9 Bottle Guardians

9 Bottle Guardians

By Enoq · Version 0.20.4

This update checks guardian order boundaries before visibility calculations and adds brief acknowledged retries for level, star and death announcements, including reports arriving during simulation handoffs or shortly after death. It includes the inspection, map and completed-training optimizations from 0.20.3. Balance and save formats remain unchanged.

Turn trophies into bottled companions. Choose from 75 creature variants across nine biomes, release them to defend your home or follow your adventures, and keep up to 9 active guardians per original owner, per world.

Normal and miniboss guardians start with 20% of their original health and damage; the seven main boss guardians start with 30%. Large creatures are reduced in size. Bottles use eight palettes (Ocean shares the blue palette), and small green arrows with guardian names help you find them on the map. Dropped bottles and wooden item stands display the animated spirit, moving motes and colored interior light. Geirrhafa, Brenna and the Zil & Thungr duo are included. All seven main bosses from Eikthyr through Fader are included; the Deep North boss and its aspects are excluded. Hares and seals are peaceful companions.

Craft and summon

At the Artisan Table, craft a guardian bottle with:

• 1 Corked Vial from the merchant
• 2 trophies of the chosen creature
• 1 Surtling Core
• 1 Fine Wood

The frozen greydwarf, frozen greydwarf shaman and Deep North skeleton also require 2 Ice. Greyling uses greydwarf trophies. Dvergr, Krigen and Elaking variants have separate recipes even when they share a trophy.

Zil & Thungr: three recipes make the same bottle with 2 Thungr trophies, 2 Zil trophies, or 1 of each, plus the usual vial, core and wood. Both fight together initially (840 base health); when Thungr falls, the same guardian transforms into Zil (480 base health). Each form has 65% native size. They occupy one active slot throughout, keeping their name, owner and orders. Losing Zil ends the guardian. Storing and resting preserve the current form: resting Zil does not revive Thungr. These are base health values before game difficulty modifiers.

Use the filled bottle from your inventory or hotbar to summon your guardian. Every successful summon returns one empty vial, including release from resting bottles. If your inventory is full, delivery waits for room; retries do not duplicate it. Aquatic guardians need sufficiently deep water nearby. Stored bottles do not count toward the active limit; guardians in distant or unloaded areas do.

Eikthyr: uses 2 Eikthyr trophies and the usual vial, core and wood. It has 150 base health, 60% native size and one active guardian slot. Antler attacks deal 6 pierce damage; the frontal discharge and stomp deal 4.5 lightning damage before modifiers. Effects, attack reach and the ragdoll are reduced to match. It follows the ordinary orders, sharing and rest rules. Guardian death gives no boss loot or progression, and does not trigger the native encounter messages, boss event or dream.

Boss bottles: all use 2 trophies of their own boss, plus the usual vial, core and wood, and occupy one active slot. Orders, allied control, resting bottles and map markers work through the existing guardian system.

| Guardian | Base health | Native size | Bottle code | | --- | ---: | ---: | --- | | The Elder | 750 | 35% | TG_Bottle_gd_king | | Bonemass | 1500 | 40% | TG_Bottle_Bonemass | | Moder | 2250 | 25% | TG_Bottle_Dragon | | Yagluth | 3000 | 35% | TG_Bottle_GoblinKing | | The Queen | 3750 | 30% | TG_Bottle_SeekerQueen | | Fader | 7500 | 25% | TG_Bottle_Fader |

At level one, boss attacks retain 30% native damage before difficulty and other modifiers. The Elder keeps ranged vines and stomp; Bonemass keeps punch and poison cloud; Moder keeps melee, frost breath and ice volleys with low flight and landing; Yagluth keeps beam, nova and meteors; The Queen keeps melee, rush and poison spit; Fader keeps melee, flame breath, meteors, fissures and walls of fire. Summoning roots/minions, the Queen's arena teleport, Moder's ice blockers, walking damage and Fader's passive fire trail are removed. Delayed volleys retain their caster and stop when it dies, is bottled, loses network authority or has no valid target. Private effects, projectiles and remains leave wild bosses unchanged.

Yagluth's continuous pink body aura and ambient magenta lights are removed; his eye and attack effects remain. On updating to 0.19.1, already active boss guardians gain the new maximum health once while keeping their current health percentage. Resting bottles use the new health when released. Normal creatures and minibosses keep their previous balance.

Boss and miniboss settings

In BepInEx/config/com.enoq.trophyguard.cfg, use:

[Summoning]
AllowMinibossSummons = true
AllowBossSummons = true

true enables Geirrhafa, Brenna and Zil & Thungr (default); false hides their crafting recipes and blocks new summons, including release from resting bottles and Zil's second form. The host/server administrator controls this synchronized setting. Existing active guardians keep their orders, can be stored, and the duo keeps its second life. Disabled summons preserve or refund the bottle; changing the setting never refunds an already completed summon. Configuration changes made through a compatible configuration manager apply during play; for manual file edits, close the game/server first.

AllowBossSummons works independently with the same rules for main boss guardians, covering Eikthyr, The Elder, Bonemass, Moder, Yagluth, The Queen and Fader. Both switches default to true and are controlled by the host/server administrator.

Controls

Look at a guardian and use the interaction key (E by default):