Elder Guardians

The Elder Guardians are four map bosses from the War for the Atlas storyline, who each drop a different map fragment that is required to fight the Elder. They are the guardians of the The Elder.

Mechanics
A Elder-influenced map of Tier 14 or higher can be occupied by one of the Guardians. The map boss is replaced with the Guardian. Approaching the map boss will spawn a portal leading to the Guardian's arena, chosen at random out of three possible arenas for each Guardian. They will be affected by the map's modifiers.

The boss fight is split into three phases. At 2/3 and 1/3 health remaining, the arena switches locations. Each arena contains different stage hazards.

Upon slaying the boss, they will drop a Map fragment. Open a complete set of fragments in the map device can open portals to fight the Elder.

Drops
All 4 Elder Guardians share the same pool of the exclusive drops.

In addition, is obtained from   and, thus it is an indirect Elder Guardians exclusive item. A similar bow is used by the Elder Guardian in the fight.

These item were exclusive to Elder Guardians, but moved to core drop table in version 3.14.0:



Lore
Elder Guardians are the side-bosses that aid The Elder, akin to Shaper Guardian. During War for the Atlas and Betrayal expansions, in order to beat Uber Elder, the player need to spread Elder influence to Shaper Guardian Maps (which at that time on the Atlas at the centre) first to convert them to Elder Guardian Maps (the base map is still the Shaper Guardian Map) and beat all 4 of them to convert The Shaper's Realm into Uber Elder variant of the area.

However, due to the introduction of Conquerors of the Atlas expansion, such end-game lore is rewritten by the game developer. Instead of the player as the protagonist to beat the Elder, Shaper and their guardians, another group of NPC / exiles, known as Elderslayers / Conquerors beat the Elder instead. Elderslayers themselves also turn into new villain in the expansion. To fill the plot hole that how the player can still enter and play the Elder Guardian Map (Shaper Guardian Map as well), new Zana voiceline was added:

The next annual expansion, Echoes of the Atlas, add the Maven as new end-game boss, which she has the ability to clone bosses to her crucible. A new atlas region, The Uncharted Realms, was added to the game as well. Elder Guardians is the objective of.

These new lore explain the in-game reappearance of Elder Guardian as map boss, which the atlas and the Maven has ability to clone it.

Version history

 * Fixed a bug where Zana missions could offer Elder Guardian Maps earlier than intended. The minimum tier before these maps are offered by Zana missions is now 14.


 * The Atlas of Worlds has been reworked. You now start at the centre and will work your way outwards as you explore a new storyline.
 * The Shaper and Elder storyline is gone and has been replaced by a story that takes place in the aftermath of the old story.
 * Zana can now sell Shaper- and Elder-influenced maps once you have progressed your Atlas enough. These act like the old Atlas influence, creating new monsters, threats, and rewards.
 * The Elder, Shaper, and combined Elder and Shaper encounters can still be accessed. If you're lucky, Zana may offer a Shaper or Elder guardian's map!
 * Elder Guardians are no longer in a separate instance to that of their map.


 * Items exclusive to the Shaper's guardians and the Elder's guardians now drop less frequently. Uniques exclusive to the Elder's guardians now also drop based on map tier, with some items unable to drop until higher map tiers.
 * (not in patch notes) Elder guardians now have a shared pool of exclusive drop, rather than tied to individual guardians.


 * Introduced to the game.
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