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Beyond the brutals, Arsilthus is populated by ordinary monsters that fill its fields, caves, and ruins. They are the day-to-day opposition between boss encounters and the main source of the resources that fund a build.
What Monsters Drop
Standard monster rewards were changed after launch to give relic energy, the resource spent to equip skills onto a weapon. That made routine combat a dependable way to fund a build rather than something to be avoided on the way to the next objective. Relic energy also appears in the world as Ancient Memories.
Source | Reward |
|---|---|
Standard monsters | Relic energy |
World chests | Crafting materials |
Abandoned campsites | Currency |
Brutals | The boss's tragic tale, and its soul laid to rest |
Encounter Design
Monster placement is deliberately tuned rather than scattered. The launch build revised existing placements and added more encounters to improve the flow and density of field combat, and later patches added further spawn points. Because attacking costs no stamina, groups are handled by sustained pressure rather than by rationing swings, though stamina still has to be kept in reserve for dodges and blocks. The combat system page covers those rules.
Patch 14 went further than any earlier pass. It added more than twenty ambush groups in one update, and the placement rules it describes say a lot about how the developers think about field combat.
Area | What Patch 14 added |
|---|---|
Chapter 1 | Ambush groups around caves, main roads, dungeon entrances and rare chest locations, including the Eser Fragment Shrines and high-grade upgrade material caches |
Chapter 2 | Two groups on the spiral rock mountain at the Raider Encampment, with more varied enemy types than the surrounding area |
The swamp | Specific offering objects now spring an ambush when a player approaches them |
The pattern puts the fights where a player is most likely to be distracted: at a chest, at a dungeon door, or standing over something worth examining.
The next two patches pulled the other way. Patch 17 reduced high monster density in Chapter 1, which the developers said was causing unfairly difficult fights, while adding ambush monsters along its main roads. Patch 18 went further: it removed unfairly placed monsters and explosive barrels across the Chapter 1 and 2 fields, adjusted enemy spacing and density, and replaced most patrolling monsters with ambushes that trigger when a player reaches a location.
Area | What Patch 18 changed |
|---|---|
Chapter 2 Outcast Zone | Enemy compositions revised to reduce high density; location-triggered Outcast ambushes added |
Chapter 2 swamp | Patrolling Victims no longer overlap static Shamans and Victims; location-triggered Victim ambushes added |
Eltrin Dungeon (Chapter 2) | Ghoul density reduced, and Ghouls now spawn from location triggers rather than as large mobs |
Caves, mid-Chapter 1 to Chapter 2 | Encounters and enemy placement overhauled with more enemy variety; unfairly placed hazards and barrels removed |
Changes Since Launch
Monsters have been rebalanced several times. Attack damage was adjusted and combat balance improved for the launch build, monster animations were reworked, and basic monster animation timing in Chapter 1 was adjusted again in a later patch. Ambient monster audio that kept playing in the Silversilver Mine with no monsters present was fixed. Patch 11 resolved a more serious case in which repeated AI re-initialisation left enemies permanently invulnerable, and cleared an ice debuff whose visual effect stayed on a monster after the debuff itself expired. Patch 10 added new event presentations and monster adjustments for Nix, and Patch 14 rebalanced the skill sound volumes for both Nix and The Unreturned. Difficulty spikes reported by players were among the issues explicitly targeted. The Updates and Patches page records each change.
A catalogue of individual monster types with names and stats has not been published, so this page covers confirmed behaviour rather than a bestiary. Six classes of ordinary enemy are named. Looters appear in a wave before the Harlan encounter and lend their name to two of the brutals. Raiders surfaced in Patch 14, which fixed one of their models standing in a T-pose at The Hungry Fields in Chapter 1 and added ambush groups at a Raider Encampment in Chapter 2. Patch 18 named four more while thinning them out: Outcasts in a Chapter 2 zone named after them, Victims and Shamans in the Chapter 2 swamp, and Ghouls in the Eltrin Dungeon. The same patch removed the rats that the boss Ishak used to summon. Official screenshots show the rest as gaunt, emaciated humanoids in ruined settlements, bloated pale creatures in wrecked villages, and armoured figures fighting alongside them.