Last Update: 23/12/97

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Monster Island Information: Calculating damage done from attacks

Working out the damage done from an attack is not as obvious as you might think...
You've two options:

Download Damage Calculating Programme

I knocked up the following programme quickly, so I apologise if it is not exactly advanced. However, it does work (I hope!). You can download a binary for DOS, compiled with DJGPP.

Download the compiled DOS binary (in ZIP form). (CWSDPMI required)


The programme will keep looping until CTRL-C is pressed, in the case of the DOS binary, you may need to hit RETURN after CTRL-C.

Please observe the following:
/* Provided with _absolutely_ no warranty. Permission granted for distribution and modification for personal use. You may not charge money for this program. Copyright Tom Ford 1997*/

Use the formula

1. Work out your armour value (add all your armour classes of equipped items together, count body armour thrice and add your skin toughness (normally 2 in first 60 turns)).
2. Multiply your armour value by 2.5. This is the percentage of damage absorbed per round, but the amount absorbed cannot exceed your total armour value.
3. Now work out the actual damage done to you by the attack in total (round .5 up I think - if any one knows better please tell me). To do this, work out what percentage of the total damage the amount you took was (e.g. if you absorb 50% each round the amount done to you would be 50% of the total). If this number exceeds the damage taken + your armour value then the amount of damage taken + your armour value is actually the amount of damage excluding armour (the maximum damage possibly absorbed has been reached).
4. Divide this number by the number of hits and round down. This is the average amount of damage done by each attack. Therefore you can be sure that the creature could do this amount of damage. However, sometimes the damage for each hit multiplied by the number of hits may not add up. In this case you know that one of the hits must have done at least 1 more point of damage.
5. The one or two numbers gained are amounts of damage that the creature could do.

Much needed example:

OK, so you were wandering through this Great Cave looking for Mantles of the Dark, dragonbone swords etc. when suddenly this horrible great bortolatomus lumbers forwards and decides you look like lunch.

"The bortolatomus bites you square in the stomach and left leg [2 hits reduce your health by 81]"

Right, you are wearing Gator armour (AC 4), a Squzskin helmet (AC 1), Iron gauntlets (AC 3), King’s spiked leggings (AC 4) and holding a damaged heavy iron shield (AC 4) and have a skin toughness of 2 (normal).
Therefore your total armour value is: (4×3) + 1 + 3 + 4 + 4 + 2 = 26
So you absorb 26 × 2.5 = 65 % of damage in each round, up to a maximum of 26.
You took 80 points of damage. As you absorb 65% of damage 81 must be 35% of total damage. Therefore the attack actually did (81/35) × 100 = 231 points of damage (rounded). After doing all this work you find that it was worthless as 231 - 81 > 26, the maximum damage your armour can absorb. Therefore maximum damage was absorbed, meaning that the attack actually did 81 + 26 = 107 points of damage.
To find out how much damage each hit certainly could have done (what I want to know) you must divide the damage by the number of hits taken: 107/2 = 53.5 , rounded down this is 53. 53+53 = 106 therefore one of the hits certainly could have done 54 points of damage. So after this long process we have worked out that the bortolatomus had the ability to do 53-54 points of damage with each attack. Looking on the sheet this falls clearly into the range specified.
I hope you understood my somewhat rambling explanation.