Guns, Cores & Elements
Guns
Four gun types, each firing down one of two damage channels:
| Gun | Channel | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Machine Gun | Physical | Fast, cheap, low damage per hit |
| Mortar | Physical | Slow, heavy damage, longest range |
| Rocket Launcher | Energy | Slow, heavy damage |
| Laser | Energy | Premium: a glowing beam that drains everything it sweeps, not a burst |
No gun is correct against everything. Enemies carry armour against one channel or the other — sometimes both, sometimes neither — so a train built entirely out of one gun type will find some enemies barely take damage at all. See Enemies & Danger for which archetypes resist which channel. A mixed loadout of physical and energy guns is the safer bet.
Mortar and Rocket Launcher also hit everything else near their target, at full damage each — that splash is wasted against a lone enemy but adds up fast once a real pack is clustered together, which is most of the time past the opening few levels. Machine Gun only ever hits the one thing it's aimed at, so it's the better buy against a single tough target (or before packs get big enough for splash to pay for itself) and the splash guns are the better buy once the swarm does.
The Laser is the premium pick against a pack, and it doesn't hit at all. It charges, then sweeps a blade through a small arc on a cooldown, always reaching its full range whether or not anything is standing that far out. Nothing the blade touches takes an instant hit — instead it starts draining, a steady wound that keeps paying out on its own, refreshed every time the beam crosses it again. That makes the Laser weak against anything that only clips the beam once and keeps moving, and strong against anything that lingers in it or gets cut on every pass — a real trade-off, not a downgrade. It still answers a crowd rather than a single target, which is why it costs more than the other three, on both racks, same as before.
Heavy rounds does nothing for the Laser. There's no instant hit left for a flat damage bonus to land on. What actually grows the Laser's drain instead is Serrated rounds and Virulence — the same two stats that already grow Fire's burn and Toxic's poison — so buying either one now also strengthens every Laser on the train, on top of whatever else it was already doing.
Attack speed makes the Laser drain harder, not more often. On every other gun, a faster rate of fire is simply more shots a second. The Laser has nowhere to put those extra shots: its drain lasts longer than its own cooldown and a fresh cut only refreshes the wound rather than stacking a second one, so re-cutting the same target bought nothing at all. Attack speed now raises the rate the wound drains at instead — the same multiplier, spent on depth instead of frequency, so the track is worth exactly what it is worth on any other gun. The cooldown still shortens as well, which is what lets the blade reach new targets sooner and keep a moving pack cut.
Mortars and rocket launchers take less of attack speed (2026-10-14). A heavy gun firing as fast as a machine gun looked wrong, so they take only a power of the attack speed multiplier: the mortar 0.35, the rocket launcher 0.4. At x39 attack speed, a machine gun fires 39x faster, a mortar about 3.6x and a rocket launcher about 4.3x. Every level still makes them fire faster. To pay for it they hit twice as hard (mortar 180, rocket 160), their blasts are 1u wider (mortar 4u, rocket 5u), and the mortar reaches 25% further (37.5u base). They cost more to match: mortar 730 gold, rocket launcher 1360 gold (3x that in scrip at the Armoury). Early on they are stronger than before; deep into the ladder, the machine gun and the laser pull ahead.
Heavy guns keep up deep into the ladder (2026-10-19). Two changes:
- The attack speed a mortar or rocket launcher does not take as fire rate, it takes as damage per shot. At x39 attack speed a mortar fires about 3.6x faster and each shell hits about 10.8x harder, so its damage per second grows 39x, the same as a machine gun's.
- Projectile Damage (flat) adds the same share of every gun's base damage. One level adds 1 to a machine gun round, 22.5 to a mortar shell (180 / 8) and 20 to a rocket (160 / 8).
So each gun keeps its catalog damage per second next to the others at every level: at the same rarity, one mortar deals about a third of one machine gun's single-target damage, plus its splash. Before, the flat bonus buried the mortar's 180 base, and one machine gun out-damaged a rack of 23 mortars 35-388x.
The mortar's blast is 3u, and it costs 450 gold (2026-10-19; it was 4u and 730 gold). With the changes above, one mortar out-killed one machine gun of the same rarity 4.5x on a rung-50 pack. At 3u it leads by 2.6x (1.35x at rung 20). Its price follows its value: 450 gold, 1350 scrip at the Armoury.
Mortars shell the far end of the line (2026-10-19). A mortar takes the enemy farthest ahead of it, in range, along the track, not the nearest one. Mortars also spread out: a mortar skips an enemy that another mortar's shell is already flying at, unless every enemy ahead is taken. With nothing ahead, it shoots the nearest enemy anywhere. It still ignores terrain between it and the target. Measured on a rung-70 siege ride: the median shell flew 42u (it was 16u), and Bursters that reached the train dropped from 30 to 12. At rung 100 more got through (94 to 159): the far shelling leaves the train's own feet to the machine gun.
The machine gun costs less (2026-10-15): 50 gold in a run and 150 scrip at the Armoury (it was 80 and 240). The enemy cap now grows with the rung, so guns that hit a whole pack gain value as you climb. The lower price keeps all four guns at the same price for the value they give.
Cores
A Core gives a gun's hits an elemental effect on top of its normal damage. Everything about Cores happens on the Cores tab of the station board — it's the one place for all three steps:
- Unlock an element with gems (see Gold, Scraps & Gems). The button under each Core shows its price; some elements also wait on a ladder tier, and the card says which. Beating a boss for the first time hands you enough gems to unlock your first Core outright.
- Level it up with more gems — the same button, once the Core is yours. See What a level buys below; it is less than the card implies.
- Fit it to a gun type — or to the Ram or Side rails, two more sockets on the same grid. Pick a target at the top, then a Core below: a gun-type target gives every gun of that type the effect, on every run; the Ram and Side rails are each ONE socket, train-wide. A Core fitted anywhere counts toward the same cap on how many different elements can be active across the train at once — a Core on the ram costs the same headroom as one on a gun. You don't need to own that gun type yet — a Core fits onto the type itself, not a specific gun, so you can set one on a card before you've bought it and it arms the moment you own your first one of that type.
Cores also turn up as a rare drop in combat — more dangerous fights are more likely to produce one.
What a level buys
Each of the six Cores does one job, and a level moves that job's own number. Damage arrives by a route that fits the job:
| Core | Its one job | How it hits |
|---|---|---|
| Lightning | More targets — reaches what the guns can't | Chains, a fraction of the round's own damage per bounce |
| Toxic | The swarm kills itself — stacking poison that spreads host to host | Its own dps, ramps with stacks |
| Fire | The ground is dangerous — one long, hot burn plus a persistent trail | Its own dps, does NOT stack any more |
| Earth | The front line — hits and holds at once | Its own damage fraction, plus a stun |
| Void | Makes big hits bigger — and hits | Its own damage fraction, plus shred and Mark |
| Ice | Time — makes everything else land | Slow and freeze; graded on damage it enables, not its own |
Most Cores grow on a steep curve rather than a flat step per level, because they're built to keep mattering the whole way up: a level 1 Core is meant to be worth having around game rung 10, level 10 around rung 50, level 20 around rung 100. Since enemy HP climbs from the tens into the trillions over a career, a Core that's still doing real work at rung 100 has to climb with it — small numbers at low levels, very large ones at the cap.
Every Core is worth a different amount, on purpose. A maxed Lightning or Void can grow into the biggest single slice of your damage; a maxed Fire or Toxic settles into a smaller, steady slice; Earth and Ice barely register as damage at all, because dealing damage isn't their job. Roughly how big a fully-levelled Core's own slice of your total damage gets:
| Core | Its job | Roughly how much of your damage it becomes |
|---|---|---|
| Lightning | more targets | high — climbs from about 28% at level 1 to about 40% at level 20, since a longer chain adds bounces with diminishing returns |
| Void | amplify and hit | high — 24% at level 1 to 46% at level 20 |
| Fire | area denial | middle, above Toxic — a flat 20% at every level |
| Toxic | contagion | middle — a flat 15% at every level |
| Earth | the front line | lower — 5% at level 1 to 12% at level 20; the stun is the point, the damage is a bonus |
| Ice | time | lowest, effectively zero — Ice's value is the damage it lets your other hits land, not a hit of its own (see below) |
| Core | Number | Level 1 | Level 10 | Level 20 | Never moves, at any level |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fire | Burn dps (single, non-stacking) | ~1,745 | ~6.32M | ~44.0B | burn 10s, trail 4s, trail node 2.5u, origin burn 4u, spacing 2u |
| Fire | Trail dps | ~1,163 | ~4.21M | ~29.3B | (same, on its own base) |
| Toxic | Poison, per stack | ~77 | ~279K | ~1.94B | poison 4s, 16 stacks, plague radius 2u, plague 2 stacks |
| Lightning | Bounce count | 3 | 5 | 8 | chain 10u, falloff 0.7, damage share 18% per bounce, crit fan-out 3, crit budget 9 |
| Lightning | Side rails: chance to shock each rider off, per 1.5s tick | 2% | 20% | 40% | no damage; each rider rolls on its own |
| Void | Own damage fraction | 24% | 34% | 46% | mark radius 2u |
| Void | Armour shred | 15% | 48% | 85% (cap 90%) | shred duration 4s |
| Void | Mark's damage bonus | 20% | 58% | 100% | mark duration 4s |
| Earth | Own damage fraction | 5% | 8% | 12% | crit radius 2.5u |
| Earth | Stun length (crit is always double) | 0.35s | 0.89s | 1.5s | — |
| Ice | How much slower | 40% | 66% | 95% (floor 5%) | slow 2s, chill radius 2u, chill slow 20%, chill 2s |
| Ice | Freeze length (crit) | 1.2s | 2.9s | 4.8s | — |
| Ice | Shatter burst, on a Frozen enemy (% of the Fire round's own damage) | 50% | ~145% | 250% | consumes the freeze — placeholder, not yet balance-solved |
Lightning, Void and Earth's damage numbers are a fraction of whatever your whole train is dealing that round, so their percentage share stays about the same at rung 10 and at rung 100 even though the raw numbers involved are wildly different — a chain that eats 28% of a small hit still eats 28% of a huge one. Fire and Toxic's dps figures work differently: they're fixed numbers on their own climb, tuned to the ladder rather than to the rest of your train.
Ice's slow and freeze, and Void's shred and Mark, aren't damage numbers at all — they make your other hits land harder, so there's no dps to put next to them. Levelling them buys more control: longer slows, deeper shred, a Mark that boosts more, not a bigger hit of their own.
A level 1 Fire Core kills a fresh rung-1 enemy in about three ticks — close enough to instant that you won't see it happen. You won't run into this in practice, though: Fire doesn't unlock until you've cleared rung 2, so by the time you can fit it, rung 1 enemies aren't what you're fighting any more.
Fire doesn't stack. Re-lighting a burning enemy just refreshes its burn clock rather than piling burns on top of each other — stacking damage is Toxic's job. What Fire does instead is area denial: the burn itself, plus a persistent trail of fire that a burning enemy drags behind it as it moves (see the table above for exactly how far it reaches and how long it lasts). Burning enemies also panic — they break off, scatter away from the train, and come back once the burn ends. Nothing ever leaves the board or despawns, so a burning pack still pays out, it just isn't standing still to soak your guns while it burns.
Two Armory/Depot stats reach past the guns and into your Cores. Wider blasts grows the splash of mortars and rockets (and Fire's trail and Toxic's plague): 20 levels, 5% each. It is worth buying whether or not you run a Core. Virulence touches a Core's own damage-over-time and the Laser's own drain — it does nothing unless you have a Fire or Toxic Core fitted, or a Laser mounted. Serrated rounds is different again: it makes every hit from anything on your train cause Bleed — a short wound, 2.5 seconds, that doesn't stack (a fresh hit just refreshes the clock) and does double damage while the enemy is sprinting — no Core needed, and it adds straight onto every burn, poison or drain tick you already have running, so the more damage-over-time you're already stacking, the more it's worth.
Salvage plating and Life leach heal you off your own damage. Salvage plating returns a slice of every hit your guns actually land — mitigation counts, so a shot that mostly bounces off armour heals for less than one that goes in clean, and a shell that catches four enemies in one blast heals for all four, not just one. Life leach is the damage-over-time half of the same idea, and it's its own separate purchase: every burn, poison tick, drain and bleed feeds it too, just at a much smaller rate per tick than a direct hit — hot damage-over-time ticks constantly, so healing it back at the same rate as a direct hit would make a stacked Fire or bleed build impossible to kill.
Crits and a Core's own signature
Four Core effects used to fire only on a weapon crit: Fire's trail, Toxic's plague spread, Void's Mark, and Earth's radius stun. That meant a build with no crit chance at all — every fresh run, since the Depot resets crit to zero on death — never saw any of them, whatever Core it had fitted.
Now every Core has its own chance to fire that effect, and it rises with the Core's own level:
| Level | 1 | 10 | 20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chance to fire the dramatic half (any Core) | 5% | ~38% | 75% |
A crit still helps — it's a second, independent roll at that same chance, so it still nearly doubles a shallow Core's odds of firing. But it stops being the only way in: level a Core up and its signature starts happening on its own, whether or not you've bought a point of crit.
Fire and Ice react
Landing Fire on a Frozen enemy shatters it instead of setting it burning: the freeze is consumed for one burst of damage — sized by the Ice Core's own level, not Fire's — rather than the usual burn taking hold. You get the burst or the ordinary burn on that hit, never both.
A Frozen enemy that dies without being shattered first explodes into chilling shrapnel as it goes down, slowing (not freezing) everyone nearby. Shatter it to death instead and there's no freeze left to explode — a real choice, burst it now or let the freeze pay off when it falls.
The Ram and Side rails
The train's own prow (which shoves or crushes whatever it's moving fast enough to ram) and its flanks (where a boarder that's caught up and latched on rides) are sockets too, not just the guns. On the ram, almost every Core does exactly what it does on a gun hit — burns, poisons, slows, and so on, on whatever the ram just hit. The side rails are different: they are the train's answer to a boarder that's dug in, so the elements that deal damage there ramp — the longer an enemy clings to the flank, the worse the rails hurt it.
| Core | On the Ram | On the Side rails |
|---|---|---|
| Fire | Its ordinary burn, on the enemy that survived the hit | Burns every attached enemy, restacking every tick — the rail's hardest-hitting dps |
| Void | Both its on-hit AND its critical effect, every time — no crit roll needed on a shove | Strips armour and marks as usual, AND lands a direct hit that ramps with every tick clung to — the rail's second dps |
| Toxic | Its ordinary poison, on the enemy that survived the hit | Poisons every attached enemy, restacking every tick — the rail's third, lightest dps |
| Ice | Its ordinary slow, on the enemy that survived the hit | Slows every attached enemy tick after tick; hang on long enough and it freezes solid and is thrown clear, landing on the ground still frozen |
| Lightning | Its usual chain into the pack, PLUS a stun on the enemy it just hit | Every 1.5s, each attached enemy has its own chance to be shocked clean off — 2% per Core level (40% at level 20) — undoing the attach. It does no damage; the enemy lands alive |
| Earth | Rams harder AND takes less collision damage while it's fitted (stacks with the train's own defence-based ram bonus) | Attached enemies hit softer while it's fitted — pure flank armour, no damage of its own |
A boarder that hangs on loses that fight. Fire, Void and Toxic's rail hits are stacking dps: each tick an enemy stays attached adds another stack, capped, and the stacks reset to nothing the moment it detaches for any reason — there's no reward for gutting out a long ride, only for getting off the flank. Ice trades the ramp for a hard stop instead: it isn't a dps Core on the rails at all, it's the control pick, ending with the enemy frozen and gone from the fight rather than merely hurt. Earth never deals damage on the rails either way — it's the pure defensive pick, softening what an attached enemy hits back for.
Six elements exist, each doing something different to whatever it hits:
| Element | Effect |
|---|---|
| Fire | One long, hot, non-stacking burn, plus a persistent trail of fire behind a burning target — and burning enemies scatter away from the train until it ends. Shatters a Frozen enemy instead of burning it — see "Fire and Ice react" above |
| Ice | Slows enemies, and can freeze them outright. A Frozen enemy that dies unshattered chills the enemies around it as it falls |
| Lightning | Chains from the target to nearby enemies |
| Earth | Stuns on every hit, and hits hard doing it — a crit stuns the whole pack, twice as long |
| Toxic | Poisons for stacking damage over time, and can spread |
| Void | Lands its own bonus hit, strips armour, and marks a target to take extra damage from everything |
Each Core levels up independently, so a gun type you've invested in keeps getting stronger the more gems you spend on it.
Every affliction has a half-second internal cooldown on each enemy: once a burn, poison, slow, freeze, stun, shred or mark lands, another of the same kind on that enemy is ignored for half a second — no extra stack, no refresh. A fast gun or a swept beam still stacks, at two a second rather than twelve. Each kind cools down on its own, so a burn never blocks a slow.
Ram and rail appearance
The locomotive carries a front ram. Each carriage has continuous lower and roof-edge rails. The ram and rails show their own equipped Core colour independently, and each is wrapped in that element's own animated particles along the ram's blade conduits and both rail rings: Fire embers climb, Ice frost settles, Lightning arcs crackle off the rail like a tesla coil while sparks race along the line, Toxic drips poison, Void turns the line into a long near-black purple hole with violet orbs spinning round it, Earth keeps rubble in orbit round the rail and thumps tremors of dust along it. Each gun's Core-coloured trim wears the same effect at reduced intensity. Removing a Core leaves the metal hardware visible and turns off its glow and particles. Car centres are spaced 4.6 world units apart to leave clearance for the full carriage models and rails.
See Also
- The Armory — where guns and gun mounts are bought
- Enemies & Danger — what each archetype resists
- Gold, Scraps & Gems