NukeFire Combat Mechanics: A Comprehensive Guide

System AI Transmission — Channel: CRAWLER ORIENTATION — Priority: HIGH

Congratulations, Crawler. You have elected to engage with the combat documentation module. This is statistically a better decision than simply running headfirst into a room full of things that want to kill you and hoping for the best. The dungeon respects initiative. Marginally.

What follows is a complete breakdown of how damage is dealt, how it is reduced, and how often you get to do any of it. Study it carefully. The alternative is dying repeatedly while confused, which, while entertaining for the spectators, is suboptimal for you.

Table of Contents

1. How a Combat Round Works
2. Fight Speed (FS / CS)
3. Hits Per Round (HPR)
4. FS and HPR Together: Your Combat Rhythm
5. Hit Chance: Does Your Attack Land?
6. Avoidance: A Completely Different Way to Not Get Hit
7. Damage Per Hit
8. Damage Reduction: The Many Ways the Dungeon Tries to Ruin Your Day
9. True Damage: Bypassing the Rules
10. Active Combat Skills
11. Guns and Ranged Combat
12. Grenades and Explosives
13. Area-of-Effect (AOE) Attacks
14. Useful In-Game Commands

How a Combat Round Works

The dungeon operates on a tick-based combat engine. This is not a turn-based strategy game. This is a meat grinder that runs on a clock.

Combat does not happen in clean, synchronized "rounds" the way you might imagine. Instead, the game engine runs on a continuous pulse — roughly ten ticks per second. Every tick, every combatant in the dungeon has their personal fight speed counter decremented by one. When your counter reaches zero, it is your turn to act.

When it is your turn:

1. You make all of your hits per round attacks in rapid succession.
2. Skills and procs that trigger on-hit fire during these attacks.
3. Your fight speed counter resets to your current FS value, and the countdown begins again.

Meanwhile, the enemy is doing the same thing on their own counter. A faster fighter — one with a lower FS value — gets more turns in the same amount of real time. This is not a coincidence. This is the design.

The system alternates between processing player actions and NPC actions on alternating ticks, so both sides get fair processing time. High-level NPCs may have their counter set to zero, allowing them to act every eligible tick. The dungeon did not design this to be comforting.

Fight Speed (FS / CS)

Also called: Combat Speed, CS, Fightspeed. The dungeon uses these interchangeably and acknowledges the inconsistency with zero remorse.

Fight Speed is the number of ticks you must wait between your turns. Lower is better. Much lower is much better. The minimum possible FS is 2 — at this point, you are acting as fast as the engine will physically allow. Please try to stay alive long enough to enjoy it.

Your Base FS

Every class has a base fight speed built in. These vary considerably — some classes are built for speed, others trade that speed for other advantages. You can check your current base FS with afx (look for "fightspeed" in the output).

What Modifies Your FS

Your base FS is adjusted by the following factors. All penalties add to your FS (making you slower); all bonuses subtract from it (making you faster). The final value is always at least 2.

Dexterity:

Heavy Armor Penalties:

Heavy armor is protective. It is also slow. The dungeon considers this a reasonable tradeoff. You may disagree.

Weight:

You are carrying a lot of things. Some of them are heavy. The dungeon notices.

• Effective weight = (weight of worn gear / 2) + weight of carried items
• Every 500 lbs of effective weight adds +1 to FS

Item Count:

Carrying too many individual items also adds a FS penalty, regardless of their weight. Pack light when you can.

Active Spell Effects:

Gear Bonuses:

Some equipment has a Speed apply (positive or negative). These stack directly with everything else and can push your effective FS well below your class base — though still never below 2.

Example: A class base of 8, a −12 speed bonus from gear, and a +3 armor penalty results in (8 − 12 + 3) = −1, which clamps to 2. You now have 6 points of FS buffer. Enemy debuffs, additional weight, or bad spells can eat into that buffer before they actually slow you down.

Check your current fight speed: whatsmy cs

Hits Per Round (HPR)

The dungeon would like to remind you that more hits per round is, in general, better than fewer hits per round. This is one of the few unambiguous truths in this place.

HPR determines how many attacks you make when it is your turn. If your FS counter hits zero and your HPR is 4, you swing four times. Each swing is its own independent attack with its own hit roll, its own damage calculation, and its own chance to trigger on-hit skills.

HPR is capped between 1 and 10.

