From The Ashes – All Beast Heart Choices And Their Consequences

Highlights

• The Guardian’s Heart is a key item in Remnant: From The Ashes that multiple characters want.
• Giving the heart to the Undying King revives the Guardian of Rhom and gives powerful weapons.
• Giving the heart to the Iskal Queen opens up Corsus to a Root invasion and starts a hivemind battle.

The Guardian’s Heart is a coveted Key Item in Remnant: From The Ashes that multiple characters demand from the player, and the Guardian this heart belongs to, otherwise known as Ixillis, is the only thing stopping the Root from invading the world of Corsus. Obtaining it from Ixillis is tough in and of itself, as most things in Soulslike games are, and the choice of who to give the heart to is equally as difficult. Both characters that want it, after all, hold a lot of power and offer tantalizing rewards.

It really is one of the most pivotal choices players will be making in Remnant: From the Ashes, and there is no ‘best’ choice, as it just depends on what reward seems more appealing to the player. It’s no exaggeration to say that this choice can determine a player’s entire build going forward since both the Undying King and the Iskal Queen give the Wanderer some powerful weapons in exchange for the Heart.

Updated December 15th, 2023 by Jacob Buchalter: With both Remnant: From the Ashes and its sequel Remnant 2 coming to Xbox Game Pass just recently (as of the time of writing this), a lot of new players are checking both games out. Remnant: From the Ashes, in particular, has an absurd amount of content in it given that the game had two seperate massive DLC additions released after it initially came out. Sure, Remnant 2 did get the Awakened King DLC and that added a good chunk of content, but it pails in comparison to the Corsus content, items, Reisum content, and Survival Mode added through both the Swamps of Corsus and Subject 2923 DLCs. Regardless, since a lot of new eyes are on Remnant: From the Ashes, that means a lot of new players who probably don’t know all the choices they have at their disposal when it comes to using Ixillis’ Guardian Heart. So, let’s go over each option at length.

5 Obtaining The Guardian’s Heart From Ixillis

To Make A Decision You Must First Obtain The Guardian’s Heart

Within Remnant’s in-universe lore, each World or ‘Realm’ (including Earth) has its own Guardian that acts as a sort of ‘firewall’, preventing the Root from invading that World through the Worldstones. This concept has only been developed further in the sequel, Remnant 2, but in R: FtA this is all players understood. Players can see the result of the Root’s invasion in Remnant: From the Ashes not only on Earth, but also in the desert realm called Rhom.

Rhom already went through an entire war with the Root, and their leader, the Undying King, resorted to essentially nuking his entire planet to wipe out all traces of the Root, who then left as Rhom was now essentially devoid of all life. Then there’s Corsus, a world that’s basically untouched by the Root, as its Guardian is still standing (at least when you first get there). But, Corsus has already undergone an invasion from a different hivemind species, the Iskal, and they also want the same Guardian’s Heart that the Undying King wants. So, which option should you choose?

4 The Three Choices Overview

Bring It To Rhom, Give It To The Iskal, Or Hold Onto It Yourself

Now, once players actually reach the Undying King, this is where they’ll first want to start weighing their options for who gets the Guardian’s Heart they’ll eventually obtain from Ixillis. While all three options aren’t fully revealed until the player talks to Cessnya, the Iskal Queen in Corsus, here’s a quick reference to each option:

Each choice has its pros and cons, with one specific path having significantly more consequences than it does benefits. Thankfully, with the way Remnant: From the Ashes was designed, it’s very easy to just reroll the Campaign, and re-progress through a few Realms to try out a different option, as the sheer volume of different events and permutations you can see in a single re-roll means no two runs feel exactly the same.

And, because players can just kill the Undying King to take his Labyrinth Key, skip Corsus altogether, and push onward straight to Yaesha, getting the Guardian’s Heart is ‘technically’ an optional objective altogether. For those who want to understand the ‘lore’ implications behind this optional objective, players are deciding between leaving Ixillis to do its job as Guardian of Corsus or using Ixillis’s Heart to bring back the Guardian of Rhom so it can drive out the Root. Now, let’s go over each option a bit more in-depth, so you’ll have all the information you’ll ever need about this choice at your disposal.

3 Option 1: Path Of The Undying King

Giving The Heart To The Undying King To ‘Save Rhom’

The first (and most common) choice you can go for is bringing the Guardian’s Heart back to the Undying King. If you do so, he’ll reward you with:

Then the King uses the Guardian Heart on the pool of liquid behind him, which is implied to be the ‘healing vessel’ for Rhom’s Guardian. This is the option most players usually opt in for on their second run of the Campaign as it is the path that lets them skip Corsus entirely if they so wish. After dealing with the swamps of Corsus and its Guardian once, most players tend not to volunteer for a second tour of the Realm unless they’re going the 100 percent completionist route.

The In-Game Lore Behind This Decision

So, the Undying King, also known as Ezlan, asks for the Guardian’s Heart as a means of saving his world and protecting his people from the Root. His motives seem sincere but his methods bring those motives into question since a lot of the item descriptions for gear obtained in Rhom imply that he and his priesthood order ruled with a strong sense of justice that seemed to prefer the needs of the many over the needs of the few.

The Basha Priesthood and by extension, the Basha Empire, was flourishing before the Root invaded. And, after a long and bloody war with the Root, Rhom’s people defended their world, but at the cost of most of its inhabitants, and the result rendered the planet almost entirely ‘lifeless’. Now, after many years, civilization and life are returning to Rhom, but the Undying King is positive that the Root will notice this resurgence of life and return to pick the invasion up from where they left off.

