VFX Tier Thresholds
What it is
A four-tier classification of a weapon’s level used to step up its visual presentation as it grows. A single helper maps any weapon level in the 1-to-20 range to a tier from 1 to 4 by checking three breakpoints. The mapping is purely level-driven and does not depend on the weapon family.
The breakpoints
The tier returned for a given weapon level:
| Level range | Tier |
|---|---|
| 1-3 | 1 |
| 4-7 | 2 |
| 8-13 | 3 |
| 14-20 | 4 |
The boundaries are inclusive at the lower end: hitting level 4 promotes the weapon to tier 2 immediately, level 8 to tier 3, and level 14 to tier 4.
What scales
The tier classifier is the single source of truth for which VFX intensity bucket a weapon’s level falls into. It is exposed as a pure level-to-tier function and is plumbed through the weapon-data barrel alongside the other per-level resolvers (stat scaling, stepped stats, damage multiplier). The function does not itself describe particle counts, flash radii, trail lengths, or color saturation — those are consumed downstream by whichever VFX paths choose to read the tier.
At the verified commit no engine VFX module reads the tier yet, so no concrete visual deltas between tiers exist in current builds. The breakpoint table above defines the contract that VFX consumers are expected to honor when they begin reading from it.
Which weapons participate
Tier is a function of weapon level only, with no per-weapon gating in the helper. Any weapon that levels through the 1-to-20 range therefore participates by definition.
| Weapon family | Participates |
|---|---|
| Barrier | Yes |
| Burst | Yes |
| Cannon | Yes |
| Coilgun | Yes |
| Defy | Yes |
| Disc | Yes |
| Fire ring | Yes |
| Fire trail | Yes |
| Flame | Yes |
| Lightning | Yes |
| Line | Yes |
| Magnetar | Yes |
| Missile | Yes |
| Mortar | Yes |
| Railgun | Yes |
| Revolver | Yes |
| Rifle | Yes |
| Shotgun | Yes |
| Sweep | Yes |