Critical Hits. How Do They Actually Work? (Alpha 20)

[IzPrebuilt]

Context:

Some of you may be aware of who I am but for those that don't, my name is IzPrebuilt, i'm a 7dtd youtuber and i'm generally most known for my in-depth, painfully detailed tutorials using info from the game files. Generally there is very little i haven't been able to essentially reverse engineer from the files for my videos but one thing that has always proved difficult for me to wrap my head around is the critical hit system and critical resistance. After like a year of trying to hunt down info around the mechanic i've not gotten particularly far.

So I thought I'd come on here and see if I can't combine the knowledge of the community to get some kind of in-depth document on how criticals work.

The Stuff I THINK I DO Know: (Crit Hits, Crit Injuries and Crit Resist)

• Zombies & Animals can do critical hits to the player by hitting them.

• If a critical hit is triggered, your critical resistance will give you a % chance for the effect to not stick. (not recieve an injury.)

• If a crit is triggered, and the crit effect DOES stick, you'll get an injury.

• The injury you get is based off of a weighted roll.

• Your crit resist is determined by your the armor you are wearing and the Health Bar Candy food item.

• Taking hits reduces your crit resist. (I can't tell if it's always by a static amount.)
• The crit resist you lose will slowly regenerate over time.
• The Pain Tolerance perk will make the player immune to stuns and also concussions. (Concussions occur 50% of the time when you recieve the stun effect, rather than it being it's own effect)
• Beer, Pain Killers and Grandpa's Moonshine will make the player temporarily immune to stuns. (and concussions.)

• Vitamins will make the player temporarily immune to Infection and Dysentary

• A player with brawler rank 1 can headshot a zombie with a fist weapon to permanently remove that zombie's ability to infect.

• The fall candy will stop you getting a sprained or broken leg from falling.

 

 

The Stuff I MIGHT Be Right About But Can't Be Sure:

• Zombies have a bonus chance to crit on their first hit (12% I think)
• Zombie crits happen more frequently when you are low on health.
 

The Stuff I Just Straight Up Don't Know:

• HOW does the game decide if a crit is triggered? I know resist will block it but how does the game calculate a critical hit being triggered BEFORE resist is taken into account?
• Do different zombies/animals have higher critical chance? (@ VULTURES)
• WHY do the crit hits happen more frequently on low health?
• HOW does the game decide how much crit resist is lost on each hit?
• WHY does armor stats reflect the crit resist as a negative?
• WHY does each piece of armor give a crit resist of (10 + (Crit Resist))? where crit resist is always a negative, so if your armor says -6% crit resist, it actually gives 4% crit resist.
• I've heard that players can do crits? How? What does that look like? Does it mean decapitation?

Any help here would be appreciated, I cannot figure out where my questions would even be answered within the game files, otherwise i'd just figure it out myself.

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by IzPrebuilt
Clarifications (see edit history)

[Ramethzer0]

Good questions and now that you've brought this up, I'd love to know as well.

[theFlu]

EDITs: did some testing, editing this to strikethrough my obvious wrongs

 

First off, I don't have Any 100% sure answers about this, so this might be more of an interrogation, but you've piqued my interest. Also, I don't even think of crits and debuffs being the same, but they may well be, for this game.

 

 

For most of the "I think I know" -stuff, I tend to agree. Couple notes:

On 12/23/2022 at 1:55 AM, IzPrebuilt said:

• If a critical hit is triggered, your critical resistance will give you a % chance for the effect to not stick. (not recieve an injury.)

• If a crit is triggered, and the crit effect DOES stick, you'll get an injury.

Is this actually two separate events, or does the crit resistance just reduce the chance to trigger outright? Not that it matters, I've just always assumed they're calculated as one. And how would we know..? (Seems this is also your first question.. ok, we don't know, but do we need to? )

 

On 12/23/2022 at 1:55 AM, IzPrebuilt said:

• Your crit resist is determined by your the armor you are wearing and the health bar food item.

