Unicorn Overlord | Assist Skills BREAKDOWN | Exact Damage Formula + Idea Support Squads

[@reneepineau631]

One other point of note: the support description in-game says that assisting members each increase the base damage by +5, but in fact, they increase the potency by that amount, which is significantly different!

[@yurisonovab3892]

Base Potency is 30, so a full party of assists makes it 55 potency. It's not enough for me to justify making a less balanced team.

[@reneepineau631]

It might not sound like much, but 55 potency is 83% more damage than 30 is: like doing 22 damage instead of 12.

[@NapoleonSoares]

@@yurisonovab3892I just finished the game on expert and 3 of my squads were "support" squads. They are incredibly, incredibly strong.

[@TwinworldGameReviews]

@@yurisonovab3892 It depends on the setup. Should you go with 5 witches, probably not. But a mix of witches, wizards, and elfs would make a decent unit for fighting certain enemies.

[@reneepineau631]

Glad my work got put to use ❤

[@andrath3765]

Thanks for the info.

[@Goodthrust69]

Great info. I have been noticing something on my second playthrough. Does the leaders crit damage effect crit chances on assists? I've been noticing way more damage from crits on my assists and she has a bow that gives massive crit bonus. I just swapped it out for a higher damage bow with 1 ap and I've noticed I don't seem to crit anymore. I'm wondering if this is a real thing or just luck?

[@reneepineau631]

@@Goodthrust69 I think you're likely correct

[@davemeech]

This channel hits right digging deep into the mechanics of a game I'm obsessed with, and doing it well. You are a fantastic presenter with super polished content. My next trpg obsession will be a final fantasy tactics remake (unless something comes out of nowhere like unicorn overlord did) so I hope you make content on that when that time comes.

[@TitaniumLegman]

Oh I will be DEVOURING any future fft stuff, you have my work on that.

[@MrAverus]

A small tweak y'all could make would be to max the squad's rapport to boost the leader's magic attack.

[@axel8406]

Good info. For a 5 percent damage or healing decrease, you can put in a unit that provides mobility to the support unit. I.E. teleport is one Valor point, and now you can support it anywhere on the map. Or you could consolidate your support into one squad and switch the support leader for one Valor point. Making the assist squad adaptable on the fly. Thank you for the video. It's time to kit the leader of mine with nothing but stats and give her the permanent stat boost to her magick.

[@reneepineau631]

Actually, you'd get potency 50 instead of 55, so it's actually about 10% less!

[@axel8406]

How does potency work? I thought it was a simple multiplier. Thank you for the clarification.

[@reneepineau631]

It is a simple(ish) multiplier! Damage ends up multiplied by Potency/100

[@axel8406]

@reneepineau631 Would this be an adequate formula for it. ((A-D)*((30+(5*N)/100))(P/100) P= potency re watching the video to see the formula again. Edit: fixed formula

[@reneepineau631]

@@axel8406 no, the (30+(5*n)) is the potency

[@StartledJC]

I found this channel due to the Unicorn Overlord content, keep it coming! Love the in-depth analysis like this!

[@mrc3533]

One slightly different way to describe the formula: the damage is between 35-50% of the difference between your attack and the enemy's def. Basically, viewing that stat difference as the 'baseline', which then gets multiplied by a factor based on the number of party members, rather than viewing 30 as the baseline which then is modified by other factors. Ultimately they are equivalent descriptions, but I found this to be an intuitive way of looking at it.

[@reneepineau631]

35-55%, but yeah, I like your way of conceptualizing it, too!

[@PM-xc8oo]

This is great investigative work. I had been wondering exactly this for the purpose of setting up squads.

[@irwinvillanueva1308]

hey, that's one of 13 sentinels battle music in the background. you truly are cultured. i have beaten unicorn overlord recently but i am still tinkering with team setups because it is addicting. i love your videos because you have gameplay demonstrations. keep it up, man.

[@GurraDesu]

Amazing investigation! I'll definitely make myself some assist units now.

