I’ve turned the info on this page into a video. Watch if you’re a more visual learner; scroll down to the text if you prefer reading 🙂
The game breaks down damage into “Damage” and “Magic Damage”. To distinguish, I’ll call “Damage” “Physical Damage” and when I say just “Damage” I mean either type.
Generally Magic Damage comes from Mages and Physical Damage comes from Archers and Tanks. But there can be exceptions. “Poison” is calculated as magic damage, so the archer Ancient Set “Bane” does both physical and magic damage. Tank weapons can also have the special ability to do magic damage.
When viewing battle stats or the damage numbers during battle, Magic Damage is blue and Physical Damage is red.
More about Magic vs Physical Damage in the last section of this page.
Definitions
“Damage” can refer to several different things. Which is part of the confusion.
There is the damage attribute that acts as a bonus and comes from hero or gems. We’ll talk a lot about that coming up in the next section about calculating damage.
There is a fighter’s damage per second, arguably the most important number. This takes into account the weapon damage and the fighter’s damage attribute. You see this listed with the fighter’s attributes on the left side below training level. Tap this and you get definitions of the attributes as well as info on how much comes from the hero.
The weapon’s damage per second. This is the top center number when looking at a weapon. It does not change if you unequip it or equip it on another fighter.
The weapon’s damage per attack. You can see this number and the attack speed by tapping the weapon’s damage per second. This is how much damage the weapon does for each hit; each swing of the ax or stab of a dagger. Only weapon types with “normal” attack speed hit once per second. For more on weapon types and their attack speeds, read about weapon types.
This distinction between damage per second and per attack is the crux of this explainer.
Damage done. This is the actual damage done, aka the change in health in the target. Everything written above is about the damage that your fighter tries to inflict on its target. However, the target has armor and can dodge. So the damage done will be a different lower number.
Base weapon damage. Your fighters will often have special abilities that happen “once in a while” or “on ally death” etc. These are NOT included in the fighter’s base weapon damage. Base weapon damage is what this page is about, just the fighter’s damage per second as it is shown in their fighter detail page. The ghosts made by the Ghost Artifact or the replicate made by the Illusionist only do the fighters base weapon damage; no special abilities.
Splash Damage is damage that is spread evenly among the enemies that it hits.
Calculating Damage
How is the fighter damage per second calculated? What effect do Damage Gems have? Lets get into it…
Damage per second is the more important of these stats, which is why the game displays this front and center while hiding damage per attack. However by doing this, it’s easy to miss the fact that there is a distinction.
I have all the weapon types and their speeds in the Weapons page, but for discussion here, I’ll just talk about these three types.
| Weapon Type | Attack Speed Name | Attack Speed |
| Daggers | Fast | 2 per second |
| Sword | Normal | 1 per second |
| Ax | Very Slow | 1 every 2 seconds |
Weapon Damage per Second Calculation
Notice that the Damage per Attach is given as a range. Take the average of those two numbers: in the above screenshot it is 4448 to 5030, so the average is 4739.
Since these are daggers with 2 attacks per second, multiply the damage per attack number by 2 and you get the weapon damage per second 9478 (4739 * 2 = 9478). And in fact, that is the exact number the game shows as weapon’s damage per second.
When the weapon is an ax, the attacks happen once every 2 seconds. Or to think of it another way, half (0.5) an attack per second. So to get the weapon damage per second, you take the damage per attack and multiply by 0.5 (the same as divide by 2).
Fighter Damage per Second Calculation
First we will add up the total damage bonus. This might be too deep into the details for you. If so, skip ahead to adding it all up.
All the places you get Damage bonus
Now we add in the damage bonus from your fighter, gear, gems, or hero.
The game does not actually show you your total damage bonus (the attribute). Instead it calculates the fighter DPS, which is more important, but it would be nice to have both numbers available.
Damage Bonus from the Fighter Training Level
Every fighter has a base damage per second (DPS) based on their fighter training level. Even a cook will have Damage per Second.
For those who are as pedantic as me, it’s more accurate to say each fighter has a damage bonus they get from their fighter training level. In the above cook’s case, that damage bonus is applied to naked fists, which act as a sort of weapon. I’ve never bothered to calculate what the various attribute is per fighter training level.
NOTE: If anyone has done the math on the damage bonus for each fighter training level and would like to share, I would be very happy to hear from you.
Damage Bonus from the Hero
The game does actually make this easily available.
Damage Bonus from Gear and Gems
Here you see that the ring comes with 1326-1768 Damage bonus and gets another 1026 Damage bonus from Gems.
These are all added up to the other damage bonuses we already found.
Adding the Fighter Damage Bonus to the Weapon Damage
Each fighter has a damage bonus coming from their training level, hero, gear, and gems. How is this applied?
This damage bonus gets applied to the weapon damage per attack.
An example with easy numbers. Lets say your fighter has 100 damage bonus total. And she has an Ax weapon that does 60 weapon damage per attack, aka 30 damage per second (Ax attacks once every 2 seconds).
The 100 damage bonus is applied per attack. So now that weapon does 160 damage per attack, aka 80 damage per second.
Now lets say you also have daggers that do the same 30 damage per second. These weapons look the same, only difference is the daggers have a 2x per second attack speed. Meaning these daggers are doing 15 damage per attack.
Apply the fighter’s 100 damage bonus to the daggers, and the daggers are doing 115 damage per attack, aka 230 damage per second.
Now that’s a big difference. We started with two seemingly similar weapons that do 30 damage per second. After the fighter’s damage bonus is applied, the slow weapon does 80 DPS and the fast weapon does 230 DPS.
How To Use This Information
This is why, when everything else is equal, you should choose weapons with faster attack speed. When comparing, don’t just compare the weapon’s DPS, look at the Fighter’s DPS with each weapon equipped.
You can also use this when prioritizing where to put your gems. Every point of damage bonus you give to a dagger will give 4x the DPS compared to that same point on an Ax.
Some people also say Crit is better on daggers because of attack speed. This page is about Damage, but when you have a lot of attacks (like daggers) the probability evens out making your investment in Crit more likely to pay off.
Magic vs Physical Damage
Every resident has some damage per second even with just their fists (no weapon equipped). This will increase based on their fighter training level, which increased their damage attribute. Which I explained ad nauseam above.
We see above, a level 100 fighter with no weapon does 8723 damage per second with their fists and physical damage bonus.
Now I will put a simple mage weapon on him. This weapon has no attribute bonuses. See that his damage per second has gone down to 5580!
Conclusion: as soon as a fighter has a mage weapon equipped, they LOSE their physical damage attribute bonus and instead gain magic damage bonus. Magic and Physical Damage are completely exclusive.
Additionally, there is no Spell Power listed with the attributes in the first image, but there is in the second. Brings us to second conclusion…
Only Mages (fighter with a mage weapon equipped) can have Spell Power. On a non-mage any Spell Power bonus is discarded.
Spell Power Bonus for Base Damage
Here we see the weapon damage per attack — but there is something new! There is a green “+ 3468 of the spell power“.
On mages, a multiplier of their Spell Power gets added to the Base Weapon Damage. Remember base weapon damage is what this page has been about, the damage done with each attack of a weapon, opposed to a special ability like “once in a while does damage to the enemy with the most health” or “on death deals splash damage”. Those special abilities are also, of course, effected by Spell Power.
It’s worth noting, that while I’m explaining Base Damage on mage weapons for the sake of explaining — you would not normally pick a Mage weapon based on its Base Damage. You pick your mage weapons based on their special ability, like healing, resurrection, or dealing a great amount of damage in a special attack.