Orbs

Orbs (玉, Gyoku), or Jades in a Chinese-context, are a concept introduced in Dynasty Warriors 4. Equipping these items activates the chosen element while attacking or during Musou Attacks.

Dynasty Warriors 4
In Dynasty Warriors 4, orbs were acquired as items the player could randomly pick up during battle. Orb levels range from 1 to 4 which may increase beyond that amount by equipping the Secret of Orbs item found in Xtreme Legends.


 * Fire/Flame Orb: Temporarily sets enemies on fire; affected enemies burn and take damage over time that ignores the victim's defense stats and if continuously kept in hitstun.
 * Lightning/Thunder Orb: Strikes enemies with lightning from above with instant bolts with some extra damage; inflicts immediate damage that sends foes dropping to the ground and spreads out to other enemies in a specified area. This can steal the player's required K.O.'s if not careful though collateral damage, but can also inflict chip damage on guarding targets if the user's attack modifiers are high enough vs the victims' defense stats.
 * Poison Orb: Purple and green bubbles appear; causes enemies' defense to fall from 10% to 25% for about 5 seconds.
 * Blast/Fury Orb: Bluish white circles appear; damages enemies with a bit of extra damage, enough to ones that guard attacks by dealing chip damage on blocked hit (or can even make attacks unblockable backed by strong enough modifiers).
 * Ice Orb: Enemies are frozen in place mid-hitstun, and may take extra damage while frozen due to being stuck in a grounded state. Cannot work on airborne targets.
 * Vorpal/Slash Orb: Enemies are struck with a dark blue smog and a red stroke; has a chance of instantly killing soldiers and extra damage to generals.

It should be noted that for higher levels on either a Fire, Lightning, Blast or Posion due to interacting with defensive modifiers or percentage-based damage, the elemental damage can also force strong enough elemental-activation-attacks backed by raw power to be unblockable even on higher difficulties vs. major enemy units with high stats. This normally depends the circumstances that have the attacker's attack power exceed the defender's defense stat (e.g. equipping a maxed out Herbal Remedy and/or Power Rune along with picking up a War God's Axe by chance). The Poison element's defensive reduction also helps with this for subsequent similar attacks under the status aliment.



Dynasty Warriors 5
Orbs in Dynasty Warriors 5 are special items that required certain requirements and had to be performed on Hard or Chaos difficulty in order to obtain them.
 * Fire Orb: Temporarily sets fire to enemies; affected enemies burn and are damaged over time which ignores their defense stats. Effect ends when enemy recovers from grounded hitstun or touches the ground from airborne hitstuns/juggling.
 * Requirements: Battle of Si Shui Gate; Allied Forces; get 200 KOs within the first two minutes of the start of the stage.


 * Ice Orb: Enemies are frozen in mid-hitstun; keeps enemies from moving and lowers defense. Cannot trigger on airborne targets.
 * Requirements: Battle of Guan Du; Yuan Shao Forces; defeat Cao Pi within 4 minutes of the start of the stage.


 * Shadow/Yin Orb: Can cause instant death to soldiers and heavy damage to officers at the cost of automatically depleting the Musou gauge on activation.
 * Requirements: Battle of Wu Zhang Plains; Wei Forces; defeat Jiang Wei before Zhuge Liang's death.


 * Light/Yang Orb: Breaks through enemies' guards via unblockable attacks by damaging them with a flash of light.
 * Requirements: Battle of Wu Zhang Plains; Shu Forces; defeat Zhen Ji, Cao Ren, and Xu Zhu within five minutes of the start of the stage.

Unlike before however, elemental damage no longer interacts with attacker and defensive multipliers in determining if attacks are unblockable or not.



Dynasty Warriors: Online
In Dynasty Warriors: Online there are 5 orbs with 2 levels. Level 2 orbs can be imbued into weapons to grant that weapon a natural element. All orbs can be found in battle, the level 2 orbs a more rare find. All elements require an activation attack to come into effect. Orbs below are listed under their level 1/level 2 counterparts.
 * Fire/Inferno: Sets the enemy on fire with gradual HP draining that ignores the victims' defense stats. The fire will last as long as the enemy is staggered or remains in the air without doing an aerial recovery. When raining and snowing, the fire effect is weakened.


 * Lightning/Blitz: Stuns the enemy and does extra damage. When activated negates all knockback attacks and prevents affected airborne enemies to use their aerial recovery. Lightning strikes increase in rain.


 * Ice/Blizzard: Freezes foes solid in mid-hitstun while they're on the ground only. They cannot be set on fire or be knocked back while frozen. Chance to freeze increases in snow.


 * Wind/Hurricane: Increases the knockback of an attack. Decreases movement speed and disables the ability to jump for affected enemy officers or player characters.


 * Vorpal/True Vorpal: Gives a chance to deal a set amount of damage, regardless of the defense of the target; will also drain the both user and victim's musou bar with every activated strike.

Samurai Warriors
In Samurai Warriors 2: Xtreme Legends, orbs are included as a way to customize players' weapons. Orbs can be attained on any difficulty level and are most easily obtained by completing missions in Mercenary and Survival Mode. They can also be rewarded to a player if they receive a high rank after completing a stage in Free or Story Mode.

Similar to the Weapon Fusion option in the Warriors Orochi series, players use can orbs to change a weapon's element and stats. There is an orb available for every element and each stat orb will add +20 of the chosen stat to the weapon. This option is accessed via the Shop in the Orb Synthesis section. The cost varies depending on the quality of the weapon being customized.