[@KyouOneZilla]

for the archer assist team, you can do 2 Shieldshooters or a shield shooter and a ranger built like a dodge tank for the frontline until you get the featherbow. For the magic assist team, a druid with a warding staff and an elven fencer for the front row. For a healing squad I recommend having 1 Seargent for the Life Aid skill

[@keithlovvorn813]

personally, I don't like using squads that can't take care of themselves in a fight, but with arbalisks and elven fencers you can make easily make support units that can hold a front line and have units with 5 supports that can fight and win on their own. healers not so much, but it might be possible.

[@battlecarrier]

For archer squads try turning the snow ranger into an evade tank with a thief cloak, it's so good. She counterattacks on evades.

[@Trevoroxx]

I got to the point I would clear almost everything with 1 or 2 teams so having another following them just to keep them topped off but never fight wasn't the worst idea

[@donniecupples6721]

It's not remotely hard to protect a useless squad, literally just have the other squad close enough them if they do get attacked you can just switch to other one. It cost literally almost nothing other than a valor point to deploy, then if nothing else they allow you to reroll rng which is a really big deal.

[@chadachi3970]

A squad led by a Wereowl dedicated solely to healing is one of the easiest squads to keep alive, as the Wereowl has innate flying, bonus move speed at night AND the healing assist. If your Wereowl squad gets caught or falls behind that's very much a user error, magic squads with a witch also have TP/gravity to keep enemies off you. Archers do have it a bit more rough, however Elven archers can somewhat facilitate both the roles of a healing squad and a artillery squad, you just need to make sure you give them a good physical bow to make up for lack of Phys Attack, though generally you can just use them as a backup healer in case the squad does get caught and they pair very well with Shieldshooters.

[@altantagrin9474]

***Character name/class spoilers*** Was getting annoyed with the number of angels in enemy squads in the final Albion battle, so I ended up throwing Liza, Raenys, Rolf, Selvie, and Mandrin into a squad whislt in a fit of rage to try and whack some of the all- and majority-angel units running around... and I was shocked by how well it worked! Liza and Raenys make decent block/evade tanks, and throwing a banishing pursuit on Raenys (and therefore having 3 follow-up attacks whenever Liza shoots someone, and two when one of the other three attack) is a little insane. Granted, this was only in that final fight where the vast majority of enemy units had at least two angels in them, but it still cleared out the non-angels too, plus contributed some pretty decent assists - had an enemy all-angel unit get absolutely smoked just by the assist attack, the actual fighting unit didn't have to do a thing.

[@joshuagardner3789]

Thank you for this video literally was working on some support squads last night and this video came in clutch!

[@axel8406]

Just the video I was hoping for.

[@Aendolin]

I love this number crunching :)

[@bxaire]

Ok this video was awesome. I wanted to do a magic assist unit that’s strictly magic assist, this helped me a lot so I won’t waste items or a “protector”. If the get caught up in up-close and die… shit doth happen. That said with the units I have available, elves/sorceresses/warlocks it seems that warlocks have the best magic attack potential at offensive/offensive steel staff, silk hood, leather good, sorcerers medallion at level 22 I have 72 magic attack. That’s pretty decent. The other classes were only one or two points behind though, so not super significant.

[@jamesgordon1446]

How much does Lex reduce the dmg or archer assist. When he’s leader.

[@Aendolin]

I concur with some of the other commenters - please do an analysis of fighter/hoplite/paladin/etc. assist damage reduction as well!

[@naberiusbuster3489]

I did some tests using the lone tower Hunter with 23 ATK in the first Auxiliary battle, and here are my findings. Both the Tower Bonus and Assist Damage reduction stack together in the same part of the formula, and they affect the total end damage after the ATK-DEF and Potency parts are calculated and applied. Tower Bonus= +50% damage Assist Damage reduction= -80% damage (I haven't ruled out 85%, but it doesn't seem likely due to being a weird number.) Both at once= -30% damage The end damage is rounded to the nearest integer (0.5 rounds up, 0.49 rounds down). Surprisingly the Assist Damage Reduction leader's defense stat has no effect. A fully armored up Hodrick and a naked Lex mitigate the same amount of damage for their allies. I haven't checked Magic Assist Damage Reduction, but I imagine it would run off the same formula as the physical version.

