Powders

Elemental powders have two major uses— they can be added to weapons or armor with sufficient powder slots to boost elemental damages or defenses, or used as crafting ingredients to give similar effects to crafted weapons, armor, and accessories.

Powder Masters can apply powders to weapons or armor, or remove powders (you won’t get them back) for a small price.

There are six tiers of powders, with each tier giving stronger effects than the previous. You can upgrade four powders of the same tier into one powder of the next higher tier at a Powder Master. The resulting powder element probablility is determined by the elements used, being guaranteed of a certain element if all four were of that element.

Applying Powders

The number of powders that can be applied to an item is displayed near the bottom of the item info.

Most items have between 0 and 5 powder slots, with a small number having more (presently, Matryoshka Shell, Singularity, Empire Builder, and Neutrino are the only items with more than 5 powder slots).

Powdering Weapons

Adding powders to weapons will 1) increase the minimum and maximum damage done by certain amounts, and 2) convert some of the weapon’s existing neutral damage (if there is any) to damage of that element. Note that when using spells, this conversion applies after the natural spell conversion, additively.

The exact damage boost and conversion depends on the element of powder - for example, Earth powders give the most conversion and a smaller raw boost vs. Thunder, which gives the least conversion.

Powder Damage Raw	T1	T2	T3	T4	T5	T6
Earth	3-6	5-8	6-10	7-10	9-11	11-13
Thunder	1-8	1-12	2-15	3-15	4-17	5-20
Water	3-4	4-6	5-8	6-8	7-10	9-11
Fire	2-5	4-8	5-9	6-9	8-10	10-12
Air	2-6	3-10	4-11	5-11	7-12	8-14

Powder Damage Conversion	T1	T2	T3	T4	T5	T6
Earth	17%	21%	25%	31%	38%	46%
Thunder	9%	11%	13%	17%	22%	28%
Water	13%	15%	17%	21%	26%	32%
Fire	14%	16%	19%	24%	30%	37%
Air	11%	14%	17%	22%	28%	35%

Incidentally, weapons with no neutral damage will not be affected by conversion, either from powders or spells (for example, an item like Alkatraz, with no powder slots and no neutral damage, will only ever do Earth damage, even when using spells). After all neutral damage is converted, any further neutral conversion will have no effect.

Note that weapons with no neutral damage will still get nominal 0 spell conversion. This has no effect in the general case, but “0 Earth damage” differs from “no Earth damage” in the sense that the former can be added to by a mob’s elemental weakness while the latter cannot. This means neutral damage on a weapon is not necessary to use spell conversion for elemental weakness exploitation. While not strictly relevant to powders, I suspect most people reading this guide would find the information useful.

Powdering Armor

When applied to armor, powders increase the elemental defense of the armor in their element, and give a (smaller) decrease in elemental defense for their “weak” element. In the typical ordering, an element’s weakness is the element immediately before it. For example, Water is weak to Thunder, Thunder is weak to Earth, Earth is weak to Air (looping back around to the end), etc. As with damages, the strength of these effects depends on the particular element of powder. Armor powders are part of the total raw eledefs, and the total is what is modified by Elemental Defense % IDs.

Powder Eledef Gain	T1	T2	T3	T4	T5	T6
Earth	2	4	8	14	22	30
Thunder	3	5	9	14	20	28
Water	3	6	11	18	28	40
Fire	3	5	9	16	25	36
Air	3	6	10	16	24	34

Powder Eledef Loss	T1	T2	T3	T4	T5	T6
Earth	-1 Air	-2 Air	-3 Air	-5 Air	-9 Air	-13 Air
Thunder	-1 Earth	-1 Earth	-2 Earth	-4 Earth	-7 Earth	-10 Earth
Water	-1 Thunder	-1 Thunder	-2 Thunder	-4 Thunder	-7 Thunder	-10 Thunder
Fire	-1 Water	-2 Water	-3 Water	-5 Water	-9 Water	-13 Water
Air	-1 Fire	-2 Fire	-3 Fire	-5 Fire	-9 Fire	-13 Fire

Crafted Items

Using powders as ingredients in crafting recipes gives their effects to the result. The effects are exactly what one would obtain when adding a powder to a slot— crafted armor and accessories (although accessories have no powder slots) gain elemental defense, and crafted weapons gain an elemental damage boost and neutral conversion. Powders cannot be used in consumable recipes. Note that post-crafting powder conversion is multiplicative with ingredient powder conversion. For example, using a T6 Earth powder as an ingredient will convert 40% of the base neutral damage to Earth damage. Adding a T6 Earth powder to the weapon after crafting will convert 40% of the remaining neutral damage, for a net conversion of 64% neutral to Earth.

