The Star-Reader
Boss · The Starless Deep · band D, The Foundations
Where The Star-Reader waits
The Star-Reader holds the gates at depths 66,500, 67,100, 67,700, 68,300, 68,900 in The Starless Deep, sharing the zone's 100-depth gate rhythm with The Unlit One and The Sightless Crown and The Last Meridian and The Orrery Engine and The Undawn.
What The Star-Reader is
The Star-Reader is a Herald: it swings a wand, and the body asks for Recoup and Life Steal, elemental defense — kill it first: its chant shields its pack from the elements. As a boss it wears the type's defences at 35%, carries no status of its own, and enrages below half health: it hits harder and moves faster.
The Star-Reader by the numbers
The card at each gate — health, damage per swing, armour and the modifiers it rolls — straight from the game's spawn table. On the floor the boss leads with 60% of the card's health and 60% of its damage, before the road's own pressure.
What those modifiers do
BURNING- +35% ignite chance; a quarter of its physical damage becomes fire
CHILLING- Turns 30% of its physical damage into cold
EXPOSING- every blow cuts your resistances by 15 for 4 s
VENOMOUS- +35% chance to poison you
ETHEREAL- takes 60% less from HITS, and double from damage over time
OF CHILLING DEATH- leaves a pool of frost where it falls
MANGLING- +35% chance to cause bleeding
LUCKY- 15% of its blows land twice over
THICK-SKINNED- Overwhelm and armor you ignore count at half
DRAINING- you recover half as much: leech, regen, recoup
OF DAMAGING- the pack within 4.5 tiles hits 25% harder
OF FLAMING DEATH- leaves a pool of fire where it falls
WITHERING- every blow leaves damage over time on you: 15% of the blow each second for 4 s
OF THE EXECUTIONER- you recover half as much within 4.5 tiles of it
Modifiers are rolled per depth and are the same for every player. Bosses always carry at least 3 and never a pace modifier (SWIFT, BRUTE), so a boss's swing rhythm is its own; of the seals only the walls — BLOODLESS, INERT, ASHEN, ETHEREAL, DENSE — ride a boss. The full list is in Enemy modifiers.
At its first gate The Star-Reader leads with 60,611,950,829 health, against 48,488,050,302 for the leader one floor above, and swings every 1.25s.
What a gate floor is
A gate is a floor like any other, with the boss leading its last pack. Nothing below it opens until the floor is cleared. A lost floor costs nothing; you can fight it again. How a floor is fought is under Combat.
Fight The Star-Reader — play free