Until You Fall has a clean, layered damage system, but it does not expose a single official full equation in-game. What it does expose, and what players can reliably observe, is that damage is split into different damage types, each triggered by specific actions, then modified by swing quality, timing, traits, supers, and enemy-specific resistances or states. This article lays out the full pipeline, with the parts that are explicit and the parts that are best described as behavioral rules rather than a published formula.

1) The Two Main Damage Pools: Guard vs Health

Guard damage

Guard damage reduces the enemy’s Guard meter (the bar above their head). When Guard hits zero, the enemy becomes vulnerable and you can start dealing Health damage through a Critical Strike combo.

How Guard damage is dealt:

• Striking an enemy with your weapon
• Blocking or parrying with your weapon
• Dashing into an enemy

A key detail: if your weapon has no trait modifying damage, a strike typically deals your weapon’s base Guard damage, and a parry typically deals that same base amount.

Another key detail: enemy resistances can change how much Guard damage they take, and difficulty increases mainly raise enemy maximum Guard rather than rewriting how the whole damage system works.

Health damage

Health damage is what actually kills the enemy. In most cases, you only deal Health damage after breaking Guard, when the enemy is in a vulnerable stunned state and you can perform Critical Strikes as a combo.

Enemy health is represented in crystals or pips, and the game treats those as point values behind the scenes:

• Each enemy Health pip is effectively 5 points of damage
• Each player Health crystal is effectively 1 point of damage

So health damage is counted in points even though you visually see crystals and pips.

2) The Damage Events That Actually Happen

Think of combat as a sequence of discrete damage events.

Event A: A normal weapon hit during Guard phase

This applies Guard damage, not Health damage, unless you are using a special Guard bypass source.

Event B: A parry or block during Guard phase

This also applies Guard damage, typically equal to your weapon’s Guard damage value, then modified by your swing and other factors.

Event C: A dash impact

Dash applies Guard damage, and longer dashes generally produce more dash damage.

Event D: A Critical Strike hit during the combo window

After you break Guard, you enter a Critical Strike combo where you deal Health damage directly. The first strike can come from any direction, then you must follow the slash patterns to continue the combo.

Event E: Guard bypass Health damage sources

Some Supers can bypass the Guard meter and deal Health damage even when Guard is still up. Some traits can also bypass Guard in special cases, such as effects that trigger when a specific enemy state is broken.

3) The Modifiers That Change Damage

Once a damage event happens, the game applies a stack of modifiers. The exact internal order is not published, but the components are clear and testable.

A) Swing size bonus (small vs standard vs big)

Big swings deal more damage and knockback. You can treat swing size as a multiplier on the base damage for that hit.

B) Attack speed penalty (rapid hits)

If you attack too quickly, the game reduces your overall damage. This functions like a tempo penalty: spamming faster does not equal more damage per second.

C) Enemy state and resistances

Enemies can resist Guard damage differently depending on enemy type and situation. This behaves like an enemy-side multiplier applied to your Guard damage.

D) Traits (flat bonuses, percent bonuses, conditional bonuses)

Traits can add flat damage, add percent damage, or apply conditional multipliers. Examples of how traits behave:

• Flat adds: add a fixed number to Guard or Health damage
• Percent boosts: multiply damage by a percentage amount
• Conditional boosts: multiply damage only under specific conditions (first hit after a cooldown, versus a certain debuff, on big swings only, and so on)

Trait text is one of the most concrete sources of math because it often provides explicit numbers.

E) Combo system and Combo Limit

Combo Limit is the number of Critical Strikes you can land after breaking an enemy’s Guard, and both weapons contribute to your total. Your total Health damage during a combo is strongly controlled by:

• Health damage per Critical Strike hit
• Your total Combo Limit
• Whether you actually land every required slash pattern hit

4) Putting It Together as Practical Formulas

Because the game does not publish a single official equation, the most accurate way to state the math is as a pipeline for each event type.

Guard damage per weapon strike (conceptual)

GuardDamageHit =

• BaseGuardDamage of your weapon
  times
• SwingSizeMultiplier (small, standard, big)
  times
• TempoMultiplier (reduced if you are rapid-hitting)
  times
• EnemyGuardResistanceMultiplier (enemy type and current state)
  then modified by
• Trait bonuses (some percent, some flat, some conditional)

Guard damage per parry or block (conceptual)

Same structure as a normal hit, except the event is parry, and certain traits specifically boost block or parry Guard damage.

Dash impact damage (conceptual)

DashGuardDamage increases with dash length, then is still subject to enemy resistance or state and any modifiers that specifically mention dash impact.

Health damage during Critical Strike combos (conceptual)

HealthDamageComboTotal =
Sum of each landed Critical Strike hit:

• BaseHealthDamagePerCritHit (weapon and upgrades)
  times
• SwingSizeMultiplier
  times
• TempoMultiplier (if rapid hits affects your cadence here, you will feel reduced output)
  plus or times
• Trait bonuses that add or multiply Health damage

The hard cap on how many hits you can apply in the window is your Combo Limit.

5) A Concrete Numeric Example Using Breakpoints

A common player way to think about damage is by breakpoints, such as being able to kill a specific enemy in one Guard break combo. Conceptually, if a full combo lands 5 hits and each hit deals 6 Health damage, that is 30 total. If the target needs 35 to die, you either need:

• +1 damage per hit across the combo, or
• +1 extra combo hit, or
• a conditional trait that spikes one or more hits

Now connect that to the pip mapping: if each enemy pip is 5 points, then 35 points corresponds to 7 pips. This is why breakpoints feel so real in-game: the right combo output deletes a clean chunk of the health display.

6) What You Can and Cannot Know Exactly

What is explicit in gameplay behavior:

• Guard and Health are separate systems, with Guard break enabling Critical Strike combos for Health damage
• Big swings increase damage and knockback
• Attacking too quickly reduces damage output
• Dash damage scales with dash length
• Many traits provide exact numeric modifiers (flat values and percent values)
• Enemy resistance or state can reduce or increase Guard damage taken

What is not publicly specified as a single exact equation:

• The exact multiplier values for small vs standard vs big swings
• The exact curve and timing thresholds for the rapid hits damage reduction
• The exact internal stacking order when multiple percent and flat modifiers apply at once

Those can be reverse-tested in a controlled environment by comparing Guard bar reduction and combo outcomes under repeatable swings, but they are not published as one official formula.

If you tell me your current weapon pair and the traits you usually run, I can translate this into a practical damage math sheet: your one-combo total, which breakpoints you hit, and what upgrade or trait gets you to the next breakpoint fastest.