Every hit you land in Ravenswatch runs through the same calculation. Once you know its shape, picking talents and magical objects stops being guesswork: some bonuses multiply each other, and some just add up inside the same bracket and quietly dilute each other. This guide walks through the formula step by step, with a worked example at the end.
The formula below was read from the game's own code (the October 2026 build, after Update 6) while building Ravenswatch Mod Manager's modding tools. Exact numbers can change with patches, but the structure has been stable.
The short version
A hit is roughly:
Damage = Base × Attack power bracket × Strength bracket × Target brackets × Resistance × Crit
Bonuses in different brackets multiply each other. Bonuses in the same bracket add together first. That single rule explains most of what "feels" strong or weak when you build a hero.
Step 1: the base number
Every attack, ability and talent effect has its own base damage. This is the number the designers wrote into the ability itself, already including any talent that changes that ability directly (for example a talent that makes a specific attack hit harder or adds an extra strike). You do not usually see this number, but everything else scales from it.
Step 2: the Attack power bracket
Attack power bracket = 1 + Attack power + Attack power for this ability
General Attack power and the bonuses that boost only one of your abilities (your basic attack, an ability, your trait, your ultimate or your dash) add together here. So +30% Attack power and +20% damage for your ultimate give your ultimate ×1.5, not 1.3 × 1.2.
General Attack power cannot go below zero in this bracket, so an effect that lowers your Attack power can at worst bring you back to the base number.
Step 3: the Strength bracket
Strength bracket = 1 + Strength + Deal extra damage − Weak
This is a separate bracket from Attack power, which is what makes Strength valuable: it multiplies with Attack power instead of adding to it. Being Weakened subtracts here, and the whole bracket cannot go below zero.
The practical lesson: if you already have a lot of Attack power, a Strength source is usually worth more than one more Attack power source of the same size, and vice versa.
Step 4: what the target brings
After your side is calculated, the game looks at the enemy you hit, in this order.
Debuff count. Some bonuses read "increase damage for each debuff on the target". They multiply by 1 + (number of debuffs × bonus). Three debuffs with a 10% per-debuff bonus is ×1.3. A per-debuff bonus tied to one ability replaces the general one for that ability.
Conditional bonuses. Effects like "+X% damage against Chilled enemies" each multiply separately, ×(1 + X) per bonus that applies. Two different conditional bonuses that both apply multiply with each other. These can also carry extra crit chance or crit damage against that kind of target.
Vulnerability. 1 + Vulnerable + Increase damage taken + Marked, all added together in one bracket. Stacking Vulnerable from one hero and Marked from another in co-op adds; it does not multiply.
Resistance. × (1 − Resistance × (1 − Ignore resistance)). An enemy with 40% resistance takes ×0.6. If you have 50% "attacks ignore resistance", that becomes 1 − 0.4 × 0.5 = ×0.8. Ignore resistance does nothing against enemies with no resistance, so it is a situational pick, strongest against tanky elites and bosses.
Step 5: critical hits
Crit chance is the ability's own base chance plus your Crit chance, ability-specific crit chance, any "crit chance against staggered enemies" (when the target is staggered), and the crit chance from conditional bonuses.
On a crit, the hit is multiplied by 1 + 0.5 + Crit damage + overflow: the base crit bonus is +50%, and your Crit damage adds to it.
The interesting part is the overflow: crit chance above 100% is not wasted. Every point past 100% turns into crit damage. At 130% crit chance every hit crits, and you get an extra +30% crit damage on top. Overstacking crit chance late in a run is a real strategy, not a mistake.
Step 6: the final touches
After all of the above, a few last things happen:
- Some enemy and boss effects can still adjust the hit.
- Damage is never lower than 1, so even a fully resisted hit chips.
- Shields absorb the result before health is touched.
- There is no friendly fire: damage between players is multiplied by zero.
A worked example
Say an ability has a base damage of 100, and you have:
- +30% Attack power, +20% Strength
- the enemy is Vulnerable (+25%) and has 40% resistance
- the hit crits, and you have +40% Crit damage
| Step | Multiplier | Running total |
|---|---|---|
| Base | — | 100 |
| Attack power | 1 + 0.3 = 1.3 | 130 |
| Strength | 1 + 0.2 = 1.2 | 156 |
| Vulnerable | 1 + 0.25 = 1.25 | 195 |
| Resistance | 1 − 0.4 = 0.6 | 117 |
| Crit | 1 + 0.5 + 0.4 = 1.9 | 222 |
Now compare two upgrades. Another +20% Attack power changes the first bracket from 1.3 to 1.5, so the hit grows by about 15%. The same +20% as Strength changes the second bracket from 1.2 to 1.4, so it grows by about 17%. The gap widens the more Attack power you already have. Give the same thought to Vulnerable versus conditional "+X% vs" bonuses: the first adds into a shared bracket, the second multiplies on its own.
Building around the formula
- Spread your bonuses across brackets. Attack power, Strength, conditional bonuses, vulnerability and crit each multiply the others.
- Watch for dilution. Each extra bonus in a bracket you have already stacked adds less, relative to your total, than the first one did.
- In co-op, coordinate debuffs. One player applying Vulnerable while another stacks debuffs for a "per debuff" build multiplies across brackets.
- Bring resistance ignore for bosses, not for trash mobs.
- Don't fear crit over 100%. It keeps paying as crit damage.
If you want to experiment with these numbers yourself, Ravenswatch Mod Manager's talent and item editors let you change the values in a mod and test them in a normal run, and you can undo everything with one click.