Damage tags
What it is
Every weapon carries exactly one damage tag — bullet, energy, bomb, or fire — except legendary weapons, which carry two. The tag travels with each hit: it stamps the enemy at the moment of impact, drives the on-hit particle signature, and decides which artifacts, passives, and downstream signals (damage_dealt, tagged_kill, bullet_hit) react to that hit. Tags do not modify the damage number itself; they route it.
The four tags
| Tag | Color identity | Visual signature | Behavior fingerprint |
|---|---|---|---|
| bullet | Brass / amber / white tracer | Yellow-to-orange spark spray ejecting through the target along the shot vector, plus directional blood splatter aligned to the player-to-enemy axis | Hitscan or fast straight-line projectiles, often piercing; single-target oriented |
| energy | Blue / cyan / electric white | Tiny electric arc flicker on hit | Beams, plasma arcs, chain jumps, and orbiting stars; clean lines, sustained streams |
| bomb | Orange / red / dark accents | No per-hit stamp — the explosion VFX itself is the impact signature | Blast radius hits, area-of-effect, arcing shells, telegraphed strikes |
| fire | Burnt orange / scarlet / gold | Small ember flicker on hit | Lingering damage zones, cone streams, persistent patches, repeated-tick auras |
Legendary dual-tag rules
Legendary weapons are produced by merging two level-20 non-legendary weapons. Each of the ten unordered tag pairings yields one legendary, and the legendary carries both of its parents’ tags. On every hit, the collision resolver stamps the primary tag on the enemy and fires the per-hit signal twice — once for each parent tag — so any artifact or passive keyed on either tag triggers on the same hit. Tag-conditional kill signals fire for the primary tag stamped on the enemy.
| Legendary | Tag pair |
|---|---|
| Mega Bullet | bullet + bullet |
| Hellrain | bomb + bomb |
| Star Halo | energy + energy |
| Phoenix | fire + fire |
| 4-Way Burst | bullet + bomb |
| Wave Gun | bullet + energy |
| Trailblazer | bullet + fire |
| Railstorm | bomb + energy |
| Carpet Bomber | bomb + fire |
| Plasma Mortar | energy + fire |
Normal vs true damage
Damage tag and damage type are independent axes. The tag picks visuals and triggers; the type picks the shield interaction.
| Type | Shield route | Hull route |
|---|---|---|
| normal | Routed through shield first; shield absorbs up to its capacity before any hull damage occurs | Excess past shield is discarded — shield never bleeds through |
| true | Bypasses shield absorption entirely | Applies straight to hull |
Tag does not change either route. A bullet hit and a fire hit against a shielded boss both follow the same normal-damage chain unless the weapon explicitly declares true damage. See the combat page for the full shield-to-hull damage chain.
Tag-conditional artifacts and passives
Many artifacts carry a damage tag of their own. Their proc visuals and on-card pill match that tag, and on-kill / on-streak artifacts that key off the stamped tag only fire when the killing hit matched. The full per-tag roster lives on the artifacts and passives roll-up pages; canonical examples below.
| Artifact | Tag | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Combat Drone | energy | Orbiting drone zaps nearby enemies at a fixed rate |
| Ion Pulse | energy | Shockwave plus stun on every enemy kill |
| Breacher Charge | bomb | Shockwave when a loot crate breaks |
| Orbital Strike | bomb | Rain of explosions on every kill-streak milestone |
| Thermite Charge | fire | Burning patch dropped under the ship on a timer |