This is the final version of my explanation of the damage formula. With the new findings, the battle simulations are now almost 100% accurate — so we can finally say that we’ve figured out the real damage formula for the game. You can see it in action on the Battle Simulator.
The simplified version of the formula looks like this:
Kills = √Troops × (Attack × Lethality) / (Enemy’s Defense × Enemy’s Health) × SkillMod- Your troop count scales with the square root, which means having a bigger army doesn’t boost your damage by a huge amount. For example, if you use 10,000 troops, the square root is 100 — but doubling your troops to 20,000 only increases it to 144, not 200. So your damage doesn’t double.
- Attack and Lethality have the same impact since they multiply together. That means Lethality isn’t stronger or more important than Attack — both matter equally.
- Your Attack × Lethality is divided by the enemy’s Defense × Health, so the old idea that “Attack reduces Defense” and “Lethality reduces Health” was completely wrong.
- The most important part of the damage formula is SkillMod, which represents the effects of hero and troop skills. This has the biggest influence on damage, so your main and joiner heroes with strong skills play a huge role in deciding the outcome of your battles.
Skill Mod or “Damage Coefficient”
This part is really important because it’s what controls how joiner skills affect your damage. The formula is:
SkillMod = (DamageUp * OppDefenseDown) / (OppDamageDown * DefenseUp)
In the backend (for joiners), both Attack and Lethality buffs are treated the same → they’re just DamageUp effects. The “attack” vs. “lethality” wording in the game is just flavor text for joiner heroes. Mechanically, the only thing that separates them is their effect_op identifier.
Note: The code examples below are from our simulator. They don’t come from the game’s files, so the actual variable names in the game may be different.
Why Different Joiners (Amane + Chenko) Deal More Damage
When you stack identical joiners, their buffs just add up. But when you stack different joiners, the buffs multiply instead, giving you slightly more damage.
Example 1: Four of the Same Hero (Amane or Chenko, each 25%)
Four Amanes → bonus_effects['DamageUp'][102] = 25 + 25 + 25 + 25 = 100
Four Chenkos → bonus_effects['DamageUp'][101] = 25 + 25 + 25 + 25 = 100
damageUp = 1 + 100/100 = 2.0 (100% boost)
Example 2: Two Amanes + Two Chenkos (25% each)
Amane = effect_op 102 → total 50
Chenko = effect_op 101 → total 50
bonus_effects['DamageUp'] = {101: 50, 102: 50}
damageUp = math.prod((1.0 + val/100.0) for val in stats_dict['DamageUp'].values())
damageUp = (1 + 50/100) * (1 + 50/100)
damageUp = 1.5 * 1.5 = 2.25 (125% boost)
Result
- Four identical heroes → 2.0 (100% boost)
- Two Amane + Two Chenko → 2.25 (125% boost)
That’s a 12.5% relative increase in damage just from mixing heroes.
Why This Happens
The math.prod function multiplies each unique effect_op separately:
- If all heroes share the same
effect_op, their buffs just add together. - If they have different
effect_ops, the buffs compound multiplicatively → leading to higher damage.
Attack vs. Lethality — Which Should You Boost?
Now that we understand the Kingshot damage formula, we know that Attack and Lethality multiply with each other. This means boosting the lower stat between them gives you a bigger increase in overall damage.
In most cases, your Attack is much higher than your Lethality, just like your Defense is usually higher than your Health — mainly because Lethality and Health are harder to improve. So, to get a noticeable boost in damage, focus on increasing Lethality, and to reduce incoming damage more effectively, work on raising Health.
Once your Lethality and Health stats are high enough, then it starts making more sense to focus on Attack and Defense again.
Your guides are really helpful, man keep it up. If you can, could you also make a guide on how to get heroes like Helga? I couldn’t really find a free way to upgrade her. It seems like the only options are either paying or ranking high in events to get free shards. If you could make a guide that helps people compete and actually get those mythical heroes, it would be amazing!
Both Helga and Amadeus are paid heroes. You can unlock Amadeus through the Hall of Governors by ranking in the top 10, but realistically, that’s pretty much impossible for free-to-play players.
Does this mean that the meta will change? f.e chenko being MANDATORY as lead in bear?
Awesome guide btw. I’ve read them all 😀
I’m glad you like my guides! So, in the damage formula, Lethality and Attack basically work the same way — they’re both multipliers. But in most cases, your Attack stat is already much higher than your Lethality. That’s why it still makes more sense to focus on increasing Lethality — it gives you a bigger boost to your overall damage.
So the meta stays the same: Chenko, Amadeus, and Yeonwoo are still the top-tier joiner heroes, with Amane coming next because of her Attack boost.
The 25% from hero skills is multiplicative. Improvements on your stats are additive, so if your attack is higher it makes sense to focus on improving lethality.
Hi, thanks for the great analysis. What I would like to confirm, whether I understand it right:
1. When being a rally leader, the focus should be on heroes with as many lethality bonuses as possible, because the base lethality is much smaller, therefore the resulting DMG will do something like this: (Attack Base+Attack Leader Skills)*(Leth Base+Leth Leader Skills).
