500 Damage, Mitigation, and Death

500.1One damage instance page

Every damage instance — a hit, a Burn tick, a Venom tick, a Tremor half, an AoE share, a boss Reflect — resolves through this pipeline. A Vitality cost is not a damage instance and skips all of it; see 500.8.

500.1-1If the recipient is a Tool or a Hub, the damage is discarded.
500.1-2If the recipient is Dormant, the damage is discarded unless the source explicitly allows it.
500.1-3If the recipient is already dead, or the amount is 0 or less, nothing happens.
500.1-4A damage-ignore charge, if the recipient has one, is spent and the instance is discarded.
500.1-5Armor's percentage reduction is applied, unless the instance ignores Armor.
500.1-6Armor's flat reduction is applied, unless the instance ignores Armor.
500.1-7A post-Armor incoming-damage cap, if the recipient's card prints one, truncates what is left to that ceiling. Everything above the cap is simply gone; it is not moved to Shield.
500.1-8Subrogated Insurance points absorb up to 25 each from what is left, and the source loses Vitality equal to what they absorbed.
500.1-9Plain Insurance points absorb up to 25 each from whatever the Subrogated points did not.
500.1-10Shield absorbs what remains, up to the Shield pool. A source whose card prints a Shield damage multiplier drains the Shield by that multiple, so the same remaining damage is paid off with fewer points of the attacker's budget.
500.1-11An ally redirect cap, if one is active, moves part of the remaining damage to the redirector.
500.1-12If the remainder would be lethal, a defy-death rune may reduce it.
500.1-13Vitality is reduced. The unit dies if Vitality reaches 0.

500.1aInsurance sits between the incoming-damage cap and Shield, so Armor is applied first and the points are spent on what Armor left. Each point absorbs up to 25 of that remainder, a point is spent whole even against a smaller instance, and one instance may spend several points. Anything the available points cannot cover carries on into Shield and then Vitality.
500.1bDamage Insurance absorbs is credited to nobody. It scores the attacker nothing and produces no Feast, while the defender counts it as damage reduced.
500.1cAn instance Insurance swallows outright still fires Thorns and Riposte, because neither reads the damage value. Nothing else in the on-damage-taken fanout fires, because no Vitality was lost. See 500.6. Two lanes are the exception: a boss Reflect starts no damage reactions at all, and an instance with no actor behind it — an overtime tick — has nobody to answer.
500.1dBurn and Venom set the ignore-Armor flag, so neither the percentage nor the flat reduction applies to them. They are still met by Insurance and absorbed by Shield.
500.1eShield is consumed before Vitality within the same instance. An instance fully absorbed by Shield deals no Vitality damage and therefore produces no Feast.
500.1fA lethal-damage redirect, if one is active, moves the entire hit to the interceptor before mitigation, and suppresses any ordinary redirect for that hit.
500.1gDamage moved to a redirect receiver lands as that unit's own instance and meets its own Armor, Insurance, and Shield. Every consequence of that spend follows on the receiver: the absorb cue, the insured-stat resync, the Insurance-prevented channel, its Shield triggers, and its own on-damage-taken fanout.
500.1hBurn and Venom ticks are adjusted before they enter this pipeline, in this order: Prismbreak amplifies the tick by 50%, rounded up; rune tick reduction is subtracted; then Forge Core tick reduction is subtracted. A tick reduced to 0 that way never enters the pipeline at all, so it spends no Insurance point and breaks no Shield.
500.1iA damage-over-time tick reaches a Dormant recipient. Dormancy stops new effects, not the ticks already running.
500.1jRetaliation — Thorns, Riposte, Retort, and Subrogated Insurance — never enters this pipeline at all. It is a Vitality cost, covered in 500.6 and 500.8. The boss Reflect rune is the exception: it comes back as a real damage instance and runs this pipeline, though it enters below the Armor steps. See 500.7.

500.2Armor

500.2aArmor gives a percentage reduction of sqrt(Armor) / (sqrt(Armor) + 20).
500.2bArmor also gives a flat reduction of 1 damage for every 5 Armor, applied after the percentage reduction.
500.2cThe percentage reduction rounds against the defender: the surviving damage is rounded up.
500.2dNegative Armor produces negative percentage reduction — that is, damage amplification. Negative Armor gives no flat reduction, and no flat amplification either.
500.2eCrush and Repossess can drive Armor negative. Piercing Roar and Crippling Scream affect Power and Speed, not Armor.
500.2fBecause the flat reduction is applied per instance, splitting damage into more instances — as Tremor and AoE do — loses more of it to high flat Armor.

500.3Recovery

500.3aRecovery means restoring Vitality or gaining Shield. Both use the same ledger.
500.3bForge Core bonuses are added to the requested amount first.
500.3cThe amount is then capped by what the target can actually receive — missing Vitality, for a heal.
500.3dMaim is applied last: each point prevents 2 of the eligible amount and is then consumed. Consumption is ceil(prevented / 2).
500.3eBecause Maim is applied to the eligible amount, healing a target that is already at full Vitality consumes no Maim.
500.3fExalt increases Shield, Hallow, Consecrate, and Fleeting buffs received, before Maim.
500.3gRecovery is refused entirely against a dead, Entrapped, or Dormant unit, and against Tools and Hubs. Tool repair is the exception and bypasses this gate.

