Limbus Company has seven status keywords. Five of them hurt the enemy: Burn, Bleed, Tremor, Rupture, and Sinking. Two empower your own Sinner instead: Poise and Charge. Each sits on a Sin, and each triggers at a different moment, which is the detail that actually decides how you build.
| Keyword | Sin affinity | Type | Triggers when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burn | Wrath | Damage over time | End of each turn |
| Bleed | Lust | Damage on action | The afflicted unit tosses an attack Coin |
| Tremor | Sloth | Stagger / burst | On Tremor Burst |
| Rupture | Gluttony | Damage on hit | The target is struck |
| Sinking | Gloom | SP damage on hit | The target is struck |
| Poise | Pride | Self-buff | Applies to the wielder |
| Charge | Envy | Self-resource | Spent to empower skills |
That trigger column is the whole reason mixed teams disappoint. Burn ticks whether you won the clash or not; Rupture only pays out when you land hits; Bleed waits for the enemy to take its turn. Three Bleed Identities next to three Rupture Identities give you two half-built statuses firing on different beats, and neither snowballs. So if your runs keep stalling in Mirror Dungeon or against a late Canto boss, the fix is almost never "pull a better Identity." It is picking one keyword and stacking the roster behind it.
The one rule that governs all seven: Count and Potency
Before the individual keywords, internalize this, because it is the thing new Managers get wrong. Every status is described by two numbers:
- Potency is how strong each activation is. Higher Potency means more damage (or a stronger effect) per trigger.
- Count is how many times it will activate, and usually ticks down by one each time it does.
The whole game of status stacking is balancing these two. Pile on Count with no Potency and you get a hundred limp ticks. Pump Potency with no Count and you get one big hit that expires immediately. Good status teams are built to raise both in the same turn, then trigger them while both are high. Keep that Count-versus-Potency tension in your head and every keyword below reads the same way.
What that means in practice differs per keyword, and the differences are where builds are won. "Count ticks down" is true of all seven, but what makes it tick down is not the same thing twice:
| Keyword | Potency is | Count is | What drains the Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burn | Fixed damage per tick | Turns remaining | Turn end, whatever happened that turn |
| Bleed | Fixed damage per coin | Attack-skill coin tosses left | The afflicted unit tossing an attack Coin |
| Tremor | Stagger Threshold added | Turns remaining | A triggered Tremor Burst |
| Rupture | Fixed damage per hit | Hits left | Taking a hit |
| Sinking | Fixed SP damage per hit | Hits left | Taking a hit |
| Poise | Crit chance, 5% per Potency | Hits that carry the bonus | A successful crit, and turn end |
| Charge | Not used; Count is the resource | The meter itself, cap 20 | Turn end, always, by 1 |
Read the last column rather than the first. Burn and Tremor are on a turn clock, so they expire whether or not the fight goes your way. Bleed, Rupture and Sinking are on an event clock, so they sit there indefinitely until somebody acts, which is why they reward stacking Count high and then unloading. Charge is on neither: it leaks one stack a turn no matter what you do.
That is also the honest answer to "which keyword is best." None of them, in the abstract. Burn suits a team that expects to lose some clashes, because it pays out anyway. Rupture suits one that expects to win them and land multi-coin flurries. Pick for the clock you can actually control.
The five that hurt the enemy
Burn (Wrath). The simplest to understand. At the end of every turn, a burning enemy takes fixed damage equal to its current Burn Potency, then the Count drops by one. Burn ignores the clash entirely, which makes it reliable chip that ticks whether you win the round or not. It rewards front-loading Potency early so every end-of-turn tick hits hard.
Bleed (Lust). Bleed activates when the afflicted unit itself acts, taking Potency damage on its coin flips and clashes, with Count falling each time. Because a boss with a full skill slate flips many coins per turn, Bleed has one of the highest theoretical ceilings in a drawn-out fight. It is the keyword that punishes enemies for doing anything.
Rupture (Gluttony). Rupture triggers on hit: every time you strike a ruptured enemy, it takes fixed damage equal to Rupture Potency and loses one Count. That makes multi-hit skills and multi-coin attacks into rupture detonators. Stack the Count high, then feed it a flurry of coins to cash it all out at once.
Sinking (Gloom). Sinking also triggers on hit, and this is the one most summaries get slightly wrong. Its tooltip reads "the next Y time(s) this unit is hit, take X fixed SP damage." Sinking is SP damage first, not HP damage with a Sanity side effect. Gloom damage is the fallback, applied only to units that have no SP bar, which is most bosses. So against a Sinner-like enemy Sinking is a Sanity weapon, and against an Abnormality it is a damage one. It is the slower, grindier keyword either way, and it pays off in long fights.
Tremor (Sloth). The odd one out. Tremor does not deal damage on its own tick; it raises the enemy's stagger threshold and then pays off through a Tremor Burst that staggers and, with the right Identities, converts into Sloth damage. It is the most mechanically involved keyword and the most rewarding when a full Tremor team lines up a burst, because a staggered enemy takes far more damage and loses its turn.
The two that buff you
Poise (Pride). Poise is not something you inflict on the enemy; your own Sinner builds it on itself. The mechanic is more specific than "raises damage": it boosts critical hit chance by Potency x 5% for the next Count hits. Ten Potency is fifty percent crit, not a vague damage bump, which is what makes Poise the one keyword you can do arithmetic on mid-fight. Both numbers fall on a successful crit and again at turn end, so Poise wants to be spent in the turn you build it rather than banked.