Powder Specials

Applying two or more powders Tier 4 or higher of the same element to either a weapon or armor piece gives it a powder special. A particular item can only have at most one powder special— if the item has 4 or more slots and there is the possibility for multiple powder specials, the special obtained depends on the order they are added. To determine the particular special, take the sequence of powders and ignore any powders without two of that element. The first powder’s element in the remaining sequence determines the powder special. Note that if you add, say, F6-T6-T6 to a weapon and get Chain Lightning, adding an additional F6 will actually change the powder special into Courage. The strength of a powder special varies depending on the tier of powders used, with five possibilities (T4/T4, T4/T5, T4/T6 or T5/T5, T5/T6, and T6/T6). It it not advised to use a Tier 4 and Tier 6 powder together, since using two Tier 5 powders achieves the same effect (T5 special) at a lower cost (8 T4-equivalent vs. 17 T4-equivalent, since a T6 powder requires 16 T4 powders to obtain).

Weapon Powder Specials

Weapon powder specials are charged by landing melee attacks. Once fully charged, holding the Shift key while using a melee attack will engage the powder special (this attack does not necessarily need to be successful, although depending on the particular powder special it’s often more useful if the attack is successful). The number of successful melee attacks needed to fully charge a powder special depends on the weapon’s attack speed (after taking into account attack speed bonus IDs). It is scaled such that regardless of attack speed, fully charging a powder special requires the equivalent of approximately 5 seconds of continuous successful melee attacks.

Attack Speed	Hits required to charge*
Super Fast	22
Very Fast	16
Fast	13
Normal	11
Slow	8
Very Slow	5
Super Slow	3

*Archer is weird. Check Additional Info.

Weapon Specials	T4	T4.5	T5	T5.5	T6
Quake	Radius: 4.4 blocks Damage: 155% ✤	Radius: 4.9 blocks Damage: 220% ✤	Radius: 5.4 blocks Damage: 285% ✤	Radius: 5.9 blocks Damage: 350% ✤	Radius: 6.4 blocks Damage: 415% ✤
Chain Lightning*	Chains: 5 Damage: 80% ✦	Chains: 6 Damage: 120% ✦	Chains: 7 Damage: 160% ✦	Chains: 8 Damage: 200% ✦	Chains: 9 Damage: 240% ✦
Curse	Duration: 7 sec Damage Boost: +90%	Duration: 7.5 sec Damage Boost: +120%	Duration: 8 sec Damage Boost: +150%	Duration: 8.5 sec Damage Boost: +180%	Duration: 9 sec Damage Boost: +210%
Courage	Damage: 75% ✹ Duration: 6 sec Damage Boost: +70%	Damage: 87.5% ✹ Duration: 6.5 sec Damage Boost: +90%	Damage: 100% ✹ Duration: 7 sec Damage Boost: +110%	Damage: 112.5% ✹ Duration: 7.5 sec Damage Boost: +130%	Damage: 125% ✹ Duration: 8 sec Damage Boost: +150%
Wind Prison	Air Damage% Boost: +400% Duration: 3 sec Knockback: 8 blocks	Air Damage% Boost: +450% Duration: 3.5 sec Knockback: 12 blocks	Air Damage% Boost: +500% Duration: 4 sec Knockback: 16 blocks	Air Damage% Boost: +550% Duration: 4.5 sec Knockback: 20 blocks	Air Damage% Boost: +600% Duration: 5 sec Knockback: 24 blocks

*Chain Lightning is weird. Check below.

Earth’s weapon powder special is Quake, and Thunder’s weapon powder special is Chain Lightning. They’re both damaging powder specials that can activate life and mana steal with the same chance as your main attack (so super slow, once again, wins). The neutral damage it would deal from the weapon’s base is converted to its element, but other elements’ damage and damage from the raw melee stat are not converted and remain neutral/their respective element.

Quake does damage in a radius around the caster, or in the case of archer, around where the arrow lands. Both the damage and the radius increase with the level of the special. This one’s pretty true to the label- it does what it says it does.

Chain Lightning arcs from mob to mob, with its multiplier going down by a flat 20% for each chain. Powder special level determines the damage and the number of bounces. Chain Lightning’s label is quite weird. Tier 6 is displayed as “damage: 240%”, when it actually starts at 300% and decreases by 20% per hit until its ninth and last hit, 140%. How did 240% get on the label? No clue. It isn’t the average, it isn’t the median, It’s even weirder at lower tiers, there’s no consistency between the actual damages and the listed percent.

Chain Lightning Damage	Hit 1	Hit 2	Hit 3	Hit 4	Hit 5	Hit 6	Hit 7	Hit 8	Hit 9
T4	2.0	1.8	1.6	1.4	1.2
T5	2.5	2.3	2.1	1.9	1.7	1.5	1.3
T6	3.0	2.8	2.6	2.4	2.2	2.0	1.8	1.6	1.4

Both their damages are determined by a multiplier on your melee hit damage, not your DPS, so raw melee has a great effect. Quake is the main reason why heavy melee is chill to play, providing a big boost to sustain and massive damage. Chain lightning is super useful in spellsteal, thanks to spellsteal tris usually including thunder, along with the prevalence of super slow attack speed for spellsteal’s life and mana steal chances.