500.4Death

500.4aA unit dies when its Vitality reaches 0, or when it is destroyed outright by Cull. A self-destruct is neither a hit nor an execution: the unit spends its whole remaining Vitality as a cost, so nothing prevents it. See 500.8.
500.4bOn death the unit's living-effect state is captured for the effects that read it, its combat state is cleared, and the death is announced.
500.4cDeath fires Macabre for every other unit on the board, on either side.
500.4dA Phylactery unit holding a Vessel spends it and revives on the spot, once the death above has fully resolved. An Everlasting unit revives 10 seconds later. Either way the unit is genuinely dead in between, and 500.9 covers what comes back.
500.4eA death and everything it fires — Macabre, deathrattles, an immediate Vessel revival, and that revival's own listeners — is one Vessel Point batch.

500.5Damage attribution

500.5aDamage is credited to the unit that dealt it, including damage from a Burn or Venom the unit applied.
500.5bWhen several units applied the same Burn or Venom, a tick is divided between them in proportion to what each applied.
500.5cFeast uses only the Vitality portion of a tick, scaled from the same shares, so absorbed damage never feeds it.
500.5dA self-destruct keeps kill credit for its source even though the source is already dead when the blast resolves.

500.6Retaliation page

Thorns, Riposte, Retort, and Subrogated Insurance all say the same thing in different words: the enemy that damaged you loses Vitality. They are one mechanic, and it is not damage. The boss Reflect rune reads like them but is not one of them — it answers with real damage.

500.6aRetaliation is a Vitality cost, not a damage instance. It skips the whole pipeline in 500.1 — Armor, the incoming-damage cap, Insurance, Shield, damage-ignore charges, and ally redirects never touch it. The rules every Vitality cost shares are in 500.8.
500.6bBecause it is not a damage instance, it starts no damage reactions. Retaliation never answers retaliation, and it fires no on-damage-taken trigger on the unit paying it.
500.6cIt is still Vitality lost, so anything keyed to losing Vitality rather than to a damage instance does respond. The runes that reset on Vitality damage — Adrenaline, Momentum, and Bolster — lose their accumulated bonus, and Vitality-threshold rune effects re-evaluate.
500.6dA defy-death rune still saves the unit paying it. Retaliation that empties Vitality kills through the ordinary death route, with deathrattles, Macabre, and kill credit intact.
500.6eRetaliation is refused against a unit that is not a legal combat target: a dead unit, an Entrapped unit, or a Dormant one.
500.6fThe retaliating unit is credited with the Vitality it took. Against a normal unit that Vitality also feeds its own Feast; against a boss it scores as damage dealt but feeds no Feast.
500.6gRetaliation into a boss can cross a Phasebreak threshold, but it never advances the boss's Stagger meter. Stagger counts direct damage only.
500.6hA unit never retaliates against itself or against an ally. Both Thorns and Riposte check sides before they fire.

500.7What retaliates

500.7aThorns is a rune and Riposte is a resonance, but they answer the same event: any hostile damage event against the unit carrying them, direct hits and Burn and Venom ticks alike.
500.7bThorns always fires, for the rune's flat per-tier amount. Riposte fires on a 50% roll, made fresh for each event and each attacker, for an amount equal to your resonance level.
500.7cNeither reads the size of the hit. That is why an instance Insurance absorbs outright still triggers both — the hit happened, and what they deal never depended on what it was worth.
500.7dA hit that reaches no Vitality any other way does silence them. Armor reducing an instance to nothing, or Shield swallowing it whole, leaves no damage event for either to answer.
500.7eBoth fire once per damaging source per event, so a tick attributed to several enemies retaliates against each of them.
500.7fRetort is the ability-authored form, a passive line reading "Damaging enemies lose N vitality". Unlike Thorns and Riposte it is gated on damage that actually landed, so an instance Insurance or Shield fully absorbs does not fire it.
500.7gSubrogated Insurance retaliates for exactly what its own points absorbed, not for the whole instance. Plain Insurance points retaliate for nothing.
500.7hThe boss Reflect rune is the odd one out. It deals 5% of the damage the attacker actually put on the boss straight back at it, rounded down but never below 1 — as damage, not as a Vitality cost.
500.7iBeing damage changes the receiving end. Reflect reads the hit after the boss's own Armor, Shield, and Insurance, so a hit the boss fully absorbs reflects nothing; and what comes back is met by the attacker's own Insurance and then its Shield, spending those points with every consequence that carries.
500.7jThe attacker's Armor is the one layer a Reflect skips. The boss is handing back damage it has already absorbed through, not swinging again, so neither the percentage nor the flat Armor reduction applies.
500.7kReflect starts no damage reactions. It is already the answer to a hit, so it fires no on-damage-taken fanout on the attacker and cannot set off that attacker's own Thorns or Riposte back at the boss — one hit never bounces a third time.
500.7lReflect is not one of the boss's activations, so it never applies Shatter.

