How a damage result is calculated

1. Choose the target's HP

Buildings use the HP row for the selected building and level. Active crafted defenses add their seasonal HP rows to that same lookup. Supercharge uses the row's separate Supercharge HP only when it exists and you enable it; normal HP is used otherwise.

Heroes start with their selected level's base HP. A ranked modifier multiplies that HP by its stored league bonus. An active seasonal hero modifier, when available and selected, adds a second multiplier. The calculator multiplies both bonuses together and rounds the final hero HP to the nearest integer.

There is no active seasonal hero HP modifier in this data snapshot. Ranked modifiers affect hero HP, not building HP or equipment damage.

Manual mode uses your chosen levels. Town Hall mode applies the stored target, spell, and equipment caps. If Earthquake is unavailable at that Town Hall, the optimizer considers zero Earthquakes. These checks do not validate a whole army or attack plan.

2. Add eligible equipment damage

Selected equipment contributes flat damage from its level lookup. The calculator assumes that damage reaches this one target. It adds eligible enabled items together; it does not simulate travel, splash radius, successive bounce targets, healing, or equipment-slot legality.

These are the tool's eligibility rules, not a guarantee that a particular attack will deliver each hit. Enabling Spiky Ball does not multiply damage by its number of bounce targets.

All supported equipment goes through the same Lightning and Earthquake optimizer. There is no separate Fireball-only optimization strategy. When flat damage already meets HP, the zero-spell candidate can win.

3. Calculate Earthquake and remaining HP

Buildings use the selected Earthquake level's first-hit building percentage. Heroes use its separate hero percentage. Levels 1–5 contribute zero hero damage. Minion Prince and Dragon Duke are treated as air heroes and contribute zero Earthquake damage at every level; other supported heroes use the ground-hero percentage.

ZapQuake treats Grand Warden as a ground hero and has no flying-mode selection. This model does not establish Earthquake eligibility for a flying Warden.

For repeated Earthquakes on that target, the shared helper sums the first-hit fraction divided by 1, 3, 5, 7, and subsequent odd numbers, capped at 100%. The calculator applies that sum to selected starting HP, then subtracts flat equipment damage. It keeps full numerical precision at this step.

Lightning contributes its stored per-spell damage. The current calculator target rule assigns zero Lightning damage to Clan Castle. A Clan Castle route requiring Lightning is removed; equipment or Earthquake can still qualify if no HP remains to be finished.

Walls, other troop types, immunity phases, moving targets, repair, healing, and battle timing are outside this model. The Earthquake reference separates official update statements from community mechanics and tool assumptions.

4. Find the fewest spells within the limits

By default, the optimizer enumerates zero through four Earthquakes. For each count it calculates the minimum Lightning count: remaining HP divided by Lightning damage, rounded up to a whole spell. Equipment-only damage requires zero Lightning when remaining HP is zero.

Advanced limits filter the combinations you can bring. The Lightning limit slider permits 0–15, and the Earthquake limit permits 0–4. With the Lightning limit off, the calculation has no Lightning-count ceiling and may return more spells than a legal loadout can hold. The tool does not separately enforce total army spell capacity.

If no combination satisfies your enabled limits, the result is impossible within those limits. Air-hero results and Earthquake levels without hero damage discard candidates that would spend ineffective Earthquakes.

5. Resolve ties and display overkill

1. Prefer the lowest total number of Lightning plus Earthquake spells.
2. For the specific three-spell tie between 2 Earthquakes + 1 Lightning and 3 Earthquakes, prefer the combination with more overkill damage.
3. For other ties, prefer fewer Lightning spells, then more Earthquakes.

Overkill is the modeled damage beyond target HP: Earthquake damage + eligible equipment damage + Lightning damage − target HP. The calculator rounds displayed overkill to the nearest integer HP. It does not round each Earthquake contribution before deciding how many Lightning spells are needed.

JavaScript numerical arithmetic and these rounding choices describe this tool. They are not an independently verified claim about the game engine's internal damage rounding.

Data provenance and reproducible examples

Guide tables and worked examples use the same supported HP and damage data as the calculator. You can inspect the stored building and hero HP, spell and equipment damage, ranked bonuses, and Town Hall caps in the public data files.

Content dates describe when a page materially changed. The calculator data snapshot date describes its stored dataset, and source review dates describe the references accessed. A newer guide date does not mean every stored game value was rechecked that day.

See the Fireball equipment comparison or recreate the building and ground-hero examples. Re-run a target after balance updates and review the changelog for supported data changes.