Nodusfall Dreadnodi Bestiary

A bestiary for a game that has no shipped client has to be honest about its limits. The creatures below come from three press sets: GameRant’s English preview on 29 August 2026, Famitsu’s Japanese session a day earlier, and the creator footage GameRant, Inven, and GameSpark published around the same week. None of the names below are confirmed by HoYoverse in shipping lore; the team has not published an English bestiary, a region list, or a contract catalogue. Treat every entry as a preview label.

If you came for how a contract starts, read Hunt Dreadnodi. For the system verbs, see combat. For how lore stacks against these creatures, open world and lore.

What is and is not a Dreadnodi

In official English copy, a Dreadnodi is a corruption of a legendary beast caused by the collapse of divine authority. The trailer and the homepage feature copy put two visual ideas on top of that definition: Eastern-rooted mythic creatures, and Western dragons standing in for catastrophe. Anything with a corruption cue — red sky glow, chained body, moulded mythic anatomy — is a fair bet to be a Dreadnodi in playtest.

What is not yet a Dreadnodi in official copy: a fire drake shown only in creator footage without a name, a chained beast inferred from a still image, the horned rain beast seen in a Famitsu photograph. Each of these is below with the press source and what the same press release did or did not actually say.

Nodusfall player hub, mounts, and boss fights revealed

Cleaver Fellstone

GameRant’s 29 August preview is the only English source that printed this name. The Cleaver Fellstone is a heavy-set creature stationed at the base of a waterfall, the first boss in their three-boss demo chain. The tank Weaver took the front, ranged Weavers shot from a backline, and GameRant’s Hexsworn sat with very little to do because nobody on the squad was taking damage yet. The clean read: a high-HP bruiser whose AoE set is forgiving enough for a first encounter.

Press translation note: “Fellstone” is a press-side coinage, not a name on the HUD. Famitsu’s 29 August coverage of the same week did not name this encounter. If Cleaver Fellstone does not appear in a later official English bestiary, drop it from the wiki on the day the studio publishes one.

Qionqi (翼獅 / 穹祁)

Famitsu called this winged horned lion by its katakana rendering チョンチー (Chonchii). GameRant romanised it as Qionqi. Both point at the same Chinese mythological creature: a winged, horned lion-rooted beast, the sort of monster that sits between a Chinese guardian lion and a manticore. GameRant’s party fought it in an underground cavern with strong AoE on every swing and four players layering their own VFX on top of telegraphs.

How it was killed in preview: the tank’s Divine Skill transformed the squad into a towering knight for a finisher that beheaded the lion in cinematic camera. GameRant’s writer did not know whether the finisher was a fixed health-bar trigger or an activated prompt. Either way, the lesson is the same: respect the AoE soup, save the long-cooldown Divine for the second-phase burst window.

Maldrake and the Armored Rider

GameRant’s closer was a Western-looking black dragon paired with an armored knight riding it, and called the duo Maldrake plus rider. The press comparison was to Dark Souls 3’s King of Storm and the Nameless King pair — same silhouette grammar, same “dragon with rider” tower moment. Heal output actually mattered for the first time on this fight: AoE on the dragon plus targeted damage from the rider’s lance forced the Hexsworn to commit her passive loop.

A second preview, on the bow kit, met the same Maldrake duel without the rider. The horse-style knight had dismounted earlier in the chain, so the bow player fought a clean two-target arena. That detail matters: a given Dreadnodus may arrive as a layered fight in one run and as a clean single-target fight in the next, depending on whether you reach it inside a chain. Plan accordingly.

If HoYoverse names this creature differently in the English shipping client, treat Maldrake as the preview title and replace it on this page.

Fire Drake

A dragon fought by creator streamers and several preview outlets without a unique name. The fire drake is the most widely clipped Gamescom encounter and is what players who watched the trailer replayed in their heads during the booth visit. Mounted traversal, vertical arenas, and a cinematic execution prompt on a near-death dragon are the only universal data points.

Bestiary assumption: until HoYoverse prints a name, treat this as “the dragon the trailer sells” and use the dragon press photos from the official HoYoverse press kit as the only visual reference. Do not invent a name; do not copy Famitsu’s チョンチー onto it.

Chained Cavern Titan (press unnamed)

A press photo from Famitsu shows a Weaver dwarfed by a molten, chained creature in a cave. No English outlet has named it. The art direction is the only stable hint: oil-painting contrast, glowing chains, lantern-style lights, and a floor that looks like it can be a mechanic. Expect arena hazards, lantern hooks for vertical play, and a body-shape that punishes floor-only teams.

Until HoYoverse prints the name, call this creature what the press photo calls it: the chained cavern titan. If a beta ships with a UI name, replace this entry and move this slug only after the page slug becomes stable.

Horned Rain Beast (press unnamed)

A second Famitsu press still frames a lone Weaver in heavy weather against a wide, pale, horned quadruped. Combat footage is thinner for this encounter. Style guesswork: it is the “anti-solo” composition of the press set, because its scale plus the weather hides telegraphs.

Treat this one as the “respect the weather” boss. If a beta names it, update this entry. Until then, do not transpose the Western dragon name onto it; Famitsu’s stills show a quadruped, not a winged reptile.

Divine-Beast Mounts

A Weaver riding a horned creature across cliffs appears in the same press set. Mounts function as traversal in most demo footage, and at least one Divine Skill on the bow kit transformed the player into a beast with paw swipes and tail jumps. Cooldowns sit in the Ultimate range (over two minutes). Range on the beast form is awkward; preview players burned the window on trash and then had nothing left for the boss.

Bestiary rule: do not catalogue traversal mounts as Dreadnodi. Treat the Divine Beast form as a combat verb belonging to its Weaver, not as a separate enemy.

Smaller fauna

Press coverage of the open ground between marked bosses mentions “smaller enemies and materials sit on the road.” No unique creature has been named from a public screenshot. Assume a mix of predatory fauna, ruin-haunting creatures, and corrupted lesser variants, all of which serve as a resource route between contracts. There is no evidence so far that they drop relics on their own — only the bigger fights have been confirmed as material sources by the homepage feature copy.

What you can and cannot list on day one

You can list Cleaver Fellstone, Qionqi, Maldrake plus its rider, the unnamed chained cavern titan, the unnamed horned rain beast, the fire drake, and the assorted smaller fauna — all annotated as press-coined names. You cannot list a complete elemental wheel, a resist chart, a region map of every spawn point, or a guaranteed drop table. HoYoverse has not published any of those.

When a beta names them, this page is the first to update, the hands-on roundup inherits second, and the combat guide inherits last. Until that day, the contract stays: name only what an editor has actually read in a published preview, and link the source inside the page so a reader can audit the claim. Press translation is not the same as an official name.