November 26, 2018

Patch Notes Extras! - Damage Boosts 101!

Brought to you by Brittney and Cheese Wizard of the AQW Hug Bunters!

Damage boosts! Everyone loves them, but sometimes they seem to misbehave. There are two common issues people report, which are not actually bugs: boosts aren't high enough (stacking), and the boosts aren't working.

Not High Enough (Stacking)

Damage boosts of the same type do not stack with each other. Instead, damage boosts are determined by the last-equipped item. This means that equipping a weapon that does 75% more damage to Undead, then a cape that does 5% more damage to Undead results in a 5% damage boost. They do not add up to 80% or multiply to 84%, as some players expect them to. It is solely determined by the last-equipped item.

Not Working

Every now and again, we'll get a report of a boost not working, and upon testing we discover the boost was indeed accidentally left off. However, the more frequent "issue" is simply the way game mechanics work.
 
Much like with the boosts not being high enough, you can overwrite a boost entirely. Say, like in the example above, you equipped a 75% Undead boost weapon and then a 5% Undead boost cape. Your current boost is 5% to Undead from your cape. If you equip a new cape with no Undead boost or unequip the damage boost cape, your current boost will revert to the baseline (no boost).
 
Many players expect the boost to go to 75% because they still have the weapon equipped, but because the boost is determined by the last-equipped item, equipping an item with no boost (or, seen another way, a 0% boost) last will cause you to have no boost. The same thing applies for unequipping the item with the boost; the game is now reading the last-equipped item as no boost, due to it only reading the last item equipped for the boost.  When you unequip an item, it does not look back for others, just the one you took off.
 
To get your boost working again, you'll have to make your last-equipped boost item is the one you want the boost from, or re-equip an item when you change pieces of gear.

For race based damage boosts (vs undead, human, dragon, elemental, chaos), monsters can only be considered one thing. A Dracolich may look like both a Dragon and Undead, but it can only be one. Check the AQW Wiki to see what a monster is considered. If your damage boost isn’t working against a monster, it may not be a broken boost, just the wrong kind of boost.

There is also a "vs all" boost.  This boost, like others, will not stack with it’s own type, but it will stack with any of the other race based boosts.  So an DoomLord’s War Mask and a BLoD will stack, but a DoomLord’s War Mask and an ArchFiend DoomLord will not.

But why don’t they stack?

Boosts of the same type were originally never intended to stack.  Sets of items which all have the same boosts have them because people do like to mix and match pieces to create unique looks.  By having the same boost on multiple items from a set, this gives the freedom to do that!