Energy weapons

Energy weapons

Ten technological weapons in two classes: pistols and rifles. All of them fire on behalf of the player, so the same rules apply as for melee weapons: safe zones, allies, target defense, stats and the damage log used to split loot. Every shot consumes energy cells, and stronger weapons consume more of them.

Damage is given per beam; a cone shot fires six beams at once, so the target takes their sum. Range is measured from the player's eye. Knockback is the strength of the push on a hit target, and pierce is the number of targets along the line of the beam (1 means only the first one).

Energy cells

Energy Cells (Common) are consumed by energy weapons instead of ammo. You buy them from the Technician: a pack of 32 for 64 VED, which is 2 VED per cell. Stronger weapons consume more cells per shot: from 1 for the Spark Pistol to 6 for the Plasma Launcher. Cells are an ordinary trade item, so you can sell them or put them on the auction house.

A shot step by step

1. Preparation. The energy weapon must be in the main hand. The base item's own behavior is completely disabled, so the weapon does not fire its "own" item on right click either.
2. Cooldown. The weapon's cooldown must pass since the player's last shot: 3 t (150 ms) for the fastest and 40 t (2000 ms) for the slowest. The cooldown is counted from a shot of any weapon the player owns, so switching the item in hand does not reset the counter. The cooldown is measured in milliseconds: number of ticks x 50 ms.
3. Ammo. All cells are counted: the loose ones in the inventory and those in pouches. If there are fewer than the weapon consumes per shot, nothing happens – no cell disappears. The message "Out of energy cells." appears on the action bar, with an empty-shot sound and 1.5 s of silence on the bar so that the message can be read (the regular bar returns after 2 ticks).
4. Taking the ammo. Cells are taken from pouches first, in inventory slot order, and only then loose from stacks. This way the supply in a pouch does not stay behind, and a freshly picked up cell always stays where it was put.
5. The shot. Depending on the weapon: an instant beam, several beams in a cone or a flying projectile with an explosion. There is one range for the whole shot, including when piercing.
6. Raycast. The beam goes from the player's eye in the direction of the gaze up to the weapon's range. It stops at the first block that does not let it through, or at the first living entity hit. Fluids do not block, and the weapon effect entities (lasers) are ignored. The beam does not hit the shooter or their pet, and untouchable and invalid targets not only take no damage – the beam passes through them and keeps going.
7. Piercing. A weapon with a limit higher than 1 goes further: after hitting a target the beam moves 0.1 block further and looks for the next one, up to the weapon's limit or a wall. Order matters – the target closer to the player takes the heavier hit, because the number of hits on the line is trimmed from the front. The hard limit of raycast steps is 64, so that in a strange world layout the beam does not walk back and forth.
8. Damage. The sum of several hits on the same target in one shot is dealt in a single go: after the first hit the target has a short invulnerability, so the following beams of a cone would be swallowed. The effect of the same weapon (stacking, head) counts once per target per shot.
9. Game rules. The shot goes through the player's ordinary attack path: target defense, attacker and target stats, safe zone, non-PvP region, ally protection from party or society, combat tag, invulnerability. Damage blocked in a safe zone or on an ally hit deals nothing and does not push the target.

With an energy weapon the action bar shows the weapon class, the number of cells (pouches together with loose ones) and the time to the next shot with one decimal place. The bar refreshes every 2 ticks, that is twice per second; after the out-of-cells message it stays silent for 1.5 s.

Damage formula and crit

Each hit is rolled separately: first the multiplier from the damage profession, then the crit from the hit profession. In a cone shot the roll is separate for each of the six beams, and the sum of hits on the target is applied at once.

After this result the target's defense is applied: Defense, armor, protective spells and Resistance, exactly as for a sword hit (defense, damage dealt).

Damage profession multiplier

The hit profession gives 0.2% per level, so level 100 gives 20% per hit; a crit multiplies damage x 1.5.

Energy weapon professions

• Pistoleer and Rifleman multiply damage; Gunslinger and Marksman give the crit chance.
• The difficulty of the enemy's spell is taken from the hit profession of the given class, so a harder target raises the chance of gain, but never above 30%.
• Professions are computed by the skill system; the weapon level from the table above is the level required to use it, not the character level.

Cone shot

Only the Scatter Rifle fires a cone. One shot sends out 6 beams: the first straight along the gaze, the rest with a random deviation. The half-angle of the cone is 8 deg, so no beam strays from the gaze axis by more than that.

• Rolling through the square root spreads the angle evenly over the cross-section of the cone, not over the plane, so the center of the spread is not empty.
• When aiming with the rifle the cone is twice as tight: 8 deg x 0.5 = 4 deg.
• If several beams hit the same target, the player gets the sum of their damage with a separate crit roll for each beam, dealt as a single hit.
• The laser is drawn separately for each beam, which means 6 lasers per shot.

Projectile and explosion

Only the Plasma Launcher fires a flying projectile. The projectile is a marker in the world: it flies at a speed of 3 blocks per tick and falls with an acceleration of 0.05 block per tick squared, the same as a Minecraft arrow. It disappears after 160 ticks (8 s), even if it hits nobody.

