Status Effects Explained — Heat, Lag and Infect in AVS03

The confirmed status effects

Demo Update 1.2 is the official source for this mapping:

All three are official, developer-named status effects — they are the game’s confirmed damage-over-time / debuff vocabulary, and the rest of the 24-weapon roster likely feeds them too. Each confirmed applier has its own page: Firewall, Paint and Bubbles.

What each status actually does — official, verbatim

Demo Update 1.2 published the mechanics in the developer’s own words:

Heat, Lag, and Infect are stackable status effects on enemies. Every half second they affect the enemy and reduce by 20% until stacks have depleted.

The same update introduced the Weapon Power stat, which replaces the old Repel stat: it increases how many stacks a weapon applies to Heat, Lag and Infect, and boosts how hard Repel (knockback) hits.

Still not published: per-stack damage numbers and exact freeze thresholds. Those get tested and documented from full release — every figure will be tagged with the game version it was verified in.

How status effects fit a build

Status effects are the reason the weapons, drivers and plugins systems matter: a build is weapon choice, driver attachments and plugin modifiers layered together. Whether Heat-stacking or Infect-spreading wins runs is exactly the kind of question that needs the full 62-plugin pool to answer — see the builds hub for how we’ll approach tested builds.

FAQ

Can enemies inflict Heat, Lag or Infect on me? Unknown. The official materials describe these as weapon-applied effects on enemies. Any enemy side of the system gets documented after launch testing.

Do all weapons apply a status effect? Not confirmed. Only the Firewall/Heat, Paint/Lag and Bubbles/Infect mappings are official — the remaining 20 weapons’ status behavior is pending verification.