Minecraft Dungeons:Royal Guard

"ROYAL GUARD – Protected by heavy armor and wielding both a shield and spiked club, the Royal Guard are not easily defeated. Your first attack will destroy their shield but cause no other damage. Pelt with arrows to keep them at a distance. They're slower than most mobs, so you should be able to keep this up to deplete their health."

- Guide to Minecraft Dungeons: A Handbook for Heroes

A royal guard is a heavily-armored illager that can be found within the various missions of Minecraft Dungeons. A variant of the royal guard, the tower guard exists within certain floors of the tower.

Appearance
Royal guards can be seen wearing dark armor that has a fancy gold trim running around the helmet edges and beneath the shoulder gear. A blue gem can be seen embedded as the centerpiece of the helmet. In addition, they wield maces alongside shields that bear a golden cross-like pattern.

Lore
Traveling throughout the Mainland, it did not take the Heroes long to notice the hierarchy of the Arch-Illager's Illager empire. At the top of illager society were the royal guards, these high-ranking warriors were handpicked by the Arch-Illager for his own personal defense. As such, their armor was not made with subtlety in mind, needing to be capable of overwhelming enemies with both damage and numbers. Because they were elite warriors, they were deployed only at strategic locations such as the Highblock Halls, the Obsidian Pinnacle, the Lone Fortress, the Gale Sanctum, and the Lost Settlement. Despite this, however, there were royal guards stationed in other places, such as the Creepy Crypt, the Lower Temple, the Underhalls, the Colossal Rampart, the Gauntlet of Gales, and the Broken Citadel. They have three methods in which they attack their enemies. At first, they try charging, hoping to intimidate foes into fleeing with fear. If that fails, they instead relay on their mace and brute force. However, once an enemy does try to flee after this, they would pursue them. The Arch-illager may have been inspired by the sight of the Nameless One's skeleton vanguards and due to their uneasy alliance.

Spawning
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 * Missions

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 * Mobs

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Behavior
Royal guards are only able to be damaged once their shield is destroyed. Royal guards are slower than most mobs, yet extremely strong, capable of dealing heavy damage to the hero. Despite this, they can be, however, be stunned by normal attacks.

Royal guards chase and attack the hero who attracted them first and ignore other heroes.

Royal guards have three behaviors:

Royal guards charge at any hero that comes within their range of attack. When the Royal Guard moves, its left eye is slightly squinted to make it look more aggressive.
 * Walk

Royal guards swing their mace at the hero, dealing heavy melee damage. However, unlike vindicators, they cannot move while attacking.
 * Basic attack

Royal guard shield
A royal guard shield is an unobtainable shield that can be seen exclusively equipped by royal guards.

Appearance
Royal guard shields are dark gray shields that have a gold trimmed edge in addition to four gold trimmed lines running from each side to the dark gray center.

Behavior
Royal guard shields provide royal guards some protection against attacks, they do not deflect all ranged attacks. This is unlike tower guard shields wielded by tower guards.

Unused
There are two unknown sound set json files named with royal guard - sfx_mob_royalGuardBlock.json and sfx_mob_royalGuardPreSummon.json.

Step
According to  file, royal guard step sounds in game are mix from:

The above sound effects also appear in the death, hurt, PreSummon and block sounds json file.

The royal guard step sound effects below were made by add-ons creator Rumaaji:

Vigilant scoundrel


The vigilant scoundrel is an ancient royal guard that can be encountered during ancient hunts with the minimum offering of the following runes:



The ancient resides within a Highblock Halls-themed arena and possesses, at minimum, the following enchantments:



Fifteen enchanted pillagers act as the ancient's minions, possessing the following enchantments:



Upon defeating the vigilant scoundrel, a gilded variant of the following items drops as a reward:



Data values

 * In the game files, royal guards are referred to internally by the names  and.
 * In the game files, royal guard shields are referred to internally by the names  and.

Trivia

 * Sometimes, a skeleton with royal guard equipment can generate within the creepy crypt and the panda plateau. When the hero interacts with it, the skeleton disappears and waves of skeletons are summoned around it. After the waves are defeated, the hero gets a chest as a reward, yet they cannot take the shield and dark armor.
 * Armor and shields of the royal guard are slightly scaled up by 1.1x or 1.2x in game and loading screens. However in the Highblock Halls cutscenes, royal guard uses original size.
 * A stunned royal guard can be also found within the loading screen of the obsidian pinnacle.