Guardian
| Crusade |
|---|
| Neophyte -> Kraken -> Guardian -> Execution -> Overgrowth -> Anomaly -> Phobia |
Guardian is the game's third boss. It introduces complex invulnerable armors. It is the first to have time bombs, though skilled players are unlikely to encounter such until Overgrowth. Guardian is also the first boss to have only 2 forms.
Appearance
Guardian's guns and cores each have obtuse-triangular, steel edges and a glowing red eye. It has plenty of shiny indigo armor, and some gray connecting pixels. The first form has two arms with laser beams from the ends to close off the center.
Its Nightmare counterpart has magenta lights instead of red; darker vulnerable pixels; and light gray, roughly segmented armor.
Personality and Traits
Guardian usually speaks only to announce the battle's state and its incoming attack patterns, like the automated tool it is. Only a rare few quotes are directed at its opponent (e.g. "You will be destroyed".) and are the only indicators of potential sapience.
Battle
Form 1
Guardian's first form consists of 2 guns at the bottom of Guardian's design, each gun connected by its own arm, a gun in the middle which blocks access to Guardian's core which is situated above the middle gun. There is also explosive pixels at the very top of Guardian which if set off will take out a small chunk of pixels revealing a shield/2 fade power up set. All guns are surrounded by a layer of invulnerable pixels.
The 2 bottom guns each have a laser that will activate after 1/1.5 seconds making the middle section of Guardian inaccessible until an arm is dealt with. Occasionally the guns will angle the lasers up or down by 20 degrees. The middle gun occasionally shoots a single diamond bullet towards you every 5-11 seconds (lowering by up to 4 seconds depending on how many pixels are destroyed, multiplied by 1.4 or 0.66 depending on difficulty).
Attacks include :
- Oval bullets which stop after flying for a couple seconds before heading towards the closest player while bounce off the edges of the arena.
- Diamond bullets shot in varying spreads or in many bursts of 8 or 10 around the boss.
- Large lingering circles tossed towards your location.
- Many orange circles shot somewhat randomly
- Pink circles shot all around Guardian which constantly switch between moving forwards fast and moving backwards slowly
- If less than 10 damage ups have been collected then Guardian may also shoot many spokes of small circles around it's core with damage ups occasionally replacing the bullets.
- Rarely Guardian will shoot bullets which are summoned randomly around the player with a 4 (3) second warning before moving towards the closest player and bouncing on the arena edges.
If 2 of Guardian's guns are destroyed or if enough time passes then Guardian will shoot a 4 damage curse which if collected spawns a drone which every few seconds will move towards the player before stopping and firing a bullet. Upon killing Guardian's first form this bullet will freeze for 10 seconds instead of despawning meaning it will persist into form 2.
When the main core is attacked Guardian will either summon Neophyte's revenge attack or a laser towards you which after a 2 second charge up time will activate for another 2 seconds.
Form 2
At the very start of this form Guardian will spawn many bullets from the edges of the arena which after a 4 (3) second warning will go towards the nearest player and bounce along the arena edges. This attack only ever happens once. The bottom gun will also start fire bullets towards the player until it's taken out, increasing in fire rate over 12 seconds. Other attacks that can happen include attacks shot during form 1 alongside :
- A bunch of diamonds shot by the lower guns of each side.
- Clusters of bullets shot in different shapes ranging from V's, semi circles, a small range of polygons and other shapes.
- Orange and red diamonds shot in random directions either in a small burst from a gun or in a much longer burst from the main core.
- Large slow moving circles shot in spokes of 4 from the main core.
- Large rectangular beams shot around the main core.
Occasionally Guardian will summon a turret which, once spawned, will start shooting the same attack as the bottom gun except with a faster fire rate. Guardian can also summon time bombs. Time bombs in Guardian spawn somewhat infrequently and have a 30 second timer. If left too long they explode and summon 6 spinning rings of lasers which must be avoided along side any attacks Guardian is currently firing.
There are 2 curses fired from Guardian during this phase. Three 4 damage up curses fired over the first couple minutes of this phase which act identically to the ones shot during the prior form and a slice curse which if collected will summon 10 vertical laser beams over the course of around 15 seconds.
Final Phase
Once all 5 guns are taken out a warning sign will appear and Guardian will rotate 90 degrees away from the player before summoning 6/3/5 rings of clockwise spinning lasers similarly to time bombs found in the stage. Halfway through this attack Guardian will rotate another 90 degrees until upside down and summon 2 turrets at the bottom corners of the arena. Guardian will then shoot 3 streams of diamond bullets in bursts of 10, shoot the laser rings attack counter-clockwise and then will shoot certain attacks for the rest of the fight including many variations of the orange and red diamonds attack, tossed bullets, V clusters and line clusters. Periodically Guardian will summon another turret underneath itself and, if enough time passes, a time bomb (which will only be summoned once).
