Breath of the Wild Guardians: HP by Type and Every Drop

A Decayed Guardian has exactly 500 HP. A Perfect Guard deals exactly 500 damage. Time the parry on its laser and it is dead in one hit, full stop, no follow-up needed. A Guardian Stalker takes three of that same parry, because it carries 1,500 HP instead of 500. A Guardian Scout IV carries 3,000 — six times a Decayed Guardian's total — though its Perfect Guard math isn't documented the way Stalker's is.

"Guardian" is one name stretched over six different machines in Breath of the Wild, and almost none of the numbers carry over between them. This is the HP for every type, what each one actually drops when you dismantle it, and the exact rupee-and-materials price for everything Robbie's Ancient Oven — Cherry — builds out of the parts at the Akkala Ancient Tech Lab.

Six machines share one name

Every hostile Guardian in the game is one of these:

• Guardian Stalker. The mobile, six-legged version that patrols the overworld and gives chase — the type covered in the combat tips guide's parry breakdown.
• Decayed Guardian. A Stalker that lost its legs. Immobile, buried, and inactive until Link gets close, then it lights up and fires. Found at Hyrule Castle, the Great Plateau, and scattered ruins.
• Guardian Turret. Also stationary, but never had legs to begin with — a fixed emplacement guarding the Sanctum of Hyrule Castle.
• Guardian Skywatcher. The flying variant. Scans with a red searchlight and needs its propellers shot off before it grounds.
• Guardian Scout I–IV. Small, shrine-exclusive Guardians built specifically for Ancient Shrine combat trials, not for the overworld war against Calamity Ganon.
• Sentry. A flying Guardian variant that exists in exactly one place: the path up Death Mountain during the "Divine Beast Vah Rudania" main quest.

There's a seventh label worth knowing but it isn't a fight: a Fallen Guardian is a destroyed Stalker husk that cannot target or attack Link at all. It's classified as an Object, not an Enemy, and it matters later in this guide for a reason that has nothing to do with combat.

The HP table across every type

Note the shape of that list: three of the six overworld/shrine combat types — Stalker, Turret, and Skywatcher — all sit at the exact same 1,500 HP, and Guardian Scout III matches them despite being a small shrine enemy. Decayed Guardians are the soft target of the family at 500, and Guardian Scout I barely counts as a fight at 13.

A Perfect Guard means something different per model

The headline Guardian trick — deflect a laser back into its own eye with a Perfect Guard — is only documented for two of these six types, and it does something different to each.

Against a Guardian Stalker, a Perfect Guard deflection deals a flat 500 damage. With 1,500 HP, that's three parries for a kill, spending zero weapon durability and zero arrows. An Ancient Shield goes further and auto-deflects the laser without requiring the parry timing at all.

Against a Decayed Guardian, the same Perfect Guard doesn't deal damage on a fixed scale — it instantly defeats it, full stop, with any shield. That number lines up cleanly with its 500 HP, but the game codes it as an instant kill rather than a damage tick, so it works even if the Decayed Guardian has somehow taken prior damage.

Guardian Turrets and Guardian Skywatchers don't have a documented Perfect Guard deflection in the same way — their counters are different. A Turret is stunned by a bow shot to the eye, or by Stasis+ during its charge-up. A Skywatcher has to be grounded first: shoot out all three propellers with a bow and it falls, or approach it directly with the Paraglider. Treat "parry it to death" as a Stalker-and-Decayed-only trick, not a universal Guardian counter.

Guardian Scouts are the shrine-only tier

Guardian Scouts don't patrol the overworld. They exist specifically inside Ancient Shrines and Divine Beasts, built by the Sheikah Monks as combat trials rather than as weapons against Calamity Ganon — which is also why the uncorrupted ones glow orange-blue instead of the pink of a Malice-possessed Guardian.

The four tiers gate directly to shrine difficulty and the number of weapons the Scout wields at once:

Every Guardian Scout is weak to elemental damage in a specific way: Electricity stuns it, Fire sets it burning, and Ice freezes it solid. When a Scout gets close to death, it charges an uninterruptible, stronger laser as a last resort — the tell to watch for before you commit to a final hit.

Sentry is Vah Rudania's early-warning system

Sentries are the one Guardian type that isn't a roaming overworld threat or a shrine gatekeeper — they exist only along the path up Death Mountain during the "Divine Beast Vah Rudania" main quest, dispatched by the Divine Beast itself as a searchlight net. Get spotted by one and Vah Rudania responds by raining Magma Bombs on the mountain rather than the Sentry attacking you directly.

At 1,000 HP a Sentry looks tanky next to a Decayed Guardian's 500, but that number is misleading: Sentries are exceptionally weak to Remote Bombs and physics damage, and a single Remote Bomb is enough to take one down outright — one of the few enemies in the game that dies to one bomb regardless of its listed health.

