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Staff Tornado

Based on game build 714014 | Last updated: 2026-03-07

Overview​

The staff_tornado prefab implements a magical melee weapon that casts tornadoes when used. It functions as both an equippable item with skin support and a spellcasting item with finite uses. When equipped, it overlays a custom animation symbol on the player; when used, it spawns a tornado entity (tornado) at a calculated offset toward the target, assigns the original caster as the tornado's owner, and decrements the staff's remaining uses. Upon exhaustion, the staff automatically removes itself. The tornado itself has its own brain, movement properties, and lifetime behavior.

Usage example​

-- Assuming `player` is a valid entity with an inventory:
local staff = SpawnPrefab("staff_tornado")
player:AddItem(staff)  -- Adds staff to inventory
-- Equipping and casting is handled automatically via game controls
-- once the staff is in the player's hands (via EquipItem or hotbar).

Dependencies & tags​

Components used: finiteuses, inventoryitem, equippable, spellcaster, locomotor, knownlocations, inspectable, soundemitter, animstate, transform, network

Tags: Adds nopunch, quickcast, usesdepleted (conditionally by finiteuses)

Properties​

No public properties are directly exposed by the staff_tornado constructor. Configuration values are loaded via constants (e.g., TUNING.TORNADOSTAFF_USES, TUNING.TORNADO_LIFETIME).

Main functions​

This prefab exposes no standalone public methods beyond those defined on the spawned tornado (SetDuration is attached to the tornado prefab, not the staff).

Events & listeners​

  • Listens to: None defined in the staff constructor.
  • Pushes:
    • equipskinneditem and unequipskinneditem (via owner:PushEvent) when equipped/unequipped with skin overrides.
    • "percentusedchange" (indirectly via finiteuses:SetUses when uses change).

Note: The spawntornado function is the core spell logic and is passed to spellcaster:SetSpellFn. It is not a public method on the staff itself but is invoked internally by the spellcasting system.