Sacred 2:Secondary Damage Effects

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Secondary Damage Effects are a damage effect type that a player can inflict on an enemy by using a weapon with a particular type of elemental damage, or Forging specific Damage Types within their weapons, or by using a Combat Art that has the chosen element as its main damage type or even used when mixed with damage types in the Combat Art:

	Chunk of Lava
	Converts a percentage of Physical damage into elemental (Fire) damage which increases the Chance for Burn
	Poison Fang
	Converts a percentage of physical damage into elemental (Poison) damage which increases the Chance for Poison
	Magic Pearl
	Converts a percentage of physical damage into elemental (Magic) damage which increases the Chance for Weaken
	Ice Crystal
	Converts a percentage of physical damage into elemental (Ice) damage which increases the Chance for Freeze

The Secondary Damage Effect of Physical damage (and Detrimental Magic Effect) is called Wounds. This effect has no base chance of being triggered, even if the weapon is dealing only physical damage. Sources of Chance to Inflict Open Wounds have to be obtained either through Combat Art mods or items. If triggered on an enemy, the effect of Open Wounds is Physical Damage over Time.

Effect

Secondary Damage Effects have a chance to occur when an enemy is hit by a weapon or Combat Art. Burn, Poison and Open wounds inflict a percent of the damage that caused the effect over a time period of 5 seconds (the actual value for effect duration is about 500 frames, which may be interpreted as 5 seconds, but the game applies damage once a second; so in practice the effect deals damage over five seconds in five pulses).

If the effect is caused by a Critical Hit, then the damage inflicted by this effect also increases by 20%. If a Secondary Damage Effect was caused by a failed hit with Spell Resistance/Spell Intensity check, this effect's damage is likewise decreased by 30%. Several different (not similar!) effects stack, so an enemy can suffer from several effects simultaneously. However, only one graphical effect is displayed at any particular time.

The fundamental difference between build-in Damage over Time, caused by Spell Damage Based Combat Arts and the periodic damage caused by Secondary Damage Effects (open wounds, burn, poison) is the latter's dependence on flat damage. The periodic damage of a Secondary Damage Effect is directly proportional to the inflicted damage that caused the effect. Periodic damage caused by Secondary Damage Effect depends on how much damage the character has received: for example, if character's armor absorbs 75% incoming damage, periodic damage caused by Secondary Damage Effect will also inflict 75% less damage.

Calculations

Damage of Secondary Damage Effect caused by Close-Combat\Ranged, Weapon Damage-Based CAs and Spell Damage Based CAs is calculated by these formulas:

• Player vs monster

When triggered, effect will cause periodic elemental damage. The enemy will sustain five hits (each hit 1 second after the other), total damage of which is 20% of the initial blow's elemental damage composition. For example, if the hit dealt 100 damage of pure poison damage and triggered Poison, the enemy would take five hits of 20 poison damage each (100 damage over time in total). This percentage can be modified by Damage Lore skill mastery (except Wounds).

• Monster vs player

Total_flat_damage * (100% - %_absorbed_by_armor) * (100% - %_Damage_mitigation) * Difficulty_multiplier

where Difficulty_multiplier = 0.65 (bronze); 0.85 (silver), 1.0 (gold); 3.3 (platinum); 3.63 (niobium).

For example, toxic cloud with 1000 poison damage on platinum VS 2000 poison armor and "Damage mitigation: Poison +20%" causes 1000 * (100% - 59%) * (100% - 20%) * 3.3 = 1000*0.41*0.8*3.3 = 1080 damage over time in total (in five pulses: 216 dam/sec)

As can be seen from the formula, periodic damage caused by SDE depends on how much damage was received by the character: for example, if a character's armor absorbs 75% incoming damage, periodic damage caused by SDE will also inflict 75% less damage.

It is important to emphasize: Damage Mitigation protects from SDE twice - first DM reduces incoming flat damage (periodic damage depends on how much damage has received the character), secondly DM reduces damage from incoming periodic damage (open wounds, burn, poison). For example, 50% Damage Mitigation reduces damage over time at 50%, and then another 50 %, a total of 75% mitigation.

If the defender's willpower value is particularly high, the damage dealt by Secondary Damage Effects will be noticeably reduced. It works only against Spell Damage Based Combat Arts that deal flat damage and have a chance for secondary effects. If an attack inflicts such effects (for example, Burn effect from a Dragon's fireball or Poison from a Kobold Shaman's projectiles) then the duration of the effect on a highly resistant character would, in this instance be reduced. Therefore, the effect would deal only a percent of its original damage.

Defender's Willpower attribute does not affect:

• Pure Damage over Time, caused by Spell Damage Based CAs (poison attacks of Undead and Toxic Elementals for example)
• Root
• De-buffs
• Secondary Damage Effects of Close Combat and Ranged attacks (as well as Weapon Damage Based Combat Arts
• Combat Arts that deal mixed damage - both flat damage and DoT (should not be confused with CAs that deal flat damage with a chance of detrimental effect). Examples of such CAs are a High Elf's Frost Flare, an Ice Elementals' ice projectiles or a Spit CA of the Weaving Spiders. Willpower affects Secondary Damage Effects, caused by flat damage, but ignores build-in Damage over Time.

