This post was last updated on September 12th, 2022
Hello Gloomhaven enthusiast, and welcome to this new article where I’ll be talking about Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion Blood Monstrosity.
After writing about the Rat Monstrosity in my previous article, I thought that speaking about the same class of monsters was the most natural thing to do to keep a bit of structure in this series.
This huge “upgrade” of the Zealot is one of the most controversial enemies in the game. Let’s see why.
There will be spoilers ahead, so if you arrived at this page by mistake I’d suggest you stop reading right now.
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Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion Blood Monstrosity
The Blood Monstrosity is a huge amass of blood and rotten meat that covers what resembles a humanoid-shaped figure holding a whip. Remember the Zealot?
This monster is capable of resisting some of your attacks thanks to its innate shield and similarly to the Rat Monstrosity, it explodes when defeated dealing tons of damage to adjacent figures.
At the beginning of the article, I said that this monster is one of the most controversial ones, but why?
Short answer: Blood Monstrosities could be very strong enemies, but they only appear in 1 scenario in which you can even run past them without striking a single attack!
It’s a huge missed opportunity in my opinion.
Where you can find this monster? Scenario: 17.
Blood Monstrosity Stat Cards
Normal enemy (average values)
- Hit points: 13 (13 considering shield)
- Base movement: 3
- Base attack: 3
Elite enemy (average values)
- Hit points: 18 (19 considering shield)
- Base movement: 3
- Base attack: 4
Considering that you will encounter this enemy in scenario 17, which is the same dungeon as the final Boss, your characters will probably be at a high level and it shouldn’t be too difficult to deal with this guy.
Hit points aren’t too high and the shield has quite low values if you compare it with the Stone Golem‘s shield for example.
Similarly to the Rat Monstrosity, they also have the special ability to deal damage to all adjacent figures when they die.
The damage output is higher than the Rats, but there is probably less chance to create a chain of explosions as these aren’t swarm enemies.
On the other hand, thanks to their high base movement, it could be a bit easier for them to reach a hex adjacent to your character.
Be sure to don’t kill them when you are in that situation as the splash damage of their Special is quite high.
Blood Monstrosity Ability Cards
Average Initiative value: 39.
Unexpectedly, looking at the artwork, the Blood Monstrosity is a very fast enemy. 5 cards out of 8 are below 50 Initiative, therefore this monster could hit quite often before your turn.
The ability cards deck are shared with the Rat Monstrosity and so the evaluation of it is pretty similar.
Explosive Blisters is still one of the best actions in the deck. If you kill the enemy while this ability is active you could get hit by very high damage.
Swarm is a pretty weak ability as there won’t be many enemies around you, as opposed to the big Rat.
Weakening Bite, Calculated Strike and Nothing Special are still nothing special.
Unstable Scratch and Unstable Frenzy are again two abilities that could help you tacking these enemies down faster.
They have a malus for which if they perform the action they suffer 1 damage. By playing around with this weakness + their innate Special, you could create small chains of damage.
Strategy against Blood Monstrosity
- Unfortunately, running away from this monster is the best strategy.
- Voidwarden class will be the MVP against these monsters thanks to some of her crowd control abilities.
- Due to their high movement, immobilizing them will be very useful as they don’t have ranged attacks.
Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion Blood Monstrosity could have been a tough monster to fight if you would have encountered it in the early part of the story.
Unfortunately, the fact that you only see it once and that the best strategy is to run away from it put this enemy very low on a hypothetical scale of preference on Gloomhaven monsters.
If you are brave, instead of running away from them, try to find an effective strategy to take them down.
If you liked this post, you may also be interested in:
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion – Review
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion Classes – Overview & Rank
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion – Monsters Overview