Seed 1159: Normal, Greg

Record details

Special event

Gladius Raid — Day 1Successive 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

7 to open every EvergaolThis map holds 7 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.

Gladius Raid — 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.

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 1159: 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.

• 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.

• 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 (10)

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Grafted Scion

  Field boss

  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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.