HOWLERS OF THE CRAG: UMBRAL MONUMENT GUIDE

Howlers of the Crag went live August 6, 2026 as the sixth Umbral Monument series. Four stages, and every one of them breaks a rule the mode taught you.

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TL;DR - Key Points

• Monumental Etching: Beastly Howl closes August 20, 2026 at 04:00 server time. The stages are permanent; only the bonus event window expires
• Four stages, not six: Visitors of Qingbo, Earthshaking Hazefyre, Mangler and Friends, King of the Crag
• Stage 1 punishes focus-fire. Every kill heals the survivors and permanently raises their ATK and Max HP
• Stage 2 is immune to Stagger DMG. Arts Burst damage seals the boss instead, and deals bonus damage as a percentage of his Max HP
• Stage 3 turns off SP regeneration. SP comes only from banana peels the rockhowlers throw, so SP batteries are close to dead weight
• Stage 4 makes your Arts Inflictions permanent and stronger, and they persist after being consumed. This is the most build-defining modifier the mode has shipped
• Rewards per stage, Normal and Agony alike: 24,000 T-Creds, 3 Advanced Cognitive Carrier, 1 Mark of Perseverance, 8 Protohedron, 5 Arms INSP Set
• Agony raises enemies to Lv. 90 and bans Tacticals and consumables on every stage

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Beastly Howl: What the Deadline Actually Gates

The only urgent thing here is the event, not the series. Monumental Etching: Beastly Howl runs from August 6, 2026 at 12:00 to August 20, 2026 at 04:00 server time, a 14-day window that is now roughly half spent. It layers bonus rewards on top of clears you were going to do anyway, so the practical instruction is simple: get your four Normal clears banked before the 20th, then take Agony at your leisure.

This matches how every prior Monumental Etching has worked. The stages stay playable forever, which is why our Umbral Monument hub guide still documents series going back to Turbidity Manifest. If you miss Beastly Howl you lose the event currency, not the content.

One scheduling note worth flagging: past Monumental Etching windows have run until “before the next version update,” an open-ended framing. Beastly Howl instead has a hard, published end timestamp that lands well before Version 1.5 would be expected. Do not assume a grace period.

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When and How to Access

Unlock requirements are unchanged from every prior series:

• Complete the main mission Chapter I Process II: Paving the Way
• Reach Authority Level 30

Both are early checkpoints, so if you cleared any previous Umbral Monument series you are already in. Server timing is the same on all regions, with the series opening at 12:00 local server time on August 6.

The mode rules also carry over unchanged: four operators maximum, a 10-minute timer per stage, and two difficulties. Normal is tuned around Lv. 60 enemies, Agony around Lv. 90, and clearing a stage on Normal unlocks its Agony version. The timer is only a fail condition, so a faster clear does not pay better.

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What Changed in Series 6

The headline structural change is length. Howlers of the Crag ships four stages, breaking the six-stage pattern that Turbidity Manifest and Contention of Deathly Silences established.

Series	#	Stages	Event
3	Searing Scars	3	Monumental Etching: Scorch Mark
4	Turbidity Manifest	6	Monumental Etching: Corrupting Surge
5	Contention of Deathly Silences	6	Monumental Etching: Dirge of Grief
6	Howlers of the Crag	4	Monumental Etching: Beastly Howl

Fewer stages at identical per-stage rewards means the total series payout is smaller than Series 4 or 5, but the time-to-medal is much shorter. If you bounced off Deathly Silences because six Agony clears felt like a grind, this is the friendlier entry point.

The more interesting change is design philosophy. Series 5 was built around uniform resistances, which made every stage a pure damage-and-timing test. Series 6 goes the other way: each of the four stages installs a modifier that invalidates a specific, normally-reliable team-building assumption. Below is what each one actually does. Stage modifier text throughout this guide is drawn from Game8’s Version 1.4 stage pages; the enemy stat blocks are from our own datamined enemy database.

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Stage 1: Visitors of Qingbo

Enemies: Road Plunderer, Hill Smasher, Cloud Stalker, Nimbus Razor, Grove Archer.

The modifier: defeating an enemy “restores some HP to all other enemies and permanently raises their ATK and Max HP.”

