The Guardian’s Heart is a coveted item in Remnant: From The Ashes that multiple characters demand from the player. Obtaining it from the Guardian of Corsus, then deciding who to give it to and how to refuse the proposal is one of the pivotal choices to make in the game, and the “right” choice depends on what players want out of it.
If players are looking to get certain sets of armor or a quest-locked weapon, this decision can make or break those wants if the right choice isn’t made.
Updated September 28, 2021, by Jacob Buchalter: Remnant: From The Ashes is one of those games that resurfaces in its popularity every now and again thanks to services like Xbox Game Pass or PS+, or even just when Dark Souls fanatics need something new to hold them over.
So, with that said, let’s take another look at the potential choices players can make with the Guardian Heart in this game, and what each decision eventually leads to.
4 How To Even Get The Guardian Heart In The First Place
Within Remnant’s “lore”, each Realm (including Earth) has its own Guardian with a “Dreamer” connected to them that stops the Root from being able to invade. And, due to a series of events that led to the current post-apocalyptic state of Rhom, their Guardian, Nui, is gone.
So, “for the sake of his people”, the Undying King (who was connected to Nui) asks the player to go to Corsus and steal the heart of their Guardian (an oddly difficult moth-creature named Ixillis) and bring it to him. First, players have to make it to the Undying King in the first place, wandering the wasteland of Rhom, likely encountering the Glowing Rods event, and maybe a difficult Dungeon Boss or two.
But, once they find him, there are three potential choices players can make:
Each choice has its own pros and cons, but it isn’t an end-all-be-all decision, considering Remnant is a game built for replayability in the first place.
And, because players can just kill the Undying King to skip Corsus, getting the Guardian’s Heart is technically an optional objective that can be ignored altogether, leaving Ixillis to serve as the Guardian of Corsus as it was meant to do. In any case, let’s go a bit more into the specifics of each choice.
3 Give It To The Undying King
The Undying King asks for the Guardian Heart as a means of saving his world and protecting his people from the Root. His motives seem sincere but his methods bring those motives into question since he is quick to resort to violence and lashes out at everyone who might stand in his way.
It’s implied through him having a Labyrinth Key and some NPC dialog that this Rhom King was using the portals in the Labyrinth to search other worlds for a Guardian’s Heart to restore Rhom’s Guardian so it’s very likely that he does actually want whats best for the kingdom.
If the player chooses to give him the heart, the Undying King will thank them and reward them with a few items before using the Guardian Heart on the pool of liquid behind him, which is implied to be the healing vessel of Rhom’s Guardian. Here are the exact rewards he gives:
This is the option most players opt-in for on their second+ run of the game since it skips Corsus entirely. Any, after playing through the Ixillis boss fight once, most people understandably choose to skip it from then on.
2 Refuse To Give It To The Undying King
This path is somewhat avoidable (at least for a little bit) because, if the player doesn’t talk to the Undying King after obtaining the Guardian Heart, he won’t fight them. But, until they do talk to him (and fight him) they can’t progress the campaign.
That said, once the player refuses to give the Heart to the Undying King, the boss fight against him begins. It’s actually one of the more difficult mid-game boss fights, so a bit of preparation goes a long way. And, thankfully, this guide on the fight itself goes pretty in-depth too.
And, this battle is where the King sort of reveals how petty he is and that his intentions might not be incredibly “pure”, since he mocks the player’s battle prowess by only using two of his four hands for the first phase. Not only that, but when things get dire, the King even siphons from the healing pod of Rhom’s Guardian to keep himself alive.
In any case, once he’s dead and gone, players will receive:
1 Hand It To The Iskal Queen, Cessnya
Whereas Ezlan Nui, the Undying King and “Dreamer” of that Realm, likely hid sinister intentions behind a noble outer shell, the Iskal Queen is just purely sinister. She’s the Queen of the Iskal, obviously, which is a hivemind race of insect-like creatures that took over the entire Corsus Realm. She’s also the final choice players can make as for who they give the Guardian Heart to.
And, while players get nothing from her if they choose to give the Heart to the Undying King, if they give the Heart to her they’ll get her rewards and then eventually the rewards from killing the Undying King, making it feel like the most “rewarding” option.
Her rewards include:
Talking to the Iskal Queen after obtaining the Heart has no impact on the campaign, even if the player refuses to give her the item. They will still be able to buy items from her shop (as she is an NPC of sorts). But, players can actually also fight the Iskal Queen as well in Adventure Mode thanks to the Swamps of Corsus DLC.
This fight requires finding her “castle” by re-rolling the Corsus Realm enough times, but it’s arguably a more difficult fight than the Undying King in just about every way.
Remnant: From The Ashes was released on August 16, 2019, and is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