1. The projectile starts half a block in front of the player's eye (otherwise it would catch on the shooter's head) and every tick checks with a short raycast of radius 0.1 block whether it hit a block or a living entity, so it does not fly through a thin wall.
2. At the point of impact there is an explosion: a flash in the weapon's color, sparks, a sound and damage to all enemies within a radius of 3 blocks.
3. Damage falls off linearly from the center of the explosion to zero at its edge. In the center the full 18, at the edge zero.
4. The explosion pushes targets away from the center, not in the direction of the shot, and the strength of the push also falls off linearly with distance: 0.6 in the center, zero at the edge.
5. The explosion does not destroy blocks, does not set the world on fire and does not hurt the shooter or their pet.

Special weapon traits

Five weapons have one additional property. The rest do not, and every target takes damage only once per shot anyway.

Volt Pistol – slowness

Slowness I for 1.5 s (30 t) on the hit target. The effect works only if the hit dealt damage: a shot blocked by a safe zone or on an ally does not slow.

Photon SMG – spread

Each shot in sustained fire adds 1 deg of beam deviation. The spread never exceeds 6 deg, and after 0.5 s without firing it returns to zero. The counter is per player and weapon, so two shooters do not disturb each other.

Arc Blaster – arc to a second target

After hitting an enemy the beam jumps to the nearest next enemy within 4 blocks of the hit target (not of the shooter) and deals 50% of that damage to it. Excluded are: the shooter, their pet, party and society allies, and everyone already hit by the same shot. The arc is visible as sparks between the targets, and the second target hears a separate sound – it is the same shot, not a new one.

Ion Carbine – stacking

Consecutive hits on the same target within 2 s stack: each following hit multiplies damage by 15%. At most 3 layers build up next to the first hit, so the fourth hit in the window gives a multiplier of x 1.45. After a pause the counter starts anew. The counter is per target, not per player, and counts once per shot – several beams in a cone do not give a double layer.

Rail Sniper – headshot

A hit point in the upper 25% of the target's height is a headshot and gives a multiplier of x 1.5. In the damage numbers it looks like a crit: red and enlarged. The threshold is computed from the entity's height, so it also works on mobs of unusual size.

Knockback, pierce and headshot

Knockback

The hit target is pushed in the direction of the shot, horizontally, with a slight lift of 0.2 – so that it does not stick to the ground. The push happens only when the damage actually went through: in a safe zone, on an ally or with a zero result the target does not move at all.

The remaining weapons have a strength of 0.15. In the Plasma Launcher's explosion the strength 0.6 in the center falls linearly to zero at the edge of the radius, just like damage.

Pierce

The pierce limit is the number of targets a beam can hit in one shot. The order is the one in which the targets lie along the beam, and the list of hits is trimmed from the front – the target closer to the player takes the heavier hit. Every target takes damage only once per shot anyway.

The remaining beams hit only the first target. A wall always ends the beam, even with a high pierce limit.

Headshot

The Rail Sniper has a special case of the headshot: a hit point in the upper 25% of the target's height multiplies damage by x 1.5 by the weapon's definition. The multiplier works together with the crit from the profession – the crit is computed first, then the head, and in the numbers above the target you see only one, red number.

Aim mode

Aim mode is crouching with a rifle in the main hand. Pistols, wands and staves do not have it. On standing up, changing the held item, leaving and dying the effect disappears immediately.

• Field of view. The player gets Slowness I without particles and without an icon – the client itself converts this into a narrowing of the screen. The effect is refreshed, and on standing up it disappears at the same moment. It does not overwrite a stronger slowness on the player (potion, spell, beacon), so their own effects stay.
• Range. The Rail Sniper and the Laser Rifle reach 20% further: Rail Sniper 96 -> 115.2 bl, Laser Rifle 48 -> 57.6 bl. The remaining rifles reach the same distance, but it is worth knowing why the number does not change.
• Cone. The Scatter Rifle has 4 deg when aiming instead of 8 deg.
• Aiming beam. When aiming with the Rail Sniper a guardian beam runs from the weapon to the aim point – a warning to everyone nearby that someone is aiming (see shot visuals).

A player with field-of-view effects turned off in the client settings will not see the narrowing – the game does not honor this setting.

Shot visuals

Beam laser

The weapon's beam is drawn as a thin, colored block of light from 2 blocks from the eye to the point of impact, or to the end of the range if it hit nothing. The two-block gap is there so that the beam does not obscure the shooter's screen. A hit closer than 2 blocks produces no laser – only the impact remains.

• Thickness: pistols 0.04 block, rifles 0.07 block, Rail Sniper 0.1 block, and at the moment of the Rail Sniper's shot the flash is thicker: 0.15 block and white, to stand out from the rest.
• Color: exactly the weapon's color (table above), as the nearest of the 16 dyes, plus an outline in the same color and full brightness – the beam glows the same at night, in a cave and in the open.
• Fading: full thickness on the first tick, then interpolation to zero over 3 ticks, disappearing after 4 ticks. Visible up to 64 blocks.
• The laser is non-persistent and marked as a game effect: spawns, farms, loot, mob nametags and the weapon beams themselves do not see it, and when the server shuts down they all disappear.
• The Scatter Rifle produces one laser per beam, that is 6 per shot.

