Attack
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| Type | Mechanic |
Attack is the buff stat that puts extra damage behind every weapon swing. It is counted in points rather than percentages, and each point adds three damage to a hit. Two rings, a short list of cooked dishes and the festival chef in the Calico Desert are where those points come from. Attack sits alongside the percentage bonuses of the Combat professions rather than replacing them, so a farmer who stacks both hits far harder than the weapon's own damage range suggests. Learning which bonuses stack, and in what order the game applies them, is the difference between scraping through the lower mines and clearing them.
Overview
A weapon has its own damage range, and the game rolls somewhere inside that range on every hit. Attack is added on top of that roll. The flat points land in the middle of the calculation: the Iridium Band's multiplier is applied first, then the Attack points, then the multipliers from the Fighter and Brute professions. That ordering is worth knowing because it means the professions scale the Attack points too, so food buffs taken by a late-game fighter are worth more than the same food taken by a farmer who skipped the Combat skill.
Rings carry Attack permanently, with no cooking and no timer. The Ruby Ring raises damage by a tenth and goes on sale at the Adventurer's Guild once floor eighty of The Mines has been reached. The Iridium Band does the same tenth while also lighting the floor and pulling dropped items in, and its recipe arrives at Combat level nine; fishing treasure chests sometimes hold one as well. Copies stack, and the Forge on Ginger Island can fuse two rings into a single slot, which is how a serious combat build ends up wearing four ring effects on two fingers.
Cooking is the cheap route. Roots Platter gives the largest ordinary food bonus and asks only for a Cave Carrot and a Winter Root, both of which come out of the mines the fighting happens in, so the dish pays for itself on the way down. Its recipe unlocks at Combat level three. Fried Mushroom is the other reliable choice and arrives in the post from Demetrius once he is a friend. Magic Rock Candy beats everything, loading Attack, Defense, Luck, Mining and Speed onto one sweet, but it is rare enough that most farmers save theirs for a Skull Cavern run rather than a normal day.
The Desert Festival changes the arithmetic. The Chef there cooks plates from paired festival ingredients, and his buffs sit in a separate slot from ordinary food buffs, so one farmer can hold a kitchen buff and a festival buff at the same time. Extremely Sharp Cheddar is the Attack ingredient: paired with Rich Marinara it becomes Calico Pizza, with Mushroom Creme it becomes Stuffed Mushrooms, with Cherry Syrup it becomes Elf Quesadilla, and with Uncomfortably Hot Sauce it becomes Nachos Of The Desert. Pungent Garlic adds a single point of Attack to dishes built around another stat, which suits a run that needs Mining or Luck first.
Some Attack arrives mid-fight. A Warrior Ring sometimes fires after a kill and grants Warrior Energy, a brief and very large spike of ten points, which chains nicely on a crowded floor where one death leads straight into the next. Monsters can take Attack away as well. A Blue Squid's orb inflicts Weakness and strips twenty points for ten seconds, which can take a weapon's output close to nothing, and a Magma Sparker's hit leaves a farmer Burnt, shaving Attack, Defense and Speed together.
Because the bonus is flat per hit rather than a share of the weapon's damage, Attack points favour weapons that swing often. A dagger stabbing four times in a row collects the bonus four times, while a club collects it once per slow swing. The percentage bonuses from rings and professions work the other way round, growing with the weapon's own numbers, so the strongest clubs gain most from them. A build that mixes both is the safe answer for a farmer who carries more than one weapon.
Notes
Attack and the Combat skill are two different things on the farmer's profile. The skill decides health, recipes and professions, while Attack is a stat that changes from hour to hour as food buffs expire. Both are shown in the skills tab of the player menu, and the Attack figure there already includes the ring and footwear effects currently worn.
Buying Attack outright is expensive. A Ruby Ring is one of the costliest items on the Adventurer's Guild shelf, and the Iridium Band wants five Iridium Bars with fifty Solar Essence and fifty Void Essence, which is a serious haul of deep-floor drops. Crafting the band is usually the better deal, since it brings the glow and the item magnet along with the damage, and a farmer who finds one in a fishing chest has saved a long trip.
All Mechanics
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