[@andrews4731]

You must be happy. I am sure DD2 was a risk for your success with UO, but with an overblown artificially created dumpster fire around DD2, you must be feeling pretty good about a high-quality game with 0 monetizing attempts. You deserve the success

[@battlecarrier]

Exact damage formula late game on expert for a squad of 5 archers: Damage = 1 Bloated enemy stats on high difficulties late game make the assists mostly good for moving the RNG. Good info for the first 75% of the game though, don't make the elven archer the leader, even if they look cooler.

[@BeefinOut]

Yeah, it's kinda wild that adding assist damage is just as likely to reduce the total damage dealt as it is to increase it. The deterministic nature of the combat hides a LOT of rng

[@axel8406]

After experimenting in a new expert game. This is what i found. This is only true for cornia and can change as the game progresses. You can have up to 3 assist units assisting at one time. They each get a 30 percent exp gain. This exp gain is static and does not care about the assinting unit level or the attacking unit's level. This means you can potentially level past the soft cap for an area using an assist unit. The exp formula is (total exp×0.3)/ N N is the number of guys in a unit. Rapport bonuses are not included in assisting damage or heals. What the leader has is the only thing that matters. So raw attack stats are best for the leader, which makes offensive/ offensive guys better. In cornia, each unit added to an assist squad will add 1 to 2 points of damage or healing, so building a unit with a griffin, knight, or witch might be worth it for the mobility they offer. Just cost valor points. Because it's so easy in cornia to push out decent damage. 2 of the same type of assist damage might be all that you need to clear an enemy unit. 3 of them make most enemies crumble. I'll now this and edit it to better convey my points Allain's valor skill, valorus orders, increases the damage of magical and archer assist. It does not increase healing. The Buff last the entire match, as long as they do not engage in combat. Empowering draught also increases damage for the whole battle. It also stacks with valorus orders. Both buffs are lost when redeployment of the unit. Edit: fixed some typos and corrected some data. Added part about valorus orders. Added part about empowering item

[@chadachi3970]

A very interesting way of looking at this is one of these squads should ALWAYS have 1 witch in it just for the teleport skill, in some cases a Mantle kit wouldn't be needed if you can get a mount/flier unit to take out a watchtower, then have your witch teleport the squad to said mount/flier to rain down extended range support artillery. In the case of archers it would be a bit harder to move around as quickly but if taking that -5 to potency isn't the biggest deal breaker then just slap a witch in there anyways, a mount/flier could also work well if you don't mind spending the valor to swap leaders instead of tping. Healers on the other hand have one of the best leaders you could ask for with this kind of squad in the Wereowl and the Wereowl in general as a leader is just cracked, albeit they come in the mid-late game. Knowing the formula and that only a single unit matters in terms of stats to make this work is amazing information to have.

[@TwinworldGameReviews]

If I recall correctly, the game provides you the formula. You would go into the unit overview screen and then go into the assist unit. You'd then press X on the leader and it provides the information related to the assist skill calculation for how potency is adjusted. For assist unit setup, definitely a good idea to max out the leader so their magic or physical attack stat is as high as possible for maximum damage. One of these days I'll make a dedicated assist unit lol. Some of the maps need most of my units deployed to cover various enemies, so I don't have any spare slots for dedicated assisting.

[@TitaniumLegman]

Yes

[@reneepineau631]

The in-game description misleadingly states that assisting characters add +5 to the "base damage", but they actually add to the attack's potency 🥲

[@TwinworldGameReviews]

@@reneepineau631 I read over the assist skills and I can see where folks would get confused. Even though the main description says potency gets adjusted based on members in the unit, the next line uses base damage / base healing instead of saying base potency. Hopefully the devs clarify it when they patch the other game issues. On a side note - it looks like poison damage is 30% of the Max HP value each round, versus the status 20 damage for burn level 1. I haven't tested burn level 2+, but am guessing the devs just stack on another 20 dmg per burn level. Burn seems to be the way to go early-game and then folks want to potentially shift into poison damage later on when fighting enemies with higher HP.

