c2270 through c2277- crabs, big and small.
crabs do not have interesting animations and i would be shocked if they differ from the crab animations in dark souls 3. however, crabs do have some interesting textures.
there are 4 crabs: normal1+2, rotted3+4, white5+6, and deathblight7+8. they come with or without eggs hanging from their abdomen. the locations where these crabs can be found is a bit weird. the rotted ones are only found in the black knife catacombs. the small white ones are found in raya lucaria, with a select few suffering from crystallization. the large white ones are in the consecrated snowfield (plus one in raya lucaria) and spray sleep gas. the deathblight ones are found near leyndell and close to the tibia mariner in liurnia of the lakes. the rotted crabs have holes in their carapace9 that reveals there’s nothing inside of the crab at all, as its been eaten away by the maggots. the deathblight crabs have golden hair and pustules.
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9. the inside of the rotted crab.
c2500- crucible knight(s) (ordovis and siluria)
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the primary crucible knight design (including crucible knight ordovis) is the “axe” variant on the left. the “tree” variant (including siluria) is on the right.
crucible knights provide a surprisingly direct insight into the nature of the mysterious “crucible” that haunts the game’s setting. their proximity to the phenomenon stains their gold armor a reddish hue (called “primordial gold” in item descriptions). though we won’t get to her until we reach the dlc files, devonia’s hammer describes the striking face as as “a torrent of life”1. this pattern is near identical to the engravings on the crucible knight’s armor, depicting a small circle with root-like lines radiating away from the center point2. the crucible hornshield description identifies the titular horn as a “great horn“, a symbol of the ancestral followers. siluria’s tree3, which appears to be composed of antlers, is described as being based on the “primordial form of the erdtree” and is “modeled on its [the erdtree’s?] crucible”. whatever that means. the crucible tree armor also sports a helix motif and roots on its greaves.
the crucible knight has several “aspect of the crucible” variants: tail4, breath5, horns6, wings7, and one that does not have a related incantation/ash of war that we will just call “claw”8. these do not render correctly as they appear to be made mostly of in-engine rendered particle effects. there is nothing interesting beneath their armor.
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c3000- exile soldier
one of the more interesting generic grunts. these grace-given1 exiles wear corroding armor2+3 erupting with thorns. even their weapons bear the same enigmatic, rotten-looking holes4 slowly consuming all of stormveil. the dark effect on the exile’s face is pretty ambiguous; what i had initially assumed was a sort of manual shading of the face might actually be more of the deadly blight5.
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c3010- banished knight
one of the coolest designs in the game is stationed right in the first major “dungeon”. though also grace-given, the banished knights have none of the mottling1 seen in the exile knights despite both being fixtures of stormveil. banished knights are also found in farum azula, another place of dragon exaltation. this explains the very noticable dragon topping their helmet2. the dragon’s appearance is sort of strange by elden ring standards, featuring forked antlers and ears (?)3, but maybe we should be looking at it as a heraldic sort of interpretation of a dragon rather than a literal depiction (like the beast on the knight’s shield4+5). a strange detail about these guys is that they are one of the very few models to have spurs6, despite not riding horses.
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c3020- dummy file(?)
whatever this is, it has a tiny file size and crashes the model viewer. i assume its the storm effects the knights use.
c3050- commander o’neil/niall
i assume these guys are just two very unlucky members of the same family lol. there’s a lot of those in the elden world. after looking at them both very closely in game footage, the difference between the two is that niall, the one found at castle sol, has a heavily scarred face1.
these two have design elements in their armor and weapons that directly ties them to the banished knights (and thus stormveil and farum azula). while the banished knights have a single, silver decorative horn on their shoulders, the commanders are haphazardly covered with what looks like real harvested horns2 from some kind of critter. their standard is decorated with dragons3 and the flag bears the same beast from the banished knight’s shield4. the symbol on their cape is not instantly recognizable to me5. if you’ve ever wondered what he’s yelling while summoning his spirit army, it sounds like “glory! brave! knights!”. not that it matters, but his prosthesis has an uncommon hammered metal texture6; in the icon in your items menu, the prosthesis appears to be made of conductive copper. its just interesting how markedly different that one part is.
niall, the castle sol one, is infamous for having a rare, bona fide translation error: his prosthesis description incorrectly says that he gave up his prosthesis in exchange for the lives of his men when it was actually his leg that he gave up. the missing leg will make an appearance in the future. who knows what happened to the other one’s leg.
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c3060- big skeleton
not really much to say about this guy. if you’ve played even a single fromsoft game before elden ring, then you are very, VERY familiar with the library of skeleton animations they’ve been re-using for nearly 2 decades; they’ve been using the same “skeleton puts its head back on” animation since dark souls 1. this skeleton is full of mud1, which is misspelled as “mad” in the files. he is full of mad lol. similar to a previous entry in these posts, i found some confusing attack animations that didn’t match with my memory before i realized this animation skeleton was recycled for a similar enemy.
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c3061- big dog skeleton
i love these guys. i think they are gruesome and off-putting. very repulsive. full of mud. he has no eyes, small ears, and a strange nose that gives them an inhuman look1. i didn’t note this for whatever reason when covering maliketh, but he wears a blue and gold cape2. the beastmen wear similarly hued blue and gold jewelry pieces3.
