Iratus: LOTD is an awesome game with astonishing, detailed characters and animations. While the game exposes a decent amount of information in its interface, it still lacks to explain and make clear a lot of the combat mechanics.

Hopefully this guide will help you understand in detail each of the combat mechanics, allowing you to better plan your battles and succeed at higher difficulties!

Brace yourselves, necromancers! Bony Weather incoming...

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Initiative is the attribute which determines the base turn order for all units in combat. The round status bar shows the order in which characters will be performing their turns in each round:
Besides telling unit action order in each turn the round status bar also displays:
i. Current round (currently playing round 4)
ii. When the next round (5) starts

Important: The units' Initiative may change from battle to battle. Say whaaat?

Before a battle starts, each unit rolls for an Initiative bonus ranging from +0 to +2. This is based on RNG, so even loading the game before a battle and starting the same battle again will possibly yield different bonuses for each unit.

You can see the roll for each unit in their cards in the bottom (left and right) of the screen:
If you ever wondered why your minions sometimes play in different order... now you know why!

Finally, Initiative is an attribute that can be affected by spells and abilities. This means that it is possible to change turn order during a battle with buffs and debuffs!

Receiving Stress damage can cause an enemy to become either Insane or Inspired. Once an enemy gets one of these effects, they last until the end of the battle and they cannot acquire the other or switch between them.

Needless to say, enemies that are immune to Stress are also immune to these effects.

Once an enemy is below a certain Sanity percentage it will be submitted to a Stress Check every single time it receives Stress damage.

Failing to pass the Stress Check the enemy will become either Insane or Inspired. The chances to become Insane are much higher than the chances of becoming Inspired. Moreover, it's possible to completely prevent enemies from becoming Inspired with certain artifacts.

Once an enemy has become insane, it will get at random one of the several available insanity debuffs. They could for instance become susceptible to receiving increased damage, lose Accuracy or have increased chances of skipping their turn or Escaping.

Insanity debuffs lasts until the end of the battle and cannot be removed.

Heart Attack

When an enemy is Insane and has reached zero Sanity there is a chance it will instantly die upon receiving Stress damage.

- This is extremely powerful as Vigor and defenses play absolutely no role; the enemy instantly dies regardless.

Much like the Stress Check mechanic, once an Insane enemy has reached zero Sanity they perform another check every time they receive Stress damage. Failing to pass that check causes a Heart Attack, instantly killing the enemy disregarding any remaining Vigor or defenses.

There is a very small chance an enemy will become Inspired instead of Insane. If they do, they will get one random buff from the several available ones that will last until the end of the combat and cannot be dispelled. These buffs usually makes the enemy or its allies stronger and tougher.

Besides getting the buff, Inspiration causes:
- The Inspired enemy completely restores its full Sanity;
- Iratus receives a large amount of Wrath as he rates it when enemies becomes Inspired.

Aside from Traps and Mark debuffs, most abilities will always perform an Evasion Check to determine whether the ability will hit or miss.

The chance of evasion is calculated based on the attacker's Accuracy minus the defender's Evasion. For instance:

If a minion with 120% is trying to hit an enemy with 49% , there is:

• 71% chance (120-49) for the attack to hit
  
• 29% chance for it to miss

These are the minimum and maximum possible values for each of these attributes:

Blocks protects against Physical Damage.
Wards protects against Magical Damage; Stress Damage; Iratus' Spells and most Debuffs (since they are from a magical nature).

After an attack passes the Evasion Check (a hit), it then checks if the defender has any of these protections. Each successful attack will remove Blocks or Wards, one by one. While the defender has protections, they will not suffer any harm. Once the protection is worn off, damage and debuffs are applied normally.

If the attack fails the Evasion Check (a miss) it does not consume any Blocks or Wards.

Tip: it's possible to remove several Blocks and/or Wards at once with some of Iratus' Artifacts, Spells and some minions abilities.

When an attack passes the Evasion Check for a defender that does not have any protective Blocks or Wards it then finally deals damage.

Some attack types can deal less damage based on the defender's:
Armor: reduces damage from Phisical attacks
Resistance: reduces damage from Magical attacks

Tip: Stress attacks are not affected by either Armor or Resistance.

Damage calculation happens in a few sequential steps:

1. Roll for the attacker's Base Attack or Dread
   
2. Apply any active multipliers that affect damage based on current buffs or debuffs
   - Increase or decrease the damage inflicted by the attacker
   - Increase or decrease the damage received by the defender
   
3. Subtract the defender's Armor or Resistance based on the attack type.
   - Stress attack attacks are not affected by either

Example:
- The attacker is performing a Magical attack. It's Base Attack is 22-28 and it currently has a buff to deal 15% more damage.
- The defender has 30 Resistance and currently has a debuff that causes it to receive 25% more damage.

1. RNG attacker's Base Attack 22-28 = 26
   
2. Add attacker's multiplier = 26 * 1.15 = 29.9
   
3. Add defender's multiplier = 29.9 * 1.25 = 37.3
   
4. Subtract defender's Resistance = 37.3 - 30 = 7.3
   
5. Round result = 7
   
6. The defender loses 7 Vigor.

Any successful attack has a chance of scoring a critical hit.

Tip: an enemy with negative Luck is more susceptible to receiving critical hits.

The base chance of a critical hit is exactly the attacker's Luck. If the defender has negative Luck, this amount is added to the base chance, resulting in a higher chance of scoring critical hits against targets with negative Luck.

Example: Attacker has 25% and the defender has -20%. Chance of a critical hit: 45%.


The base multiplier for critical damage is 1,5x, meaning a critical hit deals 150% of a regular attack's damage.

This base multiplier can be either increased or decreased by artifacts, items, abilities or spells.

All critical hits cause Sanity side effects.

When a minion scores a critical hit, all enemies lose Sanity based on the attacker's Dread.

When an enemy scores a critical hit against a minion, all enemies restores Sanity based on the attacker's Attack attribute.

This guide compiles information found scattered across the Official Wiki[iratus-lord-of-the-dead.fandom.com]; but most of comes from the official Illustrated Strategy Guide that's included in the Supporter Pack.

I hope you enjoyed and benefited from this guide! If information is unclear or if you spot any misinformation please do let me know in the comments below. Constructive feedback is always welcome!

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