Combat effects explained: damage, knockback, and modifiers

Knockback and handling

Knockback pushes a struck target away from the shot or hit. A value of zero adds no knockback.

Fire rate, reload time, projectile speed, and range describe how a weapon handles. Recoil, spread, and Kickback have their own section below. Compare them within the same weapon role; a faster projectile or longer range does not make up for using the wrong damage type against a target.

Effects from consumables and equipment

Food, medicine, and temporary buffs can heal, restore health over time, change movement speed or carry capacity, modify damage, protect against a named effect, or treat bleeding and injuries. Their item pages show the practical result and duration.

Equipment can also change movement speed, sound, defence, or damage. A value marked with % is a percentage; other values are direct values.

Alcohol: Tipsy and Drunk

Six drinks make you Tipsy: “苏西娅湖”伏特加, 私酒, the 一年期酒, 三年期酒 and 十年陈酿 Vintages, and 陈年老酒. Each drink adds 5 Tipsy stacks, up to 18, and clears Pain.

Sleeping in a Safe House bed ends both. If you want the Tipsy bonuses for a run, drink after you rest, and expect the wobble and the slower movement that follow.

Dimensional Overload and the other Disintegration statuses

Dimensional Overload is a damage-over-time status that gets worse every second. It is not the damage you take when the run timer reaches zero, which is Corruption Overload.

• It hurts more each second. The first tick deals 1 damage, the next 2, then 3, and so on, one tick per second. Armour does not reduce it. A character with 200 health and no healing dies on the 20th tick (210 damage in all), about 20 seconds after it starts.
• Getting it again does not reset the count. A new hit while it is active only sets its timer to the new hit's length, so the damage keeps climbing. Once it has run out, the next one starts again from 1.
• The Sealed Lining shirt trait shortens it. That trait cuts the duration of these statuses by 30%: poison, wound infection, every kind of bleeding, both fractures, fire, Dimensional Overload and Somatization with the penalties it hands out. It does not shorten Pain, Dizziness or Horror, or the run-timer Corruption Overload.
• You can remove it. 稳定粉末 clears it at once. Nothing stops it coming back afterwards.

Where it comes from

• A heavy Disintegration hit. Each hit is checked after resistance and Phase Shift have reduced it. The more Disintegration damage one hit still has, the more likely it is to leave a status on whoever was hit. This applies to enemies as well as to you.
• The Dimension Overload weapon trait. A Corrupted melee weapon can roll it. Each hit has a 10% chance to give the target Dimensional Overload for 10 seconds. It is in the melee trait pool only.

• Horror is the game's name for the Panic status: "the sound of your own heartbeat is all you can hear". It only muffles the sound and plays a heartbeat. It has no damage or stat penalty.
• Somatization gives you one random penalty every 10 seconds and replaces the previous one: maximum health −10%, maximum stamina −10%, all damage −10% or movement speed −10%.
• The other three damage types use the same thresholds and chances. Impact can leave Pain, Dizziness, Fractured, or, at 150 or more, Comminuted Fracture. Puncture can leave Pain or Internal Hemorrhage. Slash can leave Pain or one of two kinds of Bleeding, and Major Bleeding at 150 or more. Each type is checked separately, so one hit that carries two types can leave two statuses.
• Every status from a hit ends on its own timer, injuries included. Pain lasts 10 seconds. Dizziness lasts 20. Fractured lasts 20, or 30 from a 150+ hit, and Comminuted Fracture lasts 30. Internal Hemorrhage lasts 10, or 30 from a 150+ hit. The two kinds of Bleeding last 10, or 30 from a 150+ hit, and Major Bleeding lasts 30. A fresh hit that leaves the same status sets the timer again, and treating the injury ends it sooner.
• Which attacks reach 150? Only the heavy swings of two melee weapons list that much Disintegration: the “黑手” (220) and 神锋无影 (198). Phase Shift is taken off the hit point for point, so you would need 70 Phase Shift to bring the Black Hand's swing under 150 and 48 for 神锋无影's. No enemy carries the Black Hand, so a swing that large can only come from a player holding it. Every enemy attack lists 55 Disintegration or less.
• Enemies cannot make these hits bigger. Crit chance comes only from a scope, three skill perks, and one weapon trait, so no enemy attack is ever a critical hit. The only variation on an enemy hit is a random factor of up to 10% more. Cookie Crumb and other human enemies hit for a fixed fraction of their weapon's damage (0.15 to 1.4 times, set per enemy), which only matters for the damage they list, none of it Disintegration.
• Your own hits to an enemy can be bigger. A critical hit adds one full extra copy of the hit's damage plus any Crit Damage bonus, on top of the same random factor of up to 10%. A target with Phase Fragility, from the Dimension Overload trait, takes 20% extra Disintegration before the thresholds above are checked.

Projectile penetration

Projectile penetration is the number of additional targets a penetrating shot can hit after the first. A value of 0 hits the first target only; 1 can hit the first target plus one more, and so on. This applies when the shot uses a penetrating line or projectile attack. It is separate from Defence penetration, which reduces an enemy’s resistance and Defence.

Melee weapons: light attacks, heavy attacks and status effects

Every melee weapon has two kinds of attack with their own numbers. Guns and ammunition cause no status effects; only melee hits do.

• Light attack: use the attack button (left mouse button by default). Some daggers and machetes have two light attacks, a stab and a slash.
• Heavy attack: use the aim button (right mouse button by default). It hits much harder and slows your movement more. Its attack rate is lower on all but one weapon, and its range is the same or longer, so compare the two attacks on the weapon's page.
• Status effect: each hit can leave a status on the enemy. The chance is rolled for every hit. The heavy attack has an equal or higher chance and an equal or longer duration than the light attack.

What the statuses do to an enemy

• Bleeding: 1 damage each second for every stack, up to 3 stacks. The damage is True damage, so armour does not reduce it.
• Fractured: movement speed drops by 25%.
• Curse: 50 True damage each second for up to 10 seconds, and it ends when the target dies. One curse can deal up to 500 damage. The game gives it no name or description beyond "You have been cursed".

The Heavy Strike perk

Reaching level 2 of the Two-Handed skill unlocks Heavy Strike, which raises the chance of every status effect by 50 percentage points on the two-handed weapons: the 消防斧, Fishbone Sickle, 日式薙刀, 生锈水管, 长柄锤, 棒球斧, 棒球棍, 兽牙棒, “黑手”, 烧火棍, 大智切, 废铁砍刀, 神锋无影 and 木制长矛. A 20% Fractured chance becomes 70%, and the Black Hand's light attack curses every time. One-handed weapons do not get it. Each weapon's page shows its chances with and without the perk.