Growth
| Growth | |
|---|---|
 | |
| A bubbling black mound in a tar pit that only moves when it spits at you. | |
| Biome | Plains |
| Alignment | Aggressive |
| Faction | Undead |
| Health | 100 |
| Damage | |
| Weak To | Blunt, Fire |
| Resistant To | Slash, Pierce, Frost |
| Immune To | Poison |
| Stagger | - |
| Tameable | No |
| Trophy | Growth trophy |
| Spawn ID | spawn BlobTar
|
A Tar Pit looks like plain terrain right up until part of it sits up. The Growth is a rooted lump of tar and rot, almost invisible against the black pools it lives in, and it stands between you and every scrap of tar the Plains has to offer. The only good news is that it cannot chase you.
Behaviour
A Growth never moves. It sits anchored in its pit, mottled the same black as the sludge around it, and the first sign of one is usually the volley rather than the creature. It launches six arcing orbs at anything within roughly fifteen metres, landing for 45 blunt and 50 poison and leaving you both poisoned and tarred. Tarred slows you to a crawl at exactly the moment you most want to leave. The volley comes round again about every eight seconds, and a single pit holds up to nine Growths, so their volleys overlap into something closer to artillery than a duel. It has no melee worth the name and cannot follow you, flee or call for help, but it never loses interest either, so anything that stays in range keeps getting shelled. The tarred status is what actually kills you here, because a slowed player in an open Plains tar pit is a slowed player in Deathsquito country.
Where to Find It
Growths spawn in exactly one place: the tar pits of the Plains, the open black pools ringed by dead ground that also hold the Tar you came for. A single pit supports up to nine spawn points, and two of them refill every hour whether or not you have drained the pool, so a pit you cleared last week will have a fresh garrison by the time you return. They never appear on ordinary Plains grassland, in Fuling Villages or anywhere else, and never outside the biome. The one other way to meet a Growth is on purpose, since a thrown tar bomb spawns one where it lands. They have no starred variants, so every one you face has 100 health. No boss kill gates them either, so the tar pit is open to you the moment you can survive the walk across the Plains.
| Where and When | At Once | How Often | Stars |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 9 spawn points in Tar pits | - | 2 respawn every hour, even when the pit is drained | No |
| When a Blob bomb Tar is used | - | - | No |
Strengths and Weaknesses
Blunt and fire are the answer, and everything else is wasted durability: slash and pierce weapons both deal only half, and frost is no better. An Iron Sledge is close to ideal, because its area slam hits several packed into the same pool at once. Fire Arrows let you kill one from beyond its fifteen metre trigger range, which is comfortably the safest method. Do not plan on blocking, because you cannot parry a six-orb volley and the poison arrives regardless. Break line of sight behind the lip of the pit, or stay out of range and pull them one at a time. A Poison Resistance Mead removes most of the danger and turns clearing a full pit into a two minute chore rather than a crisis. You can also let the neighbours do the work: a Lox herded across a pit will flatten several with its stomps while you stand well clear. Whatever you bring, never fight one while tarred and out in the open, because the slow is what gets you caught by everything else the Plains has noticed.
- It takes extra damage from Blunt and Fire.
- It shrugs off Slash, Pierce and Frost.
- It ignores Poison.
Drops
Tar is the whole reason to drain a pit, since the dark wood building set runs on it, and the trophy drops about one kill in ten.
| Item | Image | Base | 1 Star | 2 Star |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Growth trophy | 
|
10% | - | - |
| Tar | 
|
1 | - | - |
Notes
- Growths in the tar can be hard to spot from a distance, and three or more may loosely surround you, dealing high damage.
- They are hostile to other Plains creatures, so luring them into Deathsquitos, Fulings or Lox works for killing or distracting them. Lox usually make quick work of them with their powerful AOE attacks.
- Killing them inside the tar pit can leave their loot stuck.
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