Ark of the Elements

Ark of the Elements* + Regular
	+ Charged

Statistics

Projectiles created
**Solar Needle**
**Glass Star**
The **Ark of the Elements** is a craftable Godseeker Mode broadsword that autoswings. It is the penultimate upgrade to the Fractured Ark. Unlike most broadswords, it uses a custom swing animation and performs a five-swing combo of an upwards slash followed by a downwards one that shoots a fast solar needle alongside an arc of four homing elemental glass stars, repeating the last two swings once, and then following it up with a medium-ranged throw, where the ark will be sent out spinning in the direction of the player's mouse, before coming back to them.

The solar needle deals 80% of the weapon's base damage, and each glass star deals 20% of the weapon's base damage. If the player releases the left mouse button right in the middle of the throw (between 30% and 60% of the way through, indicated by a blip sound alongside a pulse visual effect), the second half of the Ark will be sent out and both scissor blades will snap together, boosting their damage by 120%.

Right-clicking with the weapon performs a parry attack that grants the player brief invincibility frames on direct hits and reduce the damage of projectiles. Parrying and hitting enemies with the final part of the weapon's combo will fill up the weapon's charge.

Its best modifier is **Godly**. It cannot get modifiers that affect size.

## Parry and Charge System

Right-clicking performs a parry, where the Ark's scissor blades will get rapidly snapped in front of the player. If an enemy is hit by the blades during the parry, the owner will gain a little more than half a second worth of invincibility. If a projectile is hit by the ark, the projectile's damage will be lowered by a maximum of 200 damage for one second. In both cases a sound effect will play and a line of text will pop up above the player to indicate the parry was successful. After the parry finishes, successful or not, it will go on a cooldown, indicated by a rainbow bar above the player's head.

The Ark of the Elements possesses a unique charge system, being able to hold up to 10 charges indicated by a small rainbow bar over the ark's inventory sprite. Swinging the sword will consume one charge per swing, hitting an enemy with the snapping blades during the throw part of the combo will restore 2 charges, and landing a parry, be it on an enemy or a projectile will entirely refill the Ark's charges. When the ark holds any amount of charges, its damage will be multiplied by 1.2 and its blades will get bigger. The charges are indicated by the two scissor blades being swung as one, instead of alternating during the combo, with the entire ark being thrown out during the last part of the combo (Functionally, it remains unchanged, but instead of throwing the second blade towards the spinning one, the two spinning blades will just shut close on their own).

If the Ark holds any amount of charges, Right-Clicking while holding up will replace the parry with a Big Rip attack, where a ghostly projection of the scissor blades is thrown in the direction of the player's mouse before snapping shut, creating a damaging spacetime rip in their wake before it gets stitched back up, depleting all of the weapon's charges in the process. The damage of the rip is dependent on the amount of charges consumed to release it, on top of receiving the 120% damage boost from the Ark being charged up. The damage is equal to the base damage (alongside the charge damage boost) multiplied by half the amount of charges consumed by the blast, meaning that using the attack with all 10 charges up will give the blast a 600% damage multiplier (1.2 \* 10 \* 0.5), while using the attack with only one charge remaining will give the blast a 60% damage multiplier (1.2 \* 1 \* 0.5).

## Crafting

### Used in

* Galaxia
* Auric Bar (5)

total: 1 row(s)
## Notes

* Due to the Ark's unique swing animation, it is entirely unaffected by the player's attack speed.
* The parry doesn't work on harmless or static projectiles, or if the projectile is too large.
* The parry lasts for 5.66 seconds, with the actual parry lasting a quarter of a second, and the remaining time being taken up by the cooldown.
	+ The parry cooldown applies to all of the Fractured Ark's upgrades.
	+ The blast attack can still be performed even if the parry is on cooldown.
* Parrying a projectile that deals less than 200 damage will make it completely harmless for one second, but it can still work on projectiles that deal more than 200 damage, although the player will still be hit by the projectile for the remaining amount of damage.
	+ This can make it dangerous to parry strong projectiles that inflict debuffs, since the player will be inflicted by them even when successfuly parrying.
* The tooltip lines describing its custom features are all colored in a fiery gradient.
	+ The paragraph describing its combo is colored in a crimson color (#DC143C ●)
	+ The paragraph describing the parry function is colored in an orange (#FFA500 ●)
	+ The paragraph describing the big rip attack is colored in a yellow color (#FFD700 ●)

## Tips

* While parrying a projectile makes it harmless for a second, it may at times be preferable to directly hit an enemy with the parry to recieve the 0.58 seconds of invincibility, due to the latter providing immunity to every source of damage, while the former only reduces the damage of a single projectile.
* The rip attack is best used in situations where landing all of your shots is not guaranteed, as it can be used to deal a huge burst of damage in one time, alongside having piercing capabilities. If you're confident that you can land all of the charged shots and if piercing is not needed, it may be wise to refrain from using it, since the damage scaling on the rip makes it deal a bit more than half of the damage one would have gotten if they landed every shot with the solar needles.
	+ While the rip attack has infinite piercing, it has damage falloff, meaning the more enemies it hits, the less damage it will deal.

## Trivia

* The inventory sprite of the Ark of the Elements features a semi-translucent second blade. To represent the player's dual wielding of both blades of the weapon when the ark is empowered, the background blade will become fully opaque, making its design as a pair of cosmic scissors much more apparent.
* The Big Rip attack is not only based on the scissor-like nature of the Ark of the Elements, but also on a hypothetical model of the end of the universe also named the *Big Rip*, in which spacetime itself would get torn apart by the accelerating expansion of the universe.
* The Ark's design as a pair of cosmic scissors was inspired by the Rending Scissors from the 2013 Japanese anime television series *Kill la Kill*.
	+ The texture files for the individual scissor blades are internally named "RendingScissors".
	+ This somewhat fulfils Redigit's wish for the Scissor Blades, which was expressed in the internal name of the Stylish Scissors : `StylistKilLaKillScissorsIWish`.