Piercing Shot
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This article is about the Piercing Shot spell. For the piercing effect, see Piercing and Penetrating. For other spells with a piercing effect, see Category:Piercing spells. |
Piercing Shot is a modifier type spell that alters most projectiles so that they no longer die due to impact with terrain or entities. This piercing effect allows the projectile to hit multiple times, potentially on multiple enemies. This comes at the cost of 
15 damage, and, more significantly, enabling Friendly Fire on affected projectiles.
Triggers
Adding Piercing to a projectile with a Trigger or Timer Trigger will let the trigger fire repeatedly, releasing its payload every time it hits. This can provide a huge boost to damage, but keep in mind that those highly lethal projectiles can hurt you too.
A safe way to use Piercing and Triggers together is to ensure that the trigger itself has zero damage (the -15 damage from Piercing Shot itself can help with that), and that the trigger payload does not have Piercing Shot applied (or another source of Friendly Fire). With that setup, the trigger projectile can hit you, and release the payload, but neither can damage you.
While the Spark Bolt can hit you, it does no damage, and the Heavy Shot Spitter Bolts don't have friendly fire and can't hurt you either.
Shuffle
Spells/Cast
Cast delay
Rechrg. Time
Mana max
Capacity
Speed
Piercing is very expensive, so it's best not to pay for it. Here Add Trigger makes the modifiers between it and Lightning Bolt cost no mana.
Shuffle Spells/Cast Cast delay Rechrg. Time Mana max Capacity Speed
Using Mu like this is potentially dangerous, it copies all the projectiles, including Piercing Shot, leading to the payload enabling friendly fire.
Shuffle Spells/Cast Cast delay Rechrg. Time Mana max Capacity Speed
Projectiles modified with Piercing Shot will not die upon hitting enemies or terrain, but will still lose any Trigger or Timer Trigger they have on impact. Expiration Triggers are unaffected, as they only fire when the projectile dies.
The loss of Trigger and Timer Trigger payloads on terrain collision can be prevented with the use of Drilling Shot. When combined, these modifiers are useful components in the creation of infinite lifetime wisps.
Damage Rate
While many projectiles can do damage every game frame (typically 60 times a second) they are in contact with the target, some projectiles have a built-in delay before they can inflict damage again. The maximum rate is determined by the "Does Damage Every" stat (listed on some spell pages), which gives the minimum delay before a projectile can inflict damage again. This can be found in the game files as damage_every_x_frames.
Tips
- As an extremely mana-hungry modifier this is best used with slower-firing wands shooting high-value projectiles.
- Avoid the Projectile damage penalty by using spells with other damage types (e.g.
Slice damage from Energy Sphere or Disc Projectile) or by adding other damage types, e.g. 
Electricity damage from Electric Charge or 
Ice damage from Freeze Charge. - As said above, this modifier will cause the projectile to be able to harm the caster, so players should take care.
- When applied to a trigger projectile with low damage, e.g. Spark bolt with Trigger, the damage reduction of Piercing Shot can remove all damage from the projectile, rendering it safe to you so long as the trigger payload does not have friendly fire.
- Has great synergy with Homing, as the projectile will travel back and forth through the same enemy, dealing huge amounts of damage over time. Couple with Increase Duration and/or Drilling Shot for even greater effect.
- Can make a Heal Projectile continuously heal you, increasing its efficiency many times over. Boomerang will keep it flying toward you, or you can shoot one at the ground and stand on it. The damage reduction from Piercing Shot can also negate the damage added from Orbiting Arc and other path modifiers, making these safe to use to get the healing projectiles to hit you.
- When applied to a spell with a trigger, any payload the trigger has will be released for every frame it is in contact with a target. This can be devastating when used with high cost/high damage payloads - you only pay the mana cost for the payload once.
- The Friendly Fire effect is only enabled on a modified projectile after 5 frames. If the lifetime of the projectile is no longer than 5 frames it will not be able to hurt you. (In this case the projectile will not be able to hit you at all, so triggers, for example, won't work on you, but they will still work on enemies and the ground).
- Some spells that have a special property of penetrating entities behave poorly in combination with Piercing Shot - Tentacle, Worm Launcher, Long-Distance Cast, Freezing Gaze, Return, Magic Guard, Chain Bolt, Teleporting Cast, Warp Cast. These will only apply their damage (or any damage from modifiers) to the enemy once.
Gallery
History
- Apr 8 2024: Changed the spawn probabilities on tiers 2, 3, and 6 from 0.6 to 0.4, 0.5, and 0.4 respectively.
- Dec 19 2019: Added to the game.
