Undead in Darkest Dungeon are not defined by a shared weakness — they are defined by a shared resistance. Every Bone enemy in the Ruins carries 200% to 245% bleed resistance, which is not “hard to bleed”, it is a hard no. Meanwhile their blight resistance sits at 50% to 70% on Champion. Same enemy, one channel quadrupled.
That single number pair is the reason a bleed party that walks the Weald comfortably will stall in the Ruins, and it is the first thing to check before you pick a party.
All figures below come from darkestdungeon-enemies.json, parsed from darkestdungeon.wiki.gg.
The Bone roster, Champion tier
| Enemy | HP | PROT | Bleed res | Blight res | SPD | Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bone Rabble | 16 | 0% | 200% | 10% | 3 | With low HP, no protection, low speed, very poor resistances (save for bleed), and weak, inaccurate attacks, this enemy is by far the weakest of all Unholy enemies and should be considered a very low priority in battle. |
| Bone Soldier | 21 | 25% | 245% | 55% | 4 | Bone Soldier is an Unholy creature, and is as basic an enemy as one can encounter within the Ruins. The finesse it had in life persists in death, giving it above-average damage and allowing it to strike with a farther reach than most other melee monsters. |
| Bone Spearman | 31 | 0% | 245% | 55% | 5 | The Bone Spearman is an enemy found in the Ruins. Their spears provide them with incredible reach, letting them strike any point from anywhere on the battlefield. More dangerously, this same spear can impale the entire party at once. The Bone Spearman is an Unholy enemy that appears in the Ruins. |
| Bone Arbalist | 31 | 0% | 245% | 55% | 7 | The Bone Arbalist is a common long-range combatant found in the Ruins. Like the player’s own Arbalests, they operate by firing crossbow bolts into the fray from the safety of the back ranks, and end up in an awkward position if drawn to the front. |
| Bone Courtier | 21 | 0% | 245% | 55% | 10 | Bone Courtier is an Unholy enemy found in the Ruins, and one of the first enemies encountered that specialize in dealing Stress damage. Though ill-suited for combat, their signature Tempting Goblet is a well-known source of stress in the earlier stages of the game. |
| Bone Defender | 31 | 45% | 245% | 55% | 2 | Bone Defenders are enemies commonly encountered within the Ruins. Their large shield leaves them well-armored and capable of taking a beating, and they can use this resilience to protect the other undead soldiers guarding the area. |
| Bone Captain | 68 | 33% | 240% | 50% | 2 | The Bone Captain is an enemy that appears in Veteran-tier or harder expeditions in the Ruins. These undead soldiers, befitting their rank, are tough and strong, using their large maces to clobber the heroes. The weight of their strikes can cause the very ground to quake, leaving those affected dazed and reeling. |
| Bone Bearer | 52 | 15% | 240% | 70% | 7 | The Bone Bearer is an enemy that appears only in Champion-tier expeditions in the Ruins. While it remains standing, the banner it bears will inspire any nearby undead to fight with increased strength, and its horn may imbue individual allies, living or undead with a surge of power. |
Look at the bleed column: the “best” bleed target in the Ruins is the Bone Rabble at 200%, which is still double the threshold where a bleed stops landing. The Bone Soldier, Spearman, Arbalist, Courtier and Defender are all at 245%.
Look at the blight column: 10% on the Rabble, 50–55% on the standard infantry, 70% on the Bearer. That is a working resistance profile.
Why 200% is a different category from 90%
A resistance of 90% means a strong bleed lands roughly one time in ten. A resistance of 200% means it does not land.
This is the distinction that breaks bleed builds. In the Weald, where the Hag sits at 65% bleed resistance on Champion, bleed is the best channel in the game. In the Ruins, the same build produces nothing at all, and the party has no backup because bleed was the whole plan.
The reverse is also true. The Fanatic sits at 90% bleed resistance and 125% blight resistance, so blight is dead there while bleed works. The Countess is 90% bleed and 110% blight. Resistance parsing is not a detail in this game — it is the party selection step.
