What causes an Unreal hit that applies damage twice from overlapping events?

A single contact triggers both an overlap event and a separate hit/collision event (or two overlapping colliders), and each independently applies damage, so the target takes the hit twice.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Damage Applied Twice From Overlapping Hit Events in Unreal

Quick answer: Route all damage through one handler and dedupe by recording the target and a hit ID so the same contact cannot apply damage more than once.

If one shot or swing chunks a target for double its listed damage, two events are both firing. Deduping the contact fixes the double hit. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Route damage through one path

Pick a single event (overlap or hit) to apply damage and have the other ignore it, so a contact cannot trigger two damage applications.

2. Dedupe by target and hit ID

Maintain a set of targets already damaged by this attack instance and skip any target already in it within the active window.

3. Disable redundant collision

If two colliders both report the contact, disable generate-overlap or generate-hit on the one you do not need so only one event fires.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every Unreal Engine error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Reproduce it once with full context and the fix writes itself. The hunt is the expensive part.