This inverts the single most reflexive habit in the game. Normally you focus one target, delete it, reduce incoming damage, and repeat. Here every kill makes the remaining wave hit harder and live longer, permanently, with no decay. Kill four of five trash mobs and the survivor you left for last is a substantially different enemy than the one you started the fight with.

The correct read is to flatten the wave rather than pick it apart. Spread damage so health bars fall together, then finish several at once so the stacking buff has as little time as possible to matter. AoE ultimates and wide sweeping kits earn their slot here in a way they usually do not in single-target Umbral stages.

The enemy that decides the pace is the Road Plunderer, an Elite that carries a real health pool:

Road Plunderer	Lv. 60 (Normal)	Lv. 90 (Agony)
HP	198,003	733,731
ATK	2,156	3,717
DEF	100	100

Its resistances are worth noting because they are not uniform: Physical lands at full value while Heat, Cryo, Electric, and Nature are all resisted at 0.8x. Poise is 320 with a 9-second recovery. The chaff around it (Grove Archer at 128,403 HP on Lv. 90) dies quickly enough that the sequencing problem is mostly about not killing them too early.

Practical order: whittle the trash to near-death without killing it, break the Road Plunderer, then sweep. Leaving the Elite alive while you clear chaff means feeding it four separate permanent ATK buffs before you engage.

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Stage 2: Earthshaking Hazefyre

Enemies: Bonekrusher Pyromancer (boss), Elite Raider, Elite Ambusher.

Despite the stage name, the boss is not a Hazefyre beast. It is the Bonekrusher Pyromancer, who casts Hazefyre as an ability. The modifier text is the densest in the series:

The Bonekrusher Pyromancer constantly casts Hazefyre and deals DMG to all operators. He is also harder to interrupt and immune to Stagger DMG. When the Bonekrusher Pyromancer takes Arts Burst DMG, he takes additional DMG equal to a percentage of his Max HP and becomes temporarily sealed. He will keep summoning Elite Raiders and Elite Ambushers. Defeating an enemy with an Arts Infliction also applies 1 stack of the same Arts Infliction to all other enemies.

Four things are happening, and the first one is the important one: this boss is immune to Stagger DMG. That makes it the first Umbral Monument stage where our stagger tier list genuinely does not apply to the primary target. If your instinct is to open with a poise-breaking physical core and cash in a Finisher, that plan produces nothing on the Pyromancer. The stagger system guide explains why the usual loop is so dominant, and this stage exists specifically to switch it off.

The replacement lever is Arts Burst damage, which does two jobs at once: bonus damage scaled to his Max HP (so it stays relevant no matter how much raw HP he has) and a temporary seal that stops the constant chip damage. An Arts-heavy squad is not a preference here, it is the mechanic.

The second lever is the infliction-spread clause. Because killing an add that carries an Arts Infliction copies one stack of that infliction to everything else on the field, add waves become your delivery system for pressure on the boss. Kill inflicted adds deliberately rather than incidentally. Our inflictions and reactions guide covers which kits apply what.

Bonekrusher Pyromancer (Elite, Landbreakers):

Stat	Lv. 60 (Normal)	Lv. 90 (Agony)
HP	222,753	825,447
ATK	2,635	4,543
DEF	100	100
Resistances	All six at 1.0x	All six at 1.0x
Attack range	12 m	12 m

Two useful details in that table. He has no elemental resistance at all, so bring whatever hits hardest. And his 12-meter attack range is the longest in the series by a wide margin, which is why the constant Hazefyre chip damage is so hard to walk out of. Sustain matters more here than positioning.

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Stage 3: Mangler and Friends

Enemies: Rockhowler, Armored Manglerbeast (boss).

The modifier: “Operators no longer have SP regeneration.” Instead, the controlled operator recovers SP by stepping on banana peels thrown by the rockhowlers. The Armored Manglerbeast periodically casts an ultimate that clears the peels off the field and deals continuous damage to the whole squad, and it gains high damage reduction while casting. Attack interruptions stop the cast. Agony adds the usual no-Tacticals rule.

This is the most genuinely disorienting stage in the series, because it does not reduce your SP economy, it deletes it and replaces it with a positioning minigame. Practical consequences:

SP batteries stop being valuable. Our SP battery tier list ranks generators by SP throughput, and that ranking is close to meaningless here. An operator whose main contribution is feeding the team SP has nothing to feed you when regeneration is off. The same goes for most of the rotation logic in the SP generators guide. Slot damage, interrupt tools, or sustain in that seat instead.

