STAGE · Privateer's Hold
Bestiary
Draft — Draft: checked against the game source, not yet read through end to endAvailable from the startThe enemy families and tiers, what each resists or requires, how they fight, and what they pay.
This page is further along your path. Read ahead if you’re curious; you can return when you reach this stage.
How a foe is built
The game's base table holds a row per classic monster id: a level, a health range, an armour value, up to three damage pairs, a minimum metal to hit, a soul point value, a loot table key and a behaviour/affinity pair. enemyLevelOf reads a monster's level from that row; a class enemy is handed the player's level instead, so a bandit or knight you meet is built for you while a rat is still a level-1 rat.
Online, the host owns the foe. The room forces Meaner Monsters and Daggerfall Enemy Expansion on and holds both whole at their defaults. With Enemy Expansion loaded, MUDEX — Meaner Monsters' author's form of it for a game with the Expansion — stands in for Meaner Monsters; Meaner Monsters' own rows and PCAAO's edit of them stand aside. Enemy Expansion also changes which types spawn. What you meet online is therefore the host's Enemy Expansion/MUDEX foe, not the base row below.
Families and behaviour
| Affinity | Examples | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Animal | Rat, Giant Bat, Bear, Sabretooth, Spider, Giant Scorpion | Fight with natural attacks; usually no metal requirement. |
| Undead | Skeletal Warrior, Zombie, Ghost, Mummy, Wraith, Lich, Ancient Lich | Will not flee from morale in the ordinary sense; several need silver or better. |
| Daedra | Frost/Fire Daedra, Daedroth, Daedra Seducer, Daedra Lord | Strongest family tier; mithril requirement common. |
| Golem | Atronachs (fire, iron, flesh, ice) | Atronach rows share a template; resistances are kind-specific. |
| Water | Slaughterfish, Dreugh, Lamia | Aquatic behaviour; mostly met in water. |
| Daylight / Darkness | Spriggan, Centaur, Nymph, Orc, Vampire | The row's affinity, not a rule that they appear only then. |
| Human | Class enemies and the watch | Built at your level; may carry weapons and shields. |
| None | Horse | Not a normal enemy row. |
Behaviour drives movement: General, Flying, Aquatic, Spectral and Guard. Flying and spectral foes ignore some terrain paths that grounded ones must walk; aquatic foes only make sense in water.
A tier sample
These are base-table rows, before Meaner Monsters/Enemy Expansion and before elite or champion promotion. Level and health are the clearest measure of a tier; damage is the row's first pair.
| Foe | Level | Health | Damage (first pair) | Metal needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rat | 1 | 9–16 | 1–4 | — |
| Giant Bat | 3 | 12–26 | 2–12 | — |
| Grizzly Bear | 4 | 13–34 | 1–8 | — |
| Orc | 5 | 13–34 | 1–6 | — |
| Werewolf | 6 | 17–66 | 1–10 | Silver |
| Skeletal Warrior | 9 | 17–66 | 5–15 | — |
| Giant | 10 | 18–74 | 10–30 | — |
| Zombie | 10 | 52–66 | 15–50 | — |
| Ghost | 11 | 17–66 | 10–35 | Silver |
| Harpy | 8 | 16–85 | 5–15 | Dwarven |
| Giant Scorpion | 12 | 18–74 | 15–25 | — |
| Gargoyle | 14 | 19–82 | 10–15 | Mithril |
| Wraith | 15 | 30–90 | 20–45 | Silver |
| Dragonling | 16 | 14–42 | 5–15 | — |
| Orc Warlord | 16 | 20–90 | 5–50 | — |
| Frost Daedra | 17 | 25–130 | 50–100 | Mithril |
| Vampire | 19 | 28–154 | 20–50 | Silver |
| Daedra Lord | 20 | 35–210 | 15–50 | Mithril |
| Lich | 20 | 30–170 | 70–100 | Mithril |
| Ancient Lich | 21 | 30–170 | 70–100 | Mithril |
The table is a guide to order, not an online guarantee: a promoted elite or champion adds more, and the online room's rows are the mods'.
