Damage is the amount of health points (HP), stamina, and poise a character loses in Dark Souls when hit by an enemy attack, being affected by a negative status effect, or falling.
In game, the damage inflicted to the HP of allied and hostile player characters and NPCs is displayed above their character model, as a number. For a player, the damage inflicted to their own character is displayed only as a brief animation of the character's HP bar, roughly indicating the percentage of HP lost. It is possible to determine the actual number of damage received by opening the status menu before and after receiving damage and comparing the HP values.
Attack Damage[]
Attack damage is the most common form of damage in Dark Souls. It is inflicted by hits with weapons and spells, as well as creature body parts, such as fangs, claws, and tails.
Every attack has one or two of the following elemental damage types:
While most attacks have a single type of damage only, attacks with elemental weapons commonly inflict physical damage and one of magic, fire, or lightning damage. For example, attacks with a Magic Longsword deal both physical and magic damage.
There are three primary means to reduce attack damage.
- Dodging/Rolling which effectively reduces the total attack damage received to zero by avoiding the hit.
- Blocking, which reduces each elemental damage by the shield's (or weapon's) corresponding damage reduction value.
- Armor, which reduces each elemental damage by the armor's corresponding defense value.
The damage inflicted by an attack to the target's HP is the sum of the attack's physical, magic, fire, and lightning damage, after factoring damage reduction and defense.
In Dark Souls 1, defenses are calculated per type; meaning, the AR type of a weapon is calculated using its corresponding defensive type. The further apart both values are, the more damage is done, and the closer the values are, the more damage is reduced.
Applying an elemental infusion to your weapon will cause its base physical AR to be reduced while adding new elemental AR. When you add these two numbers together it will look like the total AR of your weapon is now much higher on paper; but because the physical and elemental ARs are much closer to the enemies corresponding defensive values, you get significantly reduced damage. For general PvE purposes on a normal leveled run, it is significantly better to deal a single type of damage, rather than splitting the damage between to types.
Sweet Spot Damage Bonus[]
All weapons with a "whiff" animation can gain the 12.5% boost to damage after defenses are calculated. A whiff animation is what happens on certain weapon types when the attack does not connect with an enemy, causing the player to stumble. If the hit does connect the whiff animation does not come into player and the user will more as normal. Weapon types that can benefit from Sweet Spot Damage Bonuses include all Hammers and Halberds. Not all attacks will gain Sweet Spot damage, attacks like Ripostes and Backstabs will not gain this benefit at all, though one-handed and two-handed light and strong attacks of these weapon types are capable of sometimes gaining this bonus depending on the angle of attack. The hammer class is specifically unique in that they usually always get this damage bonus. Not all attacks with a whiff animation will gain the sweet spot damage bonus, such as the attacks of weapons in the Axe class.
Counter Damage[]
A Counter Attack is one of the techniques used to increase damage dealt by thrust/piercing damage. It is sometimes confused with stagger damage, which is a different mechanic that also boosts damage. Counter can be performed by striking an opponent at the same time their attack would have hit you, or immediately afterwards (but before they recover from their attack animation). It is essentially a boost given to thrust/piercing attacks that risk likewise taking damage from the enemy at the same moment, though the enemy does not have to actually hit you. It naturally also works with pokes while upholding the shield for weapons that have this. The counter-attack window generally follow right after the attack hitbox disappears, i.e. shortly after the actual damage is dealt. Almost all enemies in the game can be counter-attacked, including large enemies and bosses.
- Counter Bonus increases the damage dealt by 20%.
- The Leo Ring further increases counter damage by stacking another 40% boost, for a total of 68% additional damage.
It works with most weapons, including bows and crossbows, but counters only give a bonus to thrust/piercing attack types, so the effect is weaker with weapons that have split Magic, Fire, or Lightning damage.
- Some weapons do not claim to have a thrust attack in their "Attack type" description, but might still have one anyways (like the Dagger rolling R1).
- Pure magic weapons like the Moonlight Butterfly Horn can't deal counter damage at all even though visually it deals Thrust attacks.
- The Pickaxe and Warpick can deal counter damage. Though their attack isn't the thrusting motion, it is classified as a piercing attack.
- Many Halberds deal counter damage on their light attacks, even thought their attack type may be displayed as "Slash", though any Halberd having "Scythe" in its name deals slash.
- To check the true attack types of your weapon visit their individual pages or check this Attack Type Sheet.
Process[]
Damage calculations in Dark Souls generally follow a simple pattern, where only the number and value of components varies by context. In general, to determine the Damage of an attack:
- A product is taken of different factors relating to physical or a specific elemental damage type
- Defense Calculations occurs using the above determined product and the opponent's defense, using the function described below
- The determined Damage is again multiplied with any applicable factors
- This process is repeated for all damage types and the sum of them is the final damage
One may also consider the inclusion of an earlier step, in which AR, Magic Adjustment or Physical Adjustment is determined. This would include the weapon base AR, upgrade multipliers and its Scaling, as well as miscellaneous thing such as the Gauntlets of Thorns effect on fist weapons.