Charge (Envy). Charge is a resource meter your Sinner fills and then spends to empower specific skills. Two numbers govern it and both are easy to miss in the tooltip: Count caps at 20, and it drops by 1 at the end of every turn. That second one is the important one, because it means Charge cannot be banked. A turn spent not building and not spending is a turn that costs you a stack, so the keyword punishes idling in a way none of the other six do. Weak in the opening exchange, dangerous at a full meter, and leaky in between.
Season 8 added a Charge variant that breaks the Count rule
Everything above has been stable for years. Season 8 "STÚDĬUM PUNCTUM" is the first content in a while to add mechanics that do not fit the table, and because they are attached to the Le Noir Identities on the current banners, a lot of Managers are meeting them without a tooltip that explains the interaction. These are not an eighth base keyword. They are a unique Charge variant and its satellites, which is why you will not find them on the Status Effects page.
| Mechanic | What it is | The numbers |
|---|---|---|
| Preservation | Le Noir's unique Charge variant | Count caps at 20, loses 1 Count at turn end. Identical shape to Charge |
| Conservation Tremor | An amplitude conversion of Tremor | On Tremor Burst, take Sloth damage equal to (60 + sum of Charge Potency x 8)% of Tremor Potency, capped at 120%. Loses 1 Count at turn end |
| Promised Nail | A stacking debuff on the enemy | Max 30 stacks. On Tremor Burst from Skill effects, the target takes 1 Sloth damage per stack, capped at 10, once per Skill. At 4+ stacks it gains 1 Bind next turn |
| Sanctum of Conservation | Don Quixote's field passive | Starts at 3 stacks, caps at 5, loses 1 at turn end |
Read the Conservation Tremor row again, because it is the part that matters and the part that contradicts the rule this page spent four hundred words establishing. Normal Tremor spends its Count when it bursts. Conservation Tremor's Count is not reduced by Tremor Bursts from Le Noir units. So a Le Noir team can burst repeatedly off one application instead of rebuilding Count between triggers. If you have been evaluating these Identities against the Count-versus-Potency arithmetic above and the output looked too high, that one exemption is where the extra damage is coming from.
The Sanctum passive is where Preservation turns into team output, and it pays three different ways off the same stat:
- Every ally gains Shield worth (Preservation Potency x 2)% of their own max HP on Skill Use, once per turn, capped at 10%. Ten Preservation is the ceiling.
- Le Noir allies also take Offense Level +(Preservation Potency / 3), rounded down, capped at +2, and Defense Level +(Preservation Potency / 2), rounded down, capped at +3.
- Enemies get Min and Max Speed -1 and take +10% damage from any Skill that consumes Charge Count or unique Charge.
That last line is the build instruction hiding in a passive. The damage amp does not care that it is Preservation specifically; it triggers on anything that spends Charge or a Charge variant. A Le Noir core next to your existing Charge Identities is therefore better than a pure Le Noir team, which is the opposite of the "pick one keyword and commit" advice that holds for the other seven. Worth knowing before you build a roster around the wrong half of it.
If you are deciding whether to pull for any of this, the Limbus Company banner page carries the live windows and a verdict on each.
How to actually build around one
Reading the keywords is easy. The build is the point.
- Pick one keyword and stack the roster. A Bleed team wants six Sinners who all apply and benefit from Bleed. Mixing three Bleed and three Rupture Identities gives you two half-built statuses and neither snowballs. Commit.
- Line up Count and Potency in the same window. Use your setup skills to raise both, then unload the triggers, on-hit for Rupture and Sinking, on-their-turn for Bleed, end-of-turn for Burn, on burst for Tremor.
- Let the Sin affinity guide your clashes. Each keyword lives on a Sin, and stacking that Sin also shapes your coin power and your clash and coin math. A mono-affinity lean helps both your status and your ability to win the exchange that applies it.
- Match your E.G.O to the keyword. The right E.G.O can seed a huge chunk of status in one cast, at the cost of Sanity. Slot E.G.O that reinforces your chosen keyword, not a grab bag.
Making the keyword land
Statuses are the payoff; the clash decides whether you get to apply them. Read the clash and coin combat guide so your keyword actually lands, then the team building guide to assemble a squad that all feeds one status, and the E.G.O guide to seed it in bulk. Ready to grind it? The Mirror Dungeon guide is where a committed status team feels absurd. New Manager? Begin with the beginners guide, then browse the Limbus Company hub and its tier list.
Mechanics, tooltip wording and the exact figures for the seven base keywords (the Charge cap of 20 and its one-per-turn drain, Poise at 5% crit chance per Potency, and Sinking dealing fixed SP damage with Gloom as the non-SP fallback) are from the Limbus Company Wiki's Status Effects page, verified September 28, 2026. The Season 8 figures (Preservation's cap and decay, the Conservation Tremor conversion formula and its exemption from Count loss on Le Noir bursts, Promised Nail's 30-stack cap and 10-damage ceiling, and every Sanctum of Conservation value) are read off the Haute Couture::Le Noir Brand Manager Don Quixote Identity page, verified October 2, 2026. Individual coin counts and per-skill Preservation gains are deliberately not reproduced here: they differ per skill tier and are better read in game than paraphrased.