[@reneepineau631]

​@@TwinworldGameReviews exactly! Thanks for sharing that other info; I'd been wondering about some of those numbers, too

[@brianb660]

So what I’m hearing is we ALL made a witch named renée?! 😂😂😂 Bet she has an “apathetic” voice too 😂

[@reneepineau631]

Mine's Composed 3 😅

[@iandanarko8945]

thanks for all the amazing contributors for this video, thanks for testing them and sharing your find so we lazy asses doesnt have to 😂

[@ceresbane]

Here's a good way to incentivise committed assist units for end game. If a unit has 4 characters with the same assist skill. They don't lose stamina. The trade off being if they ever get attacked in the end game. They'll get shredded by most units or lose at least 1 of the 4 from catapults or balistae.

[@TitaniumLegman]

That's what towers and portable Mantlets are for, same effect.

[@Melorific]

The one question I might still have is: Do units need to be alive/not incapacitated to provide their bonus? My guess by the wording of the assist is no, but it might be a thing to confirm. Also, a full archer squad is actually a pretty viable combat unit. Shieldshooter + snow ranger (built to dodge) up front. Then a sniper, elven archer (with quick heal) and featherbow in the back. They can actively move around the map themselves and don't need active protection. I just have them capture a watch tower and then help the rest of my team advance.

[@brawlfan9999]

huh, a squad of 2 shieldhooters and 3 other bow wielders (elven, angel, sniper) sounds like a solid squad to do this with, they would utterly shut down fliers and be able to have a decent-ish matchup against regular units if they have to fight

[@onion_____]

Or you can just one shot them

[@theexpatriate]

I did this and it worked way better than expected. The idea was to throw one of every archer type unit together just for kicks, but before I knew it they became one of my go to squads. Liza (or any shieldshooters) are only okayish guard tanks on the frontline, but surprisingly can do well as dodge tanks with the right gear. Yunifi's starter bow and the mirage greatshield alone give a flat +70 evasion and that's before you factor in any other gear/skill shenanigans. I wouldn't call it optimized but it's certainly doable

[@chadachi3970]

@@theexpatriate I think one of my biggest gripes with shieldshooter is that they almost had the perfect synergy with Elven Archer, if only Aid Cover triggered Selfless Heal. They're still a great pair thanks to basically full healing your team at the end of a battle if your tactics are set up correctly, but man imagine your team takes a big aoe hit and survives, your Shieldshooter had jumped in front of your Elven Archer to guard the hit and heal them, then your Elven Archer popped a massive team heal. It would be so satisfying, unless it actually does do this already and my set up was messed up for it, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work.

[@brawlfan9999]

@@chadachi3970 man, that's a cool idea, gonna have to test that in a mock battle

[@Kevin123Yap456]

For me the assists are mainly for changing up the rng 😅

[@hollowfox213]

So in the case of Elven Archers and their assists, I assume it runs off their physical attack stat and not their magic stat- so it’d probably be better to either equip them with a physical bow, or put them on a squad with a Hunter or Shieldshooter as the leader. That might be why my Lhinalaghos squad never did much assist damage until I just decided to switch to Etolinde for her healing. My next question would probably be, does Nightwalk stack with bestral units in a squad, or is it always the same speed increase regardless?

[@crushdavis7048]

Correct. I was running into the same issue with Ridiel as my leader and her doing peanuts for damage as assists. Then i swtched to an unpromoted Liza, and the damage effectively tripled. As far as I can tell, there should never ever be a reason for you to make an Elven archer the squad leader

[@crushdavis7048]

So correct me if I am wrong, but is there ever a reason to use more than 1 healer in a healing assist squad? The heal assist come in AFTER combat, so its not like adding more healers is going to save someone that was going to die anyways. Unless you are assisting a high HP tank squad, I dont see why you would need more than 1.

[@ElkaPME]

I'd say they're really good to keep your frontline alive, especially with tz where you have halved item usage and offensive stats are higher

[@Kozmo-Kamuy]

To late for this video I already finished the game

[@TitaniumLegman]

Congrats? Lol

[@patriciaholt4964]

Does anyone know/ can someone explain how this affects healing assists and how the classes that reduce incoming assist damage (like vanguard and sainted knight) works? Like for healing, what's the relavent attack stat, or is it calculated differently?