What Determines Your HPR

Your HPR is calculated fresh when your turn arrives, based on:

1. Your One_Hit Stat

This is your core HPR value. It comes from three sources that all add together:

• Base One_Hit: The starting value for your character, which varies by class and grows as you remort.
• Remort Bonus: Additional hits granted by your remort progression. These are added automatically as you accumulate remorts.
• Gear (APPLY_ONE_HIT): Equipment with a One_Hit apply directly adds or subtracts from your HPR. A sword that says "+2 One_Hit" means +2 attacks per turn. A cursed piece of garbage with "−1 One_Hit" means exactly what it sounds like.

2. Light Load Bonus

If your effective weight (worn/2 + carried) is under 200 lbs, you gain +1 HPR. Stay lean, Crawler.

3. Weight Penalty

For every 500 lbs of effective weight, you lose −1 HPR. This stacks with FS penalties — heavy characters are both slower and hit less often per turn. The dungeon designed this intentionally and feels no guilt.

4. Heavy Armor Penalty

Very high AC values impose an HPR penalty in addition to the FS penalty:

Note: These thresholds are separate from the FS armor penalties and may cut in at different AC values. A heavily armored character is slower and swings less often. The dungeon acknowledges this sounds punishing. It is intentional.

Check your current HPR: whatsmy hpr

FS and HPR Together: Your Combat Rhythm

The dungeon would now like to explain the combined effect of these two stats, because it has observed that crawlers who understand this tend to survive longer, which means more suffering for them. A net positive for everyone.

Think of it this way:

• FS controls how often your turn comes around.
• HPR controls how much you do when it arrives.

Damage output over time is roughly proportional to (HPR / FS). A character with FS 4 and HPR 3 takes a turn every 4 ticks and swings 3 times — delivering 3 attacks per 4 ticks. A character with FS 8 and HPR 6 takes a turn every 8 ticks and swings 6 times — also 6 attacks per 8 ticks, which is the same rate. The mechanics create different feels even at equivalent throughput.

Neither pure speed nor pure HPR is universally superior. Both stats are meaningful. Optimize both.

Example:

• FS 3, HPR 2 → You act extremely often, with 2 hits each time. Great for reactive combat, triggering on-hit procs frequently, and applying pressure continuously.
• FS 7, HPR 5 → You act less often, but unload more in each burst. Better burst windows but longer gaps between turns.

Hit Chance: Does Your Attack Land?

You've waited for your turn. You've swung. Now comes the part where the dungeon decides if you actually connected.

Each attack makes a hit roll to determine whether it lands. This is calculated as follows:

• Start at a 55% base hit chance
• Add a bonus based on the target's Armor Class — lower (more negative) AC makes the target harder to hit
• Add the attacker's Hitroll stat — higher hitroll improves accuracy
• Add a small luck component based on a d20 comparison between attacker and defender

The resulting percentage is then clamped:

• Minimum hit chance: 20% — you will always have some chance of landing a blow
• Maximum hit chance: 95% — you will never be guaranteed to hit

A few effects can reduce your hit chance after the calculation:

• The Blur effect on the defender reduces the attacker's hit chance by 10%.

What this means for you: Hitroll matters. High AC on a target makes them harder to hit. Stacking both on yourself (high hitroll to hit enemies, low AC to be harder to hit) is the intended progression. The dungeon designed this to cost you gear slots. It is not sorry.

Check your current hitroll: whatsmy — check the output of score or afx for your full stats.

Avoidance: A Completely Different Way to Not Get Hit

AC affects the probability that an attack roll succeeds. Avoidance is a separate system that kicks in after a hit is already confirmed. The dungeon layers its defenses like a particularly malicious onion.

Certain classes have a passive Avoidance chance — a percentage chance to completely negate a hit that has already beaten your AC. This is an outright miss after the fact: the attack connected, the damage was calculated, and then your character simply... stepped aside.

Avoidance rates vary by class:

These are not optional toggles. They are passive, automatic, and always active in combat. The dungeon considers them a courtesy.

Damage Per Hit

Assuming your attack landed and avoidance did not fire, it is time to determine how much structural damage you are inflicting on the entity trying to kill you.

The Base Formula

Each hit deals damage based on:

Weapon Damage Roll + Damroll Bonus

The weapon's damage is determined by its stats when the item was created. Your Damroll stat is a flat bonus added to every attack, sourced from:

• Base Damroll: Your character's foundational damage rating
• Strength Bonus: High STR adds a flat bonus; low STR subtracts from it
• Level Bonus: You gain a small damroll bonus as you level
• Remort Bonus: Additional damroll accumulated through remort progression
• Concealed Weapon Bonus: Applies if you are using a concealed weapon
• Gear and Spells (APPLY_DAMROLL): Equipment or active spells with a damroll modifier

All of these stack additively into a single Damroll number. Every hit, every swing, every attack of the round applies this full bonus.

Check your current damroll breakdown: whatsmy damroll

Damage Reduction: The Many Ways the Dungeon Tries to Ruin Your Day

You hit the target. Congratulations. Now the dungeon applies approximately seven different layers of reduction to determine how much of that damage actually sticks. The dungeon reminds you that this system works both ways, and that you, too, are subject to all of it.

Damage reduction is a multi-stage pipeline. Each stage reduces the damage remaining from the previous stage. Understanding the order matters.

Stage 1: Block Mechanics

Before percentage reductions are applied, certain abilities can intercept the attack:

Shield Block

• Chance to trigger: 10 + your Shield Block stat
• When it fires: damage is divided by 5, then further reduced by your Shield Block value
• The Shield Block stat comes from gear with the Shield_Block apply

Kaiju Block

• Similar to shield block but available to Kaiju characters
• Chance and reduction scale with the Kaiju's stats

Headhunter Block

• Headhunter-specific interception ability
• Chance scales with Headhunter remort level

Shield of Flames

• A special spell effect that can outright negate the entire attack, reducing damage to zero
• The dungeon considers this aggressive. It is correct.

Multiple block effects can theoretically apply to a single hit. The dungeon allows this.

Stage 2: Percentage-Based Damage Reductions

This is where your defensive skills, spells, and passives reduce incoming damage as flat percentages. These apply multiplicatively — each one reduces what remains after the previous reduction, not the original damage.

Multiplicative stacking example: If you take 1,000 raw damage through stage 2, and you have Sanctuary (10%) and Bark Skin (10%), you take 1,000 × 0.90 × 0.90 = 810 damage. Not 800. The second reduction applies to the already-reduced value.

Common reduction effects:

The dungeon is aware this table is very long. It designed all of these intentionally. Stacking them is the point.

Additionally, some abilities function as dodge procs triggered during this phase — Mirage Block (30%), Turkey Feather Block (30%), and Voidstep Block (30%) each have a chance to fire and negate the remaining damage entirely.

Stage 3: Flat Armor Reduction (AC-Based)

Your Armor Class contributes a flat damage reduction applied after percentage reductions. This is separate from AC's role in determining whether you get hit in the first place.

The formula: your AC is divided by 50 to produce a flat damage reduction per hit.

Example: AC −5,000 = 100 points of flat damage reduction applied to every hit that reaches this stage.

Stage 4: Damage Reduction (DR) Stat

Your Damage Reduction stat (visible as damredux in your score) applies at the very end of the pipeline, after everything else.

Each hit, the game rolls a random number between 1 and your DR score, and subtracts that from the final damage. This is not a guaranteed flat reduction — it is a random reduction. Higher DR means a higher average reduction and a higher ceiling.

This applies only to attacks that don't bypass DR. Some sources of damage (see True Damage below) ignore this step entirely.

The order matters: DR applies after AC reduction, after percentage reductions, after blocks. You are reducing the already-reduced damage. This means DR is most valuable when other defenses have already done heavy lifting.

Check your current damage reduction: whatsmy damredux or view your stats with score.

Stage 5: Class Deflection Abilities (High Remort)

At high remort milestones, certain classes gain special deflection abilities that trigger as a final post-reduction check:

• Headhunter (150+ remorts): Headhunter Deflection
• Kaiju (150+ remorts): Kaiju Deflection (can reduce damage to 0)
• Wolfman (650+ remorts): Wolfman Deflection
• Ninja (600+ remorts): Ninja Deflection

These are passive and automatic. The dungeon rewards long-term investment.

True Damage: Bypassing the Rules

Some attacks in this dungeon don't care about your carefully assembled defensive stack. The dungeon would like you to be aware of this. It says this with no apology.

Certain abilities, skills, and some NPC attacks deal True Damage — damage that bypasses some or all of the normal reduction pipeline. True damage does not play by the usual rules.

The mechanism works by splitting your attack into two portions:

• A true portion that skips some reduction layers entirely
• A reduced portion that goes through the normal pipeline

Higher-end abilities may have a significant true damage component. This means that even a target with excellent defenses can be meaningfully hurt by attacks that carry a true damage split. Building pure defense does not make you invulnerable.

Additionally, certain powerful spells and abilities from NPCs scale based on your current HP rather than a fixed damage value. This is the dungeon's way of ensuring that being nearly dead can become being dead very quickly.

Active Combat Skills

Beyond your base attacks, you have access to a variety of combat skills. These are not free. They have rules.

Skill Delay

Every combat skill has a cooldown — a brief lockout period after you use it during which no other skills can fire. This prevents ability spam and ensures that skill use requires actual timing decisions rather than just activating everything at once.

