Crit. Chance
| Crit. Chance | |
|---|---|
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| Type | Mechanic |
Crit. Chance is the Combat statistic that decides how often a swing lands as a critical strike instead of an ordinary hit. A critical strike is unmistakable: a sharp sound plays and the damage number that floats up is far larger than usual. Almost all of the stat is carried by daggers, which start with a higher natural rate than swords and clubs, so a crit build is a dagger build. The confusing part is the tooltip, because the number shown beside the stat is a modifier rather than a percentage, and the real odds are worked out from the weapon's own base rate. Every bonus multiplies that base rate rather than adding to it, which is why the Scout profession is worth little on a club and a great deal on an Iridium Needle.
Overview
Each swing is rolled separately. If the roll comes up critical, the hit is multiplied instead of simply landing, and the size of that multiplier is the business of the other critical statistic rather than this one. The practical reading is that Crit. Chance decides how often the big number appears and Crit. Power decides how big it is, so neither stat is worth much without the other.
Weapons carry very different starting odds. Most swords and clubs sit at around one chance in fifty, which is low enough that a crit is a pleasant surprise rather than part of the plan. Daggers run from roughly three in a hundred up to six, and the Iridium Needle sits at twice that, the highest natural rate of any weapon. Items that are not daggers can still carry the stat: the Insect Head and the Dark Sword both come with a bonus attached, which is unusual enough to be worth remembering when choosing what to put through the Forge.
The tooltip number is the part that trips people up. It is not added to the chance to crit. Instead it describes the modifier being applied to the weapon's base rate, which already includes the bonus daggers get for being daggers. As a rough guide each point of the displayed stat is worth about two per cent on the final odds, so the small-looking numbers on a dagger's stat block are doing more than they appear to.
Three things raise the stat for good. An Aquamarine Ring lifts critical chance by a tenth, and it is the only ring that touches the stat at all. The Forge takes Aquamarines directly, adding a flat slice of critical chance for each gem worked into a melee weapon, up to three times. A low-level weapon can also pick up a small innate critical chance bonus when it is enchanted with a Dragon Tooth, which multiplies the rate by a few per cent. Since all of these pile onto the same base, an already-critical dagger gains far more from them than a sword does.
The Scout profession is the biggest single step, and it behaves the same multiplicative way. It raises critical chance by half of whatever the weapon already has, so a weapon with a four per cent base climbs to six rather than jumping to fifty-four. That is why Scout is a late-game choice: it is nearly wasted on starting gear and strong once a high-crit dagger and an Aquamarine Ring are in hand. Taking Scout also opens Desperado at the top of the skill, which doubles the damage of every critical strike and turns a high crit rate into the whole damage plan.
Stacking all of it changes how a dagger fights. A needle-style weapon with a weak base damage range becomes competitive purely because it crits so often that the multiplied hits dominate its average output. The trade is reliability: a run of unlucky rolls leaves a low-damage weapon doing very little, while a Galaxy or Infinity sword delivers the same damage on every swing. Farmers who dislike that variance usually take Fighter and Brute instead and treat critical hits as a bonus.
Notes
Every source of critical chance sits on melee gear, so a crit build fights at arm's length. Daggers make up for the short reach with speed, and their special move stabs several times in quick succession, which rolls the critical chance once per stab. Pinning a slime against a wall and holding the special attack is the classic way to make a high crit rate pay.
Forging is reversible, which makes experimenting cheap. Unforging a weapon strips its gem upgrades and returns part of the Cinder Shards spent, so an Aquamarine build can be undone and rebuilt as a Ruby damage build without losing the weapon.
All Mechanics
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
