Taking on Epic foes and adding their powers to your own is an important part of improving as a Weaver, and this towering kinetic ark will be one of the first you face. So to help you get to grips with the mechanics, here’s how to Defeat and Harvest the Ark of the Stricken Earth in Eternal Strands.
General Strategy against the Ark of the Stricken Earth in Eternal Strands
When you first face this Great Ark, you’ll be fighting a weaker version without its staff and some of its armor plating. This means it’s missing a good chunk of it’s usual offensive power, so take the time to learn it’s general movements and get an idea of where each weak point is on its body. You should also practice using your Ice Wall power to pin its limbs to the ground or simply load them with ice to slow it down.

The Ark’s main attacks will be stomps and sweeps with it’s hands that shouldn’t be too hard to avoid, though if you get far enough away it will look for objects to throw at you. Generally though, you’ll want to be in close so you can climb on it and get to the weak spots. The Ark will try to shake you loose at times so when prompted you should hold the Cling button to avoid losing stamina, while its grabbing attack will need to be physically avoided by jumping or crawling away.
To actually damage it, you’ll need to remove the plating and strike at the grey areas of ‘flesh’ pulsing with purple lines as you get near. Striking these patches will deplete the Ark’s health until the color drains and the flesh turns white, at which point you’ll need to move on to another patch to continue dealing damage.

The plating can be removed in a couple of ways, with the easiest being to attack the brown, circular clasps holding them in place. You can do this with most physical damage, such as arrows, throwing things with Weaver’s Grasp, or climbing up and hitting it yourself, and when all the clasps are broken the piece will fall away and expose the flesh underneath.
Alternatively, you can physically break the pieces with a good enough weapon, which will also drop materials for you to craft with. Greatswords are good for this if you have one, or you can temper it with ice or fire to make it easier to break though with other weapons, though this will also affect the material dropped. If you manage to catch the Ark during one of the frozen weather events all of its plates will freeze faster, or even begin frozen, which makes the much easier to break whether you want to harvest the strand or just more materials.

When you fight other Arks of the Stricken Earth again later, they will have their full complement of plates and their staff, which will enable a few new moves.. The main one is where it slams its staff into the ground to channel a large kinetic vortex, before channelling 2-3 more at your location. Keep moving to avoid them, and if you do get caught remember to roll just as you hit the ground to avoid extra impact damage. These are most irritating if they happen while you are climbing because while you can still avoid them it requires a lot of stamina, so you’ll have to decide if it’s worth it to stay on or simply jump off and try again after it finishes. Otherwise the same principles still apply. Drop the plates and hit the skin until it dies.
How to Harvest the Ark of the Stricken Earth in Eternal Strands
Felling the Ark is one thing, but harvesting its power for your own is quite another. Luckily, this is one of the easier foes to harvest, though you’ll first need to remove the armor plate covering its chest before the locus appears. Again, you can smash the clasps or break the plates themselves, whichever you prefer, though the clasps are easier. You can find two just above the belt on its front side and another two on the front of its shoulders, though you’ll need to remove the shoulder plates to reach them.

Once the plate falls off you’ll see the locus appear on its chest, and you can climb up and hold the prompted button to harvest. Unlike some later foes, the Ark of the Stricken Earth doesn’t have a way to shake you off, but it does take a while to play out so keep that button pressed. After the Ark falls, you can collect your loot and return to Dahm to get the Ensnaring Blast power, your own version of the kinetic vortexes the Ark uses. You’ll get this power the first time you defeat the Ark regardless of whether you managed to harvest it, so defeat it normally and you can focus getting the strands your second time round.
If you enjoyed this guide or found it helpful, be sure to check out some of Siliconera’s other Eternal Strands guides like How to Defeat and Harvest the Brennig Glasstail or Where to Find the Hearthguard Gauntlets recipe.
Eternal Strands is set to release on January 28, 2025, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
Published: Jan 28, 2025 5:25 PM UTC