Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion Living Spirit – Overview & Strategy Guide

The day has finally arrived! No, it’s not time to talk about Chaos Demon, yet… instead, I’ll be talking about Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion Living Spirit.

I’m really excited to write this post because this is one of my favourite enemies in the game for a couple of reasons; I love the artwork and their ability cards.

The Living Spirit is one of those monsters with low health/high shield stats that will attack you from the distance. This monster shares half of its name with the other undead creature, the Living Corpse, but it’s a very different foe to face.

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 Living Spirit

The Living Spirit is an undead creature shaped in the form of a chained ghost, that can attack you from the distance and give you debuffs.

They also have an affinity with the ice element which they can use to stun your characters, and they have a quite high shield to protect the very low hit points value.

I found these enemies well balanced to fight, but there are only two scenarios where you can encounter them, with just one of those two being part of the main story. In fact, in my first playthrough, I haven’t even fought them because I chose to enter another dungeon.
Similar to what I wrote for the Blood Monstrosity, this is a missed opportunity to see a very cool monster returning more often to the table.

Where you can find this monster? Scenario: 12, 25.

Living Spirit Stat Cards

Ridiculously low hit points and that kind of makes sense given the fact this monster hasn’t a physical body, which makes it very fragile.

The other statistics though, base movement and attack, are good and paired with the innate shield give the Living Spirit some weapons to force you to not let your guard down when fighting them.

As we are about to see in the next section, this monster has a very long range and if it manages to attack you from a safe position in the back row, it could easily become a serious threat to your party.

Living Spirit Ability Cards

Average Initiative value: 51.

A very average Initiative value, with a perfect balance between fast and slow abilities, speaking of which they are quite diversified to make the monster’s moveset more unpredictable.

Nothing Special attack is the usual average one, which has quite a long range and therefore a bit more dangerous compared to the melee version of it.

Coupled Chain is an attack that targets 2 heroes at range 3. Not very nasty if you’re out of range.

Let’s start to talk about more serious abilities now.

Booming Scream is a quite powerful attack that has the ability to hit all the characters of your party.
It has the “move + attack” pattern so it will likely lower someone’s health when this card is pulled from the monster’s deck.

Sap Strength is the fastest card in the deck and it’s very nasty. On top of the move+attack ability, it has the chance to apply muddle status to your characters. And on top of all that, it’s range 4! No running away from it.

Now, two abilities that can infuse the Ice element, Angry Howl and Leech Warmth.
The first one is a heck of a debuff card, that can put a curse card in everyone’s attack modifier deck. Very annoying.
The second is a move+attack ability that lets the Living Spirit heal itself.

Finally, what would it be the best ability to pair with the 2 mentioned above ones? Icy Glare, of course!
Icy Glare is a move+attack ability with a range of 3 that consumes Ice to disarm your character. Paired with one of the 2 attacks above can be very nasty.

Strategy against Living Spirit

• Attack with heavy artillery. Due to their low health, they should die pretty fast.
• Try to force them to attack with disadvantage by staying at close range and positioning your heroes strategically on the map.
• Inflicting the negative status wound will help bypass their shield.
• Pay attention when you infuse the Ice element with your heroes as this monster can use the Icy Glare elemental effect to disarm you.

Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion Living Spirit is a balanced monster to fight, which can quickly become very dangerous if it attacks from the back row protected by the terrain and other enemies.
If you encounter it try to enjoy the fight as it could be the only one you will end up doing.

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