Guardian beam when aiming

When aiming with the Rail Sniper a guardian beam is drawn from the weapon to the aim point. It is seen by all players within 48 blocks, including the shooter, and the list of viewers is checked every 10 ticks, so someone who enters the range will see it, and someone who leaves – it disappears. The beam disappears after the shot (and returns if the player keeps aiming and the weapon's cooldown has passed), on standing up, changing the item, leaving, dying and server shutdown.

Impact and flash at the weapon

• On a target: 8 dust particles in the weapon's color within a radius of 0.25 block plus 6 electric sparks. The Rail Sniper adds a white flash.
• On a block: 8 particles of that block, the point moved back 0.05 block inward so that the particles are visible, plus sparks.
• With no hit (end of range) there is no effect at all – the world received nothing there.
• Flash at the weapon: 3 dust particles and a flash in the weapon's color, 2 blocks from the eye.
• Sounds: one short high hit sound for the whole shot (with the Rail Sniper's piercing a sound for every target would deafen the shooter). The shot sound is separate for each class: pistols short and high, rifles stronger, the Rail Sniper loud and its own, the Photon SMG quiet and high, because it is a fast weapon and the tail of the barrage would be unbearable.
• The Plasma Launcher has no laser: it has a projectile and an explosion with a flash and sparks.

Damage numbers above the target

Every damage dealt by a player appears above the target as a number, but only in the eyes of the player who dealt it. A missing number is information: the target received nothing. This also shows that a shot into a safe zone or at an ally did nothing.

• The value is as much as was actually taken from health: final damage after armor and stats, capped at how much the target had. One digit after the decimal point, no decimal point for a whole number, and the decimal separator in the viewer's language ("7,9" in Polish, "7.9" in English).
• Position: above the target's head, with a random offset of up to 0.4 block to the side so that consecutive numbers do not overlap. The number rises by 0.8 block over a second and disappears.
• Limit: at most 20 active numbers per player; when exceeded the oldest disappears at once, so that the Photon SMG does not flood the screen.
• Damage numbers do not appear for blocked damage (safe zone, ally protection, combat tag, invulnerability) or for targets that received nothing.

Skills and gain

Hitting with an energy weapon teaches two new combat skills: Pistols for pistols and Rifles for rifles. The gain is the same as for a sword hit: what counts is hitting a living victim with damage greater than zero, so no players, no untouchables and no farm mobs.

• The target level comes from the mob's level; an ordinary Minecraft mob has level 1. A target harder than the profession raises the chance of gain, but never above 30%.
• Profession for difficulty: Gunslinger for pistols, Marksman for rifles.
• A pet's ability does not teach combat. A bow shot has its own action and its own profession, independent of energy weapons – see actions.
• Farm mobs never teach, and party and society allies are not a target for gain.

Energy cell pouch (Ammo Pouch)

The pouch is one item in three levels. The level and the number of cells are stored in the item itself, so the contents travel with the pouch: through the auction house and in trade, and when selling to an NPC an empty pouch is worth half its price, while a full one is not bought at all – otherwise a player would sell a bag of 8,192 cells for half the price of an empty pouch.

Capacities and prices

• Pouches never stack, even if the other one is empty: each counts its cells separately.
• The upgrade works on a pouch in the player's inventory and raises its level by one, keeping the contents. Without a pouch one level lower the upgrade is not performed, and no VED is taken.
• After buying the upgrade in the shop nothing happens on Shift-click – it is a service, not an item.

Absorbing and taking out cells

1. Absorption. Cells that arrive in the inventory are moved to pouches immediately: pickup from the ground, a purchase from the Technician, being given by a command and joining the server. They go to the pouch with the most free space, up to its capacity; the rest stays loose. Without any pouch everything works as usual – cells lie loose in the inventory.
2. Pouch window. Right click in hand (also in the air) opens a window with the level, the count and the capacity and three buttons: take out 64 (Shift = as many as fit in the free inventory space), put in all loose and close. In the window you cannot drag or move items – it serves only for reading and these three actions.
3. Taking out. Cells come out in batches, and whatever does not fit in the inventory stays in the pouch. The contents themselves are never lost.

Buyback rules

• The Technician buys items from their own offer for 50% of the price (for the whole sale at once, rounded down to whole VED).
• An empty pouch is accepted: 50% of 2,000 VED = 1,000 VED.
• A pouch with even one cell is not bought – the contents are not valued, so you cannot sell a bag of cells through the Technician.
• Cells themselves are an ordinary trade item: you sell them like any other goods.
• A sale that would come to 0 VED is rejected, and the item stays in the inventory.

Buying from the Technician

The whole energy weapon offer is with one NPC. Prices are per piece and in whole VED; shift-click buys ten pieces at once.

The Technician buys back each of these weapons for 50% of the price from the table, that is half of the paid amount rounded down to whole VED. Buying and selling therefore never yield a profit.