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.

Lore
Royal guards are one of the highest ranking illagers within the Arch-Illager's illager empire, capable of overwhelming the hero with both damage and numbers. The Arch-Illager had handpicked a variety of illagers from his army of vindicator foot soldiers in order for him to have his own personal royal guards inspired by the sight of the Nameless One's skeleton vanguards and due to their uneasy alliance.

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

Spawning
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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.