Overhead Effects

There are a whole lot of status effects, both positive in negative, which are represented by little icons floating above a player's head. In general, a player or monster can only have one 'overhead effect' active at a given time; if another one takes effect, the first is removed. Exceptions are noted below.

First, the positive effects, applicable only to players:

Skill Shrine's icon is a small glowing hand. While it is in effect, any skills that the player already know have their levels increased by 2.

Experience Shrine is denoted by a glowing scroll which has a plus sign written on it. All experience earned by the player is multiplied by 150% as long as it stays in effect.

Stamina Shrine is indicated by a glowing winged foot. The player's stamina is instantly maxed out and does not deplete for the duration of the shrine.

Mana Recharge Shrine shows a small blue sphere with blue fog rising off it. The effect is to increase your mana recharge rate by 400% of its base. This is cumulative with Warmth and the benefits provided by Magefists and the like, but NOT multiplicative: +200% of Warmth combined with a Mana Recharge Shrine yields a rate of 7 times your base, not 15.

Combat Shrine's icon is a crossed sword and axe. It increases the physical damage dealt by a player, as well as increasing their Attack Rating. I don't have the exact figures handy; they'll be in the first update I guess.

Armor Shrine shows a glowing shield, and raises the player's Defense Rating. Ditto on the numbers.

Resist Fire, Resist Cold, and Resist Lightning are represented by a gray ball of fire, a gray snowflake, and a gray lightning bolt, respectively. Each adds 75% resistance to the element named, up to the player's maximum of 75%. In Normal difficulty, barring enemies with Conviction or Lower Resist, this guarantees a MAX resist, but in Nightmare and Hell it may not.

And now, for the bad stuff:

Lowered Physical Resist (aka "Cursed" or "Amp Damaged") is represented by a small burning animation. The effect is to lower the victim's physical resist by 100%; for players and most monsters, this means physical damage dealt is doubled. On monsters which do have physical resistance, though, the effect is much more pronounced: a Stone Skinned Unique (which has 90% resist physical) will be sent to -10% resist physical; in other words, rather than being nearly immune to physical damage, it now takes slightly more than the usual damage for a monster of its type. Lowered Physical Resist is inflicted by Uniques with the "Cursed" attribute, as well as the Necromancer curse Amplify Damage.

Damage Returned to Self is only inflicted by the curse Iron Maiden, cast by Necromancers and Oblivion Knights, and shows a bunch of thin red curls swirling around the victim's head. When a player or monster with this status makes a melee attack (or bow/throwing attack at point-blank range), damage is dealt to it in a quantity proportional to the damage it inflicted.

Fleeing monsters run like the dickens as fast as they can away from hostile targets. Fleeing looks like a bunch of green droplets falling onto the monster's head, and can be inflicted by the Necromancer curse Terror, the Barbarian warcry Howl, and melee attacks from weapons with Hit Causes Monster to Flee ("Howling" weapons). Fleeing status doesn't occur on players. Although Fleeing with overwrite another Overhead Effect, other status effects can be placed on top of it without removing it. (The graphic for Fleeing will disappear, but its effect continues.)

Blind status, which looks like a miniature dim sun, reduces a monster's radius of awareness to a teeny little circle. This essentially renders ranged attackers useless; alas, Oblivion Knights are immune to it. Blind is inflicted by the Necromancer curse Dim Vision as well as attacks with Hit Blinds Target. Blind does not affect players.

Weakened reduces all physical damage inflicted by the target by 33%. It looks a bit like Iron Maiden, only yellow and more glowy, and is caused by Weaken, which is cast by Oblivion Knights. Note that Necromancers COULD cast Weaken, but I've never met one who does, since its effects are far eclipsed by those of the Decrepified status.

Gives Life to Attacker makes red bubbles appear above the target's head and pop. When the cursed entity is hit by a melee attack, the attacker gains life equal to half the physical damage they inflicted. Only caused by the curse Life Tap, cast by Necromancers and Oblivion Knights.

Confused is represesented by a set of green and purple balls wobbling above the monster's head, and is only inflicted by the Necromancer curse Confuse. Confused monsters will attack other monsters as well as players. Although Confused monsters generally avoid trying to attack each other, if one Confused monster hits another on accident (i.e. aiming for a nonconfused monster which moved away) they will happily fight each other. Unfortunately, when a monster gets confused, its AI retains its current command, which will usually be "Attack the player who cast a spell on me," unless they were quite far away when Confuse was cast, or there is something nearby to distract them. Champions and Uniques are not affected by Confuse, which makes them all the more vulnerable to it: their minions will turn on them in a flash when it is cast in their general direction.

Universal Target causes a little red cometlike thing to circle the affected monster's head. It is only inflicted by the Necromancer curse Attract, and causes the affected monster to be viewed by all other monsters as a high-priority target. Champions and Uniques can not be made into Universal Targets, but they will still engage in combat with other monsters who are UTs. Although Universal Target's graphic will be replaced if another Overhead Effect comes into play on the target, its effect will continue for its entire duration. For more details, go to the Attract skill description.

Lowered Magic Resist makes purple bubbles float up above a characters head and then pop. Only the curse Lower Resist, cast by Necromancers and Oblivion Knights, can cause this status. Lowered Magic Resist lowers Fire, Lightning, Cold, Poison, and Magic resist of the target by a specified percentage; this is an absolute value and NOT a percentage of the target's inherent resistance. In other words, 50% Lowered Magic Resist drives a player with 20% resistance into -40%, NOT 10%. This increases the damage done by everything a Sorceress casts, as well as Bone Spear/Spirit, Vengeance, elemental damage added to melee attacks, you get the idea.

Decrepified looks a lot like the Lowered Physical Resist graphic, except blue and white. It lowers the target's physical resist by 50% (again, this is an absolute number, not a halving of their current resist), reduces the physical damage it inflicts by half, and slows it; the exact amount of slow escapes me at the moment... 25% ? 50%? Sorry. This effect is only caused by the curse Decrepify cast by Necromancers and Oblivion Knights.