Seed 109: Crater, Gnoster

Record details

Special event

Frenzy TowerGrant 2 Dormant Powers. One of them madness related.

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.

Old Gaol

Present in this seedAn optional encounter rather than a scheduled event, and from outside it looks like any other Evergaol. Without the seed, a squad spends a Stonesword Key to find out what is sealed inside, and keys are the part of an Evergaol route that runs short. The flag on this record is the difference between spending one blind and choosing to. The boss behind it comes from outside the normal Evergaol set and is harder than the standard ones, and clearing it pays a golden Dormant Power worth 30,000 Runes of the Strong, against the 10,000 or 20,000 a normal Evergaol returns. Three bosses pay that much and grant the achievement: Ancient Dragon, Godskin Duo and Death Rite Bird. Of the three, Death Rite Bird is usually the most manageable, especially with a holy weapon.

Frenzy Tower

This is one of the three events that are already in the map when you drop rather than triggering partway through the run, so you can fold it into the route instead of reacting to it.

A Frenzied Flame Tower on the map has been augmented. Looking directly at it builds Madness, so at range you break line of sight behind terrain, because solid terrain interrupts the eye.

The objective is every worshipper, the ones on top and the ones on the ground. Missing the group on the ground is the usual reason the event looks like it refuses to complete.

Two rewards drop, a purple and a blue. The purple slot always holds Vyke's War Spear and the Frenzied Flame Seal. Madness is a status rather than an element and almost no weapon rolls it, but both of those guaranteed drops carry heavy Fire damage. The fire earns the detour more often than the Madness does.

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 109: 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 Trolls

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.

Trolls are the version that ruins runs. They carry by far the largest health pools of the three and, oddly, hand back the fewest runes. The bigger problem is their size and their reach: they throw giant pots at range, so even a route that only passes near the castle on the way to something else can get someone sniped.

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.

• Grafted Scion

  Basement

  Fast swordwork from one or two blades at once, coming from angles that change each time, with sudden area attacks mixed in. The pause at the end of a combo is your window.

• Royal Carian Knight

  Rooftop

  Breaking its stance or parrying it only stuns it for a moment, with no critical at the end, which makes it unusual. Armored knight and armored horse together, glintstone sorcery mixed into the melee, and lightning is the damage type that passes through cleanly.

Field bosses (5)

• Tree Sentinel

  Field boss

  Heavily armored and mounted, with a halberd that reaches further than you want it to, and a horse that hits you as well. It takes full damage from lightning and shrugs off fire and holy.

• Black Knife Assassin

  Field boss

  The feint is what gets people: she leaps in with a counterclockwise slash that is not real, then follows with the clockwise one that is. Most physical damage lands, pierce least of all. Let her come to you rather than chasing.

• 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.

• Erdtree Avatar

  Field boss

  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.