Greedling

* Regular
* Masked

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They will noodle your stuff away.
The **greedling** (also known as **troll**) is the most basic and numerous monster in the waves, as well as the first enemy to be encountered. They start appearing on the first night, and increase in number as days pass. They are slightly larger and faster than villagers, but they cannot outrun the Monarch on a horse. Their primary goal is to steal as much of the Kingdom's riches as they can.

## Charge attack

Greedlings can charge and apply damage to walls, to subjects, to Monarchs.

### Against walls

A greedling apply the amount of one damage (1 HP) per charge attack when hitting any type of wall.
*For the walls hit points, see: Wall § Overview.*

 *Kingdom Two Crowns* – Armored greedlings can apply significantly more damage to walls.

  Bug on Challenge Islands – This extra damage masked greedlings apply to walls can be seen as a severe bug, because it makes the challenges on Plague and Dire Islands extremely hard, that a single player would dependent on luck to succeed.【  】Precisely they would require good luck for:
* the general island layout generation, including:
	+ the position of vagrant camps
	+ the position of tech structures
	+ having grass near the campfire on arriving or not
* the initial Monarch position
* finding coin chests on the way to the camp
* the archers aim and their hitting rate.

A player with very good knowledge of the game could not reach the gold crown in these challenges without having luck on several of these points.

### Against subjects

If a greedling attacks a subject, the subject will lose their goods in the following order:

1. extra coins for personal defense 【  】

	* Each type of subject has a different coin capacity.
	* There is no visual indication of how many extra coins a subject is holding.
	* If a subject has no extra coin, they're one hit away from losing their profession, and becoming a villager.

2. their tool or weapon 【  】

	* Hammers, scythes, and bows drop on the ground, and can be stolen by a greedling.
	* Shields, swords, pikes, and ninjatos, wear off and disappear, instead of being stolen.
	* If a subject loses their tool or weapon, they degenerate into a plain villager.

3. their last coin 【  】

	* Hammers, scythes, and bows drop on the ground, and can be stolen by a greedling.
	* These items can also be retrieved by villagers as soon as there is a clear path.
	* Shields, swords, pikes, and ninjatos, wear off and disappear, instead of being stolen.
	* If a villager loses their last coin, they degenerate into a vagrant.
	* As vagrants, they can no longer be attacked by any type of Greed.

### Against the Monarch

If a greedling attacks the Monarch, a coin is immediately dropped from the coin purse for each hit. A single greedling is limited to about one attack per second, but since there is no limit to how many hits the Monarch can take in a second, twenty greedlings hitting the Monarch at once drops twenty coins. If the Monarch has no coins left to drop, the Crown is dropped instead, launching in the opposite direction from the attack. Any greedling who comes in contact with the dropped Crown instantly picks it up and triggers game-over. As greedlings usually attack in groups, this can be quite problematic and may lead to dangerous situations.

## Stealing and abducting

Greedlings can steal items from the ground, and abduct dogs and hermits. Once the greedling holds an item, it retreats.
Stealing things is the main reason why they charge against townsfolks, to make them drop their goods, to take them away.
For the same reason they charge against walls: to have access to townspeople, and steal from them.

**Tip:** Monarchs can drop coins on the ground so that greedlings pick them up, instead of going after more valuable items.

## Retreat

If not killed, a greedling will only and always stop being aggressive at sunrise, or if it has grabbed an item.
In these cases the greedling will try to escape to the nearest portal on that side of the Kingdom *(see exceptions)*. While retreating, greedlings no longer charge at subjects, walls, or the Monarch, instead they simply bypass them causing no damage. However these greedling will still pick up any item they find on their way, if they're not carrying one already. Retreating greedlings can be damaged and killed the same way that the aggressive ones can.

Once a retreating greedling has reached the portal, it fades to pink, and disappears — basically the reversed spawning animation.

### Sunrise

At sunrise, all greedlings instantly start retreating.
This, however, does not mean that they have a problem with sunlight.
Greedlings summoned by a breeder after sunrise, for example, will keep fighting throughout the day.
Provided they can't steal anything, and are not killed, these greedlings will only retreat at the next sunrise.

Another example of greedlings freely walking under sunlight occurs when the portal that should launch a timed wave is very far from the Kingdom border.
The monsters on that wave, including the greedlings, have to start storming much earlier in the afternoon, well before the sunset, so they can reach the outer wall exactly at midnight.
If the wave is lauched from a small portal, it obviously starts in the darkness of a forest.
But if the area between the portal and the outer wall has been deforested, or if there are clearings on the way, the greedlings will have to walk under the sunlight at some point.
If that wave comes from a cliff portal, then it already starts on a sunny place.

### Holding items

If a greedling carrying an item is killed, it vanishes, and drops the object on the ground, which can then be recovered:

* by subjects, if it's a tool
* by subjects and Monarchs, if it's a coin
* by Monarchs, if it's a gem
* by other greedlings.

 *Kingdom: New Lands* &  *Two Crowns* – After being dropped by a greedling, hermits and the dog will go back to their normal routine.

 *Kingdom Two Crowns* – In the campaign mode, it is possible to recover stolen gems, and the abducted characters (hermits and the dog) on an island by exploding the cave on that island.

### Odd cases

If the Greed wave has advanced *beyond* the town center, the greedling will no longer try to go back to the same portal it came from, but it will try to reach the nearest portal on that other side of the Kingdom.
In that situation, the greedling would have to pass by the remaining troops on that side.
That should increase the chances of killing the monster, and recover any item they are carrying, before it could vanish into the portal.

If the wave has advanced beyond the campfire, but there are *no* more active portals on that other side, the greedling—along with its new acquisiton—will simply disappear in a short fading out animation.
Therefore, not having an active portal on that side would lead to the opposite outcome, immediately eliminating the chances of recovering the item. 【  】In *Two Crowns* this has been considered to be a bug by developers, and it's meant to be fixed in a future update. The expected behavior is that the greedling should try to go back to the original portal, if there are no more portals beyond the campfire.

 *Kingdom Two Crowns* – In Norse Lands, if a greedling has been teleported by the horn of portals so that it is now approaching the town from a side without a portal, the greedling will retreat to its portal, passing through the town center and the troops on the other side.

## Regular greedling

A regular greedling (or simply greedling) has only one health point, meaning it can be killed with a single hit or shot from any military unit.

 *Kingdom Two Crowns* –
Greedlings' "face" glow whenever it's dark: during nighttime, in deep in the woods, or inside the cave.
A pink (or red-violet) light effect on their "head" makes them considerably easier to spot in the shadows.
In fact, as midnights and forests in *Two Crowns* can be much darker than in the other titles—especially in Dead Lands, but not only—this luminescence is, not rarely, what makes greedlings visible at all.
Technically, the face of all greedlings, including the armored ones, glow in the dark, but masks are opaque, and most of the time fully hide their radiance.

## Masked greedling

#Armored greedlings
Some greedlings wear certain types of masks, which increases the amount of hits they take before dying. Different masks make for higher health points, varying from one to four extra hit points. So a masked greedling will require at least two and a maximum of five hits to be killed. Once depleted the mask falls off, effectively converting the greedling into a regular one, i.e. with only one health point. Masked greedlings still die with a single catapult or ballista shot no matter the mask type. On each type of campaign they wear different masks which represent the theme of each of the campaigns.

**Masks in Europe**

**Masks in Shogun**

**Masks in Dead Lands**

## Defending against greedlings

*For more tips on defensive strategy, see: Defending the Kingdom.*
The best protection against greedling swarms is to fortify your walls to the highest upgrade possible and, as is the case with most other enemies, acquire a great number of archers to mow them down with more arrows than they can handle. Catapults are also extremely effective against large groups of greedlings, and can easily wipe out an entire horde of them if the catapult launches at the right time. Ballista towers are also extremely useful as they can fire a projectile capable of dealing damage to a large number of Greed.

## References

1. ↑ In the original browser version of *Kingdom*, the first troll approaching the Monarch lands would be presented with this tutorial tip. When the monster appears from the woods, the camera travels towards it and tracks it for a few seconds, while the sentence is displayed just below, on the ground level.
2. ↑ In the game files they are referred as `trolls`.
3. ↑ Day 6 Blood Moon after the "Balance Changes" Plague Island (video). *Reddit*. 20 November 2021.
4. ↑ Plague Island Guide - Conquest/Norse Patch. *Reddit*. 9 December 2021.
5. ↑ **“***The only situation which a troll should despawn is if somehow there's no portals to exit on the same side of the campfire.***”**—developer Alan on *Steam*. 25 January 2022.
6. ↑ **“***I can fix the situation where the troll despawns, but the proper behavior is that they retreat back to the cave portal, from whence they came.***”**—developer Alan on *Steam*. 25 January 2022.
7. ↑ Red-violet on *Wikipedia*.