Back to Basics: Blades and Charms

This marks the beginning of a series we will be running on the basics of the Wizard101 mechanics, and how those can impact your game play.

The Mechanics of how Blades and Charms Get Applied:
For those of you familiar with inventory control systems, the usage of blades and charms would be likened to a FIFO (First In First Out) system. When you cast a spell, the blades over your head will be used in the order they were applied, so we'll call this the FOFO (First On First Off) system.

If you put a set of Elemental Blades (One each of Ice, Storm and Fire) over your head, and then your opponent places a Weakness on you, then you used a Fire Elf, the result would be:

• Elemental Fire Blade would be used.
• Weakness would be used.

If the order were reversed, and the Weakness was applied to you first, before you put the Elemental Blades on, the the result when using the Fire Elf would be:

• Weakness would be used.
• Elemental Fire Blade would be used.

The same principal holds true regardless of the number of blades and charms that have been applied. Just remember FOFO! ;)


The Mechanics of how Blades and Charms Effect a Spell:
For most cases this area seems obvious. If you have an Ice Blade up, and use a Colossus, then the damage is increased by 40%. That means that with a Colossus doing 460-540 base damage, the Ice Blade alone will place the damage into the 644-756 range.

What is often missed though, is that blades and charms have an effect over the entire life of a spell. What this means is that when you use a DOT (Damage Over Time) spell, the initial hit, if it has one, and all remaining pulses are affected by the blades and charms.

Using Poison as an example. Poison has a damage of 35 + 390 Death damage over 3 rounds. This means it will have an initial hit of 35 points, and then do 130 points of damage each round for 3 rounds, for a total of 425 points of damage.

If you have applied a Death Blade and a set of Spirit Blades (One each of Death, Myth and Life), then use Poison, the result would be:

• Spirit Death Blade would be applied (+35%)
• Death Blade would be applied (+40%)
• Initial hit damage would be increased from 35 to 65
• Each pulse of damage for the next 3 rounds would increase from 130 to 245
• Bringing the total damage of the spell from 425 points to 800 points!

A Note on Calculating Damage:
For the vast majority of items in game, rounding is not used. Everything truncates to the lower number. There are some occasional exceptions, but I have not been able to pinpoint what causes those to manifest themselves. So as a general rule, always round down.

I hope that this helps you gain a firm grip on how Blade and Charms can effect your spells.