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Progression Guide

A practical guide for admins designing gear and mob stat budgets. The formulas here come from the damage pipeline — see Damage for the full math.

The damage formula (quick reference)

final = base_damage × (1 + strength/100) × (1 - defense/(defense + 100))
  • base_damage — the item's damage stat
  • strength — attacker's total strength stat
  • defense — defender's total defense stat (mob or player)

On a crit, multiply by (1 + crit_damage/100). Crit chance rolls crit_chance/100 each hit.

Tier stat budgets

Use these ranges as starting points. Adjust up or down based on your pacing preferences. The numbers assume the default formula with no extra modifiers.

Tier Gear level Weapon damage Attacker strength Mob defense Mob HP Time to kill (approx)
Starter 1–10 30–60 5–20 0–15 80–150 3–5 hits
Common 10–25 60–120 20–50 15–40 150–400 4–6 hits
Rare 25–40 120–250 50–100 40–80 400–1 000 5–8 hits
Epic 40–60 250–500 100–180 80–130 1 000–3 000 6–10 hits
Legendary 60+ 500–1 000 180–300 130–180 3 000–10 000 8–15 hits

Worked example (Tier 2 — Common)

  • Player weapon: damage: 100, strength: 40
  • Mob: defense: 30, MaxHealth: 300
final = 100 × (1 + 40/100) × (1 - 30/130)
      = 100 × 1.40 × 0.769
      = 107.7

The mob dies in roughly 3 hits — a bit fast for Common tier. Bump MaxHealth to 400–500 or raise defense to 50.

Defense diminishing returns

Defense uses a diminishing-returns formula (defense/(defense + 100)), so stacking it past ~200 has rapidly shrinking gains.

Defense Damage reduction Effective HP multiplier
0 0% 1.0×
25 20% 1.25×
50 33% 1.5×
100 50% 2.0×
150 60% 2.5×
200 67% 3.0×
300 75% 4.0×
500 83% 5.9×

Rule of thumb: defense: 100 doubles effective HP. Items beyond defense: 200 are rarely worth the stat cost.

Strength returns

Strength is a linear multiplier — every 100 strength is +100% damage (doubles damage at 100, triples at 200).

Strength Damage multiplier
0 1.0× (no bonus)
25 1.25×
50 1.5×
100 2.0×
200 3.0×
300 4.0×

Since it's linear, there's no "cap" — but stat budgets (below) keep it from spiraling.

Crit chance & damage

  • crit_chance — percent chance per hit (0–100). At 100 every hit crits.
  • crit_damage — bonus multiplier on a crit. Default: crit_damage: 50 = 1.5× damage on crit.

Expected DPS multiplier from crits:

1 + (crit_chance/100) × (crit_damage/100)

Example: 30% crit chance, 100% crit damage → 1 + 0.30 × 1.0 = 1.3× average damage.

Avoid giving players both very high crit chance and very high crit damage — the multiplier compounds fast:

Crit chance Crit damage DPS multiplier
20% 50% 1.10×
30% 100% 1.30×
50% 150% 1.75×
80% 200% 2.60×
100% 300% 4.00×

Mob design guidelines

Trash mobs

Fast to kill. Dense spawns. Reward: small XP + common drops.

  • HP: 2–4× the player's expected hit
  • Defense: low (≤ 30% of damage reduction)
  • Abilities: none, or simple ~onTimer with long cooldown

Named / champion mobs

Slower to kill, solo encounter. Reward: uncommon drops.

  • HP: 8–15× player hit (~60 seconds of combat)
  • Defense: moderate (40–60% reduction with appropriate gear)
  • Abilities: 1–2 abilities with ~onHurt or ~onTimer

Dungeon bosses

Sustained fight. Reward: rare/epic drops.

  • HP: 30–60× player hit (3–5 minutes of combat)
  • Defense: high (60–70% reduction)
  • Abilities: 2–4 abilities, mix of ~onTimer, ~onHurt, ~onSpawn
  • Consider adding a phase change at 50% HP (requires health threshold support — see Patterns)

Player HP guidelines

max_health is additive on top of the player's base vanilla HP (20). The stat adds hearts.

Tier Recommended max_health bonus Total effective HP
No gear 0 20
Starter set +20–50 40–70
Common set +50–100 70–120
Rare set +100–200 120–220
Epic set +200–400 220–420
Legendary set +400–800 420–820

Scale mob damage accordingly — a Rare-tier player at 200 HP should feel threatened by a named mob doing 40–60 per hit.

Quick-check before shipping content

  1. Spawn the mob, fight it with starter gear. Does it die in a reasonable number of hits? Is it threatening?
  2. Fight it with the intended drop item. Is the upgrade obvious?
  3. Admin-skip to end-game gear, fight a starter mob. Should one-shot or near one-shot — if not, starter mobs feel spongey forever.
  4. Fight a legendary mob with starter gear. Should be near-impossible — confirms tier gates are real.

See also: Damage pipeline, Stats reference, Mobs