The Collector

The Collector =

Highwayman =

Man-at-Arms =

Vestal =

"The twisted faces of the damned, piled high, and cloaked in malice."

- The Ancestor

The Collector is an Eldritch/Human miniboss who has a 3%, 4%, or 5% chance, depending on difficulty, to spawn if your inventory is at least 79% full (translating to thirteen slots full). It carries either a Puzzling Trapezohedron (a gem worth 3,500 gold), or one of three unique and powerful trinkets: Dismas' Head, Barristan's Head, or Junia's Head. Its main strength is the ability to create grotesque parodies of Highwaymen, Men-at-Arms, and Vestals (referred to as "the Collected" in this article).

Behavior
The Collector is guaranteed to use Collect Call on his first turn, spawning a combination of Collected Highwaymen, Collected Men-at-Arms, and Collected Vestals. There is a 3/7 (~43%) chance to spawn a Collected Highwayman, a 2/7 (~28.5%) chance for a Collected Man-at-Arms, and a 2/7 (~28.5%) chance for a Collected Vestal. Only one Vestal and Man-at-Arms can be alive at any time, while Highwaymen are limited to two.

The Collector has specific chances to use Collect Call the fewer other enemies there are:
 * He has a base 3x chance to use it if there are 2 Collected left.
 * The chance increases to 9x if there is 1 Collected left.
 * He is guaranteed to use it if there are no Collected Highwaymen, or if no Collected are left.

Aside from Collect Call, the Collector will also use Show Collection and Life Steal, with a slight bias towards Show Collection.

Collected Highwaymen have only one skill, Headhunt, which can target any position, with a 3x higher chance to target marked heroes.

The Collected Man-at-Arms can only use its guard skill, Head Games, if there is at least one other Collected alive aside from itself; it will almost always guard either the Collector or a Collected Highwayman. Head Games has a 2x chance to be used over Head Knocker, which has no biases towards targeting.

The Collected Vestal normally has a 2x chance for either its buff skill Headache or its stress attack Head Rush, and a 1x chance for its healing skill Headstrong. It has a significant bias to buff or heal the Collector, with 2x and 5x chances respectively. Otherwise, it will usually buff a Collected Highwayman (4x) or just use Head Rush.

Strategy
The Collector can be denied to summon to a Stun on Turn 1 before he can act. Due to his pretty-low Stun resist for a miniboss, trying to Stun him is usually the best way to approach the fight. Having a Stun with one +Stun chance Trinket equipped can usually give you a 80% chance to Stun him. This essentially trivializes the fight since he won't do anything for the entire turn, allowing your party to deal vast amounts of damage to end the fight very quickly.

After the Collector summons minions, he will be in Rank 4. This makes him harder to reach, but with a decent party hitting the backline shouldn't be a huge problem. It is recommended to largely ignore the Collected Vestal and Man-at-Arms, since their threat is very low.

The Collected Man-at-Arms can guard Collector, which can be countered by Stunning the Collected Man-at-Arms after he guards the Collecter, since the Stun will break the Guard. Alternatively, having a Guardbreak from Shieldbreaker's Puncture can also do the trick.

The Colleced Vestal does very little overall. She can buff the offensive power of Collector, but since his attacks barely do anything, that's not really a threat. The Stress and potential healing aren't enough to warrant attention over just putting damage into the Collector to end the fight.

The main threat of this fight are the Collected Highwaymen. On the turn they appear, you usually wanna either deny their actions with Stuns or take them out before they can act. Their damage is extremely high and they can often put heroes on Death’s Door with a crit while also applying Bleed, which makes them a huge threat. Preventing the Highwaymen from attacking is the key to not dying in this fight, since their damage output is the most fatal aspect of this fight.

The Collector doesn't have much offense on its own, but will heal itself with the main attack while also marking the target, thus also indirectly buffing any Collected Highwaymen. Both can apply bleeds as well, so bandages are recommended to remove these.

Whenever the Collector is slain, the minions will disappear.

Team Selection
Unlike the other wandering bosses, it's difficult to control when you encounter the Collector, and so you can't specialize against it. Instead, treat it as a test of your team-building ability. As long as your team has good backline damage, stun sources, or even movement skills, the Collector shouldn't be too difficult. Bear in mind that even a good team isn't completely foolproof, as unlucky crits or misses can cause the fight to go awry.

Trinkets
There is a 3/4 chance of him dropping a Puzzling Trapezohedron and a 1/4 chance of him dropping one of the aforementioned Heads. A player can only have one of each trinket in their inventory, so when all three Head Trinkets are acquired, The Collector will always and only drop Trapezohedrons.

Abilities
Apprentice =

Collected Vestal
Veteran =

Collected Vestal
Champion =

Trivia

 * The Collector was added in the Inhuman Bondage update, along with the Madman and Abomination.
 * The Collector is a reference to Hastur, otherwise known as The King in Yellow.
 * The Collector also bears a striking resemblance to the Bloodborne character Micolash, Host of the Nightmare, who also has a cage affixed to his head.
 * The cage that the Collector wears was once a common form of torture employed for prisoners and lunatics. Spikes could be outfitted to the bottom of the cage to inflict additional pain on a subject being tortured should they attempt to crane their heads in response to pain. Additionally, some models featured sharpened spikes or spurs that projected from the horizontal cross-bars of the cage into the mouth, whereupon they dug into the tongue if the victim attempted to speak and were often fitted onto those accused of heresy or witchcraft. A variant called a "scold's bridle" or "the branks" was even employed to silence and humiliate housewives between the 1500-1700's by means of a curb plate which projected into mouth and pressed down upon the top of the tongue, preventing speech.
 * The Collector's trinkets bear the predetermined names of the Highwayman (Dismas), Man-at-Arms (Barristan), and Vestal (Junia). This is especially evident for the Highwayman, since the one you start the game with is named Dismas.


 * The Collector is the most recognizable boss enemy in the game and the game's global community due to its design.


 * The Collector can sometimes be anticipated by one of the narrator's quotes prior to encountering it as a hallway fight.
 * Despite leaving a corpse, the body itself cannot be targeted, has no health bar, and hides behind the 1st enemy position. It is unknown if this is intentional or a glitch. The corpse itself also only disappears after combat, and may be the only enemy to leave a corpse if he is the only enemy left when slain.
 * The Collector returns in Darkest Dungeon 2 in the form of a stagecoach item called the "Collector Chandelier" which resembles his head cage. It is unknown if this is actually the Collector or simply an item which resembles him.