Damage calculator

Armour does not scale the way its number suggests. While your rating sits below half the incoming damage it subtracts flat, one point of armour for one point of damage. The moment it crosses that line the game switches to a curve and the returns collapse. A 50 damage swing against 18 armour lands for 32; the same swing against 36 armour lands for 17, and going from 36 up to 54 saves you only another six. So the armour worth chasing is whatever gets you over the line for the biggest hit in the biome you are heading into, and very little after that.

Creatures have no armour rating at all. Nothing sits between your weapon and a Draugr except its resistance table, so the right damage type beats the bigger number almost every time. Armour is applied to players only. The single exception is a world level above zero, which hands every creature a flat rating off the difficulty setting.

Chop and pickaxe damage skip armour and blocking completely, and nearly every creature ignores them anyway, so the 140 chop on an Arbalest is for trees rather than Fulings. Fire, poison and spirit never land on impact either. They get pulled out of the hit and reapplied as lingering effects, which is why a fire arrow reads as weaker on paper than it feels in a fight.

Your weapon skill rolls a fresh multiplier on every swing, across a band 0.3 wide. At skill 0 that band runs from 0.25 to 0.55. At skill 100 it runs from 0.85 to 1.0, because the top of the band clamps, so even a maxed skill averages 92.5% of the damage printed on the tooltip. You never reliably hit the listed number. The calculator shows the average with the roll range under it.

Each star adds another full copy of the creature's health and half again to its damage. A two-star Greydwarf carries 120 health instead of 40, hits twice as hard, and drops four times the loot. A staggered creature takes double. A hit landed before it notices you gets the weapon's backstab multiplier, three times for most weapons and six for knives, and that goes on before resistances rather than after.

A few creatures carry a weak spot with its own resistance table, and a hit that lands there ignores the creature's table entirely. The Queen takes 50% more from every damage type through the head. A Gjall takes double pierce through the egg sacks. A Frost Troll's head is the only place in the game where pickaxe damage doubles. The Hive shrugs off everything except hits on its eye.