Status effects

Status Effects are conditions that affect heroes and monsters health, stats and turns.

Duration and stacking
Some status effects, such as blight and bleed, have a given duration before expiring and ending their effect. Many status effects, namely blight, bleed, buff and debuff can stack multiple times until they expire. Despite the game tooltips showing total values, stacks are handled and expire individually.

The default duration of status effects is three turns, while blight and bleed inflicted through critical hits will last five turns instead. Many abilities also have special durations for certain effects.

Poptext_bleed.png Bleed
Bleeding is a damage over time effect, represented by a red drop. At the beginning of an affected hero's turn they will take damage equal to the bleed strength, ignoring any protection points. It lasts for a specified amount of turns, which can be seen by hovering the cursor over the red drop. Be very careful with a character on Death's Door, as this can kill them before they can use a bandage on their turn. If out of combat there will be a chance to use food or a bandage to prevent death. The Bounty Hunter, Hellion, Highwayman, Hound Master, Jester, and Plague Doctor all have at least one ability capable of inflicting the bleed effect on an enemy. Notably, the Occultist can inflict the bleed status on himself and his allies through his Wyrd Reconstruction. Bleed can be cured by the item Bandage. The Plague Doctor's Battlefield Medicine cures both Bleed and Blight on herself and the target if there is one; the Hellion's Adrenaline Rush and the Grave Robber's Toxin Trickery also cures both the Bleed and Blight ailments, though only on self. Creatures in the Warrens and Weald are more susceptible to bleed, while the fishfolk of the Cove are resilient because of their scales and the skeletons of the Ruins are nearly immune.

Poptext_poison.png Blight
Blight is mechanically the same as bleed, dealing damage over time, but is represented by a green drop rather than red. What sets them apart is that many enemies will have a high resistance to one and a low resistance to the other. As with bleed, blight can kill a character on Death's Door, so be very careful of those afflicted. The Abomination, Grave Robber, and Plague Doctor all have at least one ability capable of inflicting the Blight effect on an enemy. Blight can be removed with the item Antivenom. The Plague Doctor's Battlefield Medicine cures both Bleed and Blight on herself and the target if there is one; the Hellion's Adrenaline Rush and the Grave Robber's Toxin Trickery also cures both the Bleed and Blight ailments, though only on themselves. Creatures in the Ruins and Cove are more susceptible to Blight, whereas the pigmen of the Warrens are resilient because of their unclean living and the mushroom zombies of the Weald are already infested with toxic mushrooms.

Note: another important difference between Blight and Bleed is that most blight attacks do little to no damage, yet the blight itself is very strong, such as the with the Plague Doctor or Grave Robber. Conversely bleed attacks tend to be actual attacks meant to inflict damage while adding a bleed affect, but the bleeding itself is weak, such as with the Hellion or Houndmaster. There are a few exceptions to this, though, notably the Bounty Hunter's "Hook and Slice" and the Uca Crusher's "Arterial Pinch."

Poptext_stun.png Stun
Stun is a condition that always lasts just one turn. However, it causes the character affected to skip their turn entirely. Stun is represented by a yellow crescent and diamonds above a character's head. Stun is one of the more helpful status effects, as it can be used to stun a heavy-hitting monster to prevent damage for a turn, or stop a back row stress attacker from using their magic while you work to finish them off.

One should note that any character who is stunned will get a temporary buff after the stun wears off that will grant them an extra 40% resistance to stun (this is to make it difficult for a character to have their turn continually skipped). The buff will disappear at the start of a character's turn. However, if a character is stunned with this resistance still in place, they will gain an additional 40% stun resistance for their next turn, making it 80%. This will continue until the character has a turn where they are not stunned.

The Arbalest's Rallying Flare can remove Stun and Mark effects.

Poptext_debuff.png Debuff
Debuff is a condition that lowers the stats of a character, such as ACC, Damage or Dodge. Many monsters inflict debuffs in tandem with their other skills. For example, the Bone Bulwark and Bone Shieldwall's Axeblade will debuff a hero's resistance to move and stun, while their attack Dead Weight will attempt to stun and knock characters back. Additionally, there are some heroes who will Debuff themselves after an attack, like the Hellion's Breakthrough or the Jester's Finale. Debuffs can be removed with Medicinal Herbs. So far, however, no character abilities will remove debuffs.

Poptext_tagged.png Mark
Marks are a unique condition. No character or monster can resist them and they do nothing on their own. A mark does nothing on its own, other than encouraging monsters to attack the marked target. However, there are many hero and enemy skills that will deal extra damage to any character bearing a Mark. One should be careful if one of their characters are marked since focus fire is particularly dangerous, and that obviously goes double when there is an enemy that can use the mark to deal bonus damage. Heroes that have an attack that can mark an enemy and an attack that deals massive extra damage to marked targets are the Arbalest, Bounty Hunter, and Hound Master. The Grave Robber and Highwayman have a skill with a smaller bonus on marked targets. The Occultist can put marks, but not use them. The only regular monsters who deal extra damage on marked heroes are the Bone Arbalist, Carrion Eater, Fungal Scratcher, Cultist Brawler, and both types of spiders. The Crusader and Man-at-Arms can also mark themselves with one of their self-buff skills, to attract enemy attacks to them rather than the more vulnerable members of the team. An Afflicted hero may also mark himself at the start of the turn. Self-inflicted marks only last for a single turn. As noted above, the Arbalest's Rallying Flare can remove Marks.

Poptext_move.png Move
Move is an instantaneous effect that causes the affected unit to change position in their same formation (thus changing the position of at least another unit). Move abilities can affect the user (Forward or Back) and do so regardless of the success of the attack, or opponents (Pull, Knockback, Shuffle) in which case they can be resisted. Some abilities do both at once. Most moves cause the affected unit to shift a specific number of position in a predefined direction, but Shuffle instead send it to a random position (which is always different from the starting one). Due to the high reliance of many abilities on the position of the user, move is generally considered a negative effect, unless used by self-moving abilities to reach specific positions. Many heroes make use of this effect on enemies, most notably the Bounty Hunter who is able to apply all varieties of move effects. Other have self-moving abilities that tend to be more powerful at the cost of disturbing the formation, but can be useful to change formation during a fight; the Jester is the hero that makes the most use of self-moving abilities.

Poptext_horror.png Horror
Horror is a stress over time effect, represented by a black skull. At the beginning of an affected hero's turn they will take stress equal to the horror strength. It lasts for a specified amount of turns, which can be seen by hovering the cursor over the black skull. Currently there is no method to remove horror, if one of your heroes becomes affected your only option is to wait until the effect has run its course. Only a Squiffy Ghast is able to apply Horror to any of your heroes.

Deadhero portrait.png Heart Attack
A heart attack an instantaneous effect caused by heavy stress: when a hero reaches 200 stress, they will suffer a heart attack and be brought to Death's Door or killed instantly if they're already there. It also removes a moderate amount of stress, so the hero is at a risk of suffering another one if their stress level is brought back up to 200.

Deathsdoor.png Death's Door
When a hero is brought to zero health points (it cannot go lower), they enter Death's Door. While in this state, any further damage, no matter the magnitude, has a chance to be fatal. Whenever this happens, the hero has to pass a Death Blow resist test to avoid death. Additionally, being on Death's Door causes the hero to have -10 accuracy, -25% damage and -5 speed, and will suffer from +33% increased stress damage. When the hero is healed of at least one health point he will temporarily be safe from death, and replace the penalties by the less severe Death Door Recovery debuff. Every hero starts with 67% Death Blow resist and unlike other resistances this stat is not improved by Resolve level, but it can still be improved through the use of trinkets or with the positive quirk Unyielding. Death Blow resistance caps at 87%. There also are trinkets that strengthen the heroes while they are on Death's Door.

Deathavoided.png Death's Door Recovery
Recovering from Death's Door leaves a mark on the hero that lasts for the remainder of the expedition and can be cured only through certain Camping Skills or by completing the expedition. The recovery from Death's Door overrides the Death's Door effect, inflicting softer penalties in the form of -2 accuracy, -5% damage, -1 speed and +10% stress damage. A hero will get rid of this effect after the quest is concluded but, were the hero to enter and exit Death's Door multiple times, no further stacks of the penalties will be applied.

[[file:Poptext_buff.png|30px]] Buff
Buffs are positive conditions that increase one or more stats or resistances of the unit. Their usual duration is three rounds and they can stack indefinitely until they expire. Buffs are represented by two light blue arrows pointing upward, as an icon appearing over the health bar of the affected unit.

[[file:Poptext_guard.png|30px]] Guard
Guard is a buff that a unit can apply to an ally. Doing so allows the user to receive the attacks of the guarded unit in its place, making it much harder to bring it down. Generally, this only lasts for 1 or 2 turns, but abilities that guard another unit will also apply a defensive buff (to help withstand the increased punishment) that lasts for the standard 3 turns. Heroes making use of this buff are the Man-at-Arms, able to also increase his own Protection to reduce damage taken, and the Hound Master, who fortifies his own dodge so as to evade attacks directed at him or his guarded ally. Guard is also one of the main abilities used by Pelagic Guardians. The Antiquarian can also use her ability "Protect Me" to force guard by any ally in her party, while buffing both PROT and Dodge. This Antiquarian skill cannot be used to make a hero guard her on top of another character. There are ways to get at a character that is being protected without killing the very tough guardian first. When an area of effect attack is aimed at both the guarded unit and the guarding unit, it ignores the guard effect (but not the defensive buff). Alternatively, whenever a guarding unit is stunned the guard effect immediately disappear from the protected unit.

[[file:Poptext_riposte.png|30px]] Riposte
Riposte is a defensive effect that causes the user to respond to any suffered attack, evaded or not, with one of his own, making it a perfect synergy for other defensive buffs and, naturally, the employment of Guard by the unit. Riposte is a very rare effect, notably usable by the Man-at-Arms, who is also able to guard allies to be targeted by more attacks to which he can then respond. The Highwayman also has the riposte ability.