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

Dynasty Warriors 4

Orbs in Dynasty Warriors 4. First row: Fire, Lightning, and Vorpal. Second row: Ice, Blast, and Poison.

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.
  • Attacks that activate fire of any kind normally have a yellow-orange flame trailing them or emitting from the user briefly.
  • Elemental ray shot C1 attacks instead turn into small fire crescent beams with flaming smoke trails. On hit, they put victims into a burning crumple state which they can be hit to put into a juggle. Airborne hit effect has the same effect of inflicting crowd-dispersing knockback.
• 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 in a crumple 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 (even if rather small via a lightning bolt on its own), but can also inflict chip damage on guarding targets if the user's attack modifiers are high enough vs the victims' defense stats.
  • Attacks that activate lightning unlike the other orbs, have no trailing whatsoever, and are only apparent when contacting a target. It should be noted that unlike with burned crumple state, hitting enemies with another lightning-based attack as they're dropping to the ground in shocked state can cause juggles that cannot be somersaulted from until hitting the ground, but often in almost-random trajectories due to hitbox conflicts.
  • Elemental ray shot C1 attacks turn into small pale-purple rays covered in lightning bubbles each, and have the same hit effects as any lightning attack.
  • Double Musou Attacks also automatically use this element throughout both users' sequences.
• Poison Orb: Purple and green bubbles appear; causes enemies' defense to fall from 10% to 25% for about 5 seconds.
  • Activation attacks have a green-purple cloud trail them, or have such a cloud briefly emit from the user. Enemies debuffed by poison will have an aura of the same effects like so.
  • Elemental ray shot C1 attacks are instead, turned into green bubbles with purple outlines and the same smokey effects as trails, though with a slower travel speed than the usual elemental shot. Poison elemental shots inflict stagger on any targets they contact on a grounded hit, and on airborne hit instead inflict a normal knockback on their targets.
• Blast/Fury Orb: Pale-blueish 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). Said chip damage also counts as a direct hit (and thus can even on opposing generals, grant the Blast-wielder weapon EXP on a blocked-Blast-charge attack).
  • Activation attacks are trailed by the same circles with a smokey effect.
  • Elemental ray shot C1 attacks turn into cross crescent beams covered with a ring vortex each, with the same smokey effect as their trails. Like the non-elemental ones, they still inflict crumple on grounded hit, and disperse crowds on airborne hit.
• 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.
  • Activation attacks let loose ice shards with a cold-smoke trail.
  • Elemental ray shot C1 attacks instead turn into large ice lumps, with cold-air trailing said shots and also having the same travel speeds as poison elemental shots. While they still inflict crumple on normal hit if they fail to properly freeze, airborne hit instead results in normal knockback.
• 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.
  • The aforementioned dark blue smog and red strokes trail any activation attacks.
  • Elemental ray shot C1 attacks instead turn into red energy blast projectiles with the same dark blue smog as their trail. They essentially function like stronger basic elemental ray shots with the same hit effects of crumpling victims on grounded hit, and dispersing crowds on airborne hit.

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.

Orbs in Dynasty Warriors 5. First row: Fire and Ice. Second row: Shadow and Light.

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.

Orbs in Dynasty Warriors Online. First row: Fire/Inferno, Ice/Blizzard, and Wind/Hurricane. Second row: Lightning/Blitz (1st version and 2nd version), and Vorpal/True Vorpal.

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.

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