What each type actually drops

Every combat Guardian drops some combination of six Ancient materials — Ancient Screw, Ancient Spring, Ancient Gear, Ancient Shaft, Ancient Core, and the rare Giant Ancient Core — but the odds and quantities shift by type:

Giant Ancient Cores only come from the three 1,500-HP overworld types — Stalker, Turret, and Skywatcher — and all three sit at the identical 0.5% per kill; there is no better source among them. Guardian Scouts never drop a Giant Ancient Core at all, but Scout III and Scout IV have a real shot at a regular Ancient Core on their single-item roll, 20% and 50% respectively. That matters because six of Cherry's eleven wares below want a regular Ancient Core, while only two — the Ancient Shield and Ancient Bow — call for the rarer Giant version.

The source nobody fights for

Fallen Guardians — the inert husks that can't attack — aren't worthless. Each one can be searched once for a free Ancient material, typically an Ancient Screw, the same way you'd search a Wagon or a King's Tomb. No combat, no durability spent, no laser to dodge. Hyrule Castle, Fort Hateno, the Great Plateau, and the Akkala Citadel Ruins are all littered with them, and every one you pass without searching is a material left on the table.

Cherry's full price list at the Ancient Tech Lab

Once the "Robbie's Research" side quest is done and the furnace outside the Akkala Ancient Tech Lab is relit, the Ancient Oven — Cherry — sells the following, every price exact:

The full Ancient Set alone is 6,000 rupees. Add one of each weapon and the total climbs to 11,000 rupees before materials: 1,000 each for the Ancient Short Sword, Ancient Bladesaw, Ancient Spear, Ancient Shield, and Ancient Bow. Two of those five — the Shield and the Bow — each want a Giant Ancient Core, the material that only drops from a Stalker, Turret, or Skywatcher. The armor is the expensive half on paper, but it's also the half that pays for itself: a full Ancient Set enhanced twice per piece at a Great Fairy unlocks the Ancient Proficiency set bonus, an 80% damage boost to every Ancient weapon you're now carrying.

Which Ancient weapon is actually worth building

Of the three melee options Cherry sells, the numbers split clearly:

The Ancient Short Sword already tops the entire standard-arsenal lifetime-damage chart, as covered in the weapon durability guide — but the Ancient Bladesaw actually beats it on raw output-times-uses at 2,750, for the same 1,000-rupee, 2-Core price. If your priority is total damage dealt before the weapon breaks rather than per-swing strength, the Bladesaw is the better 1,000-rupee purchase, not the Short Sword.

Neither is the strongest Ancient-family weapon in the game by strength, though — that title belongs to a weapon Cherry doesn't sell at all, covered next.

Guardian Gear is a different lineage entirely

It's easy to conflate what Cherry builds with what a Guardian Scout drops, but they're two separate equipment archetypes with two separate names: Ancient Soldier Gear (Cherry's shop) and Guardian Gear (dropped by disarmed Guardian Scouts II–IV). Guardian Gear cannot be purchased or crafted at all — it only exists as a battle drop, and its own in-game description is blunt about the tradeoff: the base Guardian Sword "is not very durable."

The Ancient Battle Axe++ hits harder than any melee weapon Cherry sells — 60 strength against the Bladesaw's 55 — but it only drops from a Guardian Scout IV that happens to be wielding one, it can't be bought a second time, and at 25 durability it breaks in under half the hits the Bladesaw survives. (The Ancient Shield's own 70 figure is a guard rating, not attack strength, so it isn't a fair comparison against a swung weapon.) Guardian Sword++ matches the purchasable Ancient Short Sword's 40 strength exactly, but with 32 durability against the Short Sword's 54, meaning the version you can farm from a shrine is strictly worse than the version you can just buy. If you want a weapon you can replace on demand, Cherry's shop is the better investment; if you're chasing the single hardest-hitting swing in the Ancient lineup, a Major Test of Strength is the only place it exists.

Quick Action Checklist

• Learn the six types before you plan a fight: Stalker and Turret and Skywatcher all sit at 1,500 HP, Decayed Guardians at 500, Guardian Scout IV at 3,000, and Sentry at 1,000 but one-bombable.
• Parry a Decayed Guardian's laser with any shield for an instant kill; parry a Stalker's three times for the same result — that trick is not documented for Turrets or Skywatchers.
• Ground a Skywatcher by shooting out all three propellers with a bow before trying to fight it in melee.
• Farm Stalkers, Turrets, or Skywatchers for Giant Ancient Cores — all three tie at 0.5% per kill, and Guardian Scouts never drop one at all (Scout IV does have a 50% shot at a regular Ancient Core instead).
• Search every Fallen Guardian husk you pass. It's a free Ancient material, once per husk, with zero combat required.
• Budget 6,000 rupees plus a full set of Ancient materials for the complete Ancient Set and weapon lineup at Cherry's shop; the Ancient Bladesaw edges out the Ancient Short Sword on lifetime damage for the same 1,000-rupee price.
• Don't confuse Guardian Gear (Scout drops, low durability, unbuyable) with Ancient Soldier Gear (Cherry's shop, replaceable on demand) — they're separate equipment lines with separate stat curves.