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    Emily Richardson
    Written By
    Emily Richardson
    Published
    11/6/17

    Meet the Elder Guardian

    Don’t get into fishticuffs with these guys

    If there’s one piece of advice an oldie like me could give to a wee youngun’ like you, it’s to RESPECT YOUR ELDERS. Especially if they are me. But also if they happen to be an Elder-ly Guardian. Those guys won’t just kick you off their lawn, they’ll get so seething mad they charge up their ancient laser beam and blow you clean out of the underwater retirement home. Don’t say you weren’t warned!

    You may be familiar with the regular Guardian already, a young and sassy little fish that’s very keen on, well, shooting you with its laser beam.

    Now we’re dealing with the older and larger of the two aquatic beasts, here’s what you need to know. Let's begin with how they came to be, as explained by Jens:

    During the development of the ocean monument I had a problem. I wanted the pyramid to feel like a maze, so you have to figure it out to get the treasure, but the bad - and good! - thing about Minecraft is that you can just rebuild everything. So the solution would always be just to knock your way through. And I didn’t want to make the pyramid indestructible because that’s also not fun in Minecraft. So after a couple of ideas we decided to have a boss guardian that would have a spell effect that would slow everything down. That was why the Elder Guardian was added. Essentially it's just a stronger Guardian and it has this spooky spell that like, pops up in your face. The reason I added it was to show the source of the slowdown effect and where it came from. I didn’t want to just add the effect, I wanted to show it as well. So I intentionally made it so that, this ghost thing that shows up in front of you? It’s actually there, so another player can actually see when you get it. It’s not just a screen effect. It doesn’t happen very often but it’s there.
    Jens Bergensten

    SPOOKY. These guys only spawn underwater in ocean monuments. They’re stronger than the lesser Guardian, but there's a finite number of them in any given world. This is because they spawn when ocean monuments are generated, and there’s always just three in each one. They never respawn after dying.

    Upon perishing, they can drop either Prismarine shards or Prismarine crystals, a raw fish (or a cooked one, if you somehow manage to burn the Elder Guardian to death) and a wet sponge. Or, you know, they might not drop anything. That's life.

    For the most part, the Elder Guardians act much like the regular Guardians. They have horrible laser beams, a very spiky body all the better for stabbing you with (try to hug these guys, I dare you) and they’re generally very grumpy. They don’t swim around as much, but unlike the little Guardian, the Elder Guardians will not back away from a player who approaches them. Awwww, how am I supposed to resist hugging one now?

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