Combat - hit and damage

[Omnislash]

How does hit and damage work? For the love of god I can't get how the hit chance or damage is working. It seems completely nonsense. I started using weapon which seems much better than everything I had before - highest hit %, highest damage, highest "pen",.. but for those idiotic hermit crabs it actually seems to be much worse and I have to do like 10 strikes before at least one hits.
That fricking crab is actually much worse than any boss I have encountered so far. Maybe little tuning would not hurt..

[Tenoshii]

I don't know exactly what the crab's stats are, but I think % Penetration helps (or just use magic).

Similar dynamic exists for bats because they have like 40 DV.

[Iyasenu]

It's probably not that you're missing your attacks on the Crab.
Crabs just have high physical resist for their level.
Try to use magic instead.
Or Canes, which can be crafted at the Carpenter's Table.

[Omnislash]

I tried to use magic, but then it's like one o two pixels of damage with each attach and my mana is gonne ofter 2-3.

[noname979427]

On the other hand hermit crab's make great training dummy's, as you don't expend stamina this way, you could wail on it for day's, barring you have the food for it, and sleep when your insanity is getting to close to 100.

but like Iyasenu said cane's and spells help here, there will be enemies that counter pure build's hermit crab's are like a reminder to have many angles of attack.

Bat's though, they counter everything but spell's, or just true hit attack's, on the bright side, they can never have 100% dodge chance, it's capped at like 80% or something i think?, so you will eventually hit the bat, the question is when.

[Omnislash]

It's so out of balance that nothing ever compares to it. Full room of enemies? Or just a few? It does not matter, once there is crab amongst them, it's a nightmare and pure random.

[Omnislash]

Strange. Now I used ice arrow and it killed him in 2 strikes. But I'd swear, that I tried that before and it did almost nothing to him.
Ok, maybe this could be the way.

Thanks! Will also try those canes.

[Tenoshii]

Originally posted by Omnislash:

Strange. Now I used ice arrow and it killed him in 2 strikes. But I'd swear, that I tried that before and it did almost nothing to him.
Ok, maybe this could be the way.

Thanks! Will also try those canes.

Keep in mind you might not have 100% cast success on spells. So it might feel like the spell isn't doing damage when it's really just not casting at all.

[Iyasenu]

And keep in mind spells will get stronger both from leveling them up by casting the same spell over and over, but as the spell's related stat increases you should eventually get another dice added to the damage formula (i.e. 2d10 -> 3d10)

You might get an unlucky low damage roll on a spell, but spells are definitely one way to go for dealing with high defense/dodge enemies.

Another would be debuffs and status effects.
Especially Weakness, which halves the target's defense and dodge values.

[gimmethegepgun]

Arrow spells have a pretty high variance in their damage. You probably just got a couple low rolls before.

Crabs have a large amount of physical damage reduction. That means it just subtracts damage from hits against it. High-damage physical attacks will kill them with no trouble. Spears are good against them because they deal pretty high damage and have a lot of penetration. Throwing weapons (boomerang, pebbles, instruments) all have a high amount of armor pen and will also kill them with little difficulty, except maybe if your character's Strength is abysmal.

[Astasia]

Crabs aren't that hard to hit, they just have fairly high PV so a lot of hits are "scratches" that do 0 damage. They are also basically harmless and nearly incapable of doing damage to you as long as you aren't basically ungeared, so you just prioritize other enemies first then kill the crabs last. It doesn't matter how long it takes to kill them, you just get more exp the longer the fight goes on. I wouldn't waste spells on them honestly, it's more worthwhile to get all the exp from fighting them. You may need the spells if it's a crab dungeon boss though.