Fire Bolt

Creates a magical flaming missile.

Fire Bolt is the Sorceress's level 1 Fire skill, with no prerequisite, and the root of the tree: it unlocks Fire Ball. It is a single-target fire missile that costs 2.5 mana at every level, and its two deciding numbers are the damage range, which climbs in ever-steeper brackets, and the +16% per hard point it takes from Fire Ball and Meteor.

The numbers

The damage comes from the EMin/EMax columns of skills.txt, halved by the row's HitShift of 7. The minimum starts at 3 and grows +1.5 a level to level 8, +2 to 16, +4 to 22, +9 to 28 and +27 a level past that (EMinLev1–5 of 3, 4, 8, 18, 54, halved). The maximum starts at 6 and grows +1.5, +3, +5, +10 and +28 in the same brackets. That is 45–60 at level 20, 80–100 at level 25 and 161–186 at level 30; the late brackets are where +skills pay off, since every level past 20 comes from gear and the expression reads lvl.

Mana is 2.5 at every level: the row has mana 5, lvlmana 0 and manashift 7, so the cost is 5 ÷ 2 and never grows.

How it works

Fire Bolt is a missile (srvmissile "firebolt"). It is a spell, so it needs no attack rating and never misses a target it collides with; what it deals is fire damage, which the target's fire resistance reduces, see Dealing Elemental Damage and Resistances and Immunities. The Basin's page classes it as a long-range, single-target missile: it stops at the first thing it hits and has range enough to reach any target on an 800×600 screen. It is cast at casting speed and the Sorceress's Faster Cast Rate breakpoints.

The Basin's page says Fire Bolt has the same velocity, range and size as Fire Ball, although Fire Ball is drawn larger. The difference is in the damage and the splash: Fire Ball hits an area, Fire Bolt hits one target.

Synergies and +skills

• Fire Ball: +16% fire damage per level and Meteor: +16% fire damage per level (skills.txt Param8 = 16; the calc reads skill('Fire Ball'.blvl) and skill('Meteor'.blvl), so only hard points count).
• Fire Bolt in turn feeds Fire Ball (+14% a hard point), Meteor (+5%) and Hydra (+3%).
• The damage line itself reads lvl, so +skills from gear raise the base range; the synergy percentages do not move with +skills.
• Fire Mastery multiplies the result once more; the Basin's page on the mastery says it applies after the synergy bonus.

The Basin's page adds that with full synergy bonuses, at skill level above 46 (47 without hard points in Meteor), Fire Bolt deals slightly more damage to a single target than an equal-level Fire Ball at a fraction of the mana.

Against players

A player's hit on another player is cut to 17% of its value (difficultylevels.txt PlayerDamagePercentVSPlayer) before anything else, see Player versus Player. The Basin's page gives no other rule for Fire Bolt against players.

Build notes

• At level 20 the bolt is 45–60 for 2.5 mana; a Fire Ball of the same level is 199–226 for 14.5. The bolt is the mana-cheap skill, not the hard-hitting one, until the synergies are maxed.
• Hard points in Fire Bolt pay twice: each is +14% to Fire Ball and +5% to Meteor as well as its own damage.
• The brackets reward +skills: level 21 to 30 adds 116 to the minimum, more than levels 1 to 20 added together.