Interrupt uptime becomes the win condition. The boss ult does three bad things at once: it damages everyone, it wipes your only SP source off the ground, and it makes the boss tanky while it happens. Interrupting it prevents all three. A squad that can reliably break the cast turns a long attrition fight into a short one.

The rockhowlers are a resource, not just a threat. Killing every rockhowler on sight starves you. They are the peel dispensers. Manage them the way you would manage an energy node: keep them alive and producing, and pick up peels between boss cast windows.

Neither Rockhowler nor Armored Manglerbeast has an entry in our datamined enemy tables yet, so we are not going to invent stat lines for them. Both were introduced as new enemies in Version 1.3 alongside Craghowler, which places them in the same Wuling wildlife family.

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Stage 4: King of the Crag

Boss: Craghowler. This is the series capstone and the best-designed stage of the four.

The modifier: the durations of Combustion, Electrification, Corrosion, Solidification, and Breach applied to Craghowler become permanent. The effects of Combustion, Electrification, Corrosion, Shatter, and Breach applied to it also become stronger. Those Arts Reactions and Physical Statuses persist after consumption. Separately, Craghowler “will unleash a furious roar on a regular basis,” applying Stun to all operators. In Agony, the Stun duration from Furious Roar gradually lengthens as the fight goes on, on top of the no-Tacticals ban.

Read those three clauses together and the stage’s intent is obvious. Permanent duration means nothing you apply ever falls off. Stronger effects mean each application is worth more than usual. Persisting after consumption means the normal cost of triggering a reaction, spending the infliction, no longer applies. Every debuff you land is a permanent, amplified, non-consumable stack.

The result is that King of the Crag rewards infliction breadth over raw single-target damage more than any stage the mode has shipped. A squad that can put four different statuses onto the boss and keep layering them scales into the fight, while a pure single-target burst comp gets none of the free multiplier. If you have been treating our inflictions and reactions guide as background theory, this is the stage where it becomes the primary consideration.

The counter-pressure is Furious Roar. Periodic squad-wide Stun means you cannot rely on reactive dodging, and in Agony the Stun windows keep growing, which puts a soft time limit on the fight independent of the 10-minute clock. Long fights get strictly worse. Front-load your damage.

Craghowler (MiniBoss, Wildlife):

Stat	Lv. 60 (Normal)	Lv. 90 (Agony)
HP	358,880	1,329,887
ATK	1,916	3,304
DEF	100	100
Poise	320, 9s recovery	320, 9s recovery
Attack range	2.8 m	2.8 m
Base resistances	Nature and Ether 1.0x; Physical, Heat, Electric, Cryo 0.8x	Same

An important caveat on those resistances. Craghowler’s base datamined profile resists four of the five player elements at 0.8x and takes full damage only from Nature and Ether. But the stage modifier text ends with the line “Enemies have the same resistance against every element,” which directly contradicts that spread. Either the stage normalizes resistances in-fight, in which case the Nature edge disappears, or that line is describing the series in general terms. We cannot confirm which from outside the game, so treat Nature as a nice-to-have rather than a hard requirement and build for infliction variety instead. This is on the watch list below.

Two behavioral notes that are confirmed. Craghowler applies Slow, per the Version 1.4 patch notes, which specifically called out improving the visual indicator for it. And its pillar slam produces expanding ground rings, which you dodge by moving inward toward the center rather than running outward. Its 2.8-meter attack range means melee operators live inside its threat zone permanently, so the safe uptime pattern is closer than instinct suggests.

For flavor, the game’s own text explains what a Craghowler is: “Craghowlers are the dominant members of rockhowler communities. These beasts will fight each other countless times before the strongest champion emerges as the leading craghowler.” Which is a tidy justification for why Stage 3’s rockhowlers and Stage 4’s boss share an arena, and why the series is called Howlers of the Crag.

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Normal vs Agony: What Actually Changes

	Normal	Agony
Enemy level	Lv. 60	Lv. 90
Stage modifiers	Base set per stage	Base set, plus additions
Tacticals and consumables	Allowed	Banned on all four stages
Stage 4 extra	Standard Furious Roar	Stun duration lengthens over time
Unlock	Available immediately	Requires the Normal clear
Rewards	24,000 T-Creds, 3 Advanced Cognitive Carrier, 1 Mark of Perseverance, 8 Protohedron, 5 Arms INSP Set	Identical
Medal	Engraved medal for all four	Trimmed medal for all four

The reward parity is worth stating plainly: Agony pays exactly the same items as Normal. The only mechanical reason to run it is the trimmed medal. If you are short on time before the Beastly Howl deadline, four Normal clears bank the entire material payout.

