Seed 1114: Rotted Woods, Balancers

Record details

Special event

Meteor Strike — Day 2An extra boss lands with a purple Dormant Power, or better.

Churches

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Stonesword Keys

6 to open every EvergaolThis map holds 6 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. There is no Township in this seed, so every key has 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.

Meteor Strike — 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.

A meteor lands and a Fallingstar Beast waits at the crater. A notification announces the impact and a red marker appears on the map, so there is no hunting involved.

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 1114: 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.

• Bell Bearing Hunter

  Basement

  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.

  The Bell Bearing Hunter is not a hard fight in the field or at night. The basement is what changes it. More health, more damage, and a sword that reaches across most of the room, in a space with no room to back off. At launch it was a running joke: players would see him down there and immediately back out.

• Magma Wyrm

  Rooftop

  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.

Field bosses (14)

• Royal Carian Knight

  Field boss

  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.

• Demi-Human Queen

  Field boss

  Her poise is low, so stance breaks come quickly. The opener is usually a staff slam into a sideways drag along the ground, and getting through both buys you a pause. Fire, poison and scarlet rot all work; madness does nothing.

• 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.

• 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.

• Red Wolf

  Field boss

  A giant wolf that casts. It alternates between closing for bites and throwing sorcery from across the arena, and the one to watch is the glintblade: it sidesteps, leaves a floating orb behind, and the orb fires at you a moment later, homing.

• Death Rite Bird

  Field boss

  Most of its attacks are slow enough to read, but it leaps and flies to reposition constantly, so a fair part of the fight is spent chasing it. Back off for the ghostflame.

• Leonine Misbegotten

  Field boss

  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.

• Golden Hippopotamus

  Field boss

  It pauses after each attack, and those pauses are where the fight is won. The jaws-open charge is the dangerous one: it grabs you and slams you repeatedly, and the lunging bite reaches further than the animation suggests. Fire and lightning both do double.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Black Blade Kindred

  Field boss

  Most of what it does is slow and well signposted. The exception is Fury of the Kindred, a five-hit combo with awkward gaps between the slashes; when the sword comes up to the left of its face, sprint out rather than roll.