Item Stats

Every weapon and headwear in *Juice Galaxy* comes with a set of stats. These **Item Stats** are what roughly determine how strong an item is. Item stats come in two varieties: Base Stats and Stat Mods, which are both scaled from a third value, known as **Item Level**.

## Item Level

An **Item’s Level** determines how high the base stats and stat mods on an item can scale to. The Item Level of a weapon or headwear can be found next to their name, as a grey number in parenthesis. Item Level is influenced directly by the enemy that drops it, including bosses and elite enemies. The formula for base stat scaling is unknown, however, the formula for stat mod scaling is understood to an extent. A chart of the average level of enemy drops can be found below.

 Elite Trees
 Elite Enemies (except for trees)

Essentially, there is a linear progression from boss to boss, until you’ve fought The Clog, and are then given the tools to start fighting high level Elites within the wilderness. Any Elite past Monster Level 100 can reliably drop items that are scaled further than The Clog’s drops.

## Base Stats

Every item has 4 Base Stats: Damage, Knockback, Scale, and Mass. These come by default, and any item without one of them has the value automatically set to 1.00. Items that are intentionally placed in the world come with a specific set of stats, while items that are randomly dropped from enemies and spawned in the wilderness have randomized stats. These stats scale with Item Level, with the scaling varying from item to item (for example, The Draginslayer has unnaturally high damage scaling, and Baseball Bats have unnaturally high knockback scaling). They generally won’t affect the overall strength of a weapon, aside from very early game.

### Damage

Damage (not to be confused with the player stat Damage) acts as a base for how much damage you’ll deal to an entity on hit. Damage will grow higher the harder the swing, meaning the best way to deal damage is to swing hard. Most weapons will have a damage stat of under 10, with the exception of incredibly high leveled melee weapons and the Draginslayer. It has a minimum value of 1.00 and cannot be controlled by the player in any way.

### Knockback

Knockback acts as a base for how far enemies will recoil after being hit. Knockback will get stronger the harder the weapon is swung, meaning the best way to deal knockback is to swing hard. Similar to damage, most weapons will have negligible knockback values, aside from Baseball Bats, which have about twice as much compared to other weapons. It has a minimum of 1.00 and cannot be controlled by the player in any way.

### Scale

Scale affects the size of the weapon, which in turn affects how much energy it costs to swing / shoot the weapon, and it’s maximum angular velocity (how hard it can be swung). Scale is affected by item level much more than the other base stats, to the point of being noticeable. Scale can be changed by the player with Blacksmith Hoagen's service, with a minimum scale of 0.05. It is also possible to use the ninth and tenth developer spells to change the scale of weapons, allowing you to take their value into the negatives or far beyond what you could purchase with Juice.

### Mass

The last of the base stats, Mass determines the “weight” of your weapon. Essentially, the more mass a weapon has, the more gravity affects it, meaning the harder it is to swing and move and the more momentum it carries. Mass starts at 1.00, and cannot be affected by the player. Mass rarely exceeds values over 5, and will affect your weapon the least out of all the base stats.

## Stat Mods

Stat Mods are additional bonuses provided by items. They directly buff The Player’s stats, or the stats found in the Juice Fountain menu. Stat mods are applied to weapons and headgear at random, with higher level items usually getting both more stat mods and getting them to a higher scale. The stat mod formula, while not entirely understood, essentially picks a random decimal number, and multiplies it by the item level. The resulting number is then rounded and applied as the stat mod. This means that items with higher levels have the potential to get better stat mods. At a high enough item level, stat mods can boost the player multiple times the potency of the default skill tree, and become the most important part of your equipment setup. What stat mods are on an item and how strong they are can not be controlled by the player. It’s important to note that each +1 from a stat mod represents +1 “skill point” in the fountain, and not +1 flat to the stat. For example, a +1 to Damage would actually add 0.15 Damage (how much 1 skill point is worth.)

## Tips

* It is important to limit stat mods affecting Jump, Flight, and Movement Speed. If they grow too high, it will become a lot harder to move, simply because you will be jumping too high / flying too fast / walking so fast you ragdoll.
	+ It is a good idea to keep a separate set of items specifically for their flight stat mods, so you can get to areas faster.
* It is a good idea to focus on the scale of your weapon, since it is the only part of the weapon you can control. Experiment and figure out what works best for you. It's generally a good idea to scale melee weapons higher, and ranged weapons smaller, due to the way size affects energy consumption.
* Just because an item is scaled higher or has more stat mods than what you're currently using, doesn't automatically make it a stronger item. Make sure to pay close attention to how your stats would change after swapping, and if it's overall beneficial. The Juice Fountain UI can be useful for seeing the changes made after swapping.
* Every stat the player has is incremented by a set number except for Health Max and Flight, which are both exponential. The more stat points you have invested in them or gained from stat mods, the higher the bonuses become, making items with high Health Max or Flight mods extremely powerful.

## Trivia

* Item Stats were added in V0.1.6, alongside the inventory update. The intended effect of the Item Stats were to encourage the player to switch weapons depending on the situation, and remove any one weapon from being "the best weapon." This wasn't practical before the inventory update, since you were limited to one item and headgear, equipped on you at all times.
* Using save editing, it’s possible to change the stats of items.
	+ Headwear can be given damage, knockback, scale, and mass. Every base stat except for scale works perfectly, treating the headwear as if it were a weapon. Scale only applies when the item is dropped, because worn headwear automatically scales to the size of your head.
	+ Stat Mods can be set into negative values, removing stat points, and pushing them into the negatives. Various funny effects can be achieved using this, such as jumping downwards, or instantly dying to any hit, or losing health or energy passively.
* Both the color of a weapon's name in the inventory and its texture are affected by the number of mods they have applied:
	+ If a weapon has 8 or 9 stat mods (so far only achieved using save editing) it will have the same name color as if it had 7 stat mods. This suggests that the maximum stat mods an item can have is 7.
	+ As of Version 0.1.12, the number of weapon mods can also change the color palette of the item itself, where items with more modifiers are more likely to have significantly altered colors.

1. ↑ *n* is half the level of the elite. Example: If you fight an elite at Monster Level 200, their drops will be roughly Item Level ~100.