Water’s weapon powder special is Curse, and Fire’s weapon powder special is Courage.

Curse applies a “debuff” on mobs around the activation, increasing damage dealt to them in the form of a spell% and melee% buff for attacks that hit the mob, along with a unique increase for poison. Its effect is indicated by rain cloud particles on affected mobs. Duration and effectiveness go up with powder special levels.

Courage has two parts- a damage burst with quake-like properties, and a buff similar to curse that applies to players, including allies. Flame particles appear above the head to indicate the buff, but only for you, for some reason. And of course, the damage is less than Quake, and the buff is less effective than Curse. The damage, the buff effectiveness, and the duration of the buff increase with special level, but the radius of the burst doesn’t.

These two are the most popular off-element weapon specials- it’s often better to sacrifice weapon damage numbers for the significant buff that comes with them. They even stack! However, since they’re a poison and spell/melee% boost, they don’t affect raw melee or raw spell.

Air’s powder special is Wind Prison. When cast, mobs in a small area slowly rise with white particle effects. The next instance of damage they take gets an air damage% boost and flings them away. Basically anything counts for the hit. Other players’ attacks do, the first arrow of a storm, even poison ticks. It’ll get completely wasted quite often, not to mention the existence of CCI. Because it’s air damage%, it doesn’t work as a heavy melee alternative either.

Armor Powder Specials

Armor powders are elemental damage% ID boosts with activation conditions. With the exception of Rage, they all ramp up to their caps over time/hits/etc. Since the caps are fixed, for every non-rage special, powdering multiple pieces just increases the rate at which you gain the bonus. It’s much more reasonable to powder at T5 instead of the 4x more costly T6, with minimal combat penalty (again, with the exception of rage).

Armor Special conditions and caps
Rage	Missing HP% * rage value, theoretical cap of ~400% (Tier 6 on all 4 armor pieces, minimum hp)
Kill Streak	Per mob killed, caps at 200%
Concentration	mana used * conc value, caps at 150%
Endurance	stacks per hit taken, caps at 200%
Dodge	stacks per second within 8 blocks of a mob, caps at 150%

Armor Special Durations
Rage	Always active
Kill Streak	5 sec, durations refresh on stack gain
Concentration	1 sec x mana used, durations do not refresh
Endurance	8 sec, durations refresh on stack gain
Dodge	2-6 sec depending on tier, -4% air damage/sec when no mobs nearby

Armor Special Numbers	T4	T4.5	T5	T5.5	T6
Rage (Earth Damage%)	+0.3%	+0.4%	+0.5%	+0.7%	+1%
Kill Streak (Thunder Damage%)	+3%	+4.5%	+6%	+7.5%	+9%
Concentration (Water Damage%)	+1%	+2%	+3%	+4%	+5%
Endurance (Fire Damage%)	+2%	+3%	+4%	+5%	+6%
Dodge (Air Damage%)	+2%	+3%	+4%	+5%	+6%

Dodge does not get lost when hit (common misconception).

You can see the effects of armor powder specials on a build by manually adjusting the elemental damage%s.

Additional Info

• The Madness major ID can cast powder specials (with “T3” numbers, one step below T4, which don’t exist normally).
• Sorcery can recast both powder specials and melee attacks, which means a lot of powder special casts. Especially effective for stacking curse/courage.
• The above is no longer true as of the silent patch removing recasts on 2022/02/09. Melee attacks are still recast though, which allows for some speeding up of charging.
• Archer shoots an arrow when it activates its powder special (with one exception), and the special activates where the arrow lands. The arrow counts as a hit for charging the next powder special, which means it requires 1 less hit to charge (a whopping 1/3 reduction in charge time for super slow!). What’s weirder is that this is true for all powder specials except Courage, where archer doesn’t shoot an arrow upon activation and the special activates around the player. No bonuses for courage stacking, I guess. It’s probably due to the buff aspect of courage. It would be pretty awkward to have to shoot at the floor to buff, but that doesn’t really make sense because you could be backlining and shoot the arrow normally to buff frontline allies.. Whatever. Classic Wynncraft.

Notes & Credits

• WynnBuilder’s crafter not having support for powders in Jeweling was discovered while this post was being made
• Literally no one uses powders in Jeweling so no real loss
• Thanks to WynnData for compiling some of the numbers so I didn’t have to scour the market
• Shoutout to Ingo for having a lot of the stacking behavior on hand (saved quite a bit of time)
• Shoutout to oinuk for catching a ton of mistakes and making it easier to read
• Shoutout to Bart for lots of constructive criticism
• Shoutout to Whats_Sigma for suggestions & edits