Rancid remains
| Rancid remains | |
|---|---|
 | |
| A skeleton with a poisoned mace, waiting in the dark of a burial chamber. | |
| Biome | Black Forest |
| Alignment | Aggressive |
| Faction | Undead |
| Health | 100 |
| Damage | |
| Weak To | Blunt, Fire |
| Resistant To | Pierce, Frost |
| Immune To | Poison |
| Stagger | 50% |
| Tameable | No |
| Trophy | Rancid Remains trophy |
| Spawn ID | spawn Skeleton_Poison
|
Down in the Burial Chambers of the Black Forest, among the ordinary rattling skeletons, stands a taller and far more rotten kind dragging a mace that drips something green. Rancid remains hit harder than anything else in the room and deal poison on contact. This is how a great many early players find out that poison in Valheim is damage over time you cannot simply walk away from. Two of them in a corridor at bronze tier is a genuine emergency.
Behaviour
Rancid remains stand motionless in the dark of a chamber until something catches their attention. Then they close in with a shambling, heavy-footed advance that is slower than a skeleton's but far more committed. They have a single attack and use it constantly: a sideways mace swing through a short arc a couple of metres wide. It lands blunt and poison damage together and is ready again roughly every three seconds. The poison is the half that matters. The impact alone is survivable, but the poison keeps ticking long after you have backed out of reach and started worrying about the next one. They stand their ground, fight without calling for help and only attack in melee, but Burial Chambers rarely put them alone: they stand among ordinary skeletons, and pulling one tends to pull the whole room. In the narrow corridors of a chamber their swing covers most of the width, so you cannot slip past.
Where to Find It
Rancid remains belong to the Black Forest, and only to its Burial Chambers. They hold rare fixed spawn points inside them instead of roaming the surface, so you will only meet one underground, away from the greydwarves. That makes them uncommon in ordinary play, and a full run through a chamber will often turn up one or none. Two events change that completely. Skeleton surprise, which can happen once Bonemass is dead, brings them to your base in one-star form. She's hot on your tail, which follows returning Hildir's brass chest, does much the same with starred variants in the mix. Outside those events they spawn without stars, and the one standing in a chamber is always the plain version.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Blunt and fire both deal half again as much damage to them, and the cheapest answer in the Black Forest is already in your off hand. A torch delivers both at once, lights the chamber while it works and staggers them nicely, while a club or a Stagbreaker does the heavy lifting. Arrows are a poor investment, and so is any frost weapon. Parrying is exactly the right habit against them, because the mace swing is slow, obvious and comes one at a time. One clean parry opens up a mob that only has a hundred health to begin with, and a wooden or bronze buckler is plenty. What actually kills people is the poison, not the mace: it keeps stacking while they turn to face the next skeleton. So carry poison resistance mead into every chamber, and drink it before you open the door rather than after the first hit lands. Full bronze with a shield and a blunt weapon makes these comfortable. In leather with a flint spear, they are the reason your first chamber run ends early and on foot.
Level Variants
A creature can spawn at one of three levels, shown as stars beside its name. Each level is rolled separately at spawn, so a two-star is rarer than a one-star. The difference goes beyond the numbers: a starred rancid remains is recoloured or larger, so you can see it coming.
| Level | Stars | Image | Health | Damage | Drops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | - | 
|
100 | 100% | x1 |
| 2 | ⭐ | 
|
200 | 150% | x2 |
| 3 | ⭐⭐ | 
|
300 | 200% | x4 |
All Creature Categories
All Black Forest Creatures
All Categories