The cooldown is counted in game ticks and varies by skill. Active skills (ones you manually type) typically impose longer delays; passive procs have their own internal cooldowns.

Proc-Based Skills

Many offensive skills are passive procs — they trigger automatically on certain attacks without you typing anything. The chance varies...

When procs fire, they apply their effect (bonus damage, status effects, debuffs) to the current attack. Multiple procs can fire on the same attack if the RNG cooperates. The dungeon finds this exciting to watch.

Zero-Wait Combo Chains

Some skills have a zero wait time, meaning they don't impose a delay after use. Under the right conditions, this allows a character to chain several abilities back-to-back in a single turn without pausing.

This is intentional but not unlimited. The game tracks a combo burst budget — a cap on how many consecutive zero-wait skills can chain before a mandatory pause is imposed. Exceeding the budget forces a delay regardless of the skill's own wait value.

The dungeon designed this because "infinite instant-speed combo loops" were determined to be suboptimal for server health.

NPC Learning System

High-end NPCs in this dungeon are not passive sponges. They observe your attack patterns and adapt.

Over time, powerful NPCs learn to predict and partially block your heaviest hits. The more consistently you deal damage in the same window, the more the NPC's block prediction improves. This effect:

• Builds over approximately 120 seconds of combat
• Can reduce incoming hits significantly
• Has a cooldown of ~4 seconds between predictions
• Resets if you vary your attack patterns or pause combat

The dungeon considers this a feature. You may consider it a boss mechanic. You are both correct.

Guns and Ranged Combat

The dungeon would like to formally acknowledge that some crawlers find melee combat insufficiently terrifying and have elected to incorporate firearms into their survival strategy. The dungeon supports this. It has, accordingly, ensured that guns come with their own unique set of ways to ruin your day.

Guns are a completely separate combat system from the melee FS/HPR framework. They do not consume your fight speed counter. They do not benefit from hits per round. They operate on their own mechanics entirely, and understanding the distinction is critical.

The Big Difference: Wait State

When you fire a gun, you are not taking a "turn" in the normal sense. Instead, shooting imposes a massive wait state on your character — a period during which you cannot take other actions. This wait state is significant. You will not be attacking, using skills, or moving during it.

This is not a bug. This is the cost of carrying a ranged weapon that can deal enormous damage from a distance.

Who Should Be Using Guns

Not every class is equally equipped to use firearms effectively. Accuracy and damage are heavily influenced by class:

Primary Gun Classes — these classes have accuracy advantage and access to powerful damage multipliers:

• Outlander
• Infiltrator
• Fanatic
• Occultist

Secondary Gun Classes — lesser accuracy advantage, competent with firearms:

• Headhunter, Ranger, Pirate, Gypsy

Everyone else — no inherent gun bonus. You can still shoot things. The results may disappoint you.

How Gun Hit Chance Works

Gun accuracy is calculated differently from melee. Instead of the 55%-base percentage system, guns use a d20 roll against a difficulty class (DC) determined by the target's Armor Class:

A roll of 1 is always a miss. A roll of 20 is always a hit, regardless of AC. Beyond those extremes, your modifiers matter:

• Dexterity vs. target DEX:
• Shoot skill level:
• Hitroll stat:
• Target is paralyzed: +2 advantage
• You are tanking (being actively attacked by someone else):
• You are blind:

Gun Damage: Caliber Is Everything

Unlike melee where your weapon's stats and damroll interact fluidly, gun damage starts with the ammo type loaded in the gun. Caliber determines the dice rolled for damage on every shot.

The dungeon would like to draw your attention to the .50 BMG and 40mm entries at the bottom of that table. These are not typos.

On top of the caliber dice, your Hitroll stat and a class-specific Bullet Impact Damage stat add flat bonuses to every shot.

The Marksmanship Multiplier

Here is where gun classes diverge dramatically from everyone else. When a primary gun class (Outlander, Infiltrator, Fanatic, Occultist) takes a shot, the game runs a Marksmanship skill check. If it passes, the damage is multiplied:

Damage multiplier = 2 + (your gun-class remort count / 20)

A fresh primary gun class character gets a 2× multiplier on successful marksmanship checks. At 20 gun-class remorts, that becomes 3×. At 100 remorts, 7×. The dungeon rewards commitment.

Occultist special: The Occultist's equivalent skill is Mark Outer Dark. If the Occultist has previously marked a target with this ability and then shoots them, the damage multiplier becomes redacted. The dungeon will refrain from editorializing about this.

Outlander special: The Kneecap ability, when it triggers, multiplies shot damage by . This is a critical hit mechanic specific to the class.