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c3070- dominula celebrant
what a mysterious bunch. they are pretty unnerving looking up close1 with their wall-eyes, sunken cheeks, and missing lips. these ladies are engaging in some sort of pagan-y re-enactment of the erdtree’s history. they seem to be styling their hair in the same manner as marika, as depicted in all of her (base game) statues, by cutting their left braids. the bones used for their weapons are weirdly big2. there are several uninteresting variants of this enemy, but there are two worthy of some attention: a gold variant3 featuring the symbol of erdtree worship incantations on their cloak and another that is blue4 with a pattern that is not seen anywhere else in the game. in my opinion, it bears a striking likeness to metyr, mother of fingers, yonic imagery and all. as for what it means…who can say?
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c3080- imp(s)
there are four imps in the base game: cat1, fanged2, wolf3, and long-tongued4. however, there are also more, unused imps in the files that correspond to the “imp head” items you find in various catacombs: elder5 and corpse6.
the cat imp head boosts intelligence, the fanged imp boosts strength, and the wolf head contains “lupine endurance”. the “long-tongued” imps have insect wings and mandibles, evoking a sort of semi-literal “dragonfly” appearance (but are described in the text as “demons”). since they are found primarily in the subterranean shunning grounds, this could just be more weird psychological torture for the omen who already see demons in their sleep. the head raises dexterity.
the elder head item simply states that it depicts “an elder” (???) which evidently has goat eyes, horns, and arcane boosting properties. it is found in the consecrated snowfield catacombs which explains nothing. the corpse head boosts faith and has an unpleasant looking body. it is found in leyndell.
the imp animations are not interesting and largely recycled from dark souls 3 thrall and (i think) bloodborne pthumerian animations.
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c3100- elemer of the briar/the bell-bearing hunter
i played with the in-program settings to make elemer’s armor shinier because otherwise it really looked like he was wearing pajamas. a man of mystery who may or may not be more than just a star-wars reference lol. unfortunately there’s nothing under his helmet at all1. the eochaids (eochaidians? eochai?) remain a total mystery.
in fact, there’s less to talk about with this guy than i expected. the stuff here is interesting, but ultimately pretty confusing when you try to slot it into the wider world of the lands between. his shield has a surprisingly complex image on it2, depicting a knight in red (or copper, as that is a material already associated with eochaid) armor flanked by skeletons, but i am leaning toward believing it came from a texture pack and is not a unique asset. his “thorns” are actually barbed wire3 (?!).
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c3150- night’s cavalry
this guy is so refreshingly straightforward that i have no commentary. its a guy in black armor. there are no sigils, insignias, or symbols to be analyzed. the weapons are so uninteresting that i’m not even going to bother to include the morning star variant. the only really notable things about them are that their armor is very, VERY beat up1 after, presumably, countless battles and they are so splattered with blood that it somehow wound up underneath their cape2.
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c3160- funeral steed
this is the only thing worth looking at when it comes to the night’s cavalry’s ride:
c3170- albinauric archer
i have absolutely no idea where the chain mail texture is in these character files. if i did, i would be able to load it in and make her (and the previously examined bell-bearing hunter’s) armor look correct instead of amorphous. as a result, her armor is just this big, shiny mass that looks like a silk cloth wrapping. sorry for the inaccuracy! in addition, every component of her body has the “is metallic” setting flipped so she’s very, very reflective, which i’m not sure matches the model we get in game. the above is her loaded in “as is”. i will mention any alterations i made to her model for visual clarity’s sake as we go.
when we turn off the metallic texture on her face, we can easily see she has blue eyes ringed with gold1. this doesn’t “seem right” given that albinaurics are supposed to be outside the erdtree’s grace, but since they drop runes upon defeat, i’ll allow it. they have anklets2 and, hidden underneath their skirt (pants?), thigh bands3, that match the blue silver bracelets. their armor is a corset4. all of latenna’s animations where she’s petting and holding onto her dead wolf companion are here. they are mostly just her looking from him to you with his hand on him, but as she disappears into spirit ash, she strokes his fur. its a nice touch. phillia’s pose is also here, but as expected it’s very uninteresting. she really is just an upscaled albinauric.
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c3171- huh?
i just don’t think this is right lol. usually the protocol on these entries that don’t end in 0s is to load the character animations from the parent entry (in this case, 3170) and apply the related model to the animation (in this case, 3171). this worked great for the crabs, as seen at the start of this post. i don’t know what the hell this is supposed to be. it has some, but not all, of the albinauric archer animations, it just looks like a pile of shit because it mashed up her model into a tiny frame. what even is this. distance models that needs the game’s code to dictate the size of the model?? i’m at a loss.
c3180- big wolf
yep. that’s a big wolf. they have very golden eyes1. that’s all there is to say about that! weird fact: if you summon latenna around these wolves, she’ll start riding them because of a scripting error lol.
1. the eyes of a favored creature of the erdtree, apparently.
that’s all for now! see you next time!