Welcome to my guide!

A major note/warning is that this guide has primarily been created as a visual reference for images and charts shown in the video it's associated with. If you are here after watching the video I hope you find this useful. If you have not seen the video I hope you still find value from this guide.

If you prefer to watch rather than read, or would like to see the tests in live action, there is a fully animated and voiced video version below:

Durable Damage is likely kept behind the scenes because it’s confusing and hard to understand. Nearly everything that deals damage has a hidden Durable Damage value also.


Primaries, secondaries, support and even Stratagems have this stat, but it won’t be seen on any in game UI element.

Data Miners have found a lot of back-end information about how the game works. They have revealed Durable Damage numbers for most items in the game.

Durable Damage is currently thought to only apply to certain parts of the enemies that count as being a “Durable Part”. A potential example is shooting the backs of Nursing Spewers or Chargers.


Before crunching the numbers on any in game test, there is another hidden mechanic that needs to be understood.

This Tweet from the CEO explains that weapons with the Explosive Trait deal 100% damage to certain areas of the bugs. With other weapons only dealing 10% of their total damage.


The weapon must have “Explosive” in the “Weapon Traits” section. If it doesn’t, it will only deal 10% to these Squishy parts.


One of the issues when trying to understand Durable Damage, is that nobody other than the Developers know the true health values of the enemies.


Knowing the Tweet information about explosive weapons dealing 100% damage to these parts. It might seem like this is a great way to get a baseline for the health values.

The Scorcher deals 200 damage and has the Explosive Trait. Fire it at the side of the Nursing Spewer and count up how many shots it takes to kill it.

Five shots at 200 damage, a total of 1,000. And the health range must be 801 to 1000.


But it’s not that easy, as there is yet another hidden mechanic that needs to be taken into consideration.

The Scorcher recently went from displaying 100 damage to 200 damage. This information in the Patch notes explained the in-game values had not changed, it was only UI to represent the explosive damage being dealt.


This can be interpreted as the Scorcher deals 100 “Normal Damage” on direct hits. And the AOE explosion, deals an additional 100 explosive damage. This is confirmed with the data mining, it shows that the projectile on direct hits deals 100 normal damage, with a potential additional 50 Durable Damage. The AOE explosive component deals 100 damage, with 100 Durable Damage also.


The separate AOE damage can be seen when hitting the heads of the Hive Guards. The Light Armour penetration on the direct hit does not get through the medium armour, with the deflection symbol showing for no damage. But the red hit marker is displaying for 100% damage, presumably from the part of that is the AOE explosive element.


Another confusing factor that is not fully understood, is how AOE splash damage works. This test on the Bile Spewer shows a white hit marker, meaning only 50% damage being dealt. Presumably that is 50% for explosive AOE splash, the direct hit can’t penetrate the armour.


The Patch Notes also mention “Damage Fall Off” from explosive weapons. The Hit Marker might be displaying white because of this, or it could just be getting confused.


Damage fall-off and the potential that AOE explosive damage could be impacted in other unknown ways, opens additional variables when using explosive weapons. This is a real challenge when trying to understand that data or compare it to other data sets.

A good place to start is with a baseline. The AR-23 and the Penetration version have quite different Durable Damage values and should provide contrasting data.


The side of the Spewer has no armour to impact the tests. It is a Squishy Part though, and that will be taken into account when breaking down the data.

All these tests were completed before the 29th of April Update. The AR-23 got a damage boost, and as of this video it is unknown if the Durable Damage value has changed. I have elected to use the data that was more reliable and understood, at the time of this video.


The AR-23 base version needs 84 hits at 55 damage per hit to kill the side of the Nursing Spewer. A total of 4,620 damage for the kill. The 23P needs 45 hits at 45 damage, a total of 2,025.


Without even considering any other information that is a huge difference.

Both need 90% taken off because it’s a Squishy Part. This leaves 462 damage for the 23 base version and 202.5 damage for the 23P version.


My current working theory, which could be completely wrong, is that the Durable Damage is being applied also and making up the difference.


Applying the Durable Damage as additional Damage per hit, comes out as an additional 420 for the AR-23. And 675 for the P version. Combining this with the normal damage provides a total of 882 and 877.5.

A remarkably similar damage total to kill the Nursing Spewer. less than five HP away from each other and within than 99% damage of each other.


Factoring in other weapons using this formula, the damage variance does widen, keep in mind there will be overkill at play here. The Concussive Rifle only needing 837 damage and opening the variance, to the 23P. Within 95% of each other.

The Diligence and Dominator also sit with the Concussive Rifle, around the 840 Damage mark.
The BR-14 somehow getting away with an 800 damage kill and the biggest variance of 91%.


My theory is complete guess work, but it is quite compelling. Getting multiple results that seem to line up, all the weapons requiring 800-900 damage to kill the target.

Explosive weapons as mentioned already have unknown variables, the data subject interpretation when comparing to other data sets.

