Animate Guardian

Animate Guardian is a spell, animating weapons and armour on the ground to form an allied guardian.

Skill functions and interactions

Using this skill on an identified item on the ground creates an Animated Guardian that moves and attacks similar to a zombie. Similar to Spectres and unlike other minions, a Guardian stays with you even after logging off and on. If you unequip the skill gem, the Guardian disappears until you equip the gem again, at which point the same Guardian (retaining all its equipment) reappears after casting the spell again. Socketing the gem in a weapon or shield slot allows you to recall the Guardian at will by switching weapon sets (default hotkey: X).

You can only have one Guardian at a time. It can be equipped with a helmet, body armour, pair of gloves, pair of boots, a shield, and melee weapons. Ranged weapons cannot be animated, similar to Animate Weapon. Items can be of any rarity, but must be identified and on the ground to be used. Animated items are consumed by the spell and cannot be recovered. Items containing skill gems cannot be animated, so the Guardian cannot use trigger gems.

Items that have modifiers like +x to Maximum life or +x% increased Attack Speed, and even corrupted implicits, apply to the Guardian the same way they apply to player characters; so animating magic or rare equipment can potentially give you a very powerful minion. Unique items can also be used, but they are usually too valuable to sacrifice.

The Guardian uses weapons and shields in the same way as player characters, and can dual wield if two one-handed weapons are animated. If you animate an item type that the Guardian is already using (such as a helmet), the new item will overwrite the old one. Equipping an armour piece restores 25% of its life; equipping one-handed weapons or shields will alternate between left and right hand. You cannot equip two shields.

The Guardian does not share your max amount of curses you can apply to enemies, and therefore functions as a player with the default curse limit when applying curses (through corrupted gloves, for example).

Guardians have 25% elemental resists and 0% chaos resist across all difficulties.

Items deleted on Death: When a Guardian dies, all its equipment is deleted and cannot be recovered. This makes very risky to use powerful or valuable items on an Animated Guardian. When the player dies, the Guardian will remain alive and will continue to fight, so it is advised to immediately resurrect (if in softcore) in order to pull the Guardian from the instance. It is possible to prevent a body armour worn by a Guardian from being deleted upon Guardian death by crafting Equipped Animated Guardian drops item on death on the Armourer's Workbench.

Necromantic Aegis: While using Necromantic Aegis your Guardian benefits from its own shield as well as the one you have equipped, allowing it to gain the benefit of two shields at once. Some unique shields can be quite powerful when doubled up this way.

Player versus Player: Animated Guardians killed in PvP areas will not lose their items.

Gem level progression

Level				Mana Cost	max. Req. Level	increased maximum Life	increased Physical Damage	additional Physical Damage	Exp.	Total Exp.
1	28	42	29	11	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	0	0
2	31	46	32	11	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	199345	199345
3	34	50	35	12	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	285815	485160
4	37	54	37	13	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	401344	886504
5	40	58	40	13	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	554379	1440883
6	42	60	42	14	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	477437	1918320
7	44	63	44	14	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	583786	2502106
8	46	66	46	15	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	710359	3212465
9	48	68	48	15	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	1355511	4567976
10	50	71	49	15	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	1138877	5706853
11	52	74	51	16	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	1368233	7075086
12	54	76	53	16	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	1638338	8713424
13	56	79	55	17	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	1956648	10670072
14	58	82	57	17	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	3655184	14325256
15	60	84	59	18	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	3017327	17342583
16	62	87	60	18	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	7759995	25102578
17	64	90	62	18	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	15138193	40240771
18	66	92	64	19	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	26083825	66324596
19	68	95	66	19	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	62620247	128944843
20	70	98	68	20	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	211708088	340652931
21	72	100	70	20	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
22	74	N/A	N/A	21	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
23	76	N/A	N/A	21	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
24	78	N/A	N/A	21	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
25	80	N/A	N/A	22	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
26	82	N/A	N/A	22	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
27	84	N/A	N/A	23	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
28	86	N/A	N/A	23	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
29	88	N/A	N/A	24	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
30	90	N/A	N/A	24	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
31	91	N/A	N/A	24	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
32	92	N/A	N/A	25	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
33	93	N/A	N/A	25	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
34	94	N/A	N/A	25	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
35	95	N/A	N/A	25	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
36	96	N/A	N/A	25	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
37	97	N/A	N/A	26	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
38	98	N/A	N/A	26	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
39	99	N/A	N/A	26	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
40	100	N/A	N/A	26	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Monster stats

Animated Guardian

Resistances:

• Normal: {{#ask: Monster resistances#MinionTotem|?Has lightning resistance in normal difficulty|?Has cold resistance in normal difficulty|?Has fire resistance in normal difficulty|?Has chaos resistance in normal difficulty|format=template|template=SMW resistance row|mainlabel=-}}
• Cruel: {{#ask: Monster resistances#MinionTotem|?Has lightning resistance in cruel difficulty|?Has cold resistance in cruel difficulty|?Has fire resistance in cruel difficulty|?Has chaos resistance in cruel difficulty|format=template|template=SMW resistance row|mainlabel=-}}
• Merciless: {{#ask: Monster resistances#MinionTotem|?Has lightning resistance in merciless difficulty|?Has cold resistance in merciless difficulty|?Has fire resistance in merciless difficulty|?Has chaos resistance in merciless difficulty|format=template|template=SMW resistance row|mainlabel=-}}

Level	Life	Attack Speed
28	823	1.00
31	999	1.00
34	1197	1.00
37	1431	1.00
40	1705	1.00
42	1908	1.00
44	2133	1.00
46	2380	1.00
48	2655	1.00
50	2952	1.00
52	3285	1.00
54	3645	1.00
56	4045	1.00
58	4482	1.00
60	4959	1.00
62	5485	1.00
64	6057	1.00
66	6687	1.00
68	7380	1.00
70	8131	1.00
72	8959	1.00
74	9864	1.00
76	10849	1.00
78	11929	1.00
80	13108	1.00
82	14395	1.00
84	15799	1.00
86	17338	1.00
88	19012	1.00
90	20839	1.00

Related helmet enchantments

The following helmet enchantments affect Animate Guardian.

Note that helmet enchantments are no longer obtainable since version 3.23.0 and can only be obtained in permanent leagues as already enchanted items from before this patch.

No results found

Version history

Version	Changes
2.3.0	Animate Weapon and Animate Guardian have had their range modified. Previously there was a bug where you could bypass the range. Now that this is fixed, the range has been tripled from 25 to 75 units. Fixed a bug where the life bar of an Animate Guardian (and curses on it) would display too low on him.
2.0.0	The Guardian's base survivability has been increased by 50%. It now deals additional physical damage.
1.2.1	Fixed a bug where Animate Guardian would not work in PVP.
1.2.0	If an Animated Guardian is unsummoned and resummoned when not on full life, it will now return with the same amount of life it had before.
1.1.4b	Animated Guardians now benefit from the dual wielding bonus that other dual wielders received in 1.1.4.
1.1.0d	Fixed a bug where your Animated Guardian could return from the dead during a PvP match.
1.0.1	The Guardian now recovers 25% of its life whenever a new armour piece is added to it. Fixed an issue with key pickup and the Animate (Weapon and Guardian) skills.
1.0.0e	When an Animated Guardian is dispelled due to its gem being unavailable, its life value is now temporarily saved so that it applies if the Guardian is restored in that area.
1.0.0	Animate Guardian has been added to the game.