[@bxaire]

I would be super cool if the choker helps, but I seriously doubt it

[@mahoumike]

I'm assuming that both Clerics' healing abilities and assists scale off of Magick Attack and not Magick Defense, but seeing as how high their Magick Defense tends to be, I can't help but wonder if healing magick might scale off of it, instead. Any ideas?

[@somuchnope2]

In battle the healing is based on magicka attack, so healing assist should be the same formula as a magicka assist with defense=0 effectively. Anecdotally that matches with the numbers I was seeing last night

[@michaeltaliana6190]

Any videos like this for Valor skill damage ?

[@threeswordssama]

69 Magic attack. Nice.

[@andrewhegstrom2187]

You lost math from chemo brain stuff? That's rough, I lose words every now and then from mine, but got the "gain" of seizures. Also thanks for running the numbers here.

[@altantagrin9474]

Correct me if I'm wrong (and from a broader strategic standpoint where the Valor economy matters, I know I am), but wouldn't it be better to have multiple single-combatant assist units of equivalent stats? Assuming you have 5 wizards/witches that are the same growths, level, and gear (and therefore the same M.Atk), you could have 5x 30 potency assists together for a total potency of 150 - almost 3x the damage of a single 5-man unit's 55 potency. Obviously adding more combatants to those assist squads would be good, but if you're short on honors and don't wanna grind and only have those 5 combatants; but even if you only have, say, two free combatants, it'd be better to make two separate squads for 2x30 total potency rather than stick them together and waste the stats of one of them, because it's the difference between 35 and 60 potency when added up.

[@reneepineau631]

Yeah, the only arguments against that are the valor cost, and in some larger late-game missions, reducing your number of combat-effective squads

[@TitaniumLegman]

You have to consider as well the stamina drain inherent to using multiple squads for assists on the same attack, to reach equivalent damage. If you're in an ideal scenario and everyone is garrisoned, that's one thing, but that's rarely the case.

[@quinnerickson328]

@@TitaniumLegman Quite true - as I said, from a broader strategic standpoint, having one or two fully-kitted assist squads is better than 5 single-assistant squads, but I was more talking about the purely Mathematical, in-a-vacuum case. Though draining enemy PP might be a good reason to burn more Valor and stamina, depending on what classes are present - if you can use up some thief PP on Evades, or cleric PP on Quick Heals, that could leave them in a much weaker position for the actual fight. More chances to hit too on higher-evade targets.

[@Dark_Oopa]

Is the hit rate and crit rate based on stats of the leader or a constant number? thx

[@TitaniumLegman]

As far as my testing has shown, those are also based on the leader's stats, yes.

[@Dark_Oopa]

@@TitaniumLegman thx

[@naberiusbuster3489]

The formula is incomplete. Where does the damage boost from towers go in the formula? How does the Ranged Assist Resist and Magic Assist Resist factor into the formula? My best guesses so far are that the damage boost is applied to the attack stat first ((AtK*1.5)-Def), and that the Assist Resist abilities add the leader's defense stats to their allies for the duration of the assist attack (Atk-(Def+LDef).

[@TitaniumLegman]

That doesn't make this formula incomplete. Those are new formulas. This is the base functioning to build off of. That said, these are good questions.

[@naberiusbuster3489]

So long as they affect the damage received from Assist attacks they are a part of the formula. This is quite important to know if a squad can safely take engagements in tower range or not.@@TitaniumLegman

[@MrNemitri]

Sadly the game abuses assists against you alot, not many towers that are in your favor at all, I wanted to do dedicated assist teams, but the timer means I have to rush like a madman most of the time, wish the timer would only kill gained Gold/EXP and not punish me for trying to think.

[@Goodthrust69]

I have two questions after playing my second playthrough. Does the leaders crit abilites matter? Ie having a 30% crit boosting bow? And also why sometimes my range assist units just dont assist. They have stamina and are in range and sometimes they just dont give the option to assist.