13.15.2 Elite Threats

In your adventures, you will start to encounter denizens who are a larger threat than the more mundane of their kind. These denizens are known as 'elite threats', and they draw from a set of behaviours and actions to make hunting them more difficult and interesting.

Currently, elite threats will only spawn in these areas:
- Tcanna Island
- Torturer's Caverns
- Drakuum
- Bonro sands
 

Identifying Elite Threats
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Elite denizens are marked on INFO HERE with (elite) added to the end of their name. In addition, elites will often stand out from their mundane versions with unique titles or descriptive names about their powers. For example, you might encounter 'a paired gorilla exuding noxious fumes' or maybe even 'Squadbreaker Brulkrec, of the Twin Detonators'. For system builders, they are additionally notated under GMCP attributes with an uppercase 'E'.


Elite Powers
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Alongside increased health, damage, and resistance to critical hits, elite threats will spawn with any number of random powers that make them a truly unique challenge. This list contains an overview of current powers and their effects:

Adaptive
When the denizen takes a certain amount of damage from a specific damage type, its resistances will shift such that it will begin to take significantly less damage from that damage type.

Ambusher
The denizen will frequently leave the room and hide, ambushing anybody that chases it with a deadly attack - ensure your health isn't low before giving chase!

Arsonist
The denizen's attacks will often set you ablaze and periodically set the room on fire. Ensure you bring buckets of water before tackling this foe, or the fire might spread to cover the entire battlefield. It will also place down firewalls.

Berserker
The lower this denizen's health gets, the more damage it will do. It will also periodically enrage, making it attack faster than normal. However, during this enrage timer, the denizen will take a lot more damage, providing ample opportunity for a resilient adventurer.

Bloody
This denizen's attacks will do more damage the more you are bleeding. In addition, its attacks will frequently cause you to begin bleeding a lot.

Bruiser
This denizen's attacks will do bruising damage to your limbs at random. In addition, its attacks can sometimes score a critical hit against you, dealing a lot more damage. A critical hit from this denizen can never kill you, but you best be ready to recover quickly.

Clever
This denizen will always target the adventurer with the lowest health in the room.

Counterer
This denizen will occasionally enter a counterattacking stance. A few seconds later, it will unleash a deadly counterattack, dealing damage based on how much damage it took during the counterattack window. The denizen will take extra damage while in its counterattack stance, so a savvy adventurer could make use of that.

Counterspell
This denizen will punish anybody who attacks it with magic-sourced damage by returning a portion of the damage it takes back to the attacker. Attacking the denizen is still possible, but you have to mind your health while doing so.

Cultist
This denizen will summon minions to help it in battle and periodically sacrifice a minion to give itself a stacking damage buff and heal its health. It has a max limit on the amount of minions it can summon. The elite denizen is weaker overall than normal elites, but its minions and the buffs it gets from sacrificing them will make up for it.

Defender
This denizen will often enter a defensive stance, reducing all damage it takes by a significant amount. The only way to make it leave this stance is to force it to move - usually by having it chase after you!

Devastator
This denizen will often channel a deadly strike that will be enough to kill most people outright if not avoided in some manner.

Explosive
This denizen will periodically set bombs in its location that will go off after some time. It also has another nasty surprise for you.

Infernal
This denizen occasionally marks adventurers with a fiery brand that counts down to detonation. Upon reaching zero, the brand erupts, harming the branded and nearby allies. Individual explosions are manageable, but clustered detonations amplify the damage greatly. The branded should spread out to individual rooms as the timer nears its end to mitigate the threat.

Juggernaut
This denizen will occasionally set its sights on a direction, readying a powerful charge. Adventurers in its path, both in its current room and those along its charge route, will be dragged along, and suffer significant damage and stun with each room traversed. Ensure you're not in its way when it decides to bolt!

Necromancer
This denizen is a crafty foe and should anything die in its presence - adventurer or otherwise - it will raise a skeleton from the corpse to fight alongside it.

Resilient
This denizen is outright immune to critical hits instead of just resistant; however, its health is much lower as a result. Additionally, when its health hits zero, this denizen will instantly return to life at 10% health. There is only one way to kill it - AB HUNTING ELIMINATE.

Riposte
This denizen will punish anybody who attacks it with an agile-sourced damage by returning a portion of the damage it takes back to the attacker. Attacking the denizen is still possible, but you have to mind your health while doing so.

Soulbinder
This denizen possesses the power to intertwine souls. It will tether two adventurers together, inflicting continuous damage until they distance themselves sufficiently to break the effect. Simultaneously, it might bind its own soul to a chosen adventurer, diverting any healing they receive to itself until they're adequately separated. Ensure you maintain distance when bound until the tether breaks.

Summoner
This denizen will summon minions to help it in battle. Unlike the Cultist power, there is no limit on the number of minions a Summoner can have - and the two powers will complement each other in a deadly way should an elite spawn with both. Like the Cultist, the Summoner is weaker overall than normal elite denizens.

Stunner
For every 20% damage this elite denizen takes, it will unleash a deadly room-wide stun.

Thorns
This denizen will punish anybody who attacks it with brute-sourced damage by returning a portion of the damage it takes back to the attacker. Attacking the denizen is still possible, but you have to mind your health while doing so.

Toxic
This denizen will periodically release toxic gas into the surroundings.

Twins
This denizen spawns with a counterpart, with both doing half damage each and having their health pool split in half between them. This can be a particularly deadly encounter, as Twins will share all their other powers. When one of them dies, its twin will respawn it to low health a few seconds later. Be sure to take them both out simultaneously.


You can identify an elite threat's traits by using AB HUNTING SCRUTINY.


Rarity & Rewards
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Elite NPCs are a lot, lot rarer. Most will, on average, spawn once every 2-4 days. There will be exceptions to this rule, such as the Dramlai Siege story event or certain quests that will guarantee an elite spawn in the future.

For those elites that have drops, an elite NPC will always drop 1 item guaranteed. In addition, if five or more people helped to kill it, there would be a second guaranteed drop. These guaranteed drops are separate from its normal random drop checks, which will still run regardless. 

Drops are given randomly to those who helped kill the elite - it's not who got the killing blow.

Elite NPCs are also worth a decent amount of experience; dying to one shouldn't result in experience loss. In addition, helping to kill one will grant you the 'elite_triumph' defence that will boost your experience gain by 10% for 30 minutes.

Pieces for the following relics may drop from the elite threats in these areas:
Torturers Caverns:
- a stiff technique scroll (all classes)
- a sad vox iterator
- a skeletal minipet cage [a skeletal fish]
- a bony pelt (Werecroc)

Drakuum:
- a ghostly flair
- a haunting vox iterator
- a ghostly minipet cage [a wandering spirit pup]
- a dark pelt (Wereraven)

Tcanna Island:
- a monkeyish technique scroll (all classes)
- a seabreeze vox iterator
- an islander minipet cage [a little leopard cub]
- an islander pelt (Werewolf, Werebear, Werecroc, Wereraven)