Element

There are various elements in the game that both infecteds and players can impart; once afflicted, these will stay (linger) for a short period of time. Each element has a special ability that can help you in fight, however, making different elements trigger at the same time (or, taking advantage of the linger) creates more useful effects (also called interactions).

Elements

•			Fire / Burning	Deals damage based on source of damage every second, but each second the damage get smaller, ending after short amount of time.
•			Toxic	Deals damage based on source of damage every second for short amount of time.
•			Cold / Chilled	Slows enemy by something around 50%.
•			Electric / Electrified	Can damage multiple enemies at once/travel through groups of enemies, dealing damage based on source damage for a single hit on each enemy.

Statuses effected by elements

These elements do nothing special by themselves, but can be combined with other elements to make a combo.

• Wet
• Flammable

Interactions

Certain combinations of elements with other elements or status can have an effect. The order these are applied does not matter.

Elements		Result
Fire	Toxic	Explosion (Toxic cancelled) - damage is equal to whichever the higher value is between fire & toxic. The explosion damages the exploding infected and potentially other ones in a radius of about 2 meters, spreading fire smolder (which also can spread on contact), with which it will make nearby poisoned (toxified) infected explode too, starting a chain (the one-time extent of which seems to be subject to a cap just like the Master of Elements skill is). Nevertheless, having multiple infected in that radius will make them incur damage from all of their separate explosions.
Cold Chilled	Wet	Frozen for 5s (Wet cancelled) - enemies can't attack or move, and also take an additional 25% damage on non-critical hits. Freezing counts as a form of stunning. Chilled is an environmental effect that doesn't damage, but slows you down (which you can counter with "Purity" or "Unleashed" like from the combo of a combat knife) and will freeze both players or infected if they're wet.
Electric	Frozen	Spreads "Frozen" status to infected in a large area.
Electric	Wet	Stun for 4s (Wet and Electrified cancelled) - since electricity can travel between mobs, this can stun multiple wet opponents. Electricity used to transmit wetting, but does not anymore.
Fire	Flammable	Incension - gradually reapplies the initial fire damage value - smolders (Flammable cancelled).
Electric	Flammable	Incension - recently electricity ignites flammability - see above (Electric and Flammable cancelled) Also spreads "Flammable" or "Incensed" status to infected in a large area.
Cold	Liquid Nitrogen	The cold counterpart of flammability, nitrogen doesn't seem to react with wetting but improves the potency of cold attacks on the affected target (Nitrogen cancelled).
Cancellations
Flammable	Wet	Toxicity forming (Flammable and wet cancelled)
Fire	Wet	Extinguished and vaporized (Fire and wet cancelled)
Toxic	Wet	Hydrolyzed and vaporized (Toxic and wet cancelled)
Fire	Cold	Extinguished and sublimated (Fire and cold cancelled)

• There are environmental sources of elemental damage (the Burnt House of Santa Rosa has fire, the Delta Experimental has toxic deposits, there are many) or effects (electric traps; puddles of water; black puddles of fuel; a few cryo tunnels, like the supermarket freezer)
• The automatic (20% attacks) Flammability from the Jerrycan - a bag-type piece of the survivor gear - (but not its throw skill) recently can affect NPCs, possibly killing them (temporarily) if contacted with fire or electricity. Flammability can also destroy loot bags (they develop a health bar and burn, but until the bar gets depleted, the contents are intact) and this effect is usually reasonably gradual.
• For flammability to become ignited any source of electricity or fire (from the infected, the environment, or the players' own output) works.
• The transmitting of effects by electricity used to have the option of affecting players too - if it was a player and not the infected to receive an electric shock. An electric trap deployed as part of the scenery, the electrician infected, or the Bodega Bay boss - could make all the players in the vicinity share the transmittable effects, leading to mass immolations, poisonings or freezings. This has mostly been removed.
• Elemental effects are subject to enhancement from not only passive kits or survivor gear functionalities, but also the very recommended "Master of Elements" passive skill you can buy from Mei Lee for 850 reputation. There are also very useful combo-activated buffing objects, like the modern paintings (they buff out the 4 main elements for 30 seconds) and the game controllers (they tremendously buff out electricity for a whole minute). A very important property of the game is that when you have multiple qualities of the same type of an object, their effects STACK (=add up) and this is the case here too. In consequence, if you have an exceptional (additional 160%), high (140%), good (120%) and normal (100%) game controller, by enabling them in succession (through combo) you can be consistently dealing the damage of 620% of your nominal electrical output. Other types of objects, like the paintings mentioned, will stack with that as well.
• The stunning (and propagating) properties of cold and electricity with wetting make it a very convenient form of triggering of the "Opportunist" passive skill, or the less pronounced bonus of the Raider clothing set. The weak point can be the wetting, because you can't make any wetting weapons at home and the only non-weapon source of it is the Swimsuit set (and some criptic kits from PVP, that MAY be smugglable to the outside, but nobody ever did), and you can't have that on with the Raider. There are many wetting weapons and you can find them without trouble, but they're not very durable.
• A combo attack from any electric weapon makes the electricity automatically hit multiple targets (it also does that randomly without combo). Don't use the combo attack from the Game Console object, as it destroys (yours and others') loot bags, and much faster than flammability. Used without clicking the Console is safe.
• Critical hits from electricity aren't indicated as such in the damage values displayed on attacked characters (they lack the ! - exclamation mark), but their values correspond to what other damage types do.