Firing Modes

Different weapons support different firing modes:

Single shot: One round fired, full wait state penalty. Standard for revolvers, bolt-actions, and Desert Eagles.

Burst fire: Multiple rounds fired in rapid succession in a single action. Auto-9 and M-41A style weapons fire 3+ rounds; semi-auto pistols typically double-tap. Burst size may vary randomly for high-capacity automatic weapons.

Magazine dump: Fire rapidly at random valid targets in the room until the magazine is empty. Chaotic. Statistically interesting.

Sniping: Fire at a target in an adjacent room by specifying a cardinal direction (shoot north, shoot east, etc.). Only specific sniper rifles support this. Deals 2× damage compared to a standard shot. Requires a clear path — locked doors and peaceful rooms block the shot.

Trigger Control

The Trigger Control skill gives you a small (5%) chance to not consume a round of ammo when you fire. Over a long fight, this adds up. The dungeon considers this a reasonable trade for skill investment.

Guns and Damage Reduction

Once your shot connects and damage is calculated, it passes through the same damage reduction pipeline as melee attacks — armor class reduction, DR, percentage-based reductions, blocks, and everything else described in the damage reduction section. A target with Sanctuary, Bark Skin, and a high DR score will absorb your bullet the same way they absorb a sword.

The dungeon does not offer bullet-specific damage resistance as a separate category. Guns are powerful enough without one.

One exception: if you accidentally shoot a bystander (someone not your intended target), their damage is hard-capped at 5 before any reductions. The dungeon recognizes that collateral damage is embarrassing.

Ammo and Reloading

Guns consume ammo from loaded magazines. When a magazine runs dry, the weapon clicks ineffectually. Reloading is automatic when ammo is available in your inventory but adds a combat delay that scales with how many magazines you reload at once.

The dungeon has an ammo ledger system that tracks stored ammunition separately from physical magazine items. If you're out of magazines but have ammo in storage, the gun will attempt to reload from reserves automatically.

Grenades and Explosives

The dungeon notes that grenades are not, technically, a gun. They are listed here because they are a ranged offensive tool and because there was no other obvious place to put them. The dungeon does not apologize for its organizational choices.

Grenades operate on a timer-based detonation system entirely separate from both melee combat and gun mechanics.

How they work:

1. You arm and throw the grenade.
2. A fuse timer begins counting down.
3. When the timer expires, the grenade detonates.
4. The carrier (or the floor, if thrown) takes full damage.
5. All other valid targets in the room take 1/4 of the detonation damage.
6. Adjacent rooms hear the explosion.

Grenade damage is rolled as dice × 100, where the dice value is set by the specific grenade item. This makes grenades highly variable — they can hit for very little or an enormous amount depending on the roll.

Grenade types:

• Explosive: Fire damage, standard blast
• Electric: Electrical damage, same blast mechanics

If the grenade happens to be in your inventory when it detonates (you forgot you were holding it, or misjudged the fuse), there is a 50% chance the explosion simply... doesn't happen. The dungeon describes this outcome as "a dud." You may describe it however you like. You are alive.

Area-of-Effect (AOE) Attacks

Some skills and spells don't target one enemy. They target everyone in the room. This is efficient. It is also, from a design standpoint, a source of many edge cases.

AOE attacks run through a centralized targeting system before damage is applied. Regardless of which AOE skill or spell you're using, the same rules apply to who gets hit.

Who Gets Hit

The Boneyard (the designated PvP arena) disables faction protection entirely. Inside it, AOE hits everything that isn't your own follower or a group ally's follower. Outside it, your AOE will not accidentally murder fellow players or their summons.

AOE Sources

Skills and spells that affect multiple targets include:

• Sword Sweep — melee AOE targeting everyone in the room
• Whirlwind Strike — rotational AOE attack
• Radiation Burst — ranged AOE damage
• Dagger Dance — fast multi-target strike pattern
• Vomit — it does what it sounds like; it hits everything nearby
• Area spells: Earthquake, Firestorm, Hellquake, Ravaged Terrain, Rotting Blight

All of these go through the same targeting filter before dealing damage. There is no "oops I hit a group member" with spells. The dungeon made this very deliberate.

Useful In-Game Commands

The dungeon has gone through the trouble of building several diagnostic tools. Use them. It is faster than rereading this document every time you change gear.

The dungeon recommends using whatsmy cs and whatsmy hpr after every significant gear change. Equipment choices have cascading effects across multiple stats. What looks like a pure upgrade might trade HPR for defense in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

End of System Transmission.

The dungeon wishes you adequate survival. Adequate. It has learned not to promise more than that.

— System AI, NukeFire Combat Orientation Module v1.0