Using the same formula as above, the Scorcher comes out with 1,300 damage over five shots.
With all the theoretical durable damage combined, it should be 260 damage per shot fired. Four shots to kill with 1,040 total damage. Instead, the test is five shots and 1,300 damage.


This could be the damage falloff not being factored in with my maths, or perhaps on Squishy parts the Durable Damage from explosive weapons is not applied. This could be because it is already taking 100% damage from the explosive element. Removing the extra 500 explosive Durable Damage, drops the damage total to 800. Right in the window of the other tests.


But this is complete conjecture, why have the Durable Number associated with the weapon if it is not applied? This might be explained with two other theories.

Another theory is that Durable Body Parts only take Durable DMG, they take no normal damage. And that Squishy parts like the Spewer and Charger backs, are potentially not durable body parts at all.


I wanted to test this all or nothing theory. A perfect way would be knowing an enemy that has this Durable part and it is for sure not Squishy. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyone who could identify a normal enemy, that has a Durable Body Part that is not also potentially Squishy.

I ended up applying the all or nothing theory to the side of the Nursing Spewer tests already done. The damage to kill ranges are now from 370 to 675 Durable Damage. A HP match of almost 55%. Quite a big variance in the damage to kill the target.


It also seems unlikely, that the AR-23 base version, requires less Durable Damage compared to the 23P for the kill. Or that certain weapons Durable Damage could kill the target with much less damage than the others.

There is another theory that the Squishy parts of the enemies have layers. That once again no Durable Damage is being dealt, instead the higher the armour penetration value, the more layers the bullet hits.


Each layer will still only take 10% damage from non-explosive weapons, but as the bullet passes through them, it would deal damage to each one. For example, the 23P would be dealing 4.5 damage per hit. But that 4.5 would deal its damage multiple times as it penetrates through layers.

I ran the numbers assuming up to five potential layers for the Squishy part.


What is interesting here, is that the Concussive Rifle deals the exact same damage and has the same armour penetration value as the AR-23 base version.


With this layer theory they should have the exact same damage results. But they don’t. As far as normal damage is concerned, they are the same gun, the Durable Damage though is the factor that changes them.


Providing perhaps a bit more evidence that Durable Damage is being dealt to these Squishy Parts.

There is no way to completely explain how it works with the current information available. My theory that both values are taken into account for total damage, is the best guess I have so far.

The developers revealed that Armour Penetration goes beyond Light, Medium and Heavy, there are actually ten steps. Data miners confirmed this information, although the names in this table are guesses made by the Wiki team.


Data mining also shows that Stratagems can have different Armour Penetration values for the direct hits versus the AOE splash damage they might deal.


And that even a direct hit such as with the Spear, can have different Penetration values, more on that coming up later.


Understanding the basics of how armour penetration works requires two bits of information. The Armour Penetration Value of the weapon firing, versus the Armour Value of the target being hit.


If the weapons value is higher than the targets armour value, it takes 100% damage from the weapon. Represented by the red hit marker.


If the values are both matched, the target takes 50% damage, and the White hit marker is shown.


If the weapon is below the armour value, it will deflect off the armour for no damage being dealt.


This becomes more complicated with Explosive AOE damage. The Orbital Walking Barrage on its AOE section has 6/0/0 for Armour Penetration. The best guess is that on a direct hit the Penetration value is 6. That’s enough to deal damage through the Chargers Armour.


But the zero values are presumed to be for splash damage that is not a direct hit. Dealing 100% damage to unarmoured enemy parts. And potentially zero damage depending on the angle on the AOE and armour placement of the target. Is the best guess so far.

Much like the different Penetration Values for Explosive AOE, it appears that direct hits can have different values also.

The Orbital 380 Barrage having a range from eight to six. Potentially the exact location of the hit the against the targets armour, will determine what value is selected. And the same for the Spear with values eight to six also.


This could potentially make a huge difference depending on the target being hit, whether it takes 100% damage, 50%, or no damage at all.

It is not understood if or how this impacts Primary Weapons. But based on my tests where the same gun might need a different number of shots to kill the same target. The angled armour hit mechanic could be the reason why.

Zeddy from the wiki team (/u/zeddypanda on TikTok) suggests it is impossible to have half numbers, these numbers are always rounded down, from extensive testing they have done. This lowers the AR-23 and P tests a bit closer to the others. 23P 855 DMG. AR-23 840 DMG. Although it also lowers the 23-C to 815.

Another point from Zeddy is that Damage should not go over 100%. If the normal damage is dealing 10% to the squishy part, then the Durable Damage can't be 100%, it must be 90%. This could be true and still works with my tests, just lowers the numbers a tad. As of now nobody can confirm this theory though. The 100% theory could also explain the Scorcher test results.

I hope this visual reference guide was of use to you. As a reminder the video with all the live tests is below: