HP Scaling is a property that many monsters possess, which was designed to ensure that fights take roughly the same time no matter the group size - mitigating/preventing steamrolling while still allowing for smaller groups to defeat them. If an enemy has HP Scaling, its HP will increase by a certain amount that increases with how many players are fighting it. HP Scaling will only start for additional players beyond the first one.
Different enemies will activate their scaling at different times in their lifetimes, sometimes upon spawning and sometimes after a delay. Enemies with HP Scaling will perform a player check roughly every 20 seconds, and readjust their scaling if needed. Readjustments in scaling will NOT affect the current percentage of health an enemy has. For example, a theoretical enemy has 100,000 base HP and 20% HP scaling (more details below). The enemy is weakened to 50% of its HP and there are 9 players in the area, so it has 130,000 out of 260,000 HP. Three players join (so there are now 12 players) and the enemy takes no more damage until it readjusts its HP scaling. After readjustment, it will now have 160,000 HP out of a total of 320,000 HP, which is still 50%.
Currently, two types of scaling exist: linear and adaptive.
Note that the list of scaling enemies may not be completely correct and is subject to change.
This is the scaling used by many bosses within the Realm itself. For every player beyond the first, a scaling enemy will increase its HP by a fixed percent of the original, increasing its maximum HP at a linear rate.
All regular scaling enemies in the Realm scale at +10% Base HP per additional player in Realm, while some special enemies (primarily seasonal Event Bosses) scale at +20% per player instead. The linear scaling can be summarized in the following formula:
Scaled HP =
where b is the base HP, s is the scaling factor (either 0.1 or 0.2) and p is the number of players in the realm. A Realm enemy will gain a theoretical maximum HP of 940% of the base value at 85 players, or 1,780% if it had 20% scaling.
All Dungeon Bosses and certain dungeon enemies (notably those in the Exaltation dungeon pool) use a modified scaling system known as Adaptive Scaling, which uses a non-linear model. The model sorts players into different “brackets” based on player number in the dungeon, with different “brackets” of players being subject to different amounts of scaling per player in them, which increases at higher brackets before gradually returning to normal as player count increases further. The amount of HP added per player at any number of players is higher for boss enemies and their minions, and boss scaling additionally increases with the base difficulty of the dungeon.
Listed below are tables depicting the amount of base HP added per player at all player counts:
Player Number | Difficulty ≤ 2.5 | Difficulty ≤ 6 | Difficulty > 6 |
2-5 | 10% | 15% | 20% |
6-25 | 25% | 30% | 35% |
26-35 | 30% | 40% | 40% |
36+ | 25% | 35% | 35% |
Player Number | All Difficulties |
2-5 | 10% |
6-15 | 15% |
16-30 | 20% |
31+ | 25% |
However, note that certain enemies will use modified scaling where the % gains per player and size or number of the brackets are changed on a case-by-case basis, which may increase or decrease the HP scaling for specific entities. Examples include small minions in The Shatters (who scale 5% less per player in all brackets and have slightly different brackets), and bosses on the route from Oryx’s Castle to Oryx’s Sanctuary (which scale 5% more per player along with having different brackets).
Linear HP scaling was introduced in Patch X.18.0 (Oct 2017), being introduced on enemies in the Parasite Chambers and the Stone Guardians. More enemies would receive HP scaling in upcoming patches, before Patch X.30.0.0 (Oct 2018) brought blanket scaling to all realm and dungeon bosses, in several cases significantly lowering their base HP to compensate.
In Exalt Version 1.0.0.0 (July 2020), adaptive scaling was introduced, being first used on the bosses and enemies in Oryx’s Sanctuary. In Exalt Version 1.1.0.0 (Sep 2020), adaptive scaling was added to all scaling dungeon bosses and enemies (who previously used 20% linear scaling), and their base HP was reduced by 25% across the board to compensate.
Prior to Exalt Version 2.3.3.0 (July 2022), adaptive HP scaling had a significantly different formula:
Scaled HP =
where b was the base HP, and p was the number of players in the dungeon. P represented a “per player” variable, which was set to 0.1 for dungeon bosses or boss minions exclusively featured in boss fights, or 0.05 for all regular dungeon monsters. A represented an “adaptive scaling” variable, that was set to 0.08 in the majority of situations. This resulted in the following true formulae:
For Dungeon Monsters: Scaled HP =
For Bosses/Boss Minions: Scaled HP =
Certain enemies would have individual P or A variables tweaked to alter their scaling.
In Exalt Version 3.0.0.0 (Aug 2022), the adaptive scaling mechanism was changed again and specific cases were tweaked, with the intention of making it less punishing on smaller groups and moreso on very large ones.