Gibbing is a mechanic that occurs to biological enemies upon killing them with high-damage single attacks. In addition to looking cool and making the player proud of his power, "overkills" have a practical niche: once gibbed, the enemy cannot be revived, which is beneficial for the player while playing on the Nightmare! or Apocalypse! difficulties.
A chance to gib is correlated with the ratio of the killing attack damage to the enemy's maximum HP. It is defined by two thresholds. The first one defines minimal damage required for gibbing to occur, while reaching the second one results in guaranteed gib. The chance to gib increases linearly between these two thresholds. While the lower threshold is 100% for all kinds of weapons, the higher one varies between the weapon types, with higher gib factors giving better chances to gib. Explosives and melee weapons typically have higher gib factors.
| Weapon type | Guaranteed gib threshold |
|---|---|
| Non-explosive ranged weapons | 200% of the max HP |
| Explosives (rockets, barrels, launchers, grenades) | 150% of the max HP |
| Melee weapons (except the chainsaw) | |
| The 12ga super shotgun | |
| Monster | |
| Ancient Gun | |
| Magrail rifle | |
| Shockwave from the Denial | |
| Plasma grenade | 133% of the max HP |
| Railgun | |
| Wavedancer | |
| Power saw | 125% of the max HP |
| CRI BFT9K | |
| BFT 10K |
Another requirement for gibbing is that all damage must come from a single source (multi-shot attack from a single weapon such as SMG or Chaingun is still considered as such, as well as attack from dual-wielded weapons). For example, 60 damage from a shotgun, SMG or auto rifle will guarantee a gib on a fiend.
Elemental gibbing[]
Most of damaging Status effects can now gib too! Namely burning, poison, acid and death (bleeding, unfortunately, cannot be used for this). For elemental gibbing to happen, enemy has to die TO status effect tick while having its stack to be at or above a certain threshold (specifically "to", killing enemy by other means will not cause elemental gibbing even if enemy has a required elemental stack). Thresholds in question are same for all elements, while number is depending at enemy type. Specifically type! For example, former/corrupted/former CRI/hellish/exalted human, or a fanatic/CRI marine will be permanently gone if finished off by any of abovementonied status effects with stack size of 5 or above.
| Enemy type | Elemental gibbing threshold |
|---|---|
| Humans | 5 |
| Fiends | 5 |
| Reavers | 10 |
| Kerberi | 10 |
| Ravagers | 15 |
| Medusae | ? |
| Warlocks | ? |
- Unlike weapon gibbing, there is no variance - elemental gibbing will always succeed if effect stack is at or above threshold and always fail if below.
- Multiple status effects at once don't add: if a reaver has a 8 burning stack and 16 death stack, that reaver will leave a corpse if it dies to the damage from burning effect.
- Mind monster resistances! For example, it will be completely impossible to burn a medusa or poison a toxic reaver due to their 100% resistance to respective effects. TTL weaponry can briefly lower its target's resistances, but even 50% resist is still a significant obstacle to make a sufficiently big stack. Better use element to which monster in question is completely unresistant to.
- Remember that acid effect has a fixed stack size of 10 and thus cannot gib high-end enemies.
Historical notes[]
- Patch 0.9.3 - Addition of gibbing mechanic.
- Patch 1.1.0 - Gibbing no longer prevent respawns, doubles respawn timer instead.
- Patch 1.6.0 - Addition of elemental gibbing.
- Patch 1.6.0 - Usage of dual-wielded weapons now count as single attack for purposes of gibbing.
- Patch 1.6.0 - Gibbing once again prevent respawns.