Orcs Must Die! 3: All Status Effects & What They Do | Debuffs Guide

Orcs Must Die! 3 seems like a pretty straightforward game. You place traps in the path of an invading horde of angry orcs — but as you progress, the game gets significantly more difficult. The best defense is a strong offense, and dealing the most damage as possible with the fewest amount of traps is absolutely required. To do that, you need to learn how Elemental effects work. There are multiple different types of elemental effects — things like fire, ice, and lightning. Each one has a different effect, and some of the elemental effects are not obvious. Know what arcade does? We didn’t know until now!

After a little research, we’ve found answers shared by fans of the game. You can count me as one of them, because Orcs Must Die! 3 is an awesome return to what we love about the series — using traps to splatter evil orcs. We can never get enough of decimating of legion of monsters with spike traps, saw blades, lasers, acid pools, and much more. This one even gives you access to super-sized traps like ballistae to blast thousands of orcs in massive sieges. What more could you ask for?

How Status Effects Work

Status Effects (Debuffs) are Elemental, and certain enemies have weakness, resistance, or immunity. Certain elements also cause special effects on enemies, increasing damage bonuses or working in tandem with other elements like physical. Each element has a unique property.

• Element Weakness: Enemies take 130% damage.
• Element Resistance: Enemies take -50% damage.
• Element Immunity: Enemies take no damage.
• Flying Enemies: Always take a base 200% damage multiplier.

Physical: The most basic damage type.

Bleed: Special physical debuff. Causes damage over time.

FIre: Causes 20% slowdown and deals 7 damage per second while on fire. Lasts a longer than other elements.

Ice: Freezes enemies in place. Enemies afflicted by ice take +30% damage from Physical and Ice. Enemies aren’t frozen for long.

Lightning: Zaps enemies. Doesn’t slow, stop, or deal damage over time. Instead, electrified enemies explode on death, dealing damage to anything nearby.

Stone: Freezes enemies in place. Enemies afflicted with stone takes +30% damage from Physical. Enemies can be both Frozen and turned to Stone at the same time for +60% damage.

Acid: Deals damage over time like Fire. Enemies damaged with acid will gain the Melt debuff. While melting, enemies take +50% damage from Physical.

Arcane: Special magical damage type. Enemies hit with arcane take +15% additional damage from all Arcane damage sources.

And that’s it! Learning how to stack and combine status effects is how you deal the most possible damage in OMD!3. Now that you know what these status effects actually do, you can returned armed with the knowledge to deal even more devastating damage on the orc hordes.