Bosses, threats, and skills

The choices

• Boss: a standard fight at your level.
• Elite: your level, with more health and an extra skill; adds a boon to the drop.
• Challenger: eight levels above you; adds a boon and offers richer experience.
• Guardian: closes a realm and guards that realm's family heirlooms.

In a full run, every third fight is a guardian. This follows realm progress, rather than a midnight calendar reset. The final guardian closes the dungeon. Cards show the encounter's actual level and rewards.

What a creature name tells you

Every creature has a fixed skill order. The first skill appears early; standard enemies have two from level 41 and three from level 81. Elites and guardians add one, up to the cap of three. The bestiary lists the actual order and conditions for each creature.

The catalog's challenge rating selects creature pools. It is not the level of a Raid encounter, and it does not give the enemy a fixed amount of HP. Each realm also draws supplemental creatures when its native pool is too small for a tier.

How skills scale

Skill intensity starts at half strength at level 1 and reaches full strength at level 100. Above 100 it can continue toward double strength. Skill ward softens penalties. The catalog descriptions show full-strength values before defenses. Brittle and Warded name specific key conditions on each creature's page.

Thorned is retired and is not an active skill. There are ten active kinds in the current source.

Health reference

These tables evaluate the game's health formula for representative encounter levels. They compare threats at the same enemy level; a challenger offered to your hero is eight levels higher. Prologue enemies use a separate, shorter health calculation. Your hero's damage and gear determine how quickly this health falls.