Cave Beetles

Cave Beetles are a group of dangerous enemies found only in the Mul Cavern of Phoenotopia.

The mobility, agreesiveness, and high spawning frequency of cave beetles makes them extremely dangerous, in the sense that they can easily pursue and swarm Gale in the narrow sections that Mul Cavern consists of.

Types of Cave Beetles

There are three types of Cave Beetles, and they are all visually identical aside from their color schemes. All Cave Beetles can jump onto ledges, fly for a short duration, swim, and swing their antenna to attack with considerable range.

The Cave Beetle differ mostly in their behaviour when defeated. While the yellow ones would simply perish, the green ones would split into three puddles of acid. The purple ones are such a volatile species, that even hitting with a Slingshot would cause it to explode violently.

Cave Beetles are too small to be hit by a Javelin thrown to them when both the beetle and Gale are on the same ground level.

Cave Beetles may drop 1~3 Rai and/or a Heart when killed.

Beetle Nest

Although some Cave Beetles can be seen idling around the cavern, most are spawned immediately from Beetle Nests found throughout the caverns once Gale's presence is alerted.

Each nest usually contain anywhere from 3 to 5 Cave Beetles. Hitting a nest while there are still beetles inside will cause them to emerge and pursue Gale immediately. However, explosives either from the Bomb or with the Ki Spear technique allows destroying the nest in a single hit, defeating all the beetles inside in the process.

If Gale destroys a nest and then leaves and reenters a room, all the beetles spawned by the nest will have vanished; similarly, killing Beetles without destroying the nest will make them respawn once Gale comes back.

A few nests have secret passages behind them. One upside-down nest in particular holds numerous rai when destroyed.

Trivia

• Supposedly, the cave beetles should be able to climb walls as well, but the developer was unable to implement this behaviour in time at the end. However, this behavior was fully implemented into the remaster's counterparts to the cave beetles: the Iads.

The gray base sprite used for the Cave Beetles in Phoenotopia

• In Phoenotopia, all three Cave Beetle varieties use the same base graphic, colored gray internally
  • The basic Cave Beetle is tinted yellow
  • The acid Cave Beetle is tinted green
  • The explosive Cave Beetle is tinted purple