Damage Reduction

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page revision: 10, last edited: 01 July 2017

Icon	Stat	Effect
	Physical	Reduction of Physical damage. Combined value of effects of equipment and Caryll Runes
	VS Blunt	Reduction of damage from blunt attacks. Combined value of effects of equipment and Caryll Runes.
	VS Thrust	Reduction of damage from thrust attacks. Combined value of effects of equipment and Caryll Runes.
	Blood	Reduction of damage from firearms and other blood attacks. Combined value of effects of equipment and Caryll Runes.
	Arcane	Reduction of damage from arcane attacks. Combined value of effects of equipment and Caryll Runes.
	Fire	Reduction of damage from fire attacks. Combined value of effects of equipment and Caryll Runes.
	Bolt	Reduction of damage from bolt attacks. Combined value of effects of equipment and Caryll Runes.

Increasing your Level will increase the derived stat Physical DEF. Despite the name, you also take less non-physical damage as your level increases. That's right, all damage is reduced the higher your level climbs.

Softcaps at Character Level 35, 70, 117, and 145
>These levels equate to 86, 180, 232, and 255 DEF respectively.
>Maximum possible DEF is 299, at Level 541.

Physical DEF's influence on the damage you receive isn't completely known (there are a lot of approximate formulae, see source 1). It seems to be "Linear reduction with diminishing returns." There seem to be diminishing returns at either extreme, with small amounts of DEF doing practically nothing against large hits, and large amounts of DEF still allowing damage through from relatively smaller hits. When the incoming damage is higher than your DEF within a reasonable margin (e.g. 400 damage vs 180 DEF), it's somewhere around -0.5 damage per DEF.

The DEF increase per level is especially high very early on, so leveling up directly translates into better survival, no matter what you're investing in. [Sljm8D]

Clothing Defense is a PERCENTAGE reduction AFTER Physical DEF is applied. "Every 10 points of resistance is 1% damage reduction." Each type is specific and separate in this category. The entry for "Physical" (read as, Physical damage that's not specifically Thrust or Blunt) doesn't apply to Thrust or Blunt damage, as they each have their own separate numbers.

Separate items of clothing stack multiplicatively, rather than additively like you might expect. Hat, chest, arms, legs of 50, 100, 40, 40 respectively for example, would yield 212, or 1000 * (1 - (.95 * .9 * .96 * .96)), rather than 230.

Caryll Runes that affect damage resistance stack on top of your Clothing Defense. Note that the "Physical" defense rune increases Physical, Thrust, Blunt, and Blood. "Arcane" only affects Arcane, but not Bolt and Fire, which each have their own rune. These also stack multiplicatively on top of clothing (and each-other). A 5% rune would be like adding a clothing item with 50 defense in that category. In the example above, you'd go from 212 to 251 with a +5% rune.

The multiplicative stacking is just an interesting way to balance clothing/runes, but the final number shown on your status screen (the result of the multiplicative stacking) lines up with the reduction you'll see in practice. [Sljm8D]

Note that there's also a constant 10% damage reduction that takes place before Physical DEF and Clothing. I'm not sure what the reasoning for this is (since it's constant, why bother adding this as opposed to lowering attack values?), but it exists. So if you expect an attack to deal, say, 100% of your AR, it will actually deal 90%, Physical DEF will apply, and then Clothing and Runes. An attack you'd expect to do 120% will deal 108%, and so on. Take the final AR of the weapon, multiply it by the expected attack multiplier, then multiply that by 0.9. [Sljm8D]