Seed 106: Crater, Gnoster

Record details

Special event

Augur Raid — Day 1Grant the effect: Using flask also restores FP.

Churches

4/

Township

Present in this seedA small settlement built around a merchant. He looks like the ones scattered across the map, but his stock is deeper. He sells a Stonesword Key to each player, so a squad that stops here leaves with one apiece. Nowhere else in the game is a key certain, and squads running Evergaols route through a Township for that reason alone. He is also the only merchant who sells talismans, and the only one who sells a +2 smithing stone, which is as far as an ordinary smithing table can take a weapon. Buying it can save the squad a run through a Tunnel, the mine that otherwise guarantees that stone. Bring runes.

Stonesword Keys

4 to open every EvergaolThis map holds 4 Evergaols, and opening one is the only thing a Stonesword Key does in the game. What is sealed behind each one stays hidden until the key goes in, which is the part the seed settles ahead of time. The Township in this seed sells a key to each player, the only guaranteed source in the game, and the rest have to be found on the map.

Augur Raid — Day 1

The day is fixed by the seed and it is written above. The minute is not: the same seed can fire the same event at different times, so treat this as something to be ready for rather than something to set a clock against.

Giant blue spheres spawn across the map, and touching one teleports that player into the fight against Augur. Winning it means flasks restore Focus Points as well as health for the rest of the run. The orbs do not ask first, though, which is the hazard worth routing around: a player crossing the map on the way to something else can be pulled into the fight whether or not the squad was ready for it.

Only one event can happen per expedition, and which ones are possible depends on the Nightlord. So this is the event for this run, with nothing else queued behind it.

Bosses in this seed

The castle, the night bosses and the bosses placed around the map are fixed for seed 106: open it again and the same bosses are waiting in the same places. A field boss marker points at the ground it holds rather than the exact step it stands on, so expect to find it moving around nearby. Knowing which ones you are walking into decides what damage type to build and which detours are worth the time.

Castle, held by Crucible Knights

This is the Limveld Castle, the fixed structure near the centre of the map, and the pattern behind it never changes: a guard faction, one chest, one boss in the basement and one boss on the rooftop. What the seed decides is which of the three factions is holding it and which bosses are inside. Noklateo is the one Shifting Earth that removes it. The Great Hollow has castles of its own, but they are built to a different plan and hold a different spread of enemies, so nothing described here applies to them.

Crucible Knights are the draw most squads hope for. They hit harder and take more punishment than Banished Knights, but the runes and the rarity of what they drop make clearing this castle one of the best trades of time for value in the game. They are also a long-standing Elden Ring enemy, so players who know the base game tend to get through them without much trouble.

The chest holds a talisman, and the path to it does not open until the basement boss is dead. That there is a talisman in it is fixed. Which talisman is not: it is rolled when the chest opens, so the same seed can hand you any talisman in the game, which is why nothing on this page names it. It pays out as a Dormant Power, so in a trio all three players get one.

Neither castle boss is unique to the castle. Both are stronger versions of bosses that also appear as field bosses, with more health, more damage and bigger rewards. Killing the basement one opens the path to the chest, and with it a shortcut that lets you cross the castle from the inside. The rooftop one is the reason to make the climb: every boss carries a small chance of dropping a legendary, and this one carries a higher chance than normal. It is a chance and not a guarantee. The only guaranteed legendary comes from the Crater event, which converts an item you are already carrying rather than leaving it to a drop.

• Ancient Hero of Zamor

  Basement

  Around 60% health it drops to its knees and channels frost into the sword, and from then on its strikes build frostbite. Before that it is a fast swordfighter with repeating windups, so the speed is the problem rather than the reading. Fire and lightning both work well.

• Erdtree Avatar

  Rooftop

  It deals Holy damage and resists Holy, so a holy loadout is the wrong answer twice over; fire does roughly double. A headless stump with a huge staff, slow and easy to read, but the leaping body slam sends out a shockwave when it lands.

Field bosses (5)

• Ulcerated Tree Spirit

  Field boss

  The whole fight is learning which of its movements actually have a hitbox. It flops and twists constantly and most of that is harmless, which makes the real attacks easy to miss.

• Night's Cavalry

  Field boss

  Getting it off the horse is most of the fight; on foot it loses the charge and the repositioning. It still swings wide, and the hilt slam puts out a shockwave that knocks back everyone inside the circle.

• Magma Wyrm

  Field boss

  Fire is close to useless here, which catches people out on a boss that spits lava. Physical damage works instead, and the head takes extra. Molten breath and the scalesword cover a lot of ground between them, and a confined arena makes that worse.

• Draconic Tree Sentinel

  Field boss

  A golden-armored knight on horseback with lightning and fireballs at every range. The raised shield means a single-target bolt; the hammer planted behind him means a wide wave. Poison and Scarlet Rot work unusually well.

• Miranda Blossom

  Field boss

  It does not move, which makes it easy to leave alone. When the petals close it is about to release pollen across a wide radius that builds poison fast, so back out and come back once it clears.