Seed 112: Rotted Woods, Gnoster

Record details

Special event

Sorcerers RiseA Sorcerer's Rise with extra puzzles and better reward.

Churches

3/

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.

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.

Sorcerers Rise

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.

This is the rarest event in the dataset. Mechanically it is a sorcerer's tower like any other with one difference: three puzzles instead of one, and solving all three releases a buff better than a normal tower's. The extra puzzles are the whole of the difference, so if you have cleared a normal Rise you already know how to approach this one.

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 112: 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.

• Red Wolf

  Basement

  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.

• Black Blade Kindred

  Rooftop

  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.

Field bosses (13)

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Ancient Hero of Zamor

  Field boss

  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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.