Keener

How it fights

The keener is the Drowned Ossuary’s caller: its own blow is small, the danger is the pack it brings. It hangs back: nearer than 3 tiles it backs off, further than 5 it comes in, and in between it sidles round you. With you within 6.5 tiles it stops, faces you and keens for 1.1 s. For that whole time a red ring of 0.8 tiles radius is drawn at its own feet, filling as the keen goes on. When the keen ends, a hero still inside that ring takes 4 base damage (9 on floor 6), and the nearest sleeping pack within 14 tiles of the keener wakes and comes for you (an ambush that has not sprung, or a pack you have already cleared, is never called). The ring is at the keener’s feet, not yours, so you only stand in it if you chased the keener there. The real answer is to kill or freeze it mid-keen: 50 HP on floor 6, 3–5 basic swings; then the ring goes, nobody is hurt and nothing wakes. It keens again 7 s plus up to 1.5 s later. It joins the waves and packs on floor 6, about 15% of the monsters there, up to floor 9, never in the Sluicewarden’s room. At most 2 are alive at once, and a pack holds 2 at most.

Base HP

20

Base bite

3

Bites at most every

0.92 s

Base speed

1.55 tiles/s

Body radius

0.28 tiles

XP

4 (elite 20)

Coin chance

40%

Item drop chance

6% × the floor’s loot

Floor by floor

The same keener gets tougher each floor: the floor multiplies its HP, bite and speed. An elite keener has 3× the HP, gives 5× the XP and always drops at least a magic item plus 5 coins. “Share of waves” is the part of the floor’s wave monsters that roll as a keener.

In the same band

• Sexton — 35 HP on floor 6
• Knitbone — 55 HP on floor 6
• Lidbearer — 115 HP on floor 6
• The Sluicewarden, the band’s boss on floor 10 — how to beat him
• Every monster