Seed 1102: Mountaintop, Balancers

Record details

Special event

Extra Boss — Day 1Tip: If you are waiting for an Eventual Greatness from the Scale Bearing Merchant, you will only get your powers once both night bosses are defeated.

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.

Extra Boss — 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.

Once the first Night Boss is dead and the rewards are collected, a second one spawns, with HP, FP and flasks refilled before it starts. The tell is an absence: if no Site of Grace and no path to the Spirit Shelter has appeared after the first fight, another one is coming. Which boss and which day are both recorded for this seed, and they are named in the boss list further 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 1102: 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.

• Leonine Misbegotten

  Basement

  A greatsword swung with more strength than technique, fast and heavy, but the bigger attacks leave openings wide enough that patience beats trading. Watch the stomp, which rolls straight into a spin and a half with the blade out. Slash and fire both work.

• Tree Sentinel

  Rooftop

  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.

Field bosses (6)

• 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.

• 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.

• Ancestor Spirit

  Field boss

  A spectral deer. The antler sweep covers a wide arc to either side, so the space beside it is the dangerous place to stand, but the windup is slow enough to read.

• Royal Revenant

  Field boss

  Cast a healing incantation near it and the cast itself damages and stuns it. Part human, part spider, which is what makes its movements hard to read, but the flurries leave clear gaps, slash cuts through it, and holy does not.

• 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.

• Bell Bearing Hunter

  Field boss

  Pierce roughly doubles on it and lightning lands well, while standard, slash and strike are all resisted. It is aggressive at close and mid range but the attacks are slow, and it can be parried, though a stance break costs two parries rather than one.