Descent Combat

Common waves: score vs threshold

For an ordinary wave, every member's power score is summed and compared to a threshold built from the wave's level and its depth:

threshold = 25 x wave level x (1 + 0.05 x wave number)

Clear it and you advance; fail and the run ends. Because the depth multiplier compounds, every wave costs about 5% more than the last — which is what eventually stops even a strong party.

Boss waves: synergy vs modifiers

Every fifth wave is a boss, and two extra systems enter the maths:

party score x (1 + synergy)  vs  boss target x modifiers

The boss target is benchmarked against what a well-built party should have at that level, so bosses scale with the playerbase's real power rather than a fixed table.

Synergy: cover all three pillars

Every talent belongs to survivability, damage, or sustain. The Descent measures your party's combined investment in each against level-scaled targets. Each category can move your effective party score by up to 10 percentage points, for a total swing of plus or minus 30%.

Modifiers: three of twelve

Each boss rolls 3 modifiers from a pool of 12. Every one your party satisfies makes the boss easier; every one you miss makes it harder.

Modifiers check things like resistances, phase mitigation, heal potency, presence, and World Sense — so broad stat coverage genuinely beats narrow min-maxing here. Two runs to the same depth can feel completely different depending on the roll.

What your power score actually weighs

Your Descent power score is not the same as your Combat Score. It weights the axes deliberately:

Damage dominates, so a party of pure tanks stalls out early even though they never die — the Descent measures whether you can kill the wave, not whether you can survive it. Your score is recomputed fresh every wave, so gear changes mid-run take effect on the next one.

Pacing: waves resolve in batches

A run does not resolve instantly. Each 15-minute tick clears a batch of waves, and the batch grows as you go deeper:

Mercenaries: the Hiring Post

Empty seats fill with NPC mercenaries, and you choose their quality when you launch:

Mercenaries never contribute to synergy and cannot satisfy role-gated modifiers, so they are a floor, not a substitute for a real party.