Talk:Stardust Dragon Staff

How much damage can the Stardust Dragon do?
I've looked, and I can't find anything on the multiplier it gets for more segments. I'd like to know so I can accurately judge it's power. Can't someone just peek at the code? Thermophile (talk) 01:52, 31 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Okay, so I did some testing and I'm pretty sure I got the modifier. My dragon staff states 107 damage, but with 10 summons the head can hit anywhere from 500 to 680. I didn't get any numbers from the tail, unfortunately. Anyway, lemme do some math. The mean of the two outliers is  and the random modifier is   (rounding off, and if all weapons have 15% random modifier then oh well). I figure that the formula it's using to calculate damage is   where x is some modifier since it is clearly not just doubling the damage. With 10 summons it is pretty easy to see what the modifier is, but I'll solve it anyway. Using the following formula: , I get  . Now to do some more testing now that I got the modifier to make sure I'm right. MadaxTheShadow (talk) 01:14, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Did some further testing and I found that just one summon does not do the listed damage of the weapon, rather an extra 66% on the first summon. This modifier seemed to not be enough for two summons, however. I tried the damage formula above with the initial instance of the summon damage getting the  modifier and got a much better result. But 50% was too high for 10 summons so I tried a few numbers and found that 46% additional damage for additional summons worked out perfectly, on 2, 3, 9, and 10 summons (looking at their mean damages). I'll add the formula to the notes section. MadaxTheShadow (talk) 01:51, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

It is possible for the dragon to have zero segments
I just had 6 Stardust Cells and one-Segmented Dragon. After switching from the Stardust Armor away, the Dragon just had zero length. Maybe someone could write this nicely into the thread?
 * You should report this in The Official Forums. We don't handle bug reports. -- Ferretwings (talk) 17:02, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

The Dragon can deal more damage than listed
The cap was once thought to be 1050 damage, but I then found my Dragon dealing 1200, which is now the current listed max. Still, this apparently isn't the maximum damage possible, as I noticed the Dragon's tail dealing 1219 on the Stardust Pillar. This may need to be investigated further within the game files.

Damage formula pc 1.3.5.3
Was looking at the code, related to minionSlots and stumbled on this page. Was curious if what summon length formula was using(my current understanding is base length is 4). Tried to find something similar to the formula in the code and couldn't. Ended up having to dig through whole thing and found something which can be roughly summed up to Staff damage it evaluated only at the time of the summoning. I'm guessing individual segments can still have different damage values(from summoning segments with different equipment, not some bodyparts naturally having different damage), but haven't tested it nor looked in the code for that specifically. Formula assumes whole dragon was summoned without variance in summon damage. Summon length is somewhat tricky. Base summon is 4 projectiles, head, tail and 2 body segments. Each additional 'casting' adds 2 body segments. All segments except tail add to damage(this is why there's -1 in the formula). (Kind of a side note, but needed because of a recent revert)Head and tail don't count towards "minion summon limit". Body segments only count as half a slot. Damage variance is "standard" random between 0.85 and 1.15, aka +-15% Decided to post on talk page for others to test, and discovered that formula seemed to have originated from "guesstimating" underlying formula from damage values :( If someone needs help looking for it in the code, summon length calculations are done in AI in the proper aiStyle section, things to look for is .scale and .localAI[0]. Damage is in Damage, look for ProjectileID.Sets.StardustDragon I did some testing with target test dummy, waiting for dragon to clip it and using autopause. Results have been falling into damage variance. Don't really feel confident to just update the formula without confirmation(and no idea how to write notwalloftext either, so if someone else wants, please do). 86.115.19.146 12:47, 15 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Aha, now I get it, supposed something like that, but was too lazy to decompile and wander around again :> Next time you people start throwing "technical" summon length instead of "casual" summon length (aka visual length, just how you observe it in game) think twice, please. Nobody knows that every dragon body segment actually consists of two segments but each of them adds up just a half to the achievement and stuff. I'm a little sorry for that revert, 4e696e6a6f795844, but just a little, as your wording was making no sense even with this new info considered, required a lot of technical explanation. So we either need to explain all the technical stuff or transform it into visually, casually verifiable things that people can actually observe in game.
 * Could you clarify a couple of things for me, please? About those spikes on the body - so body segments are actually visually different and there are two types, one with spike one without. And just every other (starting from first one, right after the head) has the spike, right? Looks like that to me (visually), makes sense. Another thing - is it possible to get odd number of body segments somehow? So lets say we get a dragon consisting of the head, 3 body segments and a tail? Or are they always gonna get added/subtracted in pairs? Cause if they do - we just gotta tweak the formula on the page slightly - replace the "5 / 3" part with "1.69" and that's it. The guy that initially tested it did a decent job.

Mislic (talk) 15:40, 17 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Ty for replying. Made me take another look at original formula and read discussion more carefully, so I finally understand where that was coming from. Wish I had noticed discussion before I started digging the code. Probably wouldn't have posted this and wasted people's time. Sorry.
 * You're correct about body segments alternating spiked segment and non spiked.
 * Getting odd number of segments is possible. They are always added in pairs, but 'despawning' removes segments individually and can leave you with an odd number. One way of doing it that works consistently for me(atm at least), is to have 4 minion "slots", summoning 3 spider minions, then stardust dragon once, then reducing minion capacity to 3. I do understand though that such specific edge cases rarely occur naturally and probably don't need to be detailed on a wiki page.
 * Personally I'm fine with changing 5/3 to 1.69 and leaving rest as is, my main problem with the formula was not being able to find anything resembling it in the code, so I made incorrect assumption that it was outdated or wrong.
 * Once again, sorry for wasting time. 86.115.19.146 17:46, 17 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Not a waste of time at all! Thank you for digging code and actually proving that original formula on the page was almost correct. Probably no need to explain technical stuff right now (maybe if some older users insist - we'll do), and no point to describe the edge cases (about "halved" segments possibility on despawn). I'll tweak the formula now as well. Thank you once again.

Mislic (talk) 19:52, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Damage formula and segments (calling for code-divers)
Could another code-diver please post pseudocode for the actual segment generation and damage calculations? Given that, I can probably summarize it into something that can go on the wiki page. ETA: I'm especially interested in what happens to the damage when it loses segments. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 03:27, 20 October 2019 (UTC)