how to assign damage in riftbound when elder is out

When Elder Dragon is out, damage assignment changes because lethal damage to enemy units is treated as 1, so you can spread damage across multiple units one lethal point at a time instead of having to fully pile damage onto one target first.

How it works

• Normally, you assign enough damage to kill one unit before moving to the next.

• With Elder Dragon on the field, lethal damage for enemy units becomes 1, so each unit only needs 1 assigned damage to count as lethal.

• That means a unit with 3 might can assign 1 damage to three different enemy units, assuming those are the damage totals being assigned in that combat.

• The key point is that Elder changes the lethal threshold , not the fact that damage still has to be assigned legally.

Practical example

If your unit has 4 might and Elder is active, and the opposing side has four units, you can usually assign 1 damage to each of four units, because 1 is already lethal to each enemy unit under Elder.

Without Elder, you would normally have to assign enough damage to fully kill one unit before assigning damage to the next.

Important caveat

Elder’s effect does not mean you can ignore assignment rules entirely; it just makes the lethal amount 1 for enemy units, which is why spread damage becomes legal in a way it normally is not.

So the short version is: with Elder out, assign 1 damage per enemy unit until your total damage is used up.

TL;DR

Elder makes each enemy unit lethal at 1 damage, so you can divide combat damage across multiple units one point at a time instead of overkilling a single target first.