Nightmare Mode
Nightmare Guardian is unique with how it contains a gimmick not seen in any other stage, including in normal or easy Guardian. If any invulnerable pixels are shot at by a player's main attack the pixel hit will spawn a counter attack of a small white diamond aimed directly at the player who shot the pixel. Cannons can be used without risk of a counter attack but using a double gun will cause 2 counter attacks.
Borrowed attacks include :
- From the start
- Multiple spokes of lightning borrowed from Storm.
- A large cluster of homing diamonds also from Storm which after passing the player will turn more tightly but will also collide with pixels (though will not cause a counter attack if they hit an invulnerable pixel)
- A single homing missile usually seen as Xulgon's revenge attack.
- An unused attack from Storm in which 10 large circles appear about 0.5 seconds apart from each other which, after all have spawned, simultaneously pulse damaging player's within them.
- During form 2
- An orb which swaps between trying to ram players and shooting out lightning, originating from Storm.
- A slow homing drone which shoots a long stream of bullets towards players, also originating from Storm.
- A large barrage of lasers shot either clockwise or counter-clockwise from Xulgon.
- A large crosshair which homes into a player which summons one of many attacks (depending on its movement speed) from Prospector.
Statistics
Medal Times
| Easy/Normal | Nightmare | |
| Bronze | 7:00 | 7:00 |
| Silver | 5:00 | 5:00 |
| Gold | 3:00 | 3:20 |
Powerups
- Each Shooter Curse: 4 Damage
- Form 1
- Left Arm: Slice/Shield
- Right Arm: 2 Cannon/3 Freeze
- Middle Gun: 2 Damage/5 Slowmo
- Top: 2 Fade/Shield
- Core: 30 Dash/Shield
- Form 2
- Beam Curse: Slice
- Bottom Gun: 3 Cannon/Shield*
- 2 Diagonal Guns: (Shield if each player has less than 2 Shields, Double Gun otherwise)/5 Slowmo
- 2 Side Guns: 3 Damage/5 Sweep
- Angular Part: Turret/Shield**
- Each Minion: 2 Damage/Shield***
*Replaced with 5 Fade if Shields are maxed **Replaced with 5 Slowmo if Shields are maxed ***Replaced with 3 Fade if Shields are maxed
The only Easy Mode change is the absence of cursed powerups.
| Nightmare Mode |
|---|
The breach on the top of the first form was sealed off.
*Replaced with 5 Fade if Shields are maxed **Replaced with 5 Slowmo if Shields are maxed ***Replaced with 3 Fade if Shields are maxed |
Trivia
- Guardian, Execution, Hermit, and Prospector are the only official stages that involve part lasers.
- Guardian, Execution, Medusa, Hermit, and Storm are the only official bosses with non-gun parts.
- Guardian, Anomaly, Hermit, Prospector, and Xulgon are the only official bosses with explosive pixels in Normal difficulty.
- Prior to the redux update Guardian didn't contain any explosive pixels. This also meant that there was no powerup at the top of Guardian's first form.
- One of Guardian's speech line "Aggression will be met with aggression." coincides with the backfire when shooting at invulnerable parts in Nightmare Mode of Guardian.
- Due to the cursed bullet freezing instead of despawning in the first form, Guardian is one of the few bosses in which it's possible to die in between forms, along side Neophyte, Nightmare Kraken, Phobia, Medusa and Monarch.
- Guardian has an unused revenge attack which presumably would've replaced Neophyte's revenge bullet. The attack is very similar to Neophyte's revenge attack but is slightly faster and is in the shape of a diamond instead.
| Official Content | |
|---|---|
| Crusade | Neophyte ! Kraken ! Guardian ! Execution ! Overgrowth ! Anomaly ! Phobia |
| Invasion | Medusa ! Hermit ! Goliath ! Monarch ! Prospector ! Storm ! Xulgon |
| Bonus | Quartet ! Crossfire ! Ball Pit ! Credits ! Timebrain |
| Other Content | The Oracle ! Xulgon's Minions ! Difficulties ! Speedruns |
| Fan Content | |
|---|---|
| Apocalypse | Catalyst ! Beehive ! Xenoware ! Amethyst ! Reaper ! Triton ! Quantum |
| Chaos Campaign | Blizzard ! Siren ! Phineus ! Labyrinth ! Macro ! Prism ! Singularity ! Forge |
| Champion Campaign | Skylier ! Volcanion ! Wireframe ! Phantom |
| Uprising | Mantis ! Cortex ! Overlord |
| Vengeance (Campaign) | Hydra ! Inertia ! Splode ! Attractor ! Terra ! Witch ! AI ! Vengeance (Boss) ! Redemption ! Nightmare-Only Boss |
| Other Content | Cultivator ! Cypher ! Fortress ! Ghost ! Gridlock ! Karma ! THE LOVERS ! Pulsus ! The Psychic ! Tryout |
| Stage Remixes | Bonus (Fan Difficulties) ! Chippy the Anime ! "Completely Normal" Bosses ! Legacy Prospector ! Remixes of the Past ! Slow-Strat Invaders ! Variance (Mechanic Demonstration) |