crate-buster

Breacher Charge

What it is

A unique artifact that weaponises loot crates. Breaking a crate releases a damaging shockwave centred on the crate’s position. The pulse hits everything in a radius, with a strong close-range damage zone and a weaker far-range falloff zone. Higher tiers grow the radius, raise both damage zones, can fire a second or third pulse, and at the top two tiers add a pull effect that drags enemies toward the blast.

Identity

Field	Value
Display name	Breacher Charge
Category	Unique
Icon	💣
Primary color	ffcc00
Secondary color	cc8800
Bright/highlight color	ffee66
Damage tag	Bomb

Per-tier values

Tiers are indexed by rarity. The four authored tiers cover uncommon through legendary; the runtime prepends a fifth “common” tier that reuses the uncommon row’s values and only adds a smaller flat passive bonus.

Damage is expressed as a percentage of the ship’s weapon damage. Close-range damage applies within the inner blast zone; far-range damage applies in the outer falloff zone. Radius is the full pulse extent in world units.

Rarity	Close-range damage (% of weapon damage)	Far-range damage (% of weapon damage)	Pulse radius (units)	Extra pulses	Vortex pull strength
Common	250%	70%	550	None	None
Uncommon	250%	70%	550	None	None
Rare	350%	90%	700	One additional pulse	None
Epic	450%	110%	850	One additional pulse	80
Legendary	600%	180%	1050	Two additional pulses	120

Effect

Trigger: the crate_break signal, fired whenever a loot crate is destroyed.

When the signal fires, the artifact runs the following actions in order:

Action	Effect
Crate-buster pulse	Spawns a damaging shockwave at the crate’s location. Inner zone applies the close-range damage percent; outer falloff zone applies the far-range damage percent. At rare and above, an additional pulse is queued; at legendary, two additional pulses are queued. At epic and above, a vortex effect pulls nearby enemies toward the blast at the tiered strength.
Artifact flash	Flashes the artifact’s HUD icon to signal the proc.
Banner	Shows the artifact’s banner the first time it procs in a run.

The pulse anchors to where the crate was, not to the ship — the player can position a crate break so the explosion lands on a dense cluster.

Stacking rules

Rule	Behavior
Trigger gating	One proc per crate_break signal. The signal fires once per destroyed crate, so the rate is bounded by how often crates spawn and break in the run.
Multi-pulse stacking	At rare and above, the artifact emits more than one pulse from the same trigger. Extra pulses share the same damage and radius values as the first pulse.
Vortex stacking	Vortex pull is a per-proc effect tied to the pulse, not a persistent modifier — each new pulse spawns its own pull.
Tier scaling	All five fields (close damage, far damage, radius, extra pulses, vortex pull) advance independently per tier rather than being grouped into a single multiplier.

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Summary: Breacher Charge is a unique bomb-tagged artifact that turns destroyed loot crates into damaging shockwaves. Close-range damage scales 250% → 600% and far-range damage scales 70% → 180% of weapon damage; radius grows 550 → 1050 units across common/uncommon → legendary. Rare and epic add one extra pulse, legendary adds two. Epic and legendary also add a vortex pull (80 → 120) that drags enemies into the blast. Common reuses uncommon’s values per the shared-tier convention.

EXTRACT-CANDIDATE flags:

• The “5th common tier reuses uncommon values and differentiates via flat passive bonus” rule is shared across all artifacts and belongs on the artifacts roll-up page, not duplicated per entity.
• The FLAT_BONUS_PCT_BY_TIER table (10 → 50 across common → legendary) referenced in _types.ts is engine-wide and should live on the artifacts overview / authoring guide.
• The crate_break signal definition (when it fires, what payload it carries, where it is emitted) is a cross-system concept shared by props/loot and combat; the canonical reference belongs on the props page or a signals/events page, not duplicated per artifact that listens to it.
• The flash_artifact action and HUD-banner-on-first-proc behavior are shared primitives across many artifacts — canonical reference belongs on the artifact authoring guide.
• The bomb damage tag and its damage-type pill display rule are shared with other bomb-tagged artifacts — canonical reference belongs on the artifact authoring guide or the combat/damage-types page.
• The custom-handler indirection (type: 'custom' with a handler name and $-prefixed value tokens) is an engine pattern shared by many artifacts that wrap bespoke runtime logic — canonical reference belongs on the effect-engine / authoring-guide page.
• Color-palette schema (primary / secondary / bright) is shared across all artifacts and belongs on the roll-up, with per-entity pages only listing the values.