Regions and encounters

Eight regions, each with 3–5 kinds of enemy. Three have a boss (the Sallow Wyrm, the glint colossus, the finale on the Heart Pane). The others have a set piece instead (the wind pass, the glass storm, the Vault, the hour trial), and the Undermere has neither. Encounter ids follow golem_spar (Data/Encounters/). Where a walkthrough places a fight, the id here is the walkthrough's. Fights no walkthrough places are optional wild encounters. Difficulty is a rough multiple of golem_spar (1.0): total enemy HP times damage per second, adjusted for specials. XP scales from golem_spar's 20. Story set pieces are in bold.

The Sallow (Sallowbank, the Drowned Steps, the Sallow Road, Sallow Fen, Halfway) (Idea: Sallow Fen)

Prologue and Act 1. The player comes back in Act 2 for the mending at the Sallow warp, and Act 3 starts here when the warps reach Sallowbank. Roster: glint, training_golem, ring_golem, tamsin_ring, mirebelly_toad, shardback_boar, and in Acts 2–3 glint_brute, winged_glint and glyph_hunter. Boss: sallow_wyrm.

The player has Repel, then Coil, then (both optional in Act 1) Brace and Mend. Each fight teaches one answer: stagger the glints, out-damage the golem, stagger the boar's charge, keep Mend for the toad, interrupt Tamsin, and stagger-then-hit against the Wyrm. Halfway is under truce, so its only fights are the Proving Ring's: the Ring is the one place inside the truce stones where casting is allowed.

The warp fights (warp_glints_*, warp_brood) are the mending guard. The five Warden menders at the circle are the casters the player guards, not foes. There is no fight against the mending: a player who declines the job isn't there.

The Long Road (the highland wind pass)

Act 2: Dace's caravan run between the two courts (main line), and Dace's caravan jobs after it (a side activity). Roster: dust_glint, gale_hound, glasshorn_stag, winged_glint, windglass_kite, glint_brute, and the raiders forsworn_mender and hollow_cut. The set piece is the wind pass defence, three fights in a row ending with the Windglass Kite.

This is where parallel spells pay off. Gale is learned on the ridge just before the pass. Fliers and fast packs make Gale (and later Squall) the obvious answers, and Drift, from Ness at the night camp, teaches dodging the stag's sweep.

Twinhold and Greenvault (the Evane lowlands)

Act 2. Roster: warden_golem, warden_sentinel, tamsin_spar, thorn_warden, bramble_glint, warden_menders. There are no wild fights inside the cities. Enemies here are drills, guardians, the Measure Vault break-in, Greenvault's overgrown terraces, and enforcers sent after a player whose standing has fallen.

Evane constructs resist mirrored spells (Glass rule 3), so this is where an Evane-only player first feels the wall, and where Facet Seal, a Gale-led thread such as Headwind, or Bevel Lash (if both halves are found) earns its keep.

The Vault's wards (Idea). Inside the Measure Vault every golem "weighs" each spell and won't take the same spell twice in a row: a repeated spell does nothing. The player has to vary their casts or thread. A Facet spell that breaks a ward instead of opening it rings the alarm.

Hushfold and the Hour Stair (the Evane highlands)

Hushfold in Act 2 and the Hour Stair in Act 3. Roster: frost_glint, echo_glint, echo_owl, hushed_one, hour_sentinel.

These fights are about sound and time. Hush and Calm counter the Still Choir's creatures, and Linger and Hasten counter the Keepers'.

The Shardfield and Lanternfall

Acts 2–3. Roster: shard_glint, storm_glint, shardshell_crab, shardback_boar, glyph_hunter, and lamplighter as Lanternfall's enforcer. The Act 2 set piece is the glass storm. The square half of Facet Seal shows on one standing shard while the storm blows, in the field and not in a battle; after the storm's peak the player fights storm_glint. From Act 3 the storm itself, glass_storm, crosses the Shardfield as a hazard boss with no glyph in it.

Here the player meets shields everywhere. Each one is the case for asymmetric casting (Bevel Lash, once both halves are found), or for stagger-then-hit.

Corran

Act 3. Roster: stilled_glint, glint_brute, winged_glint, warden_menders, who still keep Ondine's seal. Boss: glint_colossus.

This is the hardest open region before the finale. Packs and big bodies come together, and threads become the main tool. The Act 3 Sallowbank fights (sallowbank_glints, sallowbank_brute, region 1) lead into it.

The Undermere

Act 3 on, mostly for players on the evil path (Codex section 7), though any player can find a way in. Roster: roof_glint, drowned_chorister, forsworn_mender, hollow_cut, undermere_outlaw. No boss: the Undermere is a place to fall into, not one to finish.

Outlaws cast like the player, from both sides and in threads, so each fight here is a mirror of the player's own kit. Rewards are a little copper and stolen glyph fragments, and each fight moves morality (see open questions).

The Heart Pane (and the deep Shardfield around it)

The deep Shardfield opens in Act 3; the Pane is Act 4. On the approach: sky_shoal, mirror_double, shard_sentinel, plus every glint variant leaking from new warps. Finale: mirrored_chorus (or, guarded, mirrored_chorus_ally against culet_cutter), then iver_kest or prelate_ondine.

The finale and the open ending (Idea). The finale follows Act 4 (Story Bible section 4): two phases on every path, the mirrored chorus first and the asymmetric shattering second. What changes is whether the player is with each rite or against it.

The hold is a field-cast sequence with no enemy: the player threads Evane into Facet until the Pane steadies, and can't lose. Both phases run on Act 4's Pane gauge (Still at −100, Shattered at +100): mirrored casts push it towards Still, asymmetric casts towards Shattered, cross-side threads back to the middle. Every finale fight can be lost (canLose: true, allowFlee: false), and a loss restarts that phase. That fits "the story picks no canonical outcome": every path fights both phases.

How difficulty climbs

Within an act, difficulty climbs through three things, in this order:

1. More bodies: packs grow from 3 to 6.
2. One new trait per region: packs in the Sallow, fliers on the Long Road, shields in the Shardfield, mirrored resistance in Twinhold, silence and slowness in Hushfold, adds in Corran, enemy casters in the Undermere.
3. Mixing: two traits in one fight.

Story fights stay at their act's numbers. Optional fights in an earlier region rise to the player's level in later acts (an open question below).

From Bestiary › Regions and encounters