Combat Basics

Embershroud is an idle / auto-combat ARPG. Your character fights on its own; you shape the build and the plan behind it.

You are not piloting the fight, so the decisions you make before it carry the weight. That is what makes the numbers on this page worth knowing.

Availability

The closed alpha ships the Vanguard. Mechanics belonging to another class, or arriving later, are labelled.

Your attacks always hit

There is no accuracy stat. Every attack and spell your character makes lands on its target.

Five damage types

Element	Character	Mitigated by
Physical	Default, weapon-based	Armor
Fire	Burst, damage over time	Fire Resistance
Cold	Slow, shatter	Cold Resistance
Lightning	Chain, crit	Lightning Resistance
Poison	Damage over time, sustained	Poison Resistance

Each class reaches two or three elements through its skills and gear.

Armor is the only percentage mitigation for physical damage - there is no Physical Resistance affix.

One hit, several damage types

A single hit is one event that can carry several typed components at once - part Physical, part Fire, for example. It stays one hit:

• one roll for whether the hit lands
• one critical strike roll, shared by every component
• on-hit and on-critical effects fire once
• Armor mitigates the Physical component; each resistance mitigates its matching component

An Adds 8-12 Fire Damage to Attacks affix adds a Fire component to the attack you were already making. It does not create a second attack.

Armor

Armor gives percentage damage reduction against physical damage:

reduction = armor / (armor + 50 × incomingDamage)
effectiveReduction = min(reduction + flatDamageReductionBonus, cap)

Because incomingDamage sits in the denominator, the same Armor rating reduces a small hit by a large percentage and a large hit by a small one. Armor is strongest against many small hits and weakest against a single heavy slam.

Evasion

Evasion is the Hunter’s primary defensive layer, but every class gains a little Evasion as it levels.

Evasion applies to incoming Attack-delivered hits. Spells always hit you. It resolves once for the whole hit, so avoiding it avoids every component, including elemental ones.

Each evadable hit rolls three ways:

Outcome	Damage taken
Miss	0
Glancing Hit	50% of the damage, dealt over 2 seconds
Full Hit	100%, immediately

A Glancing Hit spreads the damage over two seconds, which gives HP regeneration and your Potion time to respond.

Against one heavy hitter, a 1,000-damage slam has a good chance of becoming 0 or 500-over-2s. Against twenty enemies, twenty rolls produce several concurrent Glancing effects, and those stack.

Resistance caps

Each elemental resistance - Fire, Cold, Lightning and Poison - is capped at 75%.

Vanguard gets +2% maximum to all resistances, raising its cap to 77%.

The defensive layers

Layer	What it does	Who gets it
HP	Your health pool	Everyone
Armor	Physical reduction, strongest against many small hits	Everyone (Vanguard primary)
Evasion	Attack avoidance, strongest against single heavy hitters	Everyone (Hunter primary)
Guard	Flat absorption buffer generated by skills	Vanguard exclusive
Barrier	Separate absorb pool that sits above HP	Arcanist exclusive
Resistances	Per-element reduction, capped	Everyone

Any class can equip Plate, Leather or Silk, and each family carries its own defensive stat. Guard and Barrier stay class-exclusive regardless of what you wear: Guard belongs to Vanguard, Barrier to Arcanist. See Classes.

How damage scaling stacks

Affix wording tells you what a line does, and two words behave differently:

• increased bonuses add together, then apply once.
• more bonuses are rare and multiply separately.

So 20% increased Attack Damage and 30% increased Fire Damage on an Attack dealing Fire give you +50%.

Full affix grammar is on Items & Affixes.

Where your power comes from

Your gear, affixes and crafting projects carry most of a build’s power.

There are no allocatable attributes, and no base damage per level. Your weapon’s damage is your damage.

Each level gives you automatic growth:

Gain	Every
Base HP - 350 + (level × 10), reaching 850 at level 50	level
Base Armor and Evasion - small growth	level
Talent point - 9 in total in the closed alpha	5 levels
Higher-level drops become eligible	level

The closed alpha caps characters at level 50.

Where to go next

• Classes - what each class is strong and weak against
• Battle Plan - teaching your character when to use what
• Items & Affixes - affix grammar, rarity and Integrity