spellcasting Archer build aka how is m.atk calculated?

[ThinkSome]

Question: Is a lvl 86 spellcasting Archer build with terranite head and terranite legs possible?

Answer: If we go by what the item tooltips say (they add up to -68 matk), then yes. However... the way that m.attack is calculated is confusing. And the tooltips lie. First, the item tooltip only lists subtractive maluses, not multiplicative (which are present in serverdata item_db in addition to subtractive ones!)

I start with 87 m.attack (level + 1 int).

With terra head+legs, dex ring, forest armor+bow, heart necklace + fur boots + silk gloves, testing says that 25 int is required to get 1 m.attack. At that point, the naked m.attack is 137. Of course, raising int so much means I'd be giving up a lot of points in either dex or agi. This is unnacceptable.

Here is a table of testing, with two hypothetic ways of calculating matk. The first applies multiplicative and then subtracts fixed malus. The other vice-versa. Neither of them match in-game m.atk:

Code: Select all

| matk | eqp                          | malus | calc1 | calc2 | actual matk |
|------+------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------------|
|   87 | fArmor                       |    20 |    49 |    53 |          47 |
|   87 | fArmor,fBow                  |    27 |    36 |    43 |          33 |
|   87 | fArmor,fBow,tHead            |    57 |   -20 |    12 |          0  |
|   87 | fArmor,fBow,tHead,tLegs      |    65 |   -35 |     7 |           0 |
|   87 | fArmor,fBow,tHead,tLegs,furB |    68 |   -41 |     6 |           0 |
|  137 | fArmor                       |    20 |    89 |    93 |          97 |
|  137 | fArmor,fBow                  |    27 |    73 |    80 |          83 |
|  137 | fArmor,fBow,tHead            |    57 |     1 |    34 |          23 |
|  137 | fArmor,fBow,tHead,tLegs      |    65 |   -18 |    25 |           7 |
|  137 | fArmor,fBow,tHead,tLegs,furB |    68 |   -25 |    22 |           1 |
#+TBLFM: $4=floor($1 * (100-$3)/100) - $3::$5=floor (($1 - $3) * (100-$3)/100)

note1: Forest bow is -7 and -7% matk, which is not stated in tooltip.
note2: heart necklace, dex ring and silk gloves have no effect on matk.

EDIT: Mana Pearl minus fur boots get me to 2 m.atk. Putting on cotton boots gets me back 1 out of 3 def and up to 4 m.atk.

[jesusalva]

Matk is calculated in a fixed order, but the trick is probably Astral Soul. Not to mention there are two matk parameters.

Astral Soul is a nerf, if your matk exceeds a threshold, it gets throttled in 87.5% (so 1/8 above threshold). Each level of Astral Soul mitigates this nerf (also in 12.5% or 1/8), and at level 9, you get an actual bonus of 12.5%

This nerf applies after equipment, which is probably what's screwing your calculations up. I might be wrong, btw

[ThinkSome]

Can't do Astral Soul - need speed or mallard eye as an archer. Also, forgot to test with 4leaf clover, and also with mana pearl.