The Detrimental magic effects -x% modifier reduces the duration of such effects as well as damage dealt by them (damage is reduced proportionally to the duration of time). If several bonuses of this kind are equipped at the same time, their percentage does not total together, the final sum can be calculated using the following formula:

x_final = х_1 + х_2*(100%-х_1)^2 + х_3*(100%-(х_1+х_2*(100%-х_1)^2))^2 + х_4*...

Therefore the character can never achieve 100% reduction of Secondary Damage Effects.

Resistance

In order to resist Secondary Damage Effects, players should look for items with the following modifiers:

• Opponent's Chance to Burn/Poison/Inflict Open Wounds/Freeze/Weaken - X%: Reduces the chance that opponents will harm the player.
• Damage over Time: Fire/Damage over Time: Physical/Damage over Time: Poison -X%: Reduces the duration of the effect (as well as the total damage: for example, if the incoming DoT were to inflict 250 damage for 5 seconds it would be decreased by "Damage over time:x -65%" to two seconds - 250 damage dealt by the first pulse and 187 damage a second later, summing up to 437 damage which is 35% of initial 1250).
• Detrimental Magic Effects -X%: Reduce the duration of an effect (as well as total damage).
• Spell Resistance skill mastery reduces effect duration (as well as total damage).
• Armor can reduce flat elemental damage, which inflicts burning/poisoning/wounding status: If character's armor absorbs 75% incoming damage, periodic damage caused by Secondary damage Effect will also inflict 75% less damage).
• Damage Mitigation: Fire +X% modifier protects twice - first Damage Mitigation reduces incoming flat damage (periodic damage depends on how much damage the character has received), secondly Damage Mitigation reduces damage from incoming periodic damage (open wounds, burn, poison). For example, 50% Damage Mitigation reduces damage over time at 50%, and then another 50 %, a total of 75% mitigation. Important: This Modifier can stack with similar others without diminishing returns, so immunity may be achieved.
• Recovery Elixir will also neutralize the damage from Burn/Poison/Open wound.
• If the defender's willpower value is particularly high, the damage dealt by Secondary Damage Effects may be noticeably reduced. Secondary Damage only works against Spell Damage Based Combat Arts that deal flat damage and have a chance for Secondary Damage Effects. If an attack inflicts these types of effects (for example, the Burn effect from a Dragon's fireball or the Poison from Kobold Shaman's projectiles) then the duration of such effects on highly resistant character would be somewhat reduced. Therefore, the detrimental effect deals only some calculated percentage of its original damage.

Notes

Successfully blocking or reflecting, block/reflection negates all Secondary Damage Effects (as well as DoT, caused by theese SDEs).

Reflected damage will not cause Secondary Damage Effects for attacker.

Only one similar Secondary Damage Effect can be active on a monster at a particular time. The next time it is triggered, the timer will have been reset.

Some Detrimental Magic Effects (Burn, Poison and Open Wounds) are classified as DoT and therefore affected by Damage Mitigation +x% and DoT -x% modifiers as well as by Mastery of Spell Resistance skill.

• Many monsters have Combat Arts of this type (they are classified as those having both DoT and Detrimental Effects simultaneously). Such CAs do not deal flat damage and therefore are not affected by armor - they only inflict DoT over 5 seconds after attack (Two examples are the Poison attacks of the Undead and of Toxic Elementals).

For one minimal in-game time (1 frame) no more than one hit (of flat damage) on the target can cause a Secondary Damage Effect, and from this hit a chance to cause an efect is calculated. This means that even a million Glacial Thorns, simultaneously inflicting damage, have the same chance to cause Freeze as a single Glacial Thorn.

A variety of effects may be inflicted upon enemies simultaneously. For example, a dual-wielding player whose weapon does fire damage and a weapon which does poison damage, will have the chance to inflict both of the secondary damage effects which are Chance for Burn and Chance for Poison.

Spell-casters have a chance to cause secondary damage effects as well. For example, a High Elf casts a Fireball spell, the initial elemental composition of the fireball is almost all fire element. Each hit against an enemy creates a chance that Chance for Burn will be triggered.

These secondary effects can also be forged into armor using jewelry, but the relevant elemental damage needs to be present in order to inflict such a secondary effect. For example, if a ring with +% chance to burn is worn or forged into an item, nothing will happen unless the player is also performing an action which deals fire damage. The higher the chance for secondary effects of the material used to change the weapon's damage type, as well as the higher the percentage of the chance to inflict a damage type forged within armor, the better chance a player has to inflict such effects.

See Also

• Damage
• Damage over Time
• Armor
• Item Modifiers