Blight is the answer, with the numbers
Against the standard Ruins line-up you are looking at 50–55% blight resistance on Champion, which is the same band as the Collector’s 20% or the Necromancer’s 20% in the boss file — slightly worse, but workable.
Practical consequences:
- A Plague Doctor is at full value here. Her blight lands on every Bone type except the Bearer, which sits at 70%.
- Blight also handles PROT. The Bone Defender at 45% and the Bone Captain at 33% ignore most raw damage, but damage over time does not check PROT at all.
- Blight on the champion-tier Bearer is 70%, so a single applier will whiff sometimes. Two is comfortable.
If you are running bleed because your roster is built that way, the honest answer is to route around the Ruins rather than rebuild. The hero to dungeon matching guide covers that decision properly.
PROT is concentrated in three enemies
Armour in the Ruins is not evenly distributed:
- Bone Defender: 45% on Veteran and Champion, up from 25% on Apprentice.
- Bone Captain: 33%, up from 15%.
- Bone Bearer: 15%, flat.
- Everything else: 0%, including the 68-HP Captain’s escorts.
That means a raw damage party has two specific problems and no others. Against the Defender, 45% PROT turns 31 HP into 56 effective HP. Against the Captain, 33% turns 68 into 101. Neither is a wall, but both are the wrong target when a 21-HP Courtier is standing behind them doing stress damage at speed 10.
The Defender’s role is exactly what its name says: it is there to make you attack it. Its blight resistance is 55% and its HP is 31 — it dies to two applications, and it dies faster if you simply walk past it.
Speed splits the roster into two jobs
Sort the Ruins by speed and the target priority writes itself:
- Speed 10: Bone Courtier (21 HP, 0% PROT)
- Speed 7: Bone Bearer (52 HP, 15% PROT), Bone Arbalist (31 HP, 0% PROT)
- Speed 5: Bone Spearman (31 HP, 0% PROT)
- Speed 4: Bone Soldier (21 HP, 25% PROT)
- Speed 3: Bone Rabble (16 HP, 0% PROT)
- Speed 2: Bone Captain (68 HP, 33% PROT), Bone Defender (31 HP, 45% PROT)
The fast half is unarmoured or lightly armoured and dies quickly. The slow half is armoured and dies slowly. If you kill in speed order you remove actions early; if you kill in “biggest thing first” order you spend three rounds on a 45%-PROT shield while a 21-HP stress dealer acts twice per round.
The enemy priority guide generalises this into a rule, and the Necromancer guide applies it inside a boss fight where the same roster appears as adds.
The two outliers worth knowing
Two Unholy enemies do not follow the Bone pattern.
The Ghoul is Large, 57 HP on Champion, with 40% PROT and — critically — 20% bleed resistance and 20% blight resistance. It is the one undead enemy that bleeds freely. If you brought a bleed party to the Ruins and met a Ghoul, that is the target your bleed works on.
The Squiffy Ghast is Small, 64 HP, 0% PROT, but 32.25% dodge and 110% stun resistance, with 55% blight and 140% bleed. High dodge plus high bleed resistance makes it the worst possible target for a bleed build, and its 110% stun resistance means you cannot lock it down either.
“Bone Defenders are enemies commonly encountered within the Ruins. Their large shield leaves them well-armored and capable of taking a beating” — darkestdungeon.wiki.gg, Bone Defender stat block
Building the counter
A Ruins party that answers this data:
- Blight, twice. 50–55% resistance across the line-up, 70% on the Bearer.
- No bleed specialist. 240–245% is not a soft target.
- Fast damage. The Courtier at speed 10 and the Bearer at 7 need to die before they act twice.
- PROT penetration or DoT. The Defender’s 45% and the Captain’s 33% are the only armour in the region.
The enemies guide covers the other five regions’ resistance signatures, and the dungeon guide covers which region to run when your roster cannot field blight.