Rotted Woods Seed Finder
The Rotted Woods spread across the southeast quadrant during its Shifting Earth event. The dataset holds 50 records for this configuration.
This map has the most uniform landmark distribution of the four base game Shifting Earths, which means there is no single dominant opening mark and you will usually need three observations rather than two.
A Marsh has decided the search on this map every time but one: 1,063 marks, decisive in 99.8% of them. Most searches never need it, though, since the median is a single landmark and 92.9% finish with two or fewer.
- Seeds in this map
- 50
- Landmarks to identify (median)
- 1
- Identifications logged
- 22,130
- Dataset game version
- 1.03.2
Why identification takes an extra mark here
Main Encampments appear in 47 of the 50 records, Great Churches in 46, Forts in 44, Ruins in 43, and Churches and Sorcerer's Rises in all 50. None of those splits the pool usefully, which leaves the DLC buildings at 10 of 50 and Township at 22 of 50 as the only marks worth making early.
So check for a Blacksmith Village or Marsh first. Both appear in all 10 of this map's DLC records, so finding one puts you in a set of ten and a single position will finish the job from there. If you find neither, mark a Township next, then fall back to the position of a specific Fort or Ruin.
How often each landmark appears on Rotted Woods
The share of this map's 50 records that contain at least one of each landmark. A landmark near 100% cannot narrow anything by presence alone, so the rows at the top of this table are the marks worth making first.
| Landmark | Records containing it | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Difficult Sorcerer's Rise | 2 of 50 | 4% |
| Blacksmith Village | 10 of 50 | 20% |
| Marsh | 10 of 50 | 20% |
| Scale-Bearing Merchant | 12 of 50 | 24% |
| Township | 22 of 50 | 44% |
| Ruins | 43 of 50 | 86% |
| Fort | 44 of 50 | 88% |
| Great Church | 46 of 50 | 92% |
| Main Encampment | 47 of 50 | 94% |
| Church | 50 of 50 | 100% |
| Sorcerer's Rise | 50 of 50 | 100% |
What identification actually takes on Rotted Woods
The table above is the dataset. This one is what players did with it. Across 22,130 identifications on this map, a search used 1.15 landmarks on average, selected the Nightlord 78.2% of the time and marked a landing point 53.6% of the time. 21.4% resolved without marking a single building.
The gap between the two columns is the useful part. The most marked landmark is rarely the one carrying the search, because a landmark that appears in almost every record cannot separate them by presence alone.
| Landmark | Times marked | Decided the search |
|---|---|---|
| Marsh | 1,063 | 99.8% |
| Township | 670 | 92.4% |
| Main Encampment | 4,938 | 87.5% |
| Ruins | 3,380 | 86.4% |
| Great Church | 3,754 | 85.8% |
| Blacksmith Village | 1,188 | 84% |
| Fort | 3,873 | 76.4% |
| Sorcerer's Rise | 1,332 | 70.8% |
| Church | 5,137 | 51% |
These come from the site’s own logs: every identification between 1 May 2026 and 30 July 2026, 400,702 of them across all maps. A landmark counts if it was still marked when the seed resolved, so a mark that was placed and then changed does not appear. Decisive means removing that one mark would have left more than one candidate standing, which is why several marks in the same search can each be decisive.
Running the Rotted Woods
This is the one Shifting Earth that punishes you for leaving it unfinished. Inside the woods you take Scarlet Rot the whole time you are there, and completing the event is the only thing that stops it. Leave it undone and you pay for it on Night 2, because that fight always happens inside the rot: you take it on while the rot is still ticking. Winning moves you to the Nightlord arena, where it finally stops, so the whole cost lands in that one fight. This is not a Deep of Night problem. It works the same way in a casual run.
The reward for finishing is the densest cluster of major bosses on any map. Clearing it is one of the more reliable routes to a Legendary, sometimes two in a single run, which is what keeps it valuable despite the risk.
One complication comes up repeatedly. The smaller enemies here attack at range and will interrupt boss fights rather than waiting their turn.
One rule holds across every Shifting Earth: the bosses are static. Same bosses, same places, same rewards, every run. Plain Limveld does not work like that, so this is the part of a map you can plan before you land.
The six field bosses and what the Favor does
There is nothing waiting at the end of this one. What it has instead is six Tier-2 field bosses in fixed positions, worth 30,000 to 45,000 runes each and none of them required to reach the secret: Ancestor Spirit, Bell Bearing Hunter, Black Blade Kindred, Erdtree Avatar, Royal Carian Knight and Ulcerated Tree Spirit. A Lordsworn Captain sits in the Rotted Fort beside the tower holding the map, at 3,600 runes, which makes the weakest thing on the map a neighbour of the most useful.
The Favor does three things: it nullifies Scarlet Rot, it raises max HP, and it returns part of your health when you attack after taking damage. Only the first of those is about Rot, and the other two are why the buff keeps earning its place in fights where Scarlet Rot never comes up.
That is the case the community makes for rating this Shifting Earth highest, and the arguments stack: the reward is trivial to reach, the boss density beats every other map, and the buff travels. Six Evergaols survive as well, one short of plain Limveld, and no other Shifting Earth leaves more standing.
Opening all six costs six Stonesword Keys. Fewer than half these records carry a Township, and its merchant is the only guaranteed key seller in the game, one to each player. On the rest, the keys have to be found on the map.
Nightlord distribution
- Adel5
- Balancers5
- Caligo5
- Fulghor5
- Gladius5
- Gnoster5
- Greg5
- Heolstor5
- Libra5
- Maris5
Dataset counts describe the records available to this tool, not universal in-game odds. Read the data methodology and limitations before treating a small sample as a probability estimate.
