Dawn-Dash: Scoring

Dawncaster scoring guide

🏆 An in-depth guide to maximizing your score in each game mode of Dawncaster. Select a game mode below to get started!

Standard score

Your Standard mode score is determined by the following two factors:

How well you perform in six specific scoring parameters.
The malignancies you've enabled for the run.

The combined score from these six scoring parameters are multiplied by your malignancy modifier to give your final score. These parameters are:

💀 Bosses defeated: Number of bosses killed
⚔️ Damage: Highest damage dealt in a single action or effect
❤️ Awareness: Total damage taken
💨 Lethality: Average turns per fight
🃏 Versatility: Number of distinct cards in your deck
💰 Wealth: Sum of your gold and your deck value

Each parameter is assigned a rank from one to nine (I – IX), based on your performance, and you'll be given a score corresponding to that rank.

At the maximum rank (IX):

⚔️ Damage, ❤️ Awareness, 🃏 Versatility, and 💰 Wealth give you 2000 points each.
💨 Lethality gives you 500 points.
💀 Bosses defeated depends on your difficulty and kill count. A maximum of 6000 points is achievable on Impossible difficulty.

Score growth between ranks is non-linear. Meaning that jumping from rank VIII (8) to IX (9) in one parameter is usually worth a lot more than jumping from I to V in another. Important to keep in mind if you are forced to prioritize one parameter over another. Unfortunately, most of these parameters are hidden from you during the run, so you'll have to keep track of them on your own.

🧠

Sacrificing a perfect Awareness score, just to slightly improve your Versatility, is effectively never worth it! One exception might be Lethality, as it only gives you a measly 500 points at max rank, and also drops very slowly.

Here's a detailed breakdown of each score parameter:

💀Bosses defeated
⚔️Damage
❤️Awareness
💨Lethality
🃏Versatility
💰Wealth

⚔️ Damage

Determined by the highest damage you do in a single instance. This can either be direct action damage, burning, bleed damage (not triggering damage + bleed), doom, etc. Any single source of damage will do.

This parameter is ranked the same way for both Standard and Sunforge.

Rank	Threshold	Score
IX	Over 5000 damage	2,000
VIII	Over 2500 damage	1,500
VII	Over 1500 damage	1,250
VI	Over 1000 damage	1,000
V	Over 250 damage	750
IV	Over 100 damage	500
III	Over 50 damage	250
II	Over 25 damage	150
I	???	100

💥

Overkill damage counts as well! However, charm kills don't count as damage dealt, even with a high charm value. Slay and subjugation wins also don't count.

📋 A small on these numbers

Your in-game base score is the sum of your scores in the six parameters above. If you max out everything on Impossible difficulty, this gives you a base score of 14,500 (6000 + 4 × 2000 + 500).

This score is then multiplied by your Malignancy percentage, which is the sum of all malignancies enabled for the run. The highest malignancy percentage you can have right now is 220%. Going with the numbers above, this gives us a max malignancy bonus of 31,900 (14500 × 2.2).

Adding that to the base score, puts the highest achievable Standard score for an Impossible run at 46,400 (14500 + 31900)!

Similarly for the other difficulties, the highest achievable scores are:

Hard: 40,000 ((4000 + 4 × 2000 + 500) × (1 + 2.2))
Challenging: 31,680 ((1400 + 4 × 2000 + 500) × (1 + 2.2))
Normal: 29,440 ((700 + 4 × 2000 + 500) × (1 + 2.2))

These numbers will of course vary over time, as the game introduces new malignancies, or tweaks the percentages on existing ones.

👺

There is one way of going over the maximum malignancy on Standard mode. If you play an Invasions run, and pick up the Offer of Pride while already having five malignancies, you will be granted a sixth malignancy!