"Health bar food item" .. that took me longer than it should've, but you're talking about the "Health bar" -candy. I ended up thinking that "foods have a reduction in general and you're just phrasing it weird". But I'm mixing things with Valheim here... Seems correct though.

 

On 12/23/2022 at 1:55 AM, IzPrebuilt said:

• Taking hits reduces your crit resist. (I can't tell if it's always by a static amount.)
• The crit resist you lose will slowly regenerate over time.

There was some way where you could see the change reflected in your character sheet While getting hit. It may have been a mod, on a youtuber.. or even current vanilla. I should take a look at my next test session.

But from randomly seeing those at some point, the regen didn't seem all that slow. It seemed basically guaranteed to be back from fight to fight.

 

On 12/23/2022 at 1:55 AM, IzPrebuilt said:

• Zombies have a bonus chance to crit on their first hit (12% I think)
• Zombie crits happen more frequently when you are low on health.

The first of these I haven't heard of; could be true, but sounds odd to me. Players are immune to crits when at full health, so there's at least that for a scaling against health, but I do think it's likely that there's Also a relative increase with low health. It's just hard to differentiate "low health" from "I'm being pummeled"

 

On 12/23/2022 at 1:55 AM, IzPrebuilt said:

• WHY does armor stats reflect the crit resist as a negative?
• WHY does each piece of armor give a crit resist of (10 + (Crit Resist))? where crit resist is always a negative, so if your armor says -6% crit resist, it actually gives 4% crit resist.

For that, it's just an implementation detail bleeding through into the UI. I would guess it's to give a naked character a massive drawback of 50 and then remove that by armor. As it is it looks weird, feels weird and doesn't explain anything, but .. Early Access, I hope?

EDIT: The numbers are actually better looking in A20.6 b9; while not necessarily any more informative...

 

 

On 12/23/2022 at 1:55 AM, IzPrebuilt said:

• I've heard that players can do crits? How? What does that look like? Does it mean decapitation?

Well, if stuns, bleeds and such are "crits", then.. blades cause bleeds, sledges cause knockdowns, fists cause all kinds of disables, stun batons electrocute and knockback etc. And mods can add some too. All have a more or less random chance at happening on each hit.

 

I'm just still confused with the more common theme of "crits are extra damage", which would mean headshots here.

 

On 12/23/2022 at 1:55 AM, IzPrebuilt said:

• Do different zombies/animals have higher critical chance? (@ VULTURES)

For that, the melee weapons of different entities are defined as such in items.xml:

<item name="meleeHandAnimalZombieVulture">
    <property name="Extends" value="meleeHandMaster"/>
    <property name="CreativeMode" value="None"/>
    <property name="HoldType" value="35"/>
    <property class="Action0">
        <property name="Delay" value=".7"/> <!-- obsolete if rounds per minute exists -->
        <property name="DamageEntity" value="8"/>
        <property name="DamageBlock" value="8"/>
    </property>
    <effect_group name="meleeHandAnimalZombieVulture" tiered="false">
        <passive_effect name="ModSlots" operation="base_set" value="0"/>
        <triggered_effect trigger="onSelfAttackedOther" action="AddBuff" target="other" fireOneBuff="true"
            buff="buffFatiguedTrigger,buffArmSprainedCHTrigger,buffLaceration,buffAbrasionCatch,buffInjuryStunned01CHTrigger,buffInjuryBleedingTwo"
            weights=".11,.07,.05,.29,.36,.11"/>
        <triggered_effect trigger="onSelfAttackedOther" action="ModifyCVar" target="other" cvar="infectionCounter" operation="add" value="20"><!--InfectionRadiated-->
            <requirement name="CVarCompare" target="other" cvar="infectionCounter" operation="GT" value="0"/></triggered_effect>
        <triggered_effect trigger="onSelfAttackedOther" action="ModifyCVar" target="other" cvar="abrasionZombieHit" operation="set" value="3200"/><!--AbrasionRadiated-->
    </effect_group>
</item>

There's a list of weights there, but they add up to 1, which likely means they're just for selecting a debuff type. Can't find any other means of adjusting the chances in the xml, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Or just hard-coded somewhere...

