Wisp
What it is
A tiny, very fast, very fragile chip-damage enemy that fills a “swarm pest” slot in the archetype matrix. Stat-tuned variant of the orb: shares the orb’s track-and-detonate state machine but pushed in opposite directions on almost every axis. About one third of the orb’s base HP, roughly seven times the orb’s base speed, a smaller body, a smaller AoE radius, lower AoE damage, and a longer cooldown between detonations.
The intended player response is to either eat the chip damage or sweep the swarm with area weapons rather than picking wisps off individually with single-target fire — at 220 base speed the wisp closes faster than most precision weapons can re-acquire it.
Tagged mechanical, fast. No weapon — damage comes entirely from the melee shock detonation.
Stats
Base archetype values before rarity multipliers and per-mission damage scaling.
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Base HP | 6 |
| Base speed (px/s) | 220 |
| Base radius (px) | 2.5 |
| Base XP on kill | 8 |
| Base AoE radius (px) | 18 |
| Base AoE cooldown (s) | 1.5 |
| Base AoE damage | 4 |
| Tags | mechanical, fast |
| AI behavior | orb (shared state machine) |
| Weapon | none |
| Orbit radius | 0 |
Per-rarity stats
Rarity multipliers are applied to base stats for HP / speed / radius / XP / AoE damage. AoE radius uses an index-based ramp (base × (1 + tierIndex × 0.2)). AoE cooldown uses a dedicated per-tier multiplier table, not the generic rarity multiplier — epic and legendary share the same 0.35× cooldown so the cadence flattens at the top end.
| Rarity | HP | Speed | Radius | XP | AoE radius (px) | AoE cooldown (s) | AoE damage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 16 | 308 | 3 | 24 | 18 | 1.5 | 12 |
| Uncommon | 30 | 323 | 3 | 48 | 22 | 1.275 | 18 |
| Rare | 42 | 345 | 3 | 96 | 25 | 1.05 | 26 |
| Epic | 59 | 370 | 4 | 144 | 29 | 0.525 | 34 |
| Legendary | 71 | 400 | 4 | 192 | 32 | 0.525 | 42 |
Stroke tint per rarity
Hull shape
Renders with the orb polygon silhouette (shape map routes every wisp_<rarity> to the orb hull).
Behavior
Inherits the orb four-phase state machine. The wisp does not orbit and does not fire projectiles — it tracks the player at base speed, then runs the same windup → dash → detonate → recover sequence as the orb. Because the wisp’s base speed is roughly seven times the orb’s, the absolute approach velocity feels frenetic, but the attack phases themselves use the orb’s shared durations and distances (the dash is 50 px regardless of how fast the wisp got there).
| Phase | What happens | Player threat |
|---|---|---|
| Idle | Chases the player at base speed with shared push-apart vs other enemies of the same archetype. Attack cooldown ticks down. | Contact resolved by generic collision; no AoE damage during chase. |
| Windup | Brakes, retreats slightly away from the player, aims, and squashes vertically. Cannot be skipped. | Inert. Free hits. Killing it during windup also instantly removes its forecast circle. |
| Dash | Lunges a fixed 50 px toward the player’s anticipated position. A red circle forecast is drawn at the landing spot. | Forecast tells the player exactly where the detonation will land. |
| Sploot | Snaps to landing spot, freezes, and detonates the AoE the instant it lands. | Player inside the AoE radius takes damage + electric knockback. |
| Recovery / land freeze | Holds the landing pose for a short window before returning to idle. | Inert, fully vulnerable. Punish window. |
Attack-trigger rules
Identical to the orb. Distance gate and a global early-mission softener prevent the wisp from opening up immediately.
| Condition | Effect |
|---|---|
| Distance to player > 120 px | Cooldown ticks at half rate. Wisp keeps chasing but cannot start an attack. |
| Mission time < 60 s | Cooldown ticks at 20% rate (rare early attacks, never fully blocked). |
| Mission time ≥ 60 s, within 120 px | Cooldown ticks at full rate. Attack triggers when cooldown reaches 0. |
Timing (shared with orb)
These durations are constants on the shared behavior and do not change per rarity.
| Phase | Duration |
|---|---|
| Windup | 1.12 s |
| Dash | 0.25 s |
| Sploot landing freeze | 0.15 s |
The AoE cooldown that gates re-attacks is the per-rarity value in the stats table above — that is the only timing knob the wisp tunes away from the orb.
Movement details (shared with orb)
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Windup retreat | 15 px backward from player |
| Dash distance | 50 px toward player |
| Attack-range gate (start sequence) | 120 px |
Detonation
The AoE damages the player the instant the dash ends — there is no separate detonation delay after landing. On hit:
- Player momentum is cancelled.
- Player is knocked back away from the wisp with an electric-hit flash.
- Player takes the rarity AoE damage value, modulated by the standard player-damage pipeline (invulnerability, damage multipliers).
If the wisp is killed during windup or dash, its forecast circle is removed instantly so the red telegraph does not linger on a dead enemy.
Tier scaling
The base stats and per-rarity table above are the archetype values. Mission-tier scaling applies on top via the global enemy stat ramp shared by all archetypes and via player- and mission-side damage multipliers at hit time — see enemies for the per-tier curve.
The wisp’s per-rarity AoE radius growth (18 → 32 px from common to legendary) and the dramatic cooldown drop at epic (1.05 s → 0.525 s) are the main ramp axes. HP and speed scaling are modest by comparison: at legendary the wisp has only 71 HP — still one-shot territory for most builds — but is firing detonations almost three times as often as a common wisp.
Summary
The wisp is the fast-swarm pest variant of the orb archetype. It uses the orb’s track-and-detonate behavior verbatim — same windup, same 50 px dash, same forecast circle, same sploot — but at a fraction of the body size and roughly 7× the chase speed. HP is so low (16 → 71 across rarities) that it is fragile to anything that lands, but its base speed of 220 px/s means precision single-target weapons struggle to track it, and at epic/legendary the AoE cooldown halves to 0.525 s so a surviving wisp can spam detonations. The intended counter is area-of-effect sweeping rather than picking off individual wisps.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE
- The per-rarity multiplier table (hp / xp / speed / radius / damage), the AoE-radius
1 + idx × 0.2ramp, and the AoE-cooldown[1.0, 0.85, 0.7, 0.35, 0.35]table all live in the central type-builder and apply to every orb-family archetype. Belongs onenemiesas the canonical reference, with per-entity pages keeping only the resolved numbers. - The orb four-phase state machine (idle/windup/dash/sploot/recover), its shared durations (windup 1.12 s, dash 0.25 s, sploot 0.15 s), and the constants for windup retreat (15 px), dash distance (50 px), and attack-range gate (120 px) are reused by every wisp variant. Candidate for hoisting to a “track-and-detonate attack pattern” concept page referenced from both the orb and wisp archetype pages.
- The early-mission attack-cooldown softener (20% rate < 60 s, half rate when out of range) applies identically to every member of the orb behavior family. Candidate for the same shared concept page.
- The red circle forecast / dodge telegraph and its owner-cleanup-on-death rule are shared by orb, wisp, mortar, and field. Candidate for a forecast/telegraph concept page on
combat. - Player damage application (knockback, electric-hit flash, invulnerability gating, damage multipliers) is the same shared pipeline used by every melee enemy. Candidate for
combat. - The tag vocabulary (
mechanical,fast,slow,tanky,melee, etc.) is used across multiple archetypes. Candidate for a small tags glossary onenemies.