While traveling through Teyvat you may encounter different mechanisms. And no, not the puzzles. By mechanisms, we mean big robots with long legs and arms. Those robots are called Ruin Guards. Some believe that they were developed as war machines, others as protectors of the ruins. But as a Traveler, you are here for loot and resources. Time to take on the Ruin Guard in Genshin Impact with this complete guide!
Ruin Guard Drops and Usage
Ruin Guards, just like Ruin Hunters or Ruin Graders, drop valuable weapon ascension materials. Chaos Device, Chaos Circuit, and Chaos Core. The rarity of the drop depends on your World Level. The higher the World Level the higher the chance that you will get rare items.
Other drops may contain pieces from the Traveling Doctor, Berserker, Instructor, and The Exile artifact sets. Those are pretty common and viable artifacts (assuming you are in the early game thus below AR40). So make sure to take a look at them and use them if there is something you like.
You will also encounter Ruin Guards during many Archon, Story, and World quests and Spiral Abyss if you dare to step in there. It is quite a common enemy so make sure to read through the Fighting Tactics to know how to handle them.
Best Loacations to Find Ruin Guards
If you are looking to farm Ruin Guards to obtain weapon ascension materials there are a few great locations to travel to.
The best place overall is a bit north of Lingju Pass in Liye. It has 4-5 Ruin Guards and a Ruin Hunter to defeat and they are in convenient locations. You will never have to fight them all together, quite the opposite. Enemies are spread throughout the location, some of them are in an inactive state, and are easy to defeat one by one.
If you are still in the early game and are not planning to travel to Liye there are a few locations in Mondstadt. The best one would be Stormterror’s Lair. It has multiple Ruin Guards roaming the spire and the area around it. So run around and explore a little bit.
When those locations are cleared, use the Adventurers Handbook to locate more. To open it click on the open book icon at the top right (third from the right) and then open the enemies tab. Scroll until you find the Ruin Guard and press “Navigate”. It will mark the location of a Ruin Guard on the map. And as soon as it is defeated it will mark the next one straight away.
Defeating Ruin Guards
Taking on a Ruin Guard in battle can be a challenge. It has powerful and annoying attacks that you need to know but with the right team, it will become quite easy.
Best Elements
The first thing to know is that as a mechanism Ruin Guards have high Phys DMG RES also known as resistance to physical damage. This can be applied to other mechanism-like enemies like Ruin Hunters or Perpetual Mechanical Array.
Here are the RES stats of the Ruin Guard:
| Physical DMG | Anemo DMG | Pyro DMG | Hydro DMG | Cryo DMG | Geo DMG | Electro DMG | Dendro DMG |
| 70% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% | 10% |
As you may see any kind of elemental damage will work the best on Ruin Guards but there are a few tops you can use. Despite having the same resistance to all enemies, using Hydro and Electro is the best way to deal with them.
Applying both of these elements will create an Electro-Charged reaction that can occasionally stagger the Ruin Guard and leave them vulnerable for a few seconds. Just like when you drop your laptop in the lake, it will cause short-circuit. That effect is nice to have but is not crucial. The main focus is still any source of elemental damage.
Attacks and Weak Spots
Ruin Guards have a few quite annoying attacks so let’s break them down and look for ways to counter them.
- Clap. Ruin Guard leans forward, extends its hands and claps. Easy and slow attack to just dash or even walk away from.
- Stomp. If you get too close Ruin Guard will try and stomp you a few times. Dash away and attack in between stomps as it takes the Ruin Guard a while to recover.
- Spinning Attack. Ruin Guard extends its arms and starts spinning wlking towards you. Just run. Getting hit by that attack is very painful so stay away until it ends.
- Punch and Jump. Two punches and a jump. Keep your distance and watch for the red circle that predicts Ruin Guard’s landing.
- Bombardment. Ruin Guard launches a barrage is missles on your position. Relocate as soon as the missles are launched as they lock on your last known position before launch.
A good way to break any attack is to shoot its weak spots with a bow. Ruin Guard has 2 weak spots: His eye and a cross on the back on the same level as its eye. Shooting those spots will stagger Ruin Guards for a decent time and cancel its attack.
Team Comps
Now that we know all about the ways to defeat the Ruin Guard let’s create an ideal team. The team will be mostly free to play friendly and you don’t need the same characters just the concept.
Here is a good free-to-play team for fighting the Ruin Guards:
- Amber (for hitting weak spots)
- Lisa (Elemental Damage from normal attacks)
- Xiangling (Elemental Skill and Burst for Pyro application)
- Kaeya (Elemental Skill and Burst for Cryo application)
To fight Ruin Guards, we need 2 things: a bow user and a source of elemental damage. As a bow user use whoever you like, a free-to-play option there is Amber who’s Elemental Burst is also a good source of Pyro DMG.
For elemental damage and reactions, there can be a few teams. Catalyst users like Lisa or Yanfei, characters with high elemental usage like Xiangling (her Elemental Burst) and Xingqiu. In fact, you can use whoever you like just remember to focus on their abilities and mix them to cause reactions as this is the best way to deal damage.
