Electrical hazard in the storage bunker of Liberty Island, along with its corresponding control panel. This hazard has 3 electric emitters.
Electrical hazards are a form of environmental hazards in Deus Ex. Electrical hazards often serve as obstacles that the player may need to bypass in order to complete a mission objective or to obtain valuables or skill point bonuses.
Overview[]
Electrical hazards appear as blue electrical arcs spread across an area. Entering the area of the hazard will typically result in shock damage. Most (but not all) electrical hazards will also drain the player's bioelectric energy. The damage and energy loss caused by electrical hazards vary throughout the game. That is, an electrical hazard in one map may have different damage values compared to an electrical hazard in another map.
In most cases, electrical hazards can be turned off by bypassing a nearby control panel using one or more multitool.
The shock and EMP damage caused by electrical hazards can be mitigated by the Energy Shield and EMP Shield augmentations, respectively.
Game mechanics[]
Electrical hazards typically include two types of elements: an ElectricityEmitter, which creates the visual effect and causes shock damage (i.e., damage of the "shocked" damage type), and a DamageTrigger, which is used to cause EMP damage that results in energy loss.
Most electrical hazards employ multiple instances of ElectricityEmitter that overlap in coverage. Thus, a player entering the hazard may incur damage from multiple emitters. Each ElectricityEmitter has the following properties:
- The amount of damage inflicted by the electric arc.
- The interval for inflicting damage (0.2 seconds by default).
- The range of random angles of the electric arc.
- Whether the emitter flickers and its flicker period. Emitters that flicker have cyclical periods, each having a 50% chance of being in a harmless off-state.
Due to the flicker effect and randomized angles of emitters, it is sometimes possible to pass through an emitter's coverage area without taking any damage. Additionally, since the areas covered by the emitter(s) and the DamageTrigger are not necessarily fully coextensive, it is possible to receive only shock damage or only EMP damage at certain positions that are covered by only one (but not both) of the damage sources. There are also some electrical hazards that do not have a DamageTrigger. These hazards therefore do not drain the player's energy.
As noted above, electrical hazards differ from one map to another. For example, the electrical hazard at LaGuardia Airport has a set of sparsely spaced emitters each having damage value of 5, along with a DamageTrigger that inflicts 5 EMP damage. On the other hand, the electrical hazard at the exit of the MJ12 Helibase has a set of closely spaced emitters each having a damage value of 40, without being accompanied by a DamageTrigger for EMP damage.
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