Seed 1101: Mountaintop, Balancers

Record details

Special event

Gladius Raid — Day 2Successive attacks restore stamina and hasten stamina recovery for self and nearby allies.

Churches

3/

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.

Scale-Bearing Merchant

Present in this seedHe deals in offers rather than goods, and every one of them takes something back. What he puts up is drawn at random. Killing him is also an option: he drops a talisman, rolled the same way the castle chest rolls one, but he does not go down easily.

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.

Gladius Raid — Day 2

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.

Three red circles appear on the map and everyone starts losing health continuously. Each circle holds a one-headed sundered Gladius that has to die before the raid ends, and swarms of smaller Tricephalos enemies get in the way while the drain keeps running. Three separate objectives, with your own health as the clock counting them down, is what puts this raid in a different category from the rest.

The health drain runs on the whole party for as long as the raid is active, so this is the one raid that can end a run rather than slow it down.

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 1101: 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 Banished 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.

Banished Knights are the middle option. They are not much of a wall, and both the runes and the rarity of what they leave behind are modest. If the castle is on the route, this is the version that costs the least time and the least skill to clear.

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.

• Black Knife Assassin

  Basement

  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.

• 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 (6)

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Flying Dragon

  Field boss

  It does not lean on fire the way other dragons do, and every move has a clear cue. Pierce is what works, the head takes extra, and the bite is a feint: it turns its head one way, roars, then snaps from the other side.

• Elder Lion

  Field boss

  A chained beast with a sword fused into one arm. It is faster than something that size should be and its hits can break a guard, but the big swings leave room to answer.

• 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.