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Lords of the Fallentries its best to stand out from the competition by introducing new, unique mechanics to the game that are not present anywhere else in theSoulslike genre.
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One of these mechanics is the Umbral Eye or the Dread Meter. This is a meter that fills up more the longer you stay inside the Umbral Realm. It’s a difficult mechanic to understand as the game doesn’t come out and tell you what happens if the meter fills up all the way. Here is how it works.
Updated by Hamza Haq on August 06, 2025:Additional information has been added to the article of what happens in the game after the Red Reaper dies.
What Is The Umbral Eye (Dread)?
The Dread Meter is avisual representationof how long you’ve been staying in the Umbral Realm. It’s the eye that appears directlybeneath your Vigor countwhen you enter the Umbral Realm. The eye opens up as soon as you die and enter Umbral and starts filling up slowly. You’ll see awhite outlineemerge from the top of the eye that slowscircles around the perimeteruntil it reaches the end.The longer you stay in the Umbral, the more the eye fills up.
The Dread Meter’s function is quite simple. The more it fills up, the stronger the Umbral Entities that spawn in the world get. There are three levels of the Dread Meter.
At the start, when the meter has barely begun, you will only encounter the easiest monsters in the Umbral Realm, thewhite zombies. These lumbering monsters are as slow as molasses and quiteeasy to outrun, and they spawn quite slowly.
Once the meter fills up around one-third of the way, therate at which Umbral Entities spawn speeds up. If before, you were only seeing one or two zombies; now there are four or five around every corner.
At the halfway point, stronger Umbral Entities like theMoth Motherand theUmbral Magestart spawning. As the eye fills up more, therate at which these monsters spawn speeds upeven more. Now, you’ll have to clear them out as soon as they appear if you don’t want to be overrun.
And finally,when the Umbral Eye fills up completely, the Red Reaper will spawn. This is thestrongest Umbral Entityin the game and incredibly difficult to deal with. The Reaper doesn’t appear straight away. Its impending arrival is heralded bya red glow that chases after you.
When the Reaper arrives, the Sanguinatrix becomes unusable. If you’re planning on facing off against this enemy, be sure to use it before he comes so that it doesn’t go to waste.
The Reaper wieldstwo scythesand deals massive damage per hit. Hedives into the groundevery chance he gets, making it almost impossible to land an easy hit on him.
Vestiges are safe havens that don’t allow the Umbral Eye to spy on your location and fill up. If you stand near a Vestige, the progress of the Dread Meter will be halted, and you may take a breather. Resting at a Vestige will also return you to Axiom to escape the Umbral monsters.
Despite appearances, theRed Reaper can, in fact, be killed. And while players shouldn’t even think about taking on the red menace during the early game, as you upgrade your weapons, the Red Reaper becomes more and more vulnerable to being taken out. If you defeat him, he drops11000 Vigorand5 Umbral Scouring. The red eye remains filled up after his death and herespawns again after 3 minutes.