Motion Values[]
"Motion Value" (MV) is a wider Video-Game term. In the case of Dark Souls, it refers to a multiplier every attack of each weapon and every spell has, that is applied before the Defense Calculation, that allows the developers to differentiate attacks in their damage potential. These are often given in their percent value,[Note 1] e.g. almost all one-handed light attack have an MV of 100, a 1x multiplier, two-handed light-attacks have an MV of 120, a 1.2x multiplier, and two-handed jumping attacks an MV or 155, a 1.55x multiplier.
Due to the behavior of the Damage Function (Defense Calculation below), a multiplier on AR always results in a greater multiplier on the resulting Damage, which is not constant, e.g. depending on AR and Defense a two-handed light-attack will have a multiplier of 1.2, but might deal 1.3x to 1.4x more damage for a Katana.
As another consequence of the function, identical MVs will have a lesser multiplicative effect for attacks with higher AR, as such a two-handed light-attack of a Dagger might instead deal 1.6x more Damage.
A comprehensive list of motion values can be currently found on the Motion Values Google Sheet.
Defense Calculation[]
Where DMG is only the unmodified, partial damage after defense calculations, ATK is result of step 2 and DEF is the Defense of the Damage taking target (e.g. fire defense, thrust defense if the attack is physical and of that attack type etc.).
Where DMG is only the unmodified, partial damage after defense calculations, ATK is result of step 2 and DEF is the Defense of the Damage taking target (e.g. fire defense, thrust defense if the attack is physical and of that attack type etc.).[Note 2][Note 3]
Fall Damage[]
In Dark Souls, Fall Damage is the damage sustained when a player falls from above a certain height, with higher falls causing greater damage.
It will remove a percentage of the player's max HP, meaning any survivable fall is always survivable regardless of how leveled up your character's Vitality is, provided that the player's health isn't already reduced enough to cause death. For example, a fall that removes 500 HP for a player with 1000 max HP would only remove 200 HP for a player with 400 max HP. Defenses and stats do not reduce fall damage.
A heavier equip load will increase the damage taken from a fall, maxing out at 89.7 equip load. Having 0 weight will result in sustaining only 70% of the damage taken from the same fall when having 89.7 or greater equip load.
Carrying a heavier load does not affect the survivability of falls if the player's health is full. The maximum survivable fall will result in 70% HP lost for a character with 0 equip load, and ~99.9% HP lost (rounding to 1 HP) for a character with 89.7 or greater equip load.
| Equip Load | Damage Taken
(Compared to Max) |
|---|---|
| 0.0 | 70% |
| 10.0 | 74% |
| 20.0 | 78% |
| 30.0 | 82% |
| 40.0 | 86% |
| 50.0 | 90% |
| 60.0 | 92.5% |
| 70.0 | 95% |
| 80.0 | 97.5% |
| 89.7 | 100% |
Note that the above values are not damage breakpoints, just specific examples chosen
Fall Control[]
The Fall Control spell completely prevents all Fall Damage while active, though it does not normally allow the player to survive falls that would otherwise kill them. The same max-survivable-height applies regardless if Fall Control is active or not.
An exploit with Fall Control can allow players to survive impossible landings if the player quits with a very specific timing when landing.
For more information, visit this page about the Fall Control Quitout technique.
Fall Control can also be used to negate damage on certain sloped falls (more information below).
Latent Values[]
Though there is no way to ascertain these values in-game, fall damage directly corresponds with the amount of Y coordinates the player descends when falling.
5 units of height is the greatest height that can be fallen without taking any damage. Anything greater will trigger Fall Damage.
20 units of height is the greatest height that can be fallen without dying. Anything greater will trigger death.
Things like equip load and Fall Control have no bearing on these breakpoints. They only affect the amount of damage sustained when a fall within the range listed above occurs.
Kill Boxes[]
There are places in the map where a character will instantly die when touching them, regardless of the distance of the fall. They are typically found in pitfalls and out-of-bounds areas, and guarantee death regardless of Fall Damage mechanics.
Glitches - Surviving Sloped Falls[]
A few different exploits allow surviving falls that include a sloped surface (that you "slide" down), that are otherwise normally too high and cause death when descending:
If the player performs a roll while descending a slope and i-frames are active upon landing, damage will not be taken.
If the player has Fall Control active, it will allow them to safely slide all the way down a slope to the bottom without dying. However, this only works if the sloped surface connects smoothly to the ground. If the slope ends with a drop-off before the landing, even a small one, it will not work.
Notes[]
- ↑ This is done in the parameters, almost certainly with the intent to avoid the use of floating points and avoid inaccurate results.
- ↑ The form was chosen for readability, a more accurate condition for rows 2-4 would include that the Attack value has to not fulfill the condition of the above row.
- ↑ One Damage calculator can be found here, a sheet presenting the graph as a one-dimensional function in ATK or DEF can be found here.