This is why Ezlan, Rhom’s Dreamer (or what they call the ‘Nui’), is so intent on bringing the Guardian back, through any means available. It’s implied through Ezlan having a Labyrinth Key at all and some of his dialog referencing other Worlds that Ezlan was using the Labyrinth to search other Worlds for a Guardian’s Heart to ‘heal’ Rhom’s Guardian on his own. So, at the very least, Ezlan seems to want the ‘best’ for Rhom. But, what exactly his definition of ‘best’ means, and if it’s worth investing the Guardian’s Heart in, are left entirely up to the player to figure out before they make their decision.

2 Option 2: Path of the Iskal Queen

Giving It To Cessnya So She Can Pit The Iskal Against The Root

If you choose to either ill or ignore the Undying King and give the Guardian’s Heart to Cessnya instead, she’ll give you:

The main reason players go this route, outside of choosing it because they already finished the Undying King’s route, is that this option has more rewards as a whole. If players give the Heart to the Undying King and then go to Corsus, Cessnya won’t give the player the time of day and only offer them some basic consumables and a Scythe Melee Weapon in her shop, But, if they agree to the King’s request, go to Corsus, kill Ixillis and give its Heart to Cessnya, then return to Rhom and kill the king, they’ll get the rewards from killing the king on top of the Crossbow and Slayer Set the Iskal Queen grants them.

Additionally, due to the content added in the Swamps of Corsus DLC, giving the Heart to Cessnya is even more beneficial, as it can eventually lead players to obtain the Potency Trait, the Ring of the Unclean, the Cryptolith Sigil, and eventually the renowned Labyrinth Set through a series of tasks related to finding her again in Adventure Mode. So it’s pretty clear that the Iskal Queen Path has more rewards overall, even if many of them aren’t the direct result of giving the Heart to the Queen. And that isn’t even including the Iskal Husk or Crystalline Plasma that Cessnya drops the Materials for when fought in her Status Effect-inflicting, reaction-time testing, Adventure Mode boss variant. Here’s a brief list of all the items that become available to obtain as a direct or indirect result of giving the Guardian’s Heart to the Iskal Queen:

The In-Game Lore Behind This Decision

Whereas Ezlan Nui, otherwise known as the Undying King or ‘Dreamer’ of Rhom, likely hid sinister intentions behind a noble outer facade, the Iskal Queen is sinister both inside and out. But, at least she’s honest about it. The Iskal she rules over is a hivemind race of insect-like creatures that took over the entirety of the Corsus Realm in the pursuit of everlasting life, which all but wiped out the original inhabitants of Corsus, the Elves.

All of this information is primarily discovered in the Swamps of Corsus DLC when players encounter the Graveyard Elf. This Elf is one of the last survivors that aren’t infected by the Iskal, but even she can’t avoid the infection for long. However, while the Iskal Queen will probably seem much more intimidating to most players once they find all this out, she’s actually a perfect example of the stereotypical ‘frog-in-a-well’ syndrome. Cessnya makes it clear to the player when she asks for the Guardian’s Heart that she’s intentionally opening Corsus up to the Root invasion in order to try and ‘overtake’ the Root with the Iskal as they did with the inhabitants of Corsus.

But, any player familiar with the extent of the Root’s influence, especially after seeing Root Earth in Remnant 2, will immediately know that the Iskal has almost 0 chance of beating the Root in a hivemind vs. hivemind battle. Considering the progression of time in Remnant 2, the state of Yaesha and its corrupted Guardian, and the implications behind the description of the Dead King’s Memento in Remnant 2 (which used to be called Ezlan’s Band), it would be amazing to see Corsus in some future DLC of Remnant 2, with the Iskal creatures being ‘overtaken’ by the Root altogether since they presumably lost to the Root rather embarrassingly.

1 Option 3: Path Of The Hoarder

The Most Pointless Option, But It’s Still An Option

Once the player refuses to give the Heart to the Undying King, the boss fight against him begins. And, compared to many other bosses in Remnant: From the Ashes and even in Remnant 2, the Undying King is a much more difficult encounter. However, players can choose to ‘put off’ this battle for a bit by not interacting with the Undying King at all. Still, eventually, they’ll need to at least talk to him, as he has to either give the Labyrinth Key to the Wanderer or have it looted from his dead body for the Story Mode to progress.

And, players can put off this fight even longer by, at first, accepting the King’s request for the Guardian’s Heart and allowing him to open the portal to Corsus. Then, after going to Corsus and killing Ixillis, they can just put off interacting with the King until they’re ready to fight him. But again, they’ll eventually need to fight him, as it’s the only way to obtain the Key to Yaesha. This option is by far the least beneficial out of the three, as there’s no reason for the player to hold onto the Guardian’s Heart and keep it for themselves, but it’s still technically an option, so you might as well know about it.

Rewards From The Undying King Fight

The battle against Ezlan Nui, the Undying King himself, is where this ruler sort of reveals how petty he is and that his intentions might not be as incredibly ‘pure’ as he made them sound. During the battle, he constantly mocks the player’s battle prowess and even ‘handicaps’ himself by only using two out of his four arms in the first phase of the fight.

Not only that but when the situation starts to turn against him, the King immediately resorts to siphoning life from Rhom’s catatonic Guardian to keep himself alive, proving he values his life over the safety of his Realm, at least in the grand scheme of things. When he’s finally been defeated, players will receive: