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 a Puzzling Trapezohedron, a gem worth 3,500 gold, or one of three powerful unique 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
Get used to fighting the Collector, as it's bound to show up randomly multiple times during a campaign. You might not be prepared when it happens but the rewards make it worthwhile to try and fight him.

The Collector holds very low resistances for a miniboss, and it is highly recommended to start the fight with a stun ability which will give your party almost two full rounds to focus him down with damage skills before any Collected are summoned. The only stat the Collector has going for is its a moderate amount of dodge, which still isn't very high and is unlikely to be an issue. The low resistances allow for this boss to be taken on by any party composition, since the random nature makes it difficult to plan ahead.

After the Collector summons minions, it'll be in the back slot and harder to reach. You can either pull him forward, focus him down with rank 4 hitting damage skills, or try to fight through the waves of ever respawning Collected. However, clearing the minions won't grant you much time before they are replaced. Pulling the Collector forward, however, will have the added benefit that the minions will focus on protecting the back rank regardless. This renders supporting moves like head games, headstrong and headache useless when it comes to protecting the Collector.

Since the Collector will keep replacing the minions, it is ideal to ignore them as much as possible. This is not too hard to do with the Collected Man-At-Arms and Vestal, which will mostly just drag out the fight with supportive skills. The Highwayman however deals too much damage to ignore and should be taken down whenever one is summoned.

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. Since the Collector and all minions only occupy one slot each, multiple target skills can be effective.

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 the 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.