Damage Types

Damage Types is the collective term for the seven flavors of damage dealt by weapons, spells, monsters, and traps in modern Ultima Online. Five of the seven map directly to the Resistances system (each resist absorbs the matching damage type); two are resist-bypassing edge cases. The seven types are: Physical, Fire, Cold, Poison, Energy, Chaos, and Direct Damage. The damage type a character deals depends on the weapon's Base Damage, the weapon's material/enhancement, the spell or special-move chosen, and any active forms or buffs. Every damage event is resolved against the matching resist — a Fire-damage Flamestrike against a 70 Fire Resist target deals 30% of the rolled damage. Damage Types were introduced with Ultima Online: Age of Shadows and Publish 17, replacing the pre-AoS single-axis "damage vs. armor rating" model.

The seven damage types

Chaos Damage is the cleverest mechanic — the game scans the target's 5 elemental resists, finds the lowest, and applies that resist to the entire damage packet. A 70/70/70/70/70 mage takes Chaos damage at 70 mitigation; a lopsided 70/70/30/70/70 takes the same Chaos damage at 30 mitigation. Chaos is an anti-meta tool — it punishes any non-uniform suit.

Direct Damage ignores the resist system entirely and applies as raw HP loss. Pain Spike is the canonical example.

Default damage by source

Melee weapon damage type by ore

When a melee weapon is enhanced with a colored ore, the damage type composition shifts away from pure Physical. The ore's color encodes the damage flavor:

A Verite-enhanced Dragon Slayer is the canonical "exploit the dragon's weak Poison resist" play — Verite's Poison contribution stacks with the Slayer 2× damage multiplier on dragons.

A Shadow Iron longsword is better in Fire Dungeon (Cold damage hits the fire-themed enemies' weak resist) and worse in Ice Dungeon (Cold-resistant ice enemies absorb most of it).

Wood enhancement (Bowcraft / Fletching)

Among the colored woods, only Frostwood modifies damage type:

Magery spells — damage type table

The two Magery surprises are Magic Arrow = Fire (not Energy as the visual suggests) and Mind Blast = Cold (not Energy).

Necromancy spells

Spellweaving spells

Mysticism spells

Mysticism is the Chaos-damage school — three of its damage spells exploit suit asymmetry.

Chivalry spells

Consecrate Weapon is the most subtle damage-type tool in the game — it pre-scans the target's 5 resists and forces the weapon's damage to the target's lowest resist, achieving Chaos-like damage typing without being a Chaos spell.

Other modifiers

In addition to material, other sources can shift a weapon's damage type temporarily:

Ranged

In addition to artifact bows and magical loot bows, Bowcraft & Fletching supports crafting ranged weapons with all 5 elemental damage types via Reforging / loot rolls. Notable artifact: Blight Gripped Longbow (100% Poison Damage).

Quivers introduce a separate property — Damage Modifier — that applies a damage multiplier to ranged hits after the target's resistances are calculated (a force-multiplier on whatever the resisted damage was). See Damage Increase for the broader bonus-damage system.

Summoned & Tamed creatures

Summoned creatures' damage types are listed in the spell tables above. Tamed creatures inherit the damage type of their wild counterpart.

Popular pets — damage type table

(The table covers melee damage only — pet spell casts add additional damage types per the spell.)

History

See also

• Resistances — the defensive side; one resist per damage type
• Damage Increase — the +DI multiplier system
• Base Damage — weapon-level damage roll mechanics
• Slayer — 2× damage multiplier when matching the target type
• Resources — colored-ore / colored-wood reference
• Bowcraft & Fletching — ranged weapon damage typing
• Imbuing — adds elemental damage % to crafted weapons
• Magery · Necromancy · Spellweaving · Mysticism · Chivalry — the spell-school sources