Critical hit

• A critical hit occurs randomly (with a 9% chance, subject to certain modifiers) when hitting with a ranged or melee attack, as well as when casting spells as of August 12, 2009. A critical hit will always hit the monster, regardless of your actual hit chance. It also increases the amount of damage you deal to your opponent. Specifically, it doubles the weapon power component of the damage:

 weapon damage = (a term based on your stats vs. monster's defense)
                 + Main weapon damage × crit × tsfactor            
                 + Offhand weapon damage
                 + bonus melee damage                              
                 + bonus elemental damage

 spell damage = (crit × base spell damage + bonus absolute spell damage) × (1 + bonus percent spell damage)

Where

• crit is 1 for a normal hit, 2 for a critical hit, 3 for a critical hit with Audacity of the Otter, or 4 for a critical hit with Legendary Luck;
• tsfactor is 1 for a normal attack, 2 for a Thrust-Smack, 3 for a Lunging Thrust-Smack, 5 for a Bashing Slam Smash, and 5 for a Cleave.
• Weapon damage is (10%-20% of weapon power + 0 to 1), or 1 if barehanded.

• For a comprehensive list of all items that affect the critical hit percentage for weapon attacks, see Critical Hit Chance.
• For a comprehensive list of all items that affect spell critical hit, see Critical Spell Chance.

Note: Critical hits also apply to healing spells, with the text replaced with 'CRITICAL HEAL!'

Also note that if you would normally miss or make a glancing blow, and instead get a successful critical hit then it changes it to a normal hit, not a full crit.

Monster Critical Hits

Monsters can critical hit too -- but a monster critical hit doesn't cause you any extra damage; it just succeeds in hitting when it otherwise would have missed. Monster critical hits, like monster fumbles, occur with a 6% chance per round. Thus, the total chance of abnormal monster behavior in any given round is 12%.

Special Interactions

Several mechanics in the Kingdom interact specially with critical hits:

• 7-inch discuss grant three turns of Snobby (+50% to all attributes)
• flamin', freezin', stinkin', spooky, and sleazy bindles do extra damage of the corresponding element
• bindlestockings drop an item (once per combat only)
• clockwork swords heal
• clockwork staves restore MP
• clockwork crossbows weaken enemies (and will trigger even in the off-hand)
• elven whittling knives do additional damage (20% of the monster's remaining HP)
• fish bazookas do extra physical damage
• Hodgman's whackin' sticks do extra perfect elemental damage or physical damage
• mafia pointer finger rings grants twice the monster's base meat drop once per combat
• Mer-kin gladiator weapons grant special skills after enough underwater critical hits
• Mer-kin hookspears give extra Meat
• Meteoid ice beams stagger
• murderbot whips deal an additional 1000 physical damage
• non-stick pugil sticks stun
• Red Rover BB guns either put your target's or your eye out
• rusty spearguns deal an additional 50-60 physical damage
• Skullcracker occasionally stuns
• Spirit Precipices do 12-24 damage to the player
• Spooky Putty balls can ricochet and do extra attacks
• sugar shanks cause additional bleeding that round and additional rounds of combat
• sugar shotguns block
• Truthsayers cause the player to blurt out a <conspiracy theory>
• vampire collars heal
• Virulence improves Infectious Bite (Zombie Master only)
• V for Vivala masks do various things in combat

V for Vivala mask critical hit effects will override most other special effects from critical hits. The exception is the end-of-combat stat bonus from the V for Vivala mask.