Edited December 26, 2022 by theFlu (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

7 hours ago, theFlu said:

The first of these I haven't heard of; could be true, but sounds odd to me. Players are immune to crits when at full health, so there's at least that for a scaling against health, but I do think it's likely that there's Also a relative increase with low health. It's just hard to differentiate "low health" from "I'm being pummeled"

 

I'm thinking that if you were to set the damage of zombies to 1 and then just let them pummel you repeatedly, you will find your answer there.  I didn't think it was scaled to your health percentage, just how many times you were getting hit after the first hit.

[theFlu]

11 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

I didn't think it was scaled to your health percentage, just how many times you were getting hit after the first hit.

It may well be that it isn't; tbh, I can't even remember why I'm thinking it would be. May well be superstition on my part.

 

14 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

I'm thinking that if you were to set the damage of zombies to 1 and then just let them pummel you repeatedly, you will find your answer there. 

Mmmaybe. Probably. Would be interesting from the mechanics perspective, but to get satisfying data would be quite time consuming. Especially when the answer will remain "don't get hit while on low health" anyway ..

[FA_Q2]

13 hours ago, theFlu said:

The first of these I haven't heard of; could be true, but sounds odd to me. Players are immune to crits when at full health, so there's at least that for a scaling against health, but I do think it's likely that there's Also a relative increase with low health.

Really?  IIRC, I have received debuffs while messing around in god mode so I was at full health the entire time.  Are you sure a full health character is immune to crits?

 

[theFlu]

8 hours ago, FA_Q2 said:

Really?  IIRC, I have received debuffs while messing around in god mode so I was at full health the entire time.  Are you sure a full health character is immune to crits?

Hmm. I haven't done any dedicated testing for it, so 100% sure, no.

But I think I heard it from a dev a long while back; and I've thought it to be the case for a long while now, during which I haven't seen it happen to myself or a youtuber for that matter.

 

I popped in to god mode and theres 8 bikers ganging my my character atm.. haven't heard a crit yet.

I also did a bit of "taking first, second and third hits", about a couple dozen each.. not one crit on any of the first hits, two on the second and plenty on the third. I did reset with god mode which might confer some protection for the first, but I kinda doubt it.

 

And now I died ... damnit

[Uncle Al]

On 12/24/2022 at 5:34 AM, theFlu said:

Hmm. I haven't done any dedicated testing for it, so 100% sure, no.

But I think I heard it from a dev a long while back; and I've thought it to be the case for a long while now, during which I haven't seen it happen to myself or a youtuber for that matter.

 

I popped in to god mode and theres 8 bikers ganging my my character atm.. haven't heard a crit yet.

I also did a bit of "taking first, second and third hits", about a couple dozen each.. not one crit on any of the first hits, two on the second and plenty on the third. I did reset with god mode which might confer some protection for the first, but I kinda doubt it.

 

And now I died ... damnit

I remember the original dev comments, to an extent, and it was more along the lines of 'at full crit resistance you cannot be crit' than 'at full health you cannot be crit'.

 

The dev's point was the first hit you take will never cause a crit if you've been out of combat for a reasonable time before getting hit.

 

If you're taking hits while regenning health then I'm fairly certain you can take crits even at full health, because your crit resistance will have been pushed down even though your health is staying at maximum, because you're regenerating faster than you're taking damage.

 

My understanding is:

 

Getting hit debuffs crit resistance. That debuff goes away fairly rapidly with time. A few seconds without getting hit allows your resistance to recover. You CAN see the effect of this debuff if you look at your character screen.

