Damage Category: Math
Damage Math
The Biggest Headache
There is a lot of math in the game, and hundreds if not thousand of crab-hours have been spent reverse engineering and analyzing data to figure out how things work. There are many detailed math posts on Reddit, which will be linked throughout this if you want even more of a headache. The point of this article was to try and explain things in a way that anyone can understand. This is a subset of the main Math Article to save some scrolling.

Damage

This is the most complicated part of the game, because it is also the main aspect - you do damage to kill reptiles and advance to harder reptiles and more damage, etc. Here's what you need to know:

  1. BASE DAMAGE the minimum amount of damage that a crab will do.
    • This is listed on the Crab tab as damage (Dmg).
    • For queens, it is listed as "DPS" which is 1/4th of their damage. To know their damage, you can multiply that DPS number by 4.
  2. CRITICAL RATE the chance that your crab will perform a critical hit (purple damage) instead of just the base damage (red).
    • This is also listed on the Crab tab.
    • For queens, click on their picture to see their individual statistics.
    • The ability Smokescreen will raise your critical rate.
    • Going above 100% critical rate has no additional bonuses - a crab can only crit once. Some games might give a damage bonus for a rate above 100% but not this game.
  3. CRITICAL DAMAGE When a crab criticals, their BASE DAMAGE is multiplied by their Crit Dmg multiplier.
    • Shown in the same place as Crit Rate.
    • Some places in the game list Critical Damage as a percentage increase.
    • The base Critical Multiplier is 5x. Every "100%" increase will add an additional 5x to the multiplier.
    • So a buff that gives you 1000% bonus to crit damage means your base damage will be multiplied by 50 due to that buff.
  4. GEMS The more gems you get, the bigger bonus you get.
    • Bonuses are shown in your Gems panel.
    • Filling up Gem sets multiply that bonus. A completed colour set multiplies things by 5.
    • Filling up all three Gem sets (aka a Full Set) adds another multiplier of 5 on top of the individual set bonus.
    • A common mistake is to think Full Set bonus (5x) multiplies with the individual set bonus (5x) to total 25x. They add together, not multiply. 10x total.
    • More information on gems Here
  5. MUTATIONS There are several mutations that can impact the damage of your crab.
    • All mutations add to BASE DAMAGE as their primary bonus. They either add to a specific colour, or to All (the yellow sets).
    • You can see the total Mutation increase to your crab damage at the top of the Mutation tab.
    • The percentage listed at the top of the tab is the individual colour plus the +All Dmg percentage in one number.
    • Some mutations add to your CRITICAL DAMAGE multipliers. These are listed as +All Amethyst Critical Dmg, etc. or +All Critical Dmg.
    • You will see these bonuses reflected in the crab tab statistics as you buy more mutations.
    • Mutations that say +All but do not have a colour means it applies to all colours. Generally these give less bonus with each level purchased because they impact all colours, but they are still important.
    • See This Library Section for more information on Mutations.
  6. EVOLUTIONS As you level your crabs you will choose Evolutions.
    • These can add to your Base Damage, Crit Rate, Crit Damage, or Damage to Bosses.
    • See Here for more information on Evolutions.
  7. GENES The gene tree has several sources that can increase your damage.
  8. ABILITIES AND SKILLS Your Abilities tab has different buffs that you can activate, many of which will have an impact on your damage, crit rate, etc.
    • In addition, as you level your queens, you purchase QUEEN SKILLS, some of which can increase your Base Damage, Crit Rate, Crit Damage, etc.
    • There is no specific Library article on Skills as there are no choices to be made for them - you simply buy them as they become available. Clicking on each individual queen will show a list of her Skills and what bonus they provide.
  9. KING CRAB PARTS The mini-game Land of Reptiles can boost your damage in the main game with special Magma parts.
  10. JADE SCARAB BONUS The new monthly event to collect Runes and power up your Jade Beetle can boost your main game stats quite a lot.
  11. OTHER There are some miscellaneous items to consider.
    • Crab Evolutions have a statistic for "Dmg to Boss" which is additional damage when your crab hits a boss reptile.
    • Queen Frenzy talent "Alpha Hunter" does additional damage when facing bosses.
    • Genetic Split talent "Bubble Shield" and Colossal Crab talent "Crab Guardian" give an ability called Bubble Shield which adds 25% damage on top of everything else.

Damage In General - or TL;DR

You can consider everything in the list to be important and drive your crabs towards higher and higher damage. Boosting each source of damage as high as you can will help you get further. Many of the above are multiplied together to take your damage into stupidly high numbers.

BUT.. WHAT MUTATION/GENE PATH/EVOLUTION SHOULD I CHOOSE!!!????

Sorry, I'm not going to tell you how to play the game. Really now, what fun would that be? The purpose of this information is so you have an understanding of the various parts of the game. There are guides available that will tell you exactly how to play the game if you choose to find them.

Trivia

The numbers CrabWar uses are stupidly high. They start with thousand (K), million (M), billion (B), trillion (T), then they go into an alphabetical progression Aa, Ab, Ac... up to Az, then Ba, Bb, Bc... etc etc. You may not think anything of this as they are just letters that progress higher, right? Read here to see why this is amazing.

Deeper Damage Math