Definition

The Shock Damage is the amount of non-lethal trauma a projectile inflicts to the player’s shock pool in DayZ. Unlike health or blood damage, shock directly affects the player’s consciousness. When the shock pool reaches zero, the character falls unconscious. Shock is determined by the ammo’s damageApplied → Shock.damage value and scaled by muzzle velocity, the ammo’s typicalSpeed, and optional damageOverride multipliers.

Formula

General case:

\(ShockDamage = \frac{InitSpeed \times InitSpeedMultiplier}{TypicalSpeed \times Multiplier} \times BaseShockDamage\)

Where

  • \(InitSpeed\) = muzzle velocity from the weapon’s config
  • \(InitSpeedMultiplier\) = optional multiplier applied per weapon (default = 1.0)
  • \(TypicalSpeed\) = reference speed defined in the ammo config
  • \(Multiplier\) = damageOverride (per type or global), defaults to 1.0 if not defined
  • \(BaseShockDamage\) = raw shock damage from damageApplied → Shock.damage

Explanation

Shock damage provides a balancing layer in combat: it can incapacitate players without instantly killing them. Small-caliber or non-lethal ammo may do little health damage but high shock, forcing unconsciousness rather than death. Conversely, large-caliber bullets often deal both high shock and lethal damage simultaneously. The scaling ensures that projectile velocity and overrides influence shock just like health and blood damage.

Example

For Ammo_308Win (from the Blaze rifle):

  • InitSpeed = 865
  • TypicalSpeed = 820
  • BaseShockDamage = 110
  • damageOverride = 1.0 (no override)
\(ShockDamage = \frac{865}{820 \times 1.0} \times 110 \approx 116.1\)

This round inflicts ~116 shock damage, making unconsciousness highly likely even if the player survives the health hit.