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The bestiary of Embermere

There are forty-four creatures in Lark, from the level-2 giant rat in the fields outside Goldhaven to the level-130 Void Titan waiting five floors down a rift on the frontier. This page covers what makes each one dangerous, why it drops what it drops, and roughly what you ought to be picking fights with at your level. Your in-game Bestiary tab fills in as you hunt — a name at one kill, stats at ten, loot at fifty, a Mastered star at a hundred.

Danger tiers, and what the glow means

Creatures are sorted into danger tiers, and a tier is a promise about how the fight will feel rather than just a level check. Hover anything before you commit and the game tells you its name and level.

• Starter — Giant rat (2), Cow (3), Goblin (4), Shore crab (6). A cow will headbutt you back if you swing at one, but nothing here hunts you down.
• Wilderness — Giant frog (7), Wolf (10), Scorpion (12), Jungle snake (12). Your first pack animal and your first venom.
• Dangerous — Zombie (16), Siren (17), Giant forest spider (18), Bandit (20), Brown bear (22), Bog witch (26), Mummy (28). The band where carrying food stops being optional.
• Elite — Harpy (31), Frost troll (34), Magma hound (36), Ogre (38), Necromancer (42), Yeti (44), Stone golem (46), Lava imp (47).
• Frontier elites — Mountain troll (52), Ice wraith (55), Magma salamander (57), Black knight (62). High Defence gates these behind real Attack levels; high damage gates them behind real armour.
• Apex — Frost giant (72), Greater demon (82), Ash dragon (96), and the titans above them.

From the dangerous band upward, a creature carries a coloured aura you can read across the screen: amber, then orange, then violet, then red as the tiers climb. Signature elites override the ramp with their own hue — a frost troll glows ice-blue, a magma hound ember-orange, a mountain troll a dull stone-green — so a frontier screen is legible before anything has noticed you.

Kind decides what drops

A creature's kind — beast, humanoid, undead, elemental, aquatic or boss — picks its default drop table, and its danger tier scales what's in it. That is the whole rule, and it means you can farm deliberately.

Bones climb with danger: ordinary bones through the dangerous band, big bones from the elites, dragon bones from the apex. So do the herbs — wild bristlewort from the weakest things, wild marshbloom in the middle, wild sunpetal from anything elite or better. Beasts never drop coins at all. Elementals are the opposite: coins plus fire runes about 60% of the time, which makes lava imps and magma hounds the realm's best casual rune faucet. Humanoids are the likeliest to shed gear — undead and elementals carry a small flat chance too, but the humanoid rate is the only one that scales with tier.

Plenty of creatures override the default with a hand-written table. Wolves give wolf pelts, scorpions their stingers, jungle snakes their skin, bears their hide, spiders silk; yetis drop yeti fur, mountain trolls a cracked tusk, frost giants a heart that never thaws. That is the trophy economy — pure sell value, and every trader buys it.

On top of the staples, most kinds get one gated roll on a rare table banded by danger. The heartland table pays leather gloves, fire runes and uncut sapphires; the frontier table pays Solarite scimitars and boots, death and nature runes, uncut diamonds, the occasional uncut starstone or fire cape. Distance matters here too, for anything on a default kind table: killing it further out from Goldhaven multiplies its coins by up to 2.4× and its rare roll by up to 1.8×. Creatures with a hand-written table — wolves, scorpions, snakes, bears, spiders, yetis, mountain trolls, frost giants, the Ash dragon and every boss — roll theirs at face value, though the ring still bumps the tier of any gear they shed.

Aggression, line of sight, and getting home alive

Every hostile creature has an aggression radius measured in tiles, and it needs clear line of sight to use it. Rats and shore crabs only notice you at 3, which is why the fields outside the capital forgive wandering. A goblin pulls at 4, a wolf or bandit at 5, a Black knight, greater demon or Ash dragon at 6, a world boss at 7 — and the Void Titan at 8, the widest in the game.

Three things keep you alive on the road. Rock, walls and trees break line of sight, so you can often walk past something you can plainly see. Only two engaged enemies press the attack at once — the rest hold a loose ring two or three tiles out and swap in when a presser dies, so a five-goblin camp is a manageable queue of two-at-a-time instead of five swinging at once. And you are faster than everything in Embermere: you walk at 165 pixels a second against a wolf's 130 and a stone golem's 60. You can always leave.

The exception is a charge. Zombies, ogres, bears, yetis and mountain trolls close a three-to-five tile gap with a sudden lunge and wind up on landing, so backing off to plink at a bruiser doesn't work. Wolves have the other nasty habit: pull one and every wolf within six tiles comes along.

