Upgraded Skeleton BanditReport
English：Upgraded Skeleton Bandit · Characters
The elite of the Skeleton Bandits, leading ten to fifteen followers across the south-eastern badlands. He is in fact human — wearing a Skeleton Mask, and carrying a Skeleton Repair Kit he can never use on himself.
The Upgraded Skeleton Bandit is the elite tier of the Skeleton Bandits. They are the most common squad leaders on the roads of the south-eastern badlands — one Upgraded Skeleton Bandit with ten to fifteen ordinary Skeleton Bandits behind him.
He is not a skeleton
This is the most-misread fact about the whole faction: the Skeleton Bandits are human. The Upgraded Skeleton Bandit's race entry reads Greenlander, with a fifty-fifty gender split, and the Skeleton Mask he wears is a piece of headgear, not his face.
The equipment list makes it plainer still:
| Slot | Item |
|---|---|
| Weapon | Ringed Sabre |
| Head | Skeleton Mask |
| Body | Mercenary Plate |
| Shirt | Chainmail |
| Legs | Samurai Legplates |
| Feet | Samurai Boots |
| Inventory | Skeleton Repair Kit |
That last line is the most interesting detail in the entry. A Skeleton Repair Kit repairs skeletons; carried by a human it does nothing at all. The Upgraded Skeleton Bandit carries it not to save his own life but because the creed requires him to live as a skeleton does. That is exactly what the Elder preaches: worship the machine, imitate the machine.
The squad he leads, and when it disappears
Taking Stobe's Garden as the example, the spawn data reads:
| Squad | Composition | Weight | Condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skeleton Bandits Patrol | 1 Upgraded Skeleton Bandit + 10–15 Skeleton Bandits | 10 | Elder alive |
| Skeleton Bandits Patrol (broken) | 1–5 Broken Skeleton Bandits | 5 | Elder dead |
Weight 10 is second only to the Reaver patrols in that zone — which is to say: as long as the Elder lives, Upgraded Skeleton Bandits are simply what the local traffic looks like.
Kill the Elder and the whole production line collapses: the column becomes a remnant of one to five Broken Skeleton Bandits. The same pattern holds in Stobe's Gamble, The Pits and The Crags.
Difficulty
Strength 50, combat stats 50, randomised by ±4 and multiplied by the Greenlander racial modifier. Gear starts at Standard with an 18% chance of stepping up to High — a high upgrade rate for a bandit.
His real threat is not his own numbers but the ten to fifteen people behind him. Skeleton Bandits are better equipped than bandits generally are, and a full squad charging at once puts out enough damage to break a mid-game party.