The Elder
| The Elder | |
|---|---|
 | |
| An ancient tree that stood up, and it is aiming at you. | |
| Biome | Black Forest |
| Alignment | Aggressive |
| Faction | Boss |
| Health | 2500 |
| Damage | |
| Weak To | Fire |
| Resistant To | - |
| Immune To | Poison, Spirit |
| Stagger | - |
| Tameable | No |
| Trophy | The Elder trophy |
| Spawn ID | spawn gd_king
|
The Elder is the second of the Forsaken: an enormous tree given arms, roots and a face. You summon it at a Forsaken altar in the Black Forest and fight it in the open ring of stones around the altar. It barely moves and it cannot follow you far, which makes it sound like a gentle step up from Eikthyr, right until the vines burst out of the ground beneath your feet. Killing it is the moment the game opens up, because the key it drops is the only way into the Sunken Crypts, and so the only way to iron.
Behaviour
It is rooted, slow and entirely patient. It turns to face you instead of chasing, and it will not pursue you far from its altar. At range, from about fifteen to fifty metres, it raises an arm and looses a volley of vine projectiles for 35 pierce per hit, on a six second cooldown. The volley spreads so wide that standing still means standing in front of all of it. Every twenty five seconds or so it summons: fifteen hostile roots erupt from the ground in a fifteen metre circle centred on you and stab at anything within reach, then wither away after about twenty seconds. Their real purpose is to pin you in place for the next volley. Up close it stomps for sixty blunt over a five metre radius on a five second cycle. The thousand points of chop and pickaxe damage riding on that stomp do nothing to a player, but they level trees, terrain and any hasty shelter instantly. Nothing you own can stagger it, it does not flee and it has no second phase: twenty five hundred health simply has to come off.
Where to Find It
The Elder does not spawn in the wild. Its altar is a ring of stone with an offering bowl, generated in the Black Forest. You find one by reading a vegvisir runestone inside a Burial Chamber or a ruined structure, which pins the altar on your map. Placing three Ancient Seeds in the bowl calls it. Seeds drop from Greydwarf Brutes and shamans and come from Burial Chamber chests, so the summon itself is a small quest. It never comes with stars, and there is only ever one of it. The surrounding forest does not pause for the boss: Greydwarves keep spawning, and a Troll wandering in halfway through is a real possibility, so it is worth clearing and fencing the approach before you place the seeds.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Fire is the entire plan. The Elder takes double damage from fire, so a Finewood Bow and a hundred or so Fire Arrows will kill it on their own, and a fire staff or a torch-lit weapon does the same work later. Leave the axe behind: chop and pickaxe damage are ignored completely, as are poison and spirit, and melee means standing inside stomp range for a fight that does not need it. When it winds up the vine volley, use the standing stones around the altar to break line of sight, then step out and shoot during the recovery. Keep circling so the summoned roots come up behind you rather than around you, and never plant yourself on a wooden platform, because the stomp erases it. Blocking is possible but pointless when nothing forces you into range. With bronze or early iron armour, a quiver of fire arrows and plenty of stamina food, this is a comfortable, slightly long fight rather than a dangerous one.
Drops
The Swamp Key is the whole point, and the trophy, hung on your Sacrificial Stones, pays out every time you fell a tree.
| Item | Image | Base | 1 Star | 2 Star |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Elder trophy | 
|
1 | - | - |
| Swamp key | 
|
1 per player | - | - |
Forsaken Power
Hang The Elder trophy on its stone at the Sacrificial Stones and the power is yours to call on:
- +30% health regeneration
- +60% chop damage
- +60% pickaxe damage
It is a logging and mining power. Five minutes of it clears a stand of birch or a copper deposit in half the swings.
It lasts five minutes, and every Forsaken power shares one twenty-minute cooldown, so only one is ever active. Anyone within ten metres of you gets it too.
Notes
- The altar gives a few hints about what summons him. It reads "Burn their young", which refers to Ancient Seeds, and the columns are topped by statues shaped much like Ancient Seeds.
- Because The Elder sits in the Black Forest, other enemies such as Trolls or Greydwarves may join the battle and make it much harder, especially at night.
- The Elder's stomp, with its thousand points of chop and pickaxe damage, can quickly gather resources such as Wood, Corewood, Stone and Copper Ore without any tools.
- The in-game trophies menu has another description of The Elder: "Even in death, it seems to grin with secret knowledge."
- In the game files, The Elder is also called "gd_king" and "theelder". The first most likely means "Greydwarf King".
- Warnings carved into a few of the runestones in the Black Forest call The Elder "the One Who Walks" once and "the Old One" twice.
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