Plasma

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plasma
Plasma
Inhaled?Whether this gas is
respiration-based

no

Seeping?Whether this gas can
seep through walls

yes

Character

ID?Use this ID to Wish for the item

Plasma

plasma

Ribbons of emerald and neon lace streak through the crackling air and bloom in violent florets.

Perfect

Plasma is a damaging gas that can seep through walls and other occluding objects, often destroying them in the process.

Mechanically, it is very similar to corrosive gas, except that:

  • Plasma does twice as much damage to creatures and robots.[1]
  • Plasma can leave creatures it comes in contact with coated in plasma, which causes an additional debuff.[2]

Sources

Common sources of plasma, with their level and density, include:[3]

Source Gas Level Gas Density Reference
Plasma Gas Generation
(plasma jelly has this at level 10)
Mutation Level 800 per turn, divided evenly into adjacent squares [4]
plasma grenade mk I 10 40 [5][6]
plasma grenade mk II 10 80 [5][6]
plasma grenade mk III 10 120 [5][6]
plasma jelly (on death) 1 1000 [7][6]
spaser pistol (on projectile hit) 1 20 in cell hit, 10 in all adjacent cells [8][6]
spaser rifle (on projectile hit) 1 80 in cell hit, 40 in all adjacent cells [8][6]

Damage

The damage done by plasma depends on the target:[9]

  • Plasma deals damage to creatures and robots.
  • Plasma deals significantly increased damage to:
    • Walls, doors, furniture, chests, statues, and similar objects.
    • brooding puffs.
  • Plasma deals no damage to anything with the Item tag. This includes all weapons, armor, equipment, scrap, cybernetics, energy cells, garbage, food, trade goods, corpses, books, water containers, urns and vases, quest items, and most other similar items a character might carry around in their inventory. Furniture items, such as chests or weapon racks are affected, but any items within will drop to the ground undamaged.

Note that, even though plasma does not directly damage items, it does apply the coated in plasma effect to them. This can make those items more susceptible to other forms of damage, such as catching on fire.

The following damage formulas are used to calculate plasma damage:[9]

Formula Notes
Creatures and Robots
( Density × GasLevel ) / 100
(rounded up)
Walls and Similar Objects
( 0.75 × GasLevel + 0.25 ) × Density
(rounded up)

In practice, gas damage is highly variable due to a significant amount of randomization involved in gas behavior.

Gas is constantly moving between cells, dissipating over time, merging with other gas, and being affected by random calculations in the game engine. Its density, which is the main predictor of damage, is always changing.

The density of plasma can get much higher than 100 with the Plasma Gas Generation mutation, which is the signature mutation of a plasma jelly. With that mutation, a creature releases 100 density units of gas into the cells around them each turn, and can continuously release gas for many turns depending on mutation level. This can result in very high density gas if the gas is released into a small area.

The following table indicates how much damage plasma of a certain level will do per round, depending on gas level and density. The table includes only Gas Levels 1 and 10, since other gas levels are not commonly found in game.

Gas Level Density Gas damage per round
creatures / robots walls / objects
1
10 1 10
20 1 20
40 1 40
60 1 60
80 1 80
100 1 100
120 2 120
180 2 180
240 3 240
300 3 300
1000 10 1000
Gas Level Density Gas damage per round
creatures / robots walls / objects
10 40 4 310
80 8 620
120 12 930
200 20 1550
300 30 2325
400 40 3100
500 50 3875
600 60 4650
700 70 5425
800 80 6200
900 90 6975
1000 100 7750
1200 120 9300
1400 140 10850
1600 160 12400

Looking for a more extensive damage breakdown? You can refer to the corrosive gas damage table - the numbers are the same except that you'll need to multiply the "creatures/robots" damage shown on the corrosive gas page times 2 to get the plasma damage for the same level and density.

References

This information is reliable as of patch 2.0.202.94.
  1. XRL.World.Parts.GasPlasma
  2. XRL.World.Effects.CoatedInPlasma
  3. XRL.World.Parts.Gas
  4. XRL.World.Parts.Mutation.PlasmaGasGeneration
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 XRL.World.Parts.GasGrenade
  6. 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 ObjectBlueprints.xml
  7. XRL.World.Parts.Corpse
  8. 8.0 8.1 XRL.World.Parts.EmitGasOnHit
  9. 9.0 9.1 XRL.World.Parts.GasDamaging