Critical hit
Critical hits (crits) are a game mechanic that, due to being a damage multiplier, can dramatically increase your damage output. The bonus effect is determined by the stat Critical Chance, which determines both how likely critical hits are and, above 100%, the size of the damage bonus. This mechanic applies to damage of any type, not just 
Projectile damage.
The bonus starts at ×5 your base damage output, and between 1% and 100% Critical Chance determines the probability for a hit to gain the damage bonus. For 100% or more every hit will crit and Critical Chance instead increases the size of the multiplier by ×5 for every additional 100% (e.g. 200% = ×10, 300% = ×15 etc.).
There is no hard limit to the amount of Critical Chance or the size of the damage bonus possible, and large amounts of crit are a staple for late game and/or boss killing wands.
Critical Chance
You start with a 0% chance to perform a critical hit, but this chance can be improved in many ways, including:
- Blood stains (
Bloody) +5% Critical Chance per projectile-type spell cast in the same shot - Perks:
- Critical Hit + - +10% Critical Chance per stack
- Close Call - +40% Critical Chance per projectile-type spell cast in the same shot
- among others
- Spells:
- Critical Plus - +15% Critical Chance per copy
- Critical on Wet (Water) Enemies (and similar modifiers) - +100% Critical Chance per copy
- Many spells affect critical chance, such as Spark Bolt which adds 5%
Damage above 100%
The formula for critical damage is as follows: [Base damage] * 5 * [Crit chance if >= 1.0]
So if the chance of a critical hit is increased over 100%, not only will every hit be a critical, for each point of critical chance past 100% the critical damage is increased. For example, 300% crit chance means that it will crit 100% of the time and deal 15 times the damage, (3.00 crit chance * 5 base crit multiplier = 15).
E.g. with 7 Critical Plus modifiers (7 * 15% = 105%), a Magic Arrow (10 base damage, and 5% critical chance) will deal 55 damage on every hit. I.e. 10 base damage * 5 base critical multiplier * (105% chance from Critical Plus + 5% base chance from Magic Arrow itself).
Critical on Material
The material spells and the trail modifiers can be used to force status effects on enemies. It is not necessary for them to touch the particles of liquid due to a material spell/trail modifier sharing an extra effect with projectiles shot together with them, only the projectile needs to touch the enemy to give them them the status effect for 720 frames (12 seconds). This works even if the liquid has been fungal shifted away or even if the target cannot be stained, as this mechanic does not interact with stains. Enemies might have resistance or immunity to critical hits however.
Critical On spells (water, blood, oil, burning) grant an additional 100% chance to crit per copy of the spell the wand has.
Pairing the two, we can guarantee a critical hit. E.g. This wand has 105% chance to critical hit.
Critical hit stacking
The critical hit multipliers do add together. In a nutshell, this wand deals 20x damage:
A detailed explanation is in this video:
Divide By
Divide By can be used to copy modifiers that add crit (particularly the +100% from the Crit on Material modifiers), and doing so leads to very large multipliers. Critically, this is achieved using a relatively small number of wand slots (wand space being the ultimate limiting factor in wand design).
(Note: For simplicity, this example doesn't include the multicast, projectiles, damage etc., focusing only on the slots used to gain the bonus damage.)
A simple combination granting a ×5 damage modifier in 2 slots (×2.5 per slot).
A Divide by 800 chain copying a single Critical on Wet (Water) Enemies modifier gives a damage bonus of ×4000 in 7 slots (×571 per slot).
Dividing multiple copies of the modifier makes more efficient use of the Divide chain, giving a damage bonus of ×16000 in 11 slots (×1454 per slot).
The efficiency increases as you add more copies.
| Sequence | Copies of Crit On Water |
Slot Count (With Divides etc.) |
Multiplier | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | Per Slot | |||
|
1 | 5 | ×500 | ×100 |
 |
1 | 6 | ×2000 | ×333 |
|
1 | 7 | ×4000 | ×571 |
|
1 | 8 | ×4000 | ×500 |
|
2 | 9 | ×8000 | ×888 |
|
3 | 10 | ×12000 | ×1200 |
|
4 | 11 | ×16000 | ×1454 |
|
5 | 12 | ×20000 | ×1666 |
|
6 | 13 | ×24000 | ×1846 |
|
7 | 14 | ×28000 | ×2000 |
|
8 | 15 | ×32000 | ×2133 |
The bonus can be multiplied with that from the Speed Scaling bonus. For example, combining the ×16000 bonus from dividing three copies of Crit on Water 800 times with a typical ×200 speed bonus produces a total bonus of ×800,000.
As an example, 1600 copies of Heavy Shot is +65,700 damage (70000 minus the 4300 damage penalty from the Divides). With a ×800,000 multiplier, that's 52,560,000,000 (52.5 billion) per projectile.
Resistances
Some enemies are resistant or immune to critical damage, meaning they will take only the base damage of the projectile, plus a fraction (or zero) of the increased damage that would come from a critical hit.
For example, a Sätkymestari has 40% resistance to critical damage. So from the previous example, a Magic Arrow with 7 Critical Plus modifiers will deal 37 damage per hit: 10 base damage + (100-40)% resistance × (55 critical damage - 10 base damage).
Notable examples:
- Sauvojen tuntija, Mestarien mestari and Syväolento are immune to critical damage.
- Ylialkemisti has 80% resistance to critical damage.
- Skoude has 50% resistance to critical damage.
- Minä is immune to critical damage, so you need not worry about receiving a random critical hit from an enemy, although this also means you cannot boost the critical hit chance of a Healing Bolt to heal more.
Enemies without an AnimalAIComponent, PhysicsAIComponent, WormComponent, or BossDragonComponent cannot take critical hits. Notable examples include Syväolento and the Holy Mountain statues.
