Damage

Damage in Spiral Knights is dealt out by players, monsters or physical structures such as spikes or brambles and decreases health.

Taking and Dealing Damage

Taking normal damage from a mini jelly cube (left) and taking both normal and elemental damage from a Blight Knight (right).

Dealing damage that the monster is strongly resistant to is in gray (left), a normal amount of damage is in white (middle), and dealing much more damage is in large sized numbers (right).

When taking damage of the various types, a knight will see a visual indicator of colorful damage bars coming out of their knight. Each damage bar represents 1/4 of a health bar worth of damage. The color of the damage bar depends on the type of damage taken: red for normal, yellow for piercing, green for elemental, and purple for shadow.

When dealing damage by attacking monsters with weapons, each individual knight will see what damage they are doing in the form of negative numbers coming from the monster(s) that has been hit. The size of the numbers depend on the amount of damage done to monsters. Weaker weapons will result in smaller numbers, even if monsters are weak against that particular type of damage. If a monster is strongly resistant to a damage type, the damage numbers will be gray.

Damage Types

All standard damage in Spiral Knights can be categorized into one of four types of damage. Similarly, all defense gained from gear can be categorized into these damage types.

Attacks may have a dual damage type. This is basically treated as two attacks happening simultaneously. For example, a fiery sword may output 25 normal damage and 25 elemental damage with each strike.

Normal Damage

Normal damage is the most common damage type encountered, and is the baseline, in a sense. Most weapons deal normal damage, and most armor provides, if nothing else, defense against normal damage.

Piercing Damage

Piercing damage originates from attacks designed to bypass armor. Guns often deal piercing damage, as do floor spikes and some monster attacks.

Elemental Damage

Elemental damage originates from magic or energy-based attacks. Damage dealt by the fire status condition is elemental damage, as are lasers and other such attacks without a physical component.

Shadow Damage

Shadow damage originates from otherworldly sources, such as Fiends or Undead. Rarely, the player can deal shadow damage, but such weapons are often cursed.

Monster Resistances

Each of the six monster families has a damage type they are weak to, one they are neutral to and one they are strongly resistant to. Each member of that family shares the same damage resistances, so if a Zombie happens to be weak to elemental damage, a Spookat will be as well. Using the information in this table will help you to adjust your equipment strategically to do damage types that your expected foes are weak to, or stick with normal damage, which all monsters resist at the same rate.

Monster Type	Damage Type	Weak To	Neutral To	Strongly Resistant To
Slime Family	Piercing	Shadow	Elemental	Piercing
Beast Family	Piercing	Piercing	Shadow	Elemental
Gremlin Family	Elemental	Shadow	Piercing	Elemental
Construct Family	Elemental	Elemental	Shadow	Piercing
Fiend Family	Shadow	Piercing	Elemental	Shadow
Undead Family	Shadow	Elemental	Piercing	Shadow

Healing "Attacks"

A Silkwing healing a Jelly Cube for +25.

There are some monsters which can deal healing, or negative damage, out to other monsters. This includes Silkwings and Gremlin Menders. This is represented visually in the form of positive red numbers coming from the monster(s) that has been healed.

See Also

• Armor
• Bombs
• Handguns
• Helmets
• Shields
• Swords
• Trinkets