In-Depth Info on Mechanics
All credit goes to katherine0853!
Introduction
Spellbook Demonslayers has a lot of stats, numbers and effects interacting. It’s not always obvious which interact, which don’t, and how things fit together. So here’s some things I’ve tested (since the prologue), read about and observed.
Disclaimer: the game gets updated a lot! It’s entirely possible this guide will be outdated by the time I hit publish (Not complaining, but please take a breath Xendra! Launch burnout is a real thing!). Also, I could just be wrong about some parts.
General Things
Let’s start with some short, general things that aren’t particularly explained but also don’t need too much explanation.
Stats
Those things on the bottom of your screen, what do the less obvious ones actually mean?
- Regeneration heals you that amount every second. Every heal is actually added to this, but they’re not all shown in regen/sec.
- Armor is a flat damage reduction; if you would get hit for 100 damage with 10 armor you take 90 damage. This applies before any % damage bonus the attacker would have; if that previous enemy had +100% damage you would take 180. Negative armor works the same, but you take that much more damage per hit.
This works the same on enemies, making flat base damage increases a little stronger than they seem, and scales over time for them. - Damage is straightforward; all % increases add to eachother. But “Chance to do triple damage” multiplies, just like crits (and a few other effects) do.
- Cast Speed determines how long it takes before a spell activates. Spells also have a cooldown after they’re done before it can start to cast again. This also affects how fast damaging areas such as Burning Ground or Tail Wind lvl 4 tick their damage.
- Crit Chance determines the chance your numbers become yellow and be bigger. Above 100% they become orange and even biggerer. Currently unsure what happens above 200%.
- Crit Multiplier is how much bigger your yellow crits are. Orange crits double the extra damage; for example if we have 2x (or +100%) our white dmg is 100%, yellow is 200% and orange is 300%. This can still be tripled or modified in other ways as normal, and afaik everything can crit (yes explosions etc).
- Projectiles and their stats (# of projectiles, pierce, chain, speed+range, size) get next section because there’s too much to explain.
- Banish lets you make one option not show up. This includes in chests, but does not include a Spell’s upgraded version unless that’s what you Banish (and then it won’t include the basic version).
Other
- Elite enemies buff everything around them in a certain radius, the effects differ but depend on the kind of elite. Knockback resistance is common to several variants it seems. Their buffs scale with time, yours do not.
- The Timer goes down until you hit endless/timed. At 0, all enemies from thereon get buffs and they get them again every 13 minutes in addition to their regular scaling stats. A big one is that they get a % damage reduction. I don’t think it can hit 100% (I think it keeps multiplying in on itself), but if your damage suddenly drops like a rock this is why.
- Stacking effects. A lot of effects are described similarly, and you can stack them: if your spell instantly kills enemies below x% hp and so do your crits AND you get a crit with that spell, you add the numbers together and instant-kill from up to 60% hp. If an Explosion kills an enemy and enemies explode when they die, there will be another Explosion and that can keep happening. If they happen to be frozen they can Shatter at the same time too!
Projectiles
Basically everything that does damage is a “projectile”. Including explosions, shatters, burning ground, areas, shields (these are areas), you name it. Sigils and Thrones are NOT projectiles, but the damaging effects they cause are.
But not every projectile is affected by the projectile stats, so let’s go over what the stats do and when.
Projectiles (count)
Adds that many projectiles to your spell (and adjusts the firing speed to compensate). This makes it better for spells with a low projectile count (if you normally fire 1, adding 1 is +100%. But if you fire 20, you got +5% total damage). But the lvl 4 upgrade is better if you have many (base, so starting) projectiles.
This affects basically anything that moves on it’s own and the number of times a sigil will hit.
No effect on explosions, shatters, lightning procs (but works on lightning from sigils and possibly the Throne areas?) or areas (but a lot of areas are spawned by moving projectiles which ARE affected).
Pierce
Your projectiles will pierce that many more enemies IF there are enough in range to do so. This is on top of any Pierce they might already have, which for all the areas is effectively infinite (technically probably 999, you can see it with that illegal upgrade that gives -999 Pierce).
Pierce always happens before Chain, if you have too much Pierce you might not Chain at all if there aren’t enough enemies in range.
Chain
After a projectile can’t Pierce anymore, it will Chain to up to this many more enemies IF they are in range.
