9 Bottle Guardians
Craft 75 creatures, train up to 9 guardians through combat, earn stars and reuse your vials. Guardian info, patrol controls, allies, rest, maps and 9 languages.
About this mod Author’s original text
9 Bottle Guardians
By Enoq · Version 0.20.4
This update checks guardian order boundaries before visibility calculations and adds brief acknowledged retries for level, star and death announcements, including reports arriving during simulation handoffs or shortly after death. It includes the inspection, map and completed-training optimizations from 0.20.3. Balance and save formats remain unchanged.
Turn trophies into bottled companions. Choose from 75 creature variants across nine biomes, release them to defend your home or follow your adventures, and keep up to 9 active guardians per original owner, per world.
Normal and miniboss guardians start with 20% of their original health and damage; the seven main boss guardians start with 30%. Large creatures are reduced in size. Bottles use eight palettes (Ocean shares the blue palette), and small green arrows with guardian names help you find them on the map. Dropped bottles and wooden item stands display the animated spirit, moving motes and colored interior light. Geirrhafa, Brenna and the Zil & Thungr duo are included. All seven main bosses from Eikthyr through Fader are included; the Deep North boss and its aspects are excluded. Hares and seals are peaceful companions.
Craft and summon
At the Artisan Table, craft a guardian bottle with:
- 1 Corked Vial from the merchant
- 2 trophies of the chosen creature
- 1 Surtling Core
- 1 Fine Wood
The frozen greydwarf, frozen greydwarf shaman and Deep North skeleton also require 2 Ice. Greyling uses greydwarf trophies. Dvergr, Krigen and Elaking variants have separate recipes even when they share a trophy.
Zil & Thungr: three recipes make the same bottle with 2 Thungr trophies, 2 Zil trophies, or 1 of each, plus the usual vial, core and wood. Both fight together initially (840 base health); when Thungr falls, the same guardian transforms into Zil (480 base health). Each form has 65% native size. They occupy one active slot throughout, keeping their name, owner and orders. Losing Zil ends the guardian. Storing and resting preserve the current form: resting Zil does not revive Thungr. These are base health values before game difficulty modifiers.
Use the filled bottle from your inventory or hotbar to summon your guardian. Every successful summon returns one empty vial, including release from resting bottles. If your inventory is full, delivery waits for room; retries do not duplicate it. Aquatic guardians need sufficiently deep water nearby. Stored bottles do not count toward the active limit; guardians in distant or unloaded areas do.
Eikthyr: uses 2 Eikthyr trophies and the usual vial, core and wood. It has 150 base health, 60% native size and one active guardian slot. Antler attacks deal 6 pierce damage; the frontal discharge and stomp deal 4.5 lightning damage before modifiers. Effects, attack reach and the ragdoll are reduced to match. It follows the ordinary orders, sharing and rest rules. Guardian death gives no boss loot or progression, and does not trigger the native encounter messages, boss event or dream.
Boss bottles: all use 2 trophies of their own boss, plus the usual vial, core and wood, and occupy one active slot. Orders, allied control, resting bottles and map markers work through the existing guardian system.
| Guardian | Base health | Native size | Bottle code |
| --- | ---: | ---: | --- |
| The Elder | 750 | 35% | TG_Bottle_gd_king |
| Bonemass | 1500 | 40% | TG_Bottle_Bonemass |
| Moder | 2250 | 25% | TG_Bottle_Dragon |
| Yagluth | 3000 | 35% | TG_Bottle_GoblinKing |
| The Queen | 3750 | 30% | TG_Bottle_SeekerQueen |
| Fader | 7500 | 25% | TG_Bottle_Fader |
At level one, boss attacks retain 30% native damage before difficulty and other modifiers. The Elder keeps ranged vines and stomp; Bonemass keeps punch and poison cloud; Moder keeps melee, frost breath and ice volleys with low flight and landing; Yagluth keeps beam, nova and meteors; The Queen keeps melee, rush and poison spit; Fader keeps melee, flame bre
Install & use Install: BepInEx plugin
- The archive from playbuff is the mod itself — usually a BepInEx plugin (a .dll or a plugin folder once unzipped).
- Recommended: use a community mod manager (such as r2modman) — pick this game, import the mod, and the manager sets up BepInEx and its dependencies for you.
- Manual route: install the BepInEx loader in the game folder, then drop the unzipped .dll or plugin folder into BepInEx/plugins/.
- Launch the game — the BepInEx console logs every plugin it loads; seeing this mod in the log means it is installed.
Mods with listed dependencies need those installed too, or they will not load. Options are usually changed in-game or in the plugin's config file. In multiplayer, the host and every client need the same mods installed.
Install these first, or the mod will not work: