Haunted Guard

The Haunted Guard is the heavier of the two haunted suits of armor in The Collapsed Kingdom, the ruined castle buried under Forests and Plains. It’s an empty set carrying a long axe, with 50 health and 10 armor, and you’ll almost never catch one patrolling. They stand frozen in a guard pose until a player gets close, so the first one looks like decoration until it moves.

Every Guard in the crypt is set to a metal, either Iron, Gold or Diamond, and that armor tells you what it’s going to drop before you commit to the fight. They’re placed through the dungeon rooms alongside Haunted Knights, usually one or two to a room but occasionally three or four, and three more are waiting in the boss arena with the Possessed Paladin.

Spawning

Haunted Guards don’t spawn on their own anywhere in the world, they’re hand-placed inside the Collapsed Kingdom and nowhere else. The structure generates underground in a small set of temperate biomes, spaced far enough apart that you’ll cover a lot of ground before a second one turns up. Once a Guard has been placed it’s marked persistent, so it won’t despawn while you go back for gear.

The locate command points at the gatehouse on the surface rather than the crypt itself, so there’s a tower and a run of pits between you and the first sleeping Guard. Bring a stack of blocks for the drops on the way down.

Inside the crypt most rooms hold one or two Guards, so you’ll usually face a Guard and a Haunted Knight or two at a time, and the bigger rooms stack three or four in with Knights and Fractured. The arena behind the second Somber Trapdoor is the worst, with three Guards beside the Possessed Paladin, two Fractured Apostles, a Fractured and a Haunted Knight.

Behavior

A Guard starts asleep and stays that way until it can see a player within about 10 blocks, at which point it plays a short wake-up and starts hunting. It targets players, Iron Golems and Snow Golems, and it ignores every other suit of possessed armor, so Haunted Knights and the Possessed Paladin never take a hit from it. Hitting a sleeping one wakes it just as fast.

Attacks

Both attacks deal 14 damage and neither starts until you’re inside about 4 blocks, so the fight is decided by whether you’ll stand in that range. The slam is the one to watch, as it marks where you were standing a moment earlier, lurches onto that spot and hits everything in a line about 3 blocks ahead. It launches you and puts a raised Shield on cooldown for 5 seconds.

The other option is a two-hit combo, an uppercut then a slash about a second and a half later, each covering 180 degrees out to 3 blocks. It doesn’t push you anywhere, which sounds harmless until you realize the second swing lands on you too if you haven’t moved. Both swings spill onto anything nearby, so a pet or an Iron Golem gets caught in the same arc.

Weaknesses and Immunities

The Guard throws out every Arrow that touches it, and that covers Tridents and the mod’s own thrown weapons like the Resurrected Javelin, since they’re built on the same Arrow class. It takes nothing from fall damage either, so dropping one down a shaft won’t help. What does work is anything that isn’t a projectile, so ordinary melee, Splash Potions of Harming and TNT all land.

Everything else about it is built to be stubborn rather than tough. It has 10 armor, double what a Haunted Knight carries, and enough knockback resistance that you won’t shove it back out of range between swings. It’s not undead either, so Smite does nothing and a plain Sharpness sword beats a Smite one. The wake-up is the real opening, under a second before the Guard can swing.

Drops

The Long Stick Half comes off every Guard regardless of its armor, and it lands glowing on the floor, which helps in a pitch black crypt. None of it scales with Looting, so there’s no point swapping weapons before a kill.

Haunted Guard Drops

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Haunted Guard

Long Stick Half

x1 100% UNCOMMON

On top of that each Guard coughs up the metal it was wearing, so the armor you can see from across the room is also the loot preview. A Gold or Iron one always pays something, and only the Diamond one can leave you with the stick half alone.

Two Diamonds is the best single roll, which is why a Diamond room still tempts people despite the odds. They also give barely any experience, only a couple of orbs each, so these aren’t a mob you farm, you clear them because they’re between you and the boss.

Turning the Drops Into Gear

The stick halves are the reason to bother killing Guards at all, as they’re the start of a short chain that ends in a companion of your own. You’ll want at least two Guards down before any of this is possible.

This is half of the Guard’s axe shaft and it has no use on its own. If you end up with spares you can break one down into 2 Sticks with a shapeless craft, though it’s usually better to bank them for a second Halberd.

Two stick halves, a Gold Block and 3 Gold Ingots make the Halberd, which is why a single Guard kill won’t get you there. It’s a slow, long-reach weapon, adding 5.5 attack damage with an extra 0.7 blocks of reach, and it swings at a bit over half the speed of a sword.

Golden Halberd

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Land a critical hit with it and there’s a 25% chance to apply Bleeding, which is the part that makes it worth the gold. It only carries 250 durability though, so keep a few Gold Ingots back to repair it.

Ring the Halberd with 7 Iron Ingots and a Corrupted Soul and you get the Guard Summoner, so this step is gated behind killing the Possessed Paladin first. Right-click the ground with it and a Guard spawns already tamed to you, a far bigger thing than the crypt version at 140 health, 14 armor and 18 attack damage.

Guard Summoner

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It fights for you until it dies, and if it does you rebuild the summoner from the Deactivated Guard Summoner and a single Iron Ingot. The Companions and Summoned Allies page covers the recoloring and behavior states.

Tips

Clear the room before you wake anything, because the arc attacks don’t care what they hit and a Guard swinging in a corridor connects with you and your pet in the same motion. A Guard only wakes once it has line of sight on you inside 10 blocks, so working from a doorway keeps it kneeling while you check exits and place a Torch.

Open every Chest in a room once it’s quiet, as the Collapsed Kingdom runs two Chest tiers and only the better one holds enchanted Diamond gear and Enchanted Golden Apples. The better tier is also where the Music Disc for the Possessed Paladin turns up.

Keep a Shield for the combo and treat it as gone once a slam lands, as the 5 second lockout is longer than the gap between attacks. Backing off after a slam beats trying to block the next one, and since neither attack starts outside about 4 blocks, a few steps back buys you the time to eat. The Guard paths straight back to you rather than giving up.

For the arena trio, pull them out into the corridor one at a time rather than fighting all three in the open with the Possessed Paladin, a Haunted Knight and the Fractured for company. A corridor limits how many of them can reach you at once, which is what keeps you from being sandwiched between two 14 damage arcs.

FAQ