Hard Damage is a mechanic in ULTRAKILL wherein a portion of the damage taken from an enemy attack temporarily reduces V1's maximum health. This reduces the effectiveness of solely relying on healing for damage mitigation, to incentivize the player to take an active role in avoiding damage and learning enemy attacks.
Damage Taken %[]
The portion of damage that becomes hard damage depends on difficulty.
- On Standard and harder difficulties, 35% of damage taken becomes hard damage.
- On Accessible difficulties (Lenient and Harmless), 0% of damage taken becomes hard damage. On Lenient, black holes will still override hard damage, but Stalker explosions will not. Harmless cannot receive hard damage in any way due to the absence of black holes.
Hard damage does not accumulate when over maximum health using blood orbs.
Regeneration[]
After multiple seconds of not taking Hard Damage, max health begins regenerating at 14 health per second.
The time to start regeneration depends on the difficulty and recent damage.
If the regen cooldown timer is not active then any damage taken adds a flat 1s. Then, the damage taken is divided by 20 and added onto the timer (i.e., 25 damage is calculated as 25/20 = 1.25s).
For max health override attacks such as Stalker explosions and black holes, the game will instead set the timer to 1s, then divide V1's total hard damage after the override by 10 and add it to the timer (i.e., 45 hard damage after override is calculated as 45/10 = 4.5s). There is a cap of 5s.
On Violent and Brutal, any hard damage taken also adds a flat 1s.
Damage taken that is not hard damage does not interfere with regeneration.
Exceptions[]
As mentioned, only enemy attacks deal hard damage. Damage sources that don't deal hard damage include:
- Environmental damage
- Self-damage
- Interruption explosions
- Drone kamikazes
- Streetcleaner canister explosions
- Mindflayer death explosions
- Miniface explosions (Bug?)
- Landmines, even when laid by Guttertanks
However, the following damage not related to enemies produces hard damage:
- Being electrocuted under water
Style[]
Playing stylishly helps regenerate hard damage; at S-SSS Rank you'll regenerate hard damage 2x/2.5x/3x faster respectively and hard damage will begin regeneration faster per rank. At ULTRAKILL rank, all hard damage is removed and will not accumulate from sources like Stalker explosions and Whiplash, however taking a hit will push you down in ranks and inflict hard damage.
Trivia[]
- Hard damage used to be 50% on Violent.