This can technically affect explosions and everything (their damage is affected by the “+dmg per remainig chain” lvl 4 upgrade), but since they can’t move they won’t ever actually Chain (if enemies could be in exactly the same spot it might work).
Proj. Speed (and Range)
All projectiles travel for a set time, so the Speed of it affects how far it goes. Only affects things that do move to begin with, so not explosions and things like that. Affects how fast Shields rotate.
Proj. Size
Affects everything except: Tail Wind lvl 4. Yes you can make large explosions, burning ground, shields. Basically go nuts.
Knockback
If it does damage it does knockback. It always knocks enemies directly away from you, even if a projectile chained back in your direction (unless Black Hole, where it’s reversed).
Enemies gain more and more resistance to it depending on the clock (they also gain speed) but won’t ever become completely immune.
Edge Cases
Anything that didn’t fit in the other sections.
- Slows don’t work the way you want: Astrid’s second passive (Time Dilation: enemy speed is 0.75x) plus Lethargy (-25% enemy speed) x3 does not mean enemies stop moving. Adding Dew Sigil’s upgrade didn’t stack directly with either (but slowed enemies more). To Do: 4x Lethargy?
- Some Illegal upgrades can’t stack with themselves, only the ones that give you + or – some stat. Stat conversion upgrades also don’t stack (ie: 2x Second Law won’t add your speed to your knockback twice).
- Smuggler’s Shrines don’t shrink or go away, complete them whenever you want.
- Rerolls are weighted towards things you didn’t pick yet (at this levelup) if available. Last I checked it’s possible to reroll everything away and not get anything for your level.
- Elites are Frozen for a much shorter time, you also can’t re-proc Freeze on something that’s already Frozen.
- Many spells have upgrades that buff all similar effects (such as Indra’s Sigil buffing all other Lightning Bolts, like from Dynamo for example).
And that’s about it.
I’d like ‘Second Law’ described in the guide, since it’s mentioned numerous times.
Not sure a “what the smuggler is” section is needed, but I guess it would be helpful to explain in how far the illegal spells offered there are different from regular ones, and perhaps some ‘best-of’ smuggler upgrade choices?
Awsome thank you.
But io dont get Fortification. Could u please explain why my numbers getting up and down?
The whole explaination text of fortification confuses me ( english is obviously not my first language hope)
This is a top guide. Thanks.
I’m still confused about which stats might not apply to which skills. For example, which skills can’t chain? For example, what happens with chain or pierce on armageddon sigil? Does it do anything at all? How about “+x damage for each remaining chain”?
But listing this info per skill will take a lot of work. It’s a shame the game itself does not have a statistics/interactions tooltip for each skill.
Great guide. Wondering if you know how spells stack with themselves? For example, say you have a spell that gives enemies -5 armor, max it, and pick up the same spell again for another -5 armor. (I know you can’t have duplicate illegals but it’s an example.) Would the second instance of the same effect apply interesting
edit: clarity
Yep that would stack, but only if it does something to enemies or specifically buffs other spells/effects; if you have two copies of a spell and one says it gets +10 damage, that only works on that one spell and not the other. But if it says all lightning bolts get +10 damage, that’d work on the ones from a copy or even an entirely different spell.
If projectiles with pierces and chains left reach the end of the screen while there are enemies in range do they go ofscreen and vanish, wasting those remaining pierces / chains
or will they use the chains left to stay on screen and finish the chains and maybe even remaining pierce….
Still don’t understand what the difference is between cast speed and cooldown time.
I cast a spell, it takes x time before i cast it again
or
I cast a spell, it takes x time to cool down and i cast it again…
Looks the same to me.
Can chain effect on explosions make them chain on enemies that didn’t die the fist time they got hit?
And what about enemies inside the AoE of an explosion?
One thing I still don’t understand is the difference between cast speed and cooldown reduction, which both the in-game descriptions and this guide imply there is one.
Cast speed increases how fast you re-cast a spell. Cooldown reduction increases how fast you re-cast a spell. I don’t understand how these two things aren’t functionally the same, but it seems like there is some kind of difference I’m not getting.
Thank you very much, I kept wondering if X was a projectile or not, and wrongly assumed it wasn’t
Mate, this is a top tier guide, super helpful. I’ve been playing for some months, but this helps soooooooo much