Volatile Crystal
What it is
The risk-reward tier of the world-prop catalog. A magenta energy crystal that joins the off-screen spawn pool, breaks on ship contact or under bullet fire, and bursts into a heavy outward ring of XP-orb pickups. Designed to feel “unstable” — the break burst is the largest outward ring in the catalog at 18 particles, and one in four breaks ignites a lingering fire overlay that can hurt the ship if it’s still standing on the break point. Sits between Drone Wreck (workhorse alt) and Mineral Vein (sustained-DPS) in the catalog’s HP ladder. Sprite is rendered as a baked emoji sticker with a magenta rim halo that matches the elite-affix burning-aura palette family. No edge-arrow telegraph — Volatile Crystals are common enough to find through normal movement, and the magenta sticker reads strongly against the field on its own.
Identity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Max HP | 25 |
| Visible silhouette radius | 30 px |
| Density multiplier (vs crate slider) | 0.35 |
| Orb drop count on break | 8 |
| XP per orb (fraction of current level bar) | 0.022 |
| Total drop value (level-bar fraction) | ~17.6% |
| Sticker emoji | gem |
| Rim halo color | hot magenta (#ff5fcb) |
| Edge-arrow telegraph | no |
Spawn behavior
Volatile Crystals share the typed prop pool with every other prop kind (pool cap 48, max simultaneous active 10 at slider=100). Type selection uses a weighted roll where each prop’s density multiplier is its weight in the bag. With Volatile Crystal at 0.35, it lands roughly mid-rare in frequency — less common than Scrap Pile (1.0), Drone Wreck (0.6), or Comet Fragment (0.4), but more common than Mineral Vein (0.25), Magnetar Pulse (0.20), or Supply Pod (0.15). Spawns are gated to be off-screen (never visible-spawn), pushed roughly 500-1400 px from the ship, biased 70% of the time into the player’s heading cone, and reject when too close (under 160 px) to another active prop.
Per-planet active count is driven by the planet’s destructibles.crates slider mapped onto a 0-10 active prop ceiling.
Volatile Crystal is not a cascade target — it never appears off the standard spawn path. The Supply Pod cascade explicitly skips Volatile Crystal because its afterburn proc would over-salt the Pod’s break moment with another proximity-damage beat at the same point.
Break behavior
On ship contact the runtime applies max-hp damage in a single hit — the ship one-shots regardless of the 25 HP figure. Bullets do their listed damage per overlap with piercing idempotency (a single piercing bullet cannot chip the same slot twice in one tick). The 25 HP figure means a typical pistol bullet stream chips the crystal down over several hits, so the prop has real “weapon-fire response” presence — chip-flash on the rim is visible between hits.
Non-fatal bullet hits play a chip-flash on the rim and emit a small spark cloud; reaching 0 HP triggers the full break sequence.
Break sequence (in order): fire prop_break signal → play the per-type audio cue → telemetry record → spawn XP orbs → spawn break VFX → roll synergy → deactivate slot.
The XP-orb drop is the signature wealth-burst beat for this prop: 8 orbs at 0.022 fraction each. The eight orbs fan out in 8 evenly-spaced spokes around the break point with mild jitter — combined with the 18-particle outward ring burst (see VFX palette), the visual reads as the crystal “detonating outward.”
| Break VFX layer | Value |
|---|---|
| Spark cloud particle count | 22 |
| Spark RGB | (255, 100, 220) — hot magenta |
| Chunky debris count | 5 |
| Chunk RGB | (180, 60, 180) — deep magenta |
| Rim shockwave color | #ff3fb0 |
| Outward ring burst count | 18 (largest in the catalog) |
| Audio cue id | per-type volatile-crystal recipe (unstable energy release); falls back to generic prop break |
Per-type synergy (afterburn)
Volatile Crystal is the offensive-hazard cross-system synergy of the props lane. On break, the runtime rolls against the afterburn chance; on success it overlays a burning-aura-palette fire fountain on the magenta break burst AND checks the ship’s distance to the break point. If the ship is inside the afterburn radius, a single damage tick is applied through the standard damage chain (respects invuln, shield, knockback, and damage reduction). The iconic beat is “the crystal was unstable — standing on it costs you HP, getting clear costs nothing.”
