Damage in Hustle Castle is somewhat complicated, and is often misunderstood. It doesn’t help that it’s not presented very clearly in the game interface. In this article, I will try to bring some clarity to this confusing topic.

Types of Damage

There are two different types of damage:

Physical damage (usually just called “damage” in the game)
Magic damage

This article will focus exclusively on physical damage. While much of what is described here will also apply to magic damage, there are some extra subtleties that make magic damage even more interesting. I may go over this in another, future article if I am so motivated.

Sources of Physical Damage

Physical damage comes from tank (melee) weapons and from archer weapons. Here is a complete list of all tank weapons:

Daggers
Sword
Mace
Axe

And here are the archer weapons:

Bow
Crossbow

Physical damage can also come from armor and / or a ring that your fighter is wearing. Some tank armor provides damage, and all archer armor provides damage. Some rings provide physical damage, some provide magic damage, and some provide no damage.

Tank armor that provides physical damage

Weapon Attack Speed

The different categories of physical damage weapons each have a different attack speed. This speed is independent of the DPS (damage per second) number reported on the weapon description, but it is important in calculating the overall DPS for the fighter. More on this later.

Here are the attack speeds of the different weapons:

Fast (2 per second) – Daggers
Normal (1 per second) – Sword, Bow
Slow (2 every 3 seconds) – Mace, Crossbow
Very Slow (1 every 2 seconds) – Axe

You can find out the attack speed of a weapon by clicking on the DPS number in the weapon’s details screen. For example:

The DPS Calculation for a Weapon

Notice in the above image, the Bloodsucker poleaxe deals between 3154 and 3448 damage with each attack. If you take the mean of those two values, you can assume that each attack of the axe will, on average, deal 3301 damage to the enemy. Since the axe is a very slow weapon, it only deals an attack every 2 seconds, or 1/2 attack every second. So, divide 3301 by 2, and you get (rounded down) 1650 damage every second. This is the DPS value that is reported for the weapon.

The DPS Calculation for a Fighter

If you only equip your fighter with a weapon, then the DPS for the fighter is simple to calculate. It is equivalent to the DPS of the weapon, as shown below:

Notice in the bottom-left corner of the fighter’s info screen (bottom image) it says that the fighter’s DPS is 1738. This is equal to the DPS of the equipped daggers (top image).

Things get more interesting when you throw armor into the mix, though. Look at the following archer armor:

This armor provides between 2581 and 2700 damage on each attack. Note that this is not a DPS value! This is where the confusion comes from. This armor gives an average of 2640.5 damage per attack. So, if you equip it along with the fast daggers, which do 2 attacks per second, then the armor provides 2640.5 * 2, or 5281 DPS. This is shown below:

Notice that the fighter’s DPS value is 7019, which is the 1738 from the daggers added to the 5281 from the armor.

The same thing goes for damage from a ring. Take this ring, for example:

It provides an average of 680 damage, (588 + 772) / 2, on each attack. So, when coupled with the daggers, it provides an extra 1360 DPS, as shown below:

The armor and ring are significantly less effective when paired with a very slow weapon, like the Bloodsucker poleaxe, already discussed above. Here is what that configuration looks like:

Wow! Even though the axe provides DPS of 1650, which is only 88 DPS less than the 1738 from the daggers, the whole package yields 5068 less total DPS for your fighter. That’s because the fast daggers attack 4x as fast as the very slow axe. So the DPS boost from the armor and ring is only 1661 when the axe is equipped. This is 1/4 the DPS boost of 6641 that you get from the armor and ring when the daggers are equipped.