A unique kill-triggered artifact. Whenever the ship kills an enemy, a shockwave centered on the kill site deals flat area damage to enemies in radius and applies the stunned status to all enemies in the same radius. The proc is gated by a cooldown so chained kills cannot trigger it on every frame.
Identity
Field
Value
Display name
Ion Pulse
Internal id
energy_kill_nova
Category
Unique
Icon
Spiral glyph
Primary color
#6644ff
Secondary color
#4422cc
Bright/highlight color
#aa88ff
Damage tag
None (type-agnostic)
Flat-bonus stat
Weapon Damage (flat additive)
Banner
First proc in a run shows the artifact banner
Per-rarity values
The four authored tiers cover uncommon through legendary. The runtime prepends a fifth common tier that reuses the uncommon row’s values; the common-vs-uncommon differentiation comes from the shared flat-bonus ramp, not the ability values.
Rarity
Shockwave damage
Stun duration (s)
Radius (px)
Flat Weapon Damage bonus
Common
120
3
300
+10%
Uncommon
120
3
300
+20%
Rare
200
3.5
390
+30%
Epic
320
4.5
500
+40%
Legendary
500
6
600
+50%
When it triggers
Property
Value
Trigger signal
enemy_kill
Cooldown between procs
2.0 seconds
Center of shockwave
The kill site (signal coordinates), not the ship
Damage mode
Flat — tiered damage value is dealt to every enemy in radius
Status applied
stunned for the tiered duration, to every enemy in radius
Conditions
None — the only gate is the cooldown
On each proc, the artifact runs four actions in order:
Action
Effect
damage_aoe
Deals the tiered flat damage to every enemy whose center lies inside the tiered radius around the kill site.
apply_status_aoe
Applies the stunned status with the tiered duration to every enemy in the same radius around the kill site.
vfx
Plays a burst_and_ring VFX in the bright color: a 32-particle spark burst at speed 120 plus a sonar ring at scale 6.0 over 0.45 s.
flash_artifact
Flashes the HUD icon for 0.5 s and emits the artifact’s standard double-ring plus particle-burst feedback at the ship in its own palette.
How it stacks
Rule
Behavior
Cooldown gating
A single 2.0 s cooldown across all kills. Kills during the cooldown do not re-proc the shockwave.
Damage stacking
One-shot per proc — the area damage does not persist, and overlapping procs from rapid kills cannot occur during the cooldown.
Status stacking
Each proc applies a fresh stun of the tiered duration to enemies in radius; the engine’s stun application rules determine refresh-vs-stack behavior.
Tier replacement
Only one tier of the artifact is active at a time; upgrading the artifact replaces its tier values with the new row.
Flat passive bonus
The Weapon Damage flat bonus follows the artifact-wide common→legendary ramp (10/20/30/40/50%) and is always on, independent of the proc.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE
The “5th common tier reuses uncommon values and differentiates via flat passive bonus” convention is shared across every artifact and belongs on the artifacts roll-up page rather than being repeated per entity.
The common→legendary flat-bonus ramp (10/20/30/40/50%) is engine-wide and belongs on the artifacts overview / authoring guide.
The damage_aoe, apply_status_aoe, vfx (burst_and_ring), and flash_artifact action primitives appear across many artifacts — canonical reference belongs on the artifact authoring guide.
The kill-site-centered center: 'signal' semantics (shockwave originates at the kill coordinates, not the ship) recur in other kill-triggered artifacts and should be defined once on the artifacts or effect-engine page.
The enemy_kill trigger signal itself is shared with other kill-reactive artifacts; canonical definition belongs on a signals/triggers page.
The stunned status (duration semantics, refresh-vs-stack rules) is a generic enemy-status concept and belongs on a combat or status-effects page.
The artifact color-palette schema (primary / secondary / bright) is shared across all artifacts and belongs on the roll-up.
The first-proc banner behavior (showBanner: true) is shared across artifacts and belongs on the roll-up.