Darksiders Genesis guide: Creature Cores

Darksiders Genesis’ Creature Core system is a little confusing, but it’s a great way to make Strife and War more powerful. In this guide, we’ll teach you everything you need to know about Creature Cores and they do.

How Creature Cores work

Airship Syndicate/THQ Nordic via Polygon

When you kill an enemy in Darksiders Genesis, there’s a chance it’ll drop a piece of its soul, also known as a Creature Core. You can slot them into the Create Core skill tree to grant yourself increased stats and bonus perks.

The Creature Core tree has 30 purple Minor Creature Core slots, and eight orange Major Creature Core slots. Minor Cores come from the smaller enemies you fight most of the time, while Major Cores come from bosses or mini boss creatures.

Each Creature Core comes with a perk, and you can level that perk up twice. Some perks are stat bonuses, like increased health or damage, and others offer bonus effects like the chance to create a trail of flaming ooze as Strife and War dash.

Upgrading Creature Cores

You can upgrade your Creature Cores by collecting multiple cores from the same enemies.

Airship Syndicate/THQ Nordic via Polygon

For example, you’ll get the Hollow Fiend Major Creature Core (pictured above) for defeating the game’s first boss during Dethroned. Slot it in, and you’ll increase your attack power by 3.5%. Defeat the Hollow Fiend again, and you’ll level up the Creature Core. At LV2, you’ll get a 7% attack power bonus. Defeat the Hollow Fiend again, and you’ll get the LV3 version, which comes with a 15% boost to your attack power.

Optimizing the Creature Core skill tree

There are a few ways to optimize the Creature Core tree and get the most out of your Creature Cores.

Each socket in the tree has an associated stat: health (heart icon), Wrath (swirl icon), or attack (sword icon). Cores also have the same associations. If you match a core stat association with a socket of the same type, you’ll get a stat bonus. There are also some wildcard slots on the tree, which give you the stat bonus regardless of the core’s stat.

Sockets also have a level cap associated with them. Some tree sockets only allow for level one Creature Cores, while others allow for all three levels. If you put a level three Creature Core in a level one socket, you’ll only get the level one bonus for that Creature Core.

You can rearrange your Creature Cores at any time in Darksiders Genesis. When you pick up a new core in the wild, pop into your tree and add it for an instant bonus to War and Strife’s stats.

As you get more and more Creature Cores, consider moving your cores around or removing them based on the type of build you want. Aim to match the core with the socket icon, and try moving higher level Creature Cores to sockets that accept them.

You can never create the ultimate Creature Core tree, with all max levels and every core you’ve found inside. But if you play around with the system, match the stats, and move your best Creature Cores to the highest level slots, you can seriously increase the horsemen’s power.

What each Creature Core does

Airship Syndicate/THQ Nordic via Polygon

Here are all the Creature Cores we’ve found so far and what they do. We’ll update this store after we’ve found all the Creature Cores in Darksiders Genesis.

Minor

• Armored Flea: Attack power increase.
• Fallen Hound: Attack power increase.
• Molten Hound: Stoneskin deals damage in an area, Caltrops suck enemies into the bombs. Drops two bonus Caltrops at level three.
• Void Magus: Grants bonus souls, but also reduces War and Strife’s health (health loss removed at level three).
• Gholen: Increases max health, attack, and Wrath power.
• Stinger: Stoneskin returns damage to attacks, Caltrops drop health orbs.
• Slag Flea: Fleamag explosions have a chance not to disrupt players (reduces explosion damage at level three).
• Legion: Shadow Clone taunts enemies, Blade Geyser grants war bonus attack damage for a few seconds.
• Skeletal Soldier: Wrath orbs drop more frequently.
• Skeletal Archer: Killing enemies boosts movement speed.
• Legion Champion: Wrath power increase
• Trauma: Rampage creates a blast when it hits an enemy, World Ender is wider.
• Shadow Caster: Reviving a players heals the living player as well.
• Wraith: Wrath power increase.
• Hellhound: Small chance on an attack to spawn a allied Hellhound to attack enemies.
• Ghoul: Gain more Souls from enemies and chests, but reduces Wrath power (Wrath power loss removed at level three).
• Legion Bomber: Increases Hotstreak build up speed for Strife, reduces War’s damage taken.
• Demonic Magus: Ammo drop rate increase.
• Borrower: War’s Synergy attack heals both Horsemen, Stife’s Synergy attack gains increased damage.
• Suffering: War gains bonus damage resistance after his Synergy attack, Strife gains increased run speed after his Synergy attack.
• Phantom Guard: Shadow Clone’s bullets ricochet, Blade Geyser’s radius increases.
• Duskwing: Max health increase.
• Broodling: Health orb drop rate increase.

Major

• Legion Boltspitter: Max health increase.
• Slag Demon: Chance tot leave behind a lava trail after a dash.
• Hollow Fiend: Attack power increase.
• Ashworm: Attack power and Wrath power increase.
• Jailer: Killing an enemy boosts attack power for a few seconds.
• Dreadwalker: War can block more damage, Strife gains bonus attack and Wrath power.
• Construct Champion: War refills a Wrath pip after his Synergy attack, Strife fills 25% of his Hotstreak meter after his Synergy attack.
• Mammon: More health and Wrath orbs, Souls, and ammo drops.
• The Houndmaster: Wrath power increase.
• Angelic Beast: Evade and parry window increase.
• Tormented Gate: Attack power increase.