What they resist
Metal requirements. The base row's minMetalToHit is a material index: silver (2) for the Werewolf, Wereboar, Nymph, Ghost, Mummy and Vampire; dwarven (4) for the Harpy; mithril (5) for the Gargoyle, the daedra, the liches and the Ancient Vampire. Online, "soft" material requirements multiply damage by 1 − min(shortfall × 0.2, 0.9) — a one-step shortfall is ×0.8, five or more ×0.1 — and the game tells you when a blow falls to 45% or less. The classic zero-damage refusal only runs with the module off.
Silver and edges. Silver doubles damage against the Skeletal Warrior and the six careers Werewolf, Ghost, Wraith, Vampire, Mummy and Wereboar. A non-edged weapon is halved against the Skeletal Warrior.
Innate reduction. A monster with nothing worn on the struck part reduces by its group's multiplier instead of natural resistance. Most are 1.0; exceptions include the Skeletal Warrior 0.8, Gargoyle blunt 1.21 and other 0.71, Spriggan blunt 0.66 and other 1.26, Ice Atronach blunt 1.4 and Iron Atronach blunt 0.6, and a few daedra careers at 0.84–1.04.
Poison and disease. The source routes poison through a monster's hit; the exact immunity set is per career and per spell, so check the effect's own saving throw rather than assuming a family is immune.
How they fight
Beasts telegraph a lunge. Brutes telegraph slam and sweep. Blades (humanoid weapon users) telegraph sweep and lunge. Class casters throw no telegraphed blow.
An archer shoots from its ranged band on a 1/32 chance per classic tick; an aimed shot is faster and stronger.
A caster's
CastSpellaction runs on a long cooldown; silence and magic resistance matter.An armed foe whose natural attack averages higher discards the weapon and strikes unarmed.
A monster's unarmed attack can roll up to three damage spans, each gated by your Reflexes setting.
Watchful revenants cannot be backstabbed and are never “unaware”.
What they pay
The row's lootTableKey selects the loot table, and soulPts sets the soul value a trap captures. As a rough map from the sample: orcs use table A, giants F, ghosts and wraiths I, daedra J, vampires Q, daedra lords and liches S, the Skeletal Warrior H. Higher-tier tables carry better gear; promoted elites and champions improve the odds again. The same dungeon-kind grade that makes a place dangerous also sets its loot odds, so a high-tier foe in a high-tier place pays best.
Danger scales from the place as well as the foe. A town, a mine and a natural cave are the gentlest grades; a crypt, vampire haunt or dragon's den raises both foe strength and loot. See Danger and regions later, The hero's threat later and Elites and champions later.
Common mistakes
Reading a base row as online fact. The room's Meaner Monsters/Enemy Expansion rows are the online foes.
Bringing iron to a silver fight. Online it cuts damage; against the Skeletal Warrior the edge matters too.
Assuming a family is immune to poison or magic. Immunity lives on the career/effect, not the label.
Treating a class enemy as a fixed level. It is built at your level.
Ignoring behaviour. Flying, aquatic and spectral foes path differently; a water foe will not come to you on land.
Next
Sources & checked facts
src/characters/enemy/enemyBasics.js:ENEMY_NAMES,MOBILE_BEHAVIOUR,ENEMY_BASICSrows (level, health, damage,minMetalToHit,soulPts,lootTableKey),enemyLevelOfsrc/combat/pcaao.js:pcaaoWeaponAttackDamage,SILVER_DOUBLED_CAREERS,pcaaoPercentageReductionCalculationForMonsters, soft material requirement,SPECIAL_WEAPON_MONSTERSsrc/characters/meanerMonsters.js:MEANER_MONSTERS_ROWS(the mod's buffs and rat/bat/zombie debuffs);src/systems/enemyExpansion/dexSwitches.js:meanerMonstersAlone,mudexLoaded;src/systems/enemyExpansion/dexTables.js: the Expansion's table readersrc/systems/online/onlineLane.js:ONLINE_ROOM_MOD_KEYS,ONLINE_WHOLE_MODS(both enemy mods forced)src/ai/blowShapes.js:BLOW_FAMILY,familyShapes;src/ai/foeBlows.js:blowTier;src/characters/enemy/enemyAttack.js:BOW_SHOT_CHANCE;src/systems/spellcast.js:CASTSPELL_COOLDOWN_TICKsrc/characters/enemy/enemyBasics.js: class-enemy levels viaisClassEnemyId; power scaling:src/systems/heroThreat.jssrc/systems/loot/lootRarity.js:DUNGEON_RARITY_TIER; research notehandbook/research/H2.md