Goldhaven and Stonewatch each have a six-tile safe core where nothing initiates and anything chasing you gives up on the spot. Elsewhere an engaged enemy leashes home once it is about its aggro radius plus six tiles from where it spawned — but only after eight seconds without being struck, so you cannot kite something past its spawn to rubber-band it back to full health. Wounded ordinary beasts do the opposite: below a fifth of their health they break off and bolt for home, healing only once they arrive.

Everything has one trick

The roster exists so that no two fights are the same button. A shore crab raises its shell into an 80% damage-reduction stance you break with a special attack — the first fight in the game that asks you to do something. A mummy's landed hit wraps you in place for a second and a half, and hitting it back tears you free. A stone golem telegraphs a haymaker with a growing ring on the ground that lands triple damage unless you step out of melee. A Black knight periodically raises a parry: swing into it and eat double thorns, or simply wait it out.

Status effects layer on top. Scorpions, jungle snakes and spiders inflict venom — one damage every three seconds for twelve. Frost trolls, ice wraiths, frost giants and the Ice Wyrm chill you, cutting your walk speed for three seconds. Magma hounds and salamanders burn.

Most important of all, some creatures fight at range or with magic, and the combat triangle is real: melee beats ranged, ranged beats magic, magic beats melee. Goblins, bandits and harpies are slingers, knife-throwers and raptors — close on them. Sirens, bog witches, lava imps, necromancers, ice wraiths, greater demons and Ash dragons cast, which makes heavy metal armour exactly the wrong answer and Protect from Magic the right one. Once you have ten kills on a species your Bestiary spells its weakness out for you.

Shimmering rares

Now and then an ordinary creature spawns as a superior variant: drawn noticeably larger, ringed in a bright golden shimmer, and named. The chance climbs with distance from the capital — roughly 2.3% in the heartland to about 5.5% on the frontier, hard-capped at 6%. Cows and Treasure Sprites carry a no-rare flag, and bosses are never promoted either — everything else in the table is fair game.

A rare rolls one of four affixes that changes how the fight goes, and takes a name to match. Swift attacks about 43% faster. Vampiric drinks half its maximum hit back every time it lands one. Stoneskin carries a heavy Defence bump and is a genuine slog to crack. Unstable detonates a telegraphed nova when it dies. The name is the affix plus a kind-adjective plus the species, so you meet things like a Swift Feral Wolf, a Stoneskin Champion Bandit or a Vampiric Putrid Mummy — Feral for beasts, Champion for humanoids, Putrid for undead, Volatile for elementals, Abyssal for aquatics, and Apex for anything at the top tier.

They are worth the trouble. A rare hits for 1.4× its usual maximum but pays a guaranteed extra roll on its rare table plus a coin-flip on a gear drop one difficulty ring above where it actually died. Being on a Huntmaster contract for that species raises your rare odds by another 50%, and mastering a species at a hundred kills adds a standing edge — the stacked bonus is capped at ×2.5 no matter how many sources are live.

Dungeon bosses

Walk into any cave, mine, crypt, sewer or ruin and the deepest floor holds a named terminal boss: The Cave Tyrant, The Den Alpha, The Broodmother, The Cinder Maw, The Rotmother, The Tomb Warden, The Arcane Horror, The Sewer Brute, The Crypt Lord, The Iron Captain, The Temple Guardian, The Bandit Warlord. Each is the apex of that dungeon's own roster with roughly 3.5× its species' health — more the deeper the dungeon runs — a 2.4× maximum hit and extra Defence. They are never benched by the two-attacker cap either, so a boss with friends is a real problem.

Every cave family pays its own signature trophy. Gnasher's Fang comes out of a plain grotto, the Denmother's Fang from a beast den, the Brigand's Hook from a bandit hideout, the Coralbite Kris from the Smuggler's Cove, Cinderbrand from a lava tube, the Deepdelver's Pick from an abandoned mine, the Warden's Maul from a broken stronghold, the Oracle's Beads from a ruined temple, the Watcher's Lens from a sunken tower. The base chance is 5%, rising a point for every unbroken floor of a descent up to five — a 10% ceiling — which is precisely what makes clearing a hole all the way to the bottom worth doing twice.

Some dungeon bosses carry a signature borrowed from their species. A zombie or mummy boss calls two more of its kind at half health. A bandit boss dashes across a gap to reach you. A lava imp boss doubles its attack speed below a quarter health. A necromancer or bog witch boss drains 20 adrenaline with every landed blow, so you can never quite bank a special against one.

