Gravity Pulse
What it is
A stat-category artifact that adds knockback (and at higher tiers a brief stun) to every weapon hit the ship lands. At run start the artifact writes a per-tier knockback force and stun duration onto the ship; the damage pipeline then reads those values on every successful weapon hit and pushes the enemy radially away from the ship. Pack-leader elites are immune. Identified by a hand-pushing icon and an orange palette (primary #ff8844, secondary #cc5522, bright #ffbb77).
Reward-card flavor: “When you hit an enemy, it is knocked back into other enemies.”
Identity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Display name | Gravity Pulse |
| Category | Stat |
| Icon | 🫸 |
| Damage tag | None (type-agnostic) |
| Primary color | #ff8844 |
| Secondary color | #cc5522 |
| Bright color | #ffbb77 |
| Flat-bonus stat | Damage Reduction (percent mode) |
Per-rarity values
The source defines four tiers (uncommon → rare → epic → legendary). At runtime a fifth “common” tier is prepended; its values record is shared with the uncommon row, with differentiation coming from the per-artifact flat stat bonus rather than these effect values. The shared per-tier flat-bonus ramp is 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 percentage points applied to Damage Reduction.
| Tier | Rarity | Knockback force (impulse) | Stun duration (s) | Vulnerability (unused) | Bowling (unused) | Bowling cooldown (s, unused) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Common | 100 | 0.20 | 0 | 0 | — |
| 1 | Uncommon | 100 | 0.20 | 0 | 0 | — |
| 2 | Rare | 140 | 0.30 | 0.15 | 0 | — |
| 3 | Epic | 180 | 0.40 | 0.25 | 0 | — |
| 4 | Legendary | 250 | 0.50 | 0.40 | 1 | 0.3 |
When it triggers
A single run-start effect drives the artifact’s setup; the actual knockback procs from the damage pipeline on each weapon hit, not from the effect engine.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Effect trigger type | Run start (one-shot) |
| Conditions | None |
| Banner on proc | No |
On run start, two stat-modify actions fire in order:
| Order | Action | Target stat | Bound value | Mode | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Modify stat | _knockbackForce (ship) | Tier knockback force | Flat | Permanent |
| 2 | Modify stat | _knockbackStun (ship) | Tier stun duration | Flat | Permanent |
After setup, the damage-resolution path reads those two ship fields on every weapon hit:
| Condition | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Knockback force greater than zero AND target is not a pack-leader elite | Add impulse to enemy velocity along the ship-to-enemy vector |
| Stun duration greater than zero AND enemy has no active stun timer | Set the enemy’s stun timer to the stored duration |
| Target is a pack-leader elite | Skip both knockback and stun entirely |
A short orange ring pulse plays at the enemy’s position and the HUD icon flashes whenever a knockback lands.
How it stacks
This artifact is in the stat category. It does not stack on itself: leveling the artifact replaces the previous tier’s stat values rather than adding to them. There is no kill counter, no charge meter, and no per-enemy accumulator in the data definition. Pack-leader elites are a hard exclusion — the knockback and stun branch is skipped before any impulse is applied, so they are 100 percent immune regardless of tier.
The flat-bonus passive (Damage Reduction) is added as a separate modifier with its own source key, so it persists independently and is also stripped and re-added across tier changes.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE flags
- Common-tier resolution rule. The runtime prepends a 5th common tier that reuses the uncommon values record; differentiation comes from the per-artifact flat-bonus ramp (10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50). This rule is general to all artifacts and belongs on the artifacts roll-up page, not here.
- Run-start stat-write pattern. Writing tier values to private ship fields at run start and reading them from the damage pipeline is a reusable pattern (Wayfinder’s source comment explicitly notes it mirrors this artifact). Belongs in a shared effect-engine reference.
- Pack-leader knockback/stun immunity. The “pack leaders are 100 percent immune to knockback and stun” rule is enforced inside the damage pipeline, not in this artifact’s data. Belongs on a shared combat or elite-mechanics page.
- Dead tier fields.
vulnerability(rare/epic/legendary) andbowlingplusbowlingCooldown(legendary) are defined in the tier values but no effect, action, or custom handler consumes them. Either the intended ricochet-into-other-enemies and vulnerability-debuff behaviors are unshipped and the fields should be removed, or the handlers are present elsewhere and need wiring. Possible content gap. - Reward-card flavor mismatch. The card text promises “knocked back into other enemies,” but no source code applies extra damage, ricochet, or collision-on-bounced-enemies behavior — the implemented effect is a radial push only. Possible content gap or stale copy.
procAudioCuefield. Not used by this artifact. The_types.tscomment notes a project rule that common-trigger procs should have their own audio — Gravity Pulse currently omits it, which is a possible content gap.