Tainted & Corrupted

What they are

Almost any monster can turn up as a stronger variant: Tainted, with a white skull, or Corrupted, with a red skull. Their name says which, as in "Tainted Dragon" or "Corrupted Demon", and so does their loot message. They hit harder and take longer to kill, and they pay for it in experience and loot.

The damage bonus applies to the whole hit, before your armour and shield take their part, so a variant can hurt where the normal monster could not.

Where they come from

• When monsters respawn. Every respawn has a 1 in 300 chance to be Tainted and a separate 1 in 300 chance to be Corrupted. One that nobody kills leaves after 30 minutes.
• When you kill a normal monster. Each kill has a 1 in 150 chance to call a Tainted and a separate 1 in 150 to call a Corrupted. A portal opens on the corpse and the variant steps out 8 seconds later. It stays for 30 minutes.
• Raids. One raid monster in five is a variant, half of them Corrupted.
• Corrupted Rifts are nothing but variants.

Bosses never spawn as a variant, but killing one can still open a variant portal. A variant's summons come out as the same variant, but summons drop nothing and give no experience.

More chances: the daily boosted creature on the front page raises its own respawn chances by 10–30%. The shop's Variant Boost raises them by 15% for an hour. Both only affect respawns, not the portals from kills.

Loot

A variant drops four kinds of loot:

1. Its normal loot, at ×5 (Tainted) or ×10 (Corrupted) the usual chance.
2. Loot only variants drop. About 200 monsters have their own variant-only items, usually around 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 1,200. Tainted and Corrupted Demons, for example, can drop pieces nothing else drops. The Tainted and Corrupted pages of the Bestiary tab list them.
3. A bonus that grows with the monster's strength. Every variant with up to 20,000 health drops some of this, and the tougher the monster, the better the odds:

   Drop	Tainted	Corrupted
   Platinum coins	Every kill: 1–3 on the weakest monsters, up to 25–35 on the strongest
   Fragments (one kind, 1–5)	1 in 40 → 1 in 3	1 in 30 → 1 in 2
   Jewel box	1 in 50 → 1 in 20	1 in 40 → 1 in 10
   Minor gem	1 in 50 → 1 in 20	1 in 40 → 1 in 10
   Major gem	1 in 300 → 1 in 40	1 in 250 → 1 in 20
   Greater gem (strongest monsters only)	1 in 1,000 → 1 in 700	1 in 900 → 1 in 600
   Aurelia ring	1 in 450 → 1 in 250	1 in 300 → 1 in 150
   Ring	Life ring, 1 in 30 → 1 in 10	Ring of healing, 1 in 30 → 1 in 10
   Potions	Health and mana potions to match the monster, 1 in 3 or 4 each	The same, sometimes two

   Variants are the only source of greater gems.
4. Higher Item Levels. Everything it drops rolls its Item Level 3 (Tainted) or 7 (Corrupted) steps higher than the same monster's normal drops. Rarity chances are unchanged.

Loot needs more than 14 hours of stamina, as it does for every monster.

How they behave

• Fields don't stop them. Both variants walk straight through fire, energy and poison fields. They still take the damage.
• Corrupted monsters clear their own path. If other monsters block a Corrupted from reaching you, it kills the blocker in one hit and comes through. It never does this to bosses or summons.