The titans at the edge of the map

Seven world bosses live at the bottom of hand-placed landmark dungeons, sited out toward the deep frontier. They do not erupt in the open world — you find the entrance, marked by a red diamond on your map, and descend five floors. You get a warning as you approach, and the warning is honest: bring a matched Protection prayer, because food alone will not out-heal one.

• The Sand Pharaoh — the Scarab God (108), in the Desert Pyramid. Its slam sweeps a long bar down the row and column it stands in — roughly six tiles either way — so you dodge diagonally, never straight back. Drops the Scarab Aegis; the first clear guarantees Pharaoh's Khopesh.
• The Forgemaster — the Magma Colossus (110), in the Volcanic Forge. Every stomp leaves a burning three-by-three pool behind it. Drops the Molten Greataxe; guarantees the Forgeheart Plate.
• The Frost Monarch — the Ancient Ice Wyrm (112), in the Glacial Cavern. It opens casting and swaps into melee. Drops the Frostfang Blade and the Wyrmsteel Halberd; guarantees the Aurora Mantle.
• The Plague Mother — the Plague Hydra (94), in the Sunken Crypt. Knits 8% of its health back each time it drops into a new phase, so bring damage rather than patience. Drops the Hydra Scale Body; guarantees the Bogreaper Scythe.
• The Jade Wrath (100), in the Jungle Ziggurat — calls spiders as it phases, and its venom stacks with theirs. Drops the Jade Idol.
• The Drowned Leviathan — the Tidal Leviathan (106), in the Tide-Sunken Temple. Calls the deep for reinforcements. Guarantees the Tide Trident.
• The Void Titan (130), in the Void Rift — 1,100 health and a delayed outer ring after its third-phase stomp: dodge out, then step straight back into the eye. Drops the Void Cleaver; guarantees the Eye of the Void.

They share a shape. Three health phases, a telegraphed ground slam every 4.2 seconds — 2.8 in the final phase — and a footprint decal painted on the floor that renders even with reduced motion on, because it is information rather than decoration. The slam is the ground buckling, not a blow, so no Protection prayer stops it; you move or you wear it. Each titan pays between 500 and 2,000 coins, two or three dragon bones — three or four from the Void Titan — and a rare-table roll at 95-100%. Any of them can also drop the Titanling pet at roughly one kill in four hundred.

Every landmark archetype has a second, echo site somewhere else in the world with its own name, its own differently-named capstone and its own lesser trophy at 40% on a first clear — so the Desert Pyramid has a Forgotten Barrow, the Void Rift a Hollow Between. Outside that set, Gortak the Warlord (75) holds a farmable lair by the volcano in the far south-east: a guaranteed gear drop every kill and a real shot at Gortak's cleaver. And the campaign climaxes against Gortak the Ember-Crowned in The Ember Crown, a fight deliberately tuned to be lethal without Protect from Melee and winnable with it.

What should I be fighting?

Lark's own balance workbench runs tier-matched kit against tier-matched enemies, and the bands it uses are the most honest answer anyone can give you:

• Bronze, around level 14 — goblins, shore crabs, giant frogs, wolves, scorpions.
• Steel, around level 25 — zombies, bandits, brown bears, giant forest spiders, sirens, bog witches.
• Verdite, around level 45 — frost trolls, magma hounds, yetis, lava imps.
• Solarite, around level 58 — mountain trolls, ice wraiths, magma salamanders, Black knights.

A tier-matched fight is meant to be won 75-98% of the time and cost under 70% of your health. If something is costing you more than that, you are either under-geared or fighting into the wrong side of the triangle — a steel-clad melee player takes about two and a half times as much damage from a bog witch as the same player with Protect from Magic raised — a matched ward negates 60% of the blow.

Huntmaster contracts are a good spine for the middle game, because the task pool is itself a level ladder: rats from combat level 1 and goblins from 3, wolves at 8 and scorpions at 10, bandits at 14, zombies at 18, jungle snakes at 20, sirens at 22, spiders at 24, bears at 28, yetis at 34, lava imps at 38, magma hounds at 46 and mountain trolls at 52. Being on task also carries the 50% rare bonus, so it is rarely wasted time. See the combat guide for the maths behind hits and prayers, and equipment for what to wear into each band.

Common questions

Read next

• Getting startedYour first hour: waking in the cottage, the controls, and what to do first.
• SkillsAll 17 skills, what each is for, and how to train it to 99.
• CombatHow a fight resolves, the triangle, prayers, food and dying.
• QuestsHow questing works, Quest Points, and the main story spine.
• EquipmentThe seven-tier gear ladder, unique effects, rolled loot and rarity.
• The worldEmbermere end to end: biomes, towns, caves and the frontier.