Hardened
What it is
Hardened is a world-roaming elite affix that ramps damage reduction over the host’s lifetime. The host takes full damage at spawn, and incoming damage linearly decreases over a fixed ramp duration until it bottoms out at a permanent maximum reduction. It is a pure damage filter with a per-frame visual cue; no spawn cost, no anchor enemies, no side effects on the player or world. The teaching beat is “kill it before it hardens” — the longer the elite survives, the more punishing it becomes to finish.
Identity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Affix ID | hardened |
| Category | world-roaming elite |
| Priority | 25 |
| Hooks | onUpdate, filterIncomingDamage, onDeath |
| Roll pool | world-roaming elite pool |
| Halo palette entry | pale silver (r 200, g 200, b 220) |
Hardened sits near the bottom of the affix priority order (25). The damage-filter chain runs in descending priority, so phasing (75), reflective_burst (70), gravity_well (55), summoner (40) all get their say before hardened’s multiplier applies. The intent is to let other affixes’ invuln-style filters short-circuit first, and have hardened scale whatever damage survives.
What it does
On each frame, the host’s elapsed-alive timer advances by the frame’s delta time. The damage filter consults that timer on every incoming hit and returns the hit multiplied by a ramp curve that runs from 1.0 (full damage) at spawn to 1 - maxReduction at the end of the ramp. After the ramp peaks, the multiplier stays at its minimum for the rest of the host’s life. A silver-glint particle emits at the host edge after the ramp finishes (roughly twice per second) as a visual tell that the elite is now fully hardened. On death, the host drops a Drone Wreck prop at its position.
| Phase | Damage multiplier | Visual |
|---|---|---|
| At spawn (elapsed = 0) | 1.0 | none |
| Mid-ramp (elapsed = rampDuration / 2) | 1 - (maxReduction × 0.5) | none |
| Ramp peaked (elapsed >= rampDuration) | 1 - maxReduction | silver glint ~2/sec at host edge |
The ramp is linear and clamped: once elapsed exceeds rampDuration, the multiplier holds at its minimum and does not continue to drop. If rampDuration is zero or negative, the multiplier jumps straight to its minimum at spawn.
Per-tier values
The affix is tunable via instance state; defaults come from the palette tuning constants.
| State key | Type | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| maxReduction | number | 0.5 | Fraction of damage removed at peak (0.5 = host takes 50% of incoming damage) |
| rampDuration | number | 30 | Seconds from spawn until the multiplier reaches its minimum |
| elapsed | number | 0 | Seconds the host has been alive (advanced by onUpdate) |
Mistyped values throw at first hook invocation; the runtime crashes loudly rather than fall back silently.
| Default schedule | Elapsed seconds | Multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| Spawn | 0 | 1.00 |
| Quarter ramp | 7.5 | 0.875 |
| Half ramp | 15 | 0.75 |
| Three-quarter ramp | 22.5 | 0.625 |
| Ramp peak | 30+ | 0.50 |
How it interacts
Interaction with regenerating
When a host carries both hardened and regenerating, the regenerating tick rate doubles once the hardened ramp has fully peaked (elapsed > rampDuration). The combination is the “turtle mode” beat: after the 30-second ramp finishes, the host both takes half damage and heals at double its base fractional rate. Telemetry samples this proc roughly once per second to avoid frame-rate noise.
| Condition | Regenerating heal multiplier |
|---|---|
| Hardened ramp not peaked | 1× (base) |
| Hardened ramp peaked | 2× |
Interaction with phasing
When a host carries both hardened and phasing, the hardened filter skips its ramp entirely during the phasing invuln window and applies the minimum multiplier (peak reduction) immediately. The interaction is the “defensive double-up” beat — the phased host hardens preemptively while invulnerable. Outside the phasing window, hardened reverts to its normal elapsed-based ramp position.
| Condition | Hardened damage multiplier |
|---|---|
| Phasing window inactive | hardenedDamageMult(elapsed) (normal ramp) |
| Phasing window active | 1 - maxReduction (peak, regardless of elapsed) |
Hardened’s filter priority (25) is lower than phasing’s (75), so phasing’s zero-return invuln short-circuits the chain before hardened sees the hit at all. The phasing-skip-to-peak only matters in edge cases where the phasing filter passes damage through (it does not, in v1) — the interaction is currently primarily defensive-signal coordination.
Death drop
On host death, hardened spawns a Drone Wreck prop at the death point. The drop is palette-matched (silver/cyan) and thematic (the hardened hull cracks, leaving behind defensive scrap). The dropped Drone Wreck has its own 30% invuln-grant break-synergy, so finishing a hardened elite leaves a defensive pickup that mirrors the affix’s identity.
Priority neighbors
| Priority | Affix | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 40 | summoner | Fires before hardened; can spawn minions before reduction lands |
| 25 | hardened | This affix |
| 20 | armored | Fires after hardened; both are multiplicative filters and stack |
When hardened and armored co-occur on the same host (rare; armored is boss-flavored, hardened is world-roaming), the filters multiply in priority order: incoming damage is first scaled by hardened’s ramp, then by armored’s flat multiplier.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE
- The damage-filter priority-ordering rule (descending priority, zero short-circuits subsequent filters) is a global affix-system rule; canonical home is the affixes overview page, referenced from each affix variant page.
- The “elite drops themed prop on death” pattern is shared across most world-roaming affixes (volatile, regenerating, reflective_burst, phasing, summoner, hardened, gravity_well); the death-drop concept and prop crossover table may belong on the affixes overview page.
- The pale-silver halo palette entry (r 200, g 200, b 220) ties to the enemy-orbit halo system; the per-affix color table is a candidate for the affixes overview page.
- The linear-ramp-with-clamp curve shape (1.0 at start, peaks at duration, holds thereafter) is unique to hardened in v1 but could be reused; if a second affix adopts it, the curve becomes a candidate for extraction.