The fire overlay reuses the burning_aura elite-affix palette so the cross-system reference is visually explicit: a system the player has already learned (burning-aura elites are a damage zone) is reused here as a one-shot hazard. No new color, no new audio cue, no new damage type.
The fire particles travel as an outward fountain with a slight upward bias (vy offset of -30 px/s), slower than the magenta spark cloud — the two layers read as distinct: a sharp magenta detonation burst followed by a lingering orange fire tongue.
The proc is fail-silent if the burning-aura affix palette has been removed from the build — no orphan effect ever fires. The telemetry distinguishes hits from misses so the radius can be tuned later.
| Synergy field | Value |
|---|---|
| Proc chance per break | 0.25 |
| Afterburn damage radius | 180 px |
| Damage applied on proximity | 4 HP |
| Particle count (fire overlay) | 14 |
| Particle palette | reuses burning_aura elite-affix palette |
| Audio cue id | inherits the standard volatile-crystal break audio (no new cue layered on the proc) |
| Damage source label | prop:volatile_afterburn |
| Telemetry recorded | hit / miss, plus damage amount on hit |
VFX palette
| Channel | Value |
|---|---|
| Rim halo | hot magenta (#ff5fcb) |
| Spark cloud | hot magenta (255, 100, 220) |
| Chunk debris | deep magenta (180, 60, 180) |
| Rim shockwave ring | #ff3fb0 |
| Outward burst | reuses spark RGB |
| Afterburn fire overlay | reuses burning_aura elite-affix palette |
| Hit-flash duration | 0.18 s |
| Chip spark particle count per non-fatal hit | 6 |
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE flags
- Weighted prop-type roll mechanics — the density-multiplier-as-weight pattern is shared across every prop kind; canonical home is the props roll-up page. Only the resulting Volatile Crystal frequency claim belongs here.
- Shared off-screen spawn pipeline rules (pool cap 48, max density 10, spawn distance 500-1400 px, 160 px minimum gap, 70% velocity-cone bias, off-screen gating, planet destructibles slider mapping) — all common to every prop kind; canonical home is the props roll-up page.
- Break sequence ordering (signal → audio → telemetry → orbs → VFX → synergy → deactivate) — applies to every prop kind; canonical home is the props roll-up page.
- Bullet collision rules (piercing idempotency via per-bullet hit set, non-piercing consumed on hit, chip-flash on non-fatal) — same for every prop kind; canonical home is the props roll-up or combat page.
- XP-orb drop scheme (fraction-of-level-bar scaling via
xpForLevel, fan-out angles, per-orb speed) — same for every prop kind; canonical home is the props roll-up page or the XP-orb page. - Three-layer break VFX skeleton (spark cloud → chunky debris → rim shockwave ring → optional outward ring burst) — same template for every prop kind; canonical home is the props roll-up page. This page only documents Volatile Crystal’s per-layer numbers and the fact that it uses the optional outward burst layer at the catalog’s highest count.
burning_auraelite-affix palette + radius default — canonical home is the affixes page. This page only documents that the afterburn proc reads the palette viagetAffixVfxColor('burning_aura')and reuses the same default radius.damagePlayerdamage chain (invuln gate, shield, knockback, damage reduction) — canonical home is the combat/damage page. This page only documents that the afterburn tick routes through it.- Supply Pod cascade composition (what props the Pod ring contains, why Volatile Crystal is excluded) — canonical home is the Supply Pod page. This page only mentions Volatile Crystal’s exclusion from the cascade.
- Edge-arrow HUD telegraph system — only relevant to high-value props (Supply Pod, Magnetar Pulse); canonical home is the HUD or props roll-up page. Volatile Crystal only needs the “no” flag.