The Vehrniis¶
You feel an arcane presence...
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The Vehrniis (pronounced "vurr-neese") is a massive sea serpent boss found in Challenger's Grotto.
The Vehrniis can be fought at any time if the player reaches her arena, and defeating her rewards the player with the Proxigea legendary weapon. This is not one of the six trials on the moon.
The Vehrniis can be seen in the lake outside of the Grotto before and after fighting her. While out in the world, she can damage the player, but cannot be hurt.
Location¶
The entrance to Challenger's Grotto.
The Vehrniis is located in Challenger's Grotto, a massive cavern in the southern leg of Dahr's Domain whose entrance is marked by a tall gray banner. Following this cave through a short series of dives and climbs, the player will find themselves at the top of a massive flooded scene in an open cavern. This serves as the arena for the Vehrniis boss fight.
Along this tunnel and outside in Dahr's Domain, players can find several copies of the Lesser Scalepiercer, with various durabilities. Picking up some of these is highly recommended.
The interior arena portion of Challenger's Grotto.
Upon dropping into the arena, the fight will begin.
Fight¶
The fight starts with the appearance of a bossbar and a message in chat which reads, "Something stirs in the watery depths...", followed by "An enormous apex predator draws near...".
The Vehrniis will then enter the arena from a door in the southeast. Players may climb up to a small tower above the water at the southern end of the arena, but it is very difficult to clear this fight without spending most of your time in the water.
Like all other bosses, the Vehrniis' health scales based on the number of players configured in the /trigger Settings menu.
| Players | Health |
|---|---|
| 1 | 190 |
| 2-3 | 300 |
| 4-5 | 420 |
| 6-7 | 550 |
| 8+ | 750 |
The Vehrniis will roughly track nearby players, locking on to them and wrapping around the arena to bite at them. She will also heavily utilize bomb projectiles, which emanate from her body in multiple directions and explode, as well as trident projectiles of her own.
The Vehrniis only takes damage when struck in the head. Attempting to attack her body will deal no damage, and prompt the message "The snake's scales are too thick for your blade!" in chat. Thrown tridents can be very effective at dealing damage in this fight.
At 67% health, the health bar will gray out, and the player will be unable to deal any damage. She will then summon a small wave of other aquatic hostile mobs, including guardians (named "Thrall of the Vehrniis") and trident-wielding Drowned (named "Sunken Tehrmari"). These mobs will glow with a blue outline, and must be killed in order for the Vehrniis to become vulnerable again.
At 33% health, the health bar will gray out again, and another wave of glowing enemies will spawn, now including an Elder Guardian. Killing these mobs will make the Vehrniis vulnerable again, but her health bar will turn red. She will become faster and more aggressive, swimming in circles around the player and firing a massive barrage of projectiles.
When the health bar is fully depleted, the Vehrniis will swim away to an exit route in the eastern wall, accompanied by a message of surrender: "The wyrm yields..."
After she has fully exited the arena and the bossbar has disappeared, an underwater door in the northern end of the arena will open, allowing the player access to a new room holding the Proxigea legendary trident. A passage out of this new room leads to a chiseled stone brick, where players can mine out to the surface of the lake.
Lore¶
The Vehrniis has patrolled the waters of Dahr's lake for centuries, ever since Dahr himself issued a challenge to all residents of Lo'Dahr: "Let it be heard: in a sea cave lies a trident of great strength and value. If you seek it and defeat all foes who lie within, you shall earn the weapon's might." The lesser scalepiercer artifacts found throughout the area are the tridents of treasure hunters who failed in this task, and it appears that the player is the first to succeed in defeating the wyrm.
It is not known exactly when this challenge was issued, but per developer information, the Vehrniis at least predates the Divine Schism. It was stated that the Vehrniis is responsible for killing the giant spider found inside of a cave in northeastern Dahr's Domain, and that the spider was an instrument of Maen during the Schism.
Extras¶
Known Issues¶
The Vehrniis boss fight is known to be extremely laggy at times, making the boss move in a very slow and choppy manner as if the ticks per second have drastically dropped. This is a known problem due to a change in how entity actions are read from the datapack between 1.17 and 1.20, making the original code behind the boss extremely inefficient on version 2.2.1 and above. This is not currently fixed in either version 2.2.1 or 2.2.2.
Origin and Name¶
The Vehrniis was built off of an armor stand "worm" experiment built by Numbers, Drehmal's lead coder in 2.2. She was given the nickname "Bernice" early in development, and this has persisted to this day as her most frequently used name in the community. The name "Vehrniis" was reverse engineered from "Bernice", designed to sound more like a name that could fit in the world of Drehmal.
Soundtrack¶
The soundtrack for the Vehrniis' boss battle (1) is "What Lurks Below", by Drehmal composer Chris Nesja.
- This is distinct from Bernice's theme song, which is "California Gurls" by Katy Perry.