Raw Damage vs % damage

Units do raw damage. Some gods do also extra % damage - damage based on max HP of target. To kill the final boss of normal/hard mode, you will need % damage. At lower levels, the boss has too much HP to be killed with only raw damage, so you'll need to do as much % damage as possible. At higher levels, you can use raw damage.

To kill final boss of hell mode, you need damage scaling with shield or insane damage output (cannon and eggby are best for this)

% Damage Buffs and Crits

% damage cannot be increased by crits or by increasing damage (for example from ancient blue dragons). The best buff for % damage is speed boost (from witch doctor). This means that you'll do the same % damage per hit, but you'll be hitting more often, allowing you to kill bosses faster.

% Damage in Hard and Hell mode

% damage is based only on max health. Because of this, enemies that have more shield than they do health will be much harder to kill with % damage, and you'll need more raw damage as a result.

Example: if an enemy has 10 health, and 1000 shield, 10% damage would be 1 damage, requiring you to hit them 1010 times overall.

Upgrading Units with Stones

In battle, you can upgrade units using stones to increase their damage - this feature is usually useless, you want to use it only when you're done building and have blue stones to spend.

Abilities increasing attack are based on base damage (white numbers), and damage increases from spending stones do not stack with abilities. For example, a unit with 30k base damage will get +30k damage from a level 1 blue dragon (+100%), and the Blue Dragon buff will not increase as you upgrade it with stones.

Crit Rate

Base crit rate is roughly 15%. Base crit damage is roughly +100%. Extra boss damage is nearly useless.

Support Units

Support units (witch doctor, ancient blue dragons) apply their bonus to partner too, and bonuses stack additively: if you make 4 lvl 1 witch doctors, both you and partner's units will have their speed doubled.

Demon God Upgrade

In-battle demon god upgrade will increase damage of units based on their type: Clara will get different bonus than slime. This upgrade does not depend on unit level; lvl 1 Clara will get the same damage boost as lvl 21 Clara. This boost is usually dramatically bigger than raw damage of unit, but still not that useful nowadays.

Slow Effect

Slow effects do stack but only for different units: if a tile is covered by 3 different Ice Knights, it is the same is if it were covered by one. Big Hand's slow from relic however will be add to the slow from Ice Knight. When effects DO stack, they're multiplicative.

Stun Effect

Stunning stunned enemy will refresh stun duration. If enemy from previous wave is still on board, he will get 20% chance to ignore stun (meaning attacks are less likely to stun him). If he is on board for 2 waves, the chance rises to 40%. This continues until enemy has 100% chance to resist stun and becomes unstunnable.

Attack Priority

Unless specified otherwise, units will attack the closest enemy.

Multiplicative vs Additive

Multiplicative boosts are much more powerful than additive boosts.

• Additive boosts add together before being applied. For example, if you have two bonuses of +50% damage, they combine into +100% total, giving you 2× damage. Every +50% buff will be the same size.

• Multiplicative boosts apply separately and multiply the result. Two +50% boosts would be 1.5 × 1.5 = 2.25× damage, making them stronger when stacked.

Additive: +50% three times → 1 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 = 2.5×
Multiplicative: +50% three times → 1 × 1.5 × 1.5 × 1.5 = 3.375×