2. When joining a rally, the best is to alternate joiner captains between Leth and Attack heroes as they provide a smaller boost in the SkillMod value.
I am not fully sure with the 1st point as you some comments suggested to focus on the Lethality, because Base Attack is usually higher, but again, there are comments where the skills are being added together.
Thanks in advance.
When a skill description says it increases Lethality or Attack, it actually means it adds to DamageUp in the SkillMod. For example, Saul’s third skill says it increases Lethality by 25%, but using Saul won’t actually give you a 25% lethality stat boost. That’s just flavor text; the effect goes into SkillMod as DamageUp. So any hero skill that mentions Attack Up or Lethality Up is treated as DamageUp in SkillMod.
1. If the enemy is defending and using Howard and Gordon, what should I do? Should I attack with a Lethality hero or an Attack hero?
2. Most beginner players don’t implement that strategy, randomly filling their garrison without considering defense. What should I do? Should I attack with a Defense hero or an Attack hero?
I’d recommend sending 2 Chenkos and 2 Amanes instead of 4 Chenkos. We’ve tested it and found that 2 Chenkos + 2 Amanes deal more damage than 4 Chenkos. Use that setup if you can.
The main thing to check is the widget of the hero you’re sending as the Rally Leader. Always go for heroes with an Attack Widget. By Gen 3, the best attack lineup is Amadeus, Petra, and Marlin.
If the fomular is correct, it means “+25% Lethality = +25% Attack”, and “+5 Lethality > +5 Attack”.
I’m not sure about this. Because I believe 25% Lethality up > 25% Attack up.
Lethality is seen as a better stat because your Attack is almost always much higher than your Lethality. So, increasing Lethality gives a bigger damage boost compared to raising Attack.
1×20=20
1×21=21
2×20=40
Makes sense. Thank you
I have a question about defense. What is the relationship between Health and Defense? Is it calculated in the same way as the damage formula above?
Health is basically the life of your troops — that’s where all the damage goes. When their health hits zero, the troop dies or gets injured. Defense, on the other hand, reduces the damage coefficient, which will lower the damage you deal.
Thank you for answering my question. Can I ask one more question? Does Howard’s first skill of Expedition, Damage Reduction Skill (Max 20%), reduce the damage coefficient?
My guess is that Defense lowers the damage coefficient, while skills like Howard’s and Quinn’s reduce the final damage before it actually hits your health.
Thank you for the knowledge. Sharing this a bud.
Could you provide a methodology to support or refute your findings, along with additional information, recordings, or spreadsheets of the testing?
Still regularly get arguments about how the stats work, even if this might be the best we can go by.
Can you show the math for how 2 level 5 chenko and 2 level 5 amane are better than 4 level 5 chenko?
2 Chenkos give a +50% boost (1.5x damage), while 1 Chenko + 1 Amane gives 1.25 × 1.25 = 1.5625 (+56% boost). So the mixed combo does a bit more because attack and lethality multiply in the damage formula.
Hello, thank you for your efforts and providing so much knowledge.
Is Yeanwoo considered a third multiplier, or is it counted as identical with Chenko?
If it’s different, then we can reach a 1.5 × 1.25 × 1.25 = 2.34 multiplier, correct?
Yeonwoo, Amadeus, and Chenko all have the same effect_op, so their effects don’t multiply. Amane and Margot are the only ones with a different effect_op for DamageUp, so they stack well with Chenko, Amadeus, or Yeonwoo.
In the previous damage formula, even if the number of troops increased, the damage did not increase drastically and the square root was used. Why is the square root of the number of troops no longer used in the new damage formula?
Glad you noticed! The old formula wasn’t very accurate. All of these findings come from testing, and things can change as I discover more; either through solo testing or with help from friends. This one is more reliable, around 95% accurate, and you can check it yourself on the battle simulator currently live at kingshotsimulator.com.
So I’m a little confused with how this applies to the Bear Hunt event. From what I’ve seen online the Bear has “no” defense. This should mean that lethality is not relevant and only attack matters in the bear event based on this damage formula, correct? However (anecdotally) it does seem like boosting lethality increases damage against bear. Can you confirm any of this for me?
Bear does have defense — you can confirm this by activating the “Enemy Defense Down” buff in the city bonuses section, which will increase your damage against the Bear.
Which skill uses OppDefenseDown skillmod or is this the enemy defence down city buff? Can we get a list of skillmods for all other heroes?
There’s no hero right now that uses OppDefenseDown. Those will come in higher generations.
Great content Daryl, many thanks.
With gen 5 heroes recently released on our server, I was contemplating how Vivians joiner skill (‘attacks increase enemy damage taken by 25%’) fit into the formula.
Is this considered a similar effect_op for DamageUp, alongside ‘attack’ and ‘lethality’? I.e.would it be added as a third multiplier in the numerator?
Or do you see it as another boost to attack stats, thus fitting neatly into existing formula?
Or, finally, is there a way it would apply bonus differently than the already described function?
Thank you for sharing.
It is also a DamageUp effect with an ID of 101, so it’s similar to the first skill of Chenko, Amadeus, and Yeonwoo.