 

Being at low health increases your chance of being critically hit. That penalty only goes away when you heal the missing health. This does NOT show on the character screen.

 

From the 'cannot be crit on the first hit' dev comment, it seems likely that 'full' crit resistance will protect you from a crit no matter what your health is. So being at low health means more hits will be crits, but the first few of these will likely be shrugged off by your crit resistance. Mechanically this does imply a 'two roll' system where a hit 'rolls to see if it is a crit' and then the crits roll against your crit resistance to see if they actually inflict a status effect.

[theFlu]

9 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

I remember the original dev comments, to an extent, and it was more along the lines of 'at full crit resistance you cannot be crit' than 'at full health you cannot be crit'.

 

The dev's point was the first hit you take will never cause a crit if you've been out of combat for a reasonable time before getting hit.

This.. isn't how I remember it, But, you inspired me to finally get my act together and thus I have proven myself wrong in the current iteration of the game. As in, I did some testing, forget all that I've said before... I love being proven wrong, though, so thanks!

 

Some testing.. There's more snake bite than calf on my character by now.

 

Some random notes from the test set that might be of interest for the thread:

A20.6 (b9):

Does the UI show Crit resistance..? Yup, at least somehow. Hidden within the movement-disabling-character-sheet, so not exactly a sane way to learn in a real game, but it's there.

Character Sheet => Trophy icon ("Extended Character Stats") => Armor Crit Resist (ACR). It seems to have been "normalized" to normally show positive values. Taking damage causes it to drop in a constant but non-linear pattern. Then it slowly ticks back up, and if not hit for about 15 seconds, it resets completely.

When naked, ACR shows 0. With Padded armor, 20 (4 x 5 pieces). Steel: 6 x 5 = 32, because of course it is. (Rounding issues, there's randomness in the values, just all my steel pieces were showing 6)

 

Against steel, the first two hits land on ACR showing 32, never a debuff received. Before the Third hit ACR shows 1, but I had plenty of debuffs from that hit - about one in three or so. If I assume everything is "working", the incoming hit will first reduce the ACR and then decide if a crit happens. Maybe misleading, but could be accurate.

 

For padded and naked, the first hit was immune, but the second hit was giving debuffs. I was assuming that might be a difference between the armor types, but my test scrap armor dropped to -4 on second hit and after quite a few hit pairs, I managed to get a sprained arm on the second hit on scrap. It did feel like a 4% chance at -4 ACR (post-hit).

 

So, as a rule of thumb, but not a strict rule, padded will give no real extra crit protection, steel will give a second swing of safety, anything in between is almost a second swing.

 

Immune on "first hit" based on what though? The UI ACR resets on God Mode, and after 15 seconds of not getting hit. Both resets seem to work as immunity - although I'll admit I didn't do too many a dozen of the wait-15-secs-type.

Full health? Nope:

I did some "hit => painkillers to full => hit" sets, and managed to get all kinds of debuffs. Full health does NOT give immunity. Being at full health within 15 seconds of getting hit might be a rarity, but full health gets crit just fine.

 

I was testing on a weakling snake - Does the damage amount matter? Bikers and Z-Bears seemed to cause the same changes to ACR per hit while doing 4x the damage, so, I'll have to assume "no". Just the number of hits, which would explain why a flock of vultures will rot you to your core before you've noticed them.

 

Having the debuffs themselves seem to reduce the max ACR. (concussion, fatigue, deep laceration 4, sprained leg 8, sprained arm 9 (rounding issues? 8.5?), 10 min abrasion none, infection none)

 

I did some tests at low health taking the "first hit"; I didn't manage to get crit that way either, no matter how low the health. But I also didn't have the patience to wait for the reset, so the sample is really small, a couple dozen at slowly diminishing health values.

 

The only exception to all of that seemed to be stuns, those would very rarely land on some of the otherwise immune hits. No concurrent concussions from any of them, though.

[BFT2020]

So I was right. 😉