There are quite a few flavors of damage in Once Human, which can make things a bit confusing at a glance. Very confusing, actually, because the game lists Elemental Damage and Status Damage as distinct values, but they’re quite similar. It’s also difficult to explain, but here goes:

In a nutshell, Elemental Damage is a special kind of damage like blaze, blast, shock, or frost. Status Damage is a damage-over-time effect such as burn. Status Damage sometimes has an Elemental, er, element, but they’re essentially different concepts.

• Elemental Damage: A specific type of damage that some enemies may be strong/weak against.
• Status Damage: How long status effects (like burn) will last.

Let me put it this way: burn is blaze damage-over-time. Your Status Damage stat increases how long this lasts.

However, Status Damage doesn’t have to have an elemental attribute to it. If you have a weapon that causes vulnerability, then that will simply make the enemy take more damage for a length of time.

When you’re buffing your character, you’ll want a combination of both. If you’re focusing on frost damage, you’ll want to build the Frost DMG stat. However, if you’re using a weapon that causes Frost Vortex, then you’ll also want to build up Status Damage to increase how long an enemy takes damage from its effect. You’ll benefit by giving a bit of love to both categories.

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