500.8Vitality costs page

An ability paying its own price in Vitality — a Bloodletting cost, an Interest payment, a self-destruct, and the retaliation family in 500.6. A cost is a statement, not a hit, and almost nothing on the defensive side gets to answer it.

500.8aA Vitality cost skips the whole pipeline in 500.1. Armor, the incoming-damage cap, Insurance, Shield, and damage-ignore charges never see it, and none of them are spent by it. A payer holding a single point of Shield cannot pay a cost for free.
500.8bThe payment is clamped to the Vitality the payer actually has. A cost larger than that takes everything and kills the payer; it never carries a debt forward.
500.8cBecause it is not a damage instance, a cost starts no damage reactions. It fires no on-damage-taken fanout, no Thorns, no Riposte, and no Shield-damaged or Shield-broken trigger.
500.8dIt is still Vitality lost, so anything keyed to losing Vitality does respond. The runes that reset on Vitality damage — Adrenaline, Momentum, and Bolster — lose their accumulated bonus, and Vitality-threshold rune effects re-evaluate.
500.8eA cost moves nothing on a unit that discards combat interactions, so a Tool or a Hub pays nothing at all. Dead and Entrapped units are refused as payers outright.
500.8fWhether a defy-death rune answers a lethal cost is decided per cost. Retaliation and Bloodletting opt in, and the unit spends its once-per-life charge either way. Interest and self-destruct do not: they pay through.
500.8gInterest is the one cost that also debits the payer's maximum Vitality by the amount paid, for the rest of the battle.
500.8hA self-destruct spends the unit's entire remaining Vitality as a cost, so nothing talks it out of dying: no damage-ignore charge, no defy-death rune, and no Insurance point burned on the way. Its Shield is scrapped with it rather than damaged, so no Shield trigger fires. Everlasting still revives it on schedule, because that is a revival rather than a prevention.
500.8iListeners read the Vitality that actually left the payer, not the price printed on the card. A Bloodletting payment clamped by a low payer pays out its own listeners for that smaller amount.
500.8jA death caused by a cost is an ordinary death. Macabre fires, deathrattles resolve, and the activation that charged the cost continues.

500.9Revival page

Two things bring a dead unit back: an Everlasting timer, and a Phylactery Vessel. They differ in what pays for them, when they land, and where the unit stands afterwards. Everything past that is one shared procedure, and this is it.

500.9aEverlasting revives 10 seconds after the death, if combat is still running. It searches the dying unit's own board half for a free slot, and retries on later ticks while none is open — a revival can be delayed indefinitely by a full board.
500.9bPhylactery spends a stored Vessel the moment the death has finished resolving, and returns the unit to the cell it died in. It runs no timer, searches for nothing, and cannot fail for want of a slot.
500.9cBoth causes hand off to the same body from here. A revived unit returns at full Vitality, with its battle-start numbers rebuilt: resonance passives and persistent Scrip grants are reapplied, and every status, timed effect, and combat stat change from the previous life is gone.
500.9dCharge restarts from empty. A revival never hands back the activation the unit was charging when it died.
500.9eOnce-per-life rune effects are re-armed, so a defy-death rune can save the same unit again in its next life.
500.9fA revived unit is a new target incarnation: Rabid excludes it for one activation, and new-target rune effects can fire for it again.
500.9gEverlasting is re-resolved from the unit's own ability plus any grant that was made for the whole battle, so a battle-long grant survives the revival and can revive the unit again.
500.9hRevival dispatches two trigger channels — one the revived unit hears about itself, one its living allies hear — and both carry the cause.
500.9iOnly the self channel filters on that cause. A line on the revived unit's own card that names Phylactery is refused on an Everlasting revival and the reverse, so a runtime Everlasting grant on a Phylactery bearer never crosses the two.
500.9jThe allied channel is generic. A card that listens for an ally reviving answers every revival on its side — Phylactery or Everlasting, and whether or not the revived ally carries Phylactery at all.
500.9kA revival listener may aim at the revived ally, or at the unit that killed it. Both causes carry the killer: Phylactery resolves at the death and still has it in hand, and Everlasting holds the killer's identity for the 10 seconds the unit is down. Either way, if the killer is gone or is no longer a legal target, the clause falls back to the listener's own Focus roll rather than fizzling.
500.9lThe Reliquary rune hands its revived bearer Speed until that unit's next activation, which clears it. Reapplying it does not add; the larger amount stands. An ordinary Speed buff written on a revival listener is not this effect and lasts as long as any other buff.
500.9mA revival and every passive it triggers pool into one Vessel Point batch, which is what stops a chain of revival listeners from paying for the revival after it.