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Recommended Teams

Because three of the four stages disable a different system, there is no single comp that is best everywhere. These are the cores that carry the series, with the stage each one actually wants.

Comp	Operators	Best For	Why It Fits
Zhuang Fangyi Electric	Perlica / Zhuang Fangyi / Arclight / Antal	Stages 1, 2, 4	Electrification is one of the statuses Stage 4 makes permanent and stronger; strong grouping helps Stage 1’s simultaneous kills
Arcane INT	Arcane / Gilberta / Xaihi / Tangtang	Stages 2, 4	Heaviest Arts Burst access in the game, which is Stage 2’s only real lever against the Pyromancer
Laevatain Heat	Laevatain / Camille / Wulfgard / Ardelia	Stages 1, 3	Wide AoE ultimates flatten Stage 1’s wave together; Ardelia covers Agony’s consumable ban
Mi Fu Mono-Physical	Mi Fu / Pogranichnik / Chen Qianyu / Lifeng	Stages 1, 3, 4	Breach and Shatter both appear on Stage 4’s amplified list; strong interrupt tools for Stage 3’s boss cast

Two selection rules that matter more than the specific names:

For Stage 2, bring Arts. Stagger immunity plus the Arts Burst seal makes this the least flexible stage in the series. A physical stagger core can still kill the adds, but it has no answer to the boss’s chip damage.

For Stage 3, drop your battery. Whatever operator you normally bring for SP generation should be swapped for damage, interrupt, or sustain. This is the one stage where the standard team template is actively wrong.

Gear-wise, nothing here demands an exotic set. Follow the per-operator recommendations in our gear sets database; the Stage 4 infliction scaling rewards uptime and application frequency rather than any specific set bonus.

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Clear Order by Player Type

Heavily-invested accounts. Run all four on Agony directly and bank the trimmed medal before the 20th. The only stage likely to cost you a retry is Stage 3, purely because the SP restriction is unfamiliar rather than because it is hard. Learn the peel positions on Normal first if you would rather not waste attempts.

Mid-invested accounts. Clear all four on Normal first to lock the full material payout inside the event window, then work Agony afterward at your own pace. Prioritize Stage 4 Agony last, because the escalating Stun makes it the least forgiving of a thin roster.

Newer or lower-investment accounts. Four Normal clears is a realistic goal for the event window and gets you 100% of the items. Do Stage 1 and Stage 3 first, since neither requires a specific damage type. Stage 2 is the wall if you have no Arts damage dealer built, so consider it the stretch target rather than the blocker. There is no penalty for stopping at Normal; the series is permanent and Agony will be waiting.

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Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Focus-firing in Stage 1. Every kill permanently buffs the survivors. Bring health bars down together instead of deleting targets one at a time.
• Killing the rockhowlers in Stage 3. They are your only SP source. Starving yourself of peels is the most common way that stage times out.
• Bringing an SP battery to Stage 3. SP regeneration is off. That roster slot produces nothing.
• Opening with a stagger core on Stage 2. The Bonekrusher Pyromancer is immune to Stagger DMG. You need Arts Burst to seal him.
• Letting the Stage 3 boss ult resolve. It damages the squad, clears your peels, and it is tanky while casting. Interrupt it.
• Dodging outward from Craghowler’s pillar slam. The rings expand, so move toward the center.
• Playing Stage 4 Agony as a long attrition fight. The Furious Roar Stun gets longer as the fight continues. Time is against you specifically.
• Assuming Agony pays more. It does not. The items are identical; only the medal differs.

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Rewards and Medals

Per stage, in both Normal and Agony:

• 24,000 T-Creds
• 3 Advanced Cognitive Carrier
• 1 Mark of Perseverance
• 8 Protohedron
• 5 Arms INSP Set

Across four stages that is 96,000 T-Creds, 12 Advanced Cognitive Carriers, 4 Marks of Perseverance, 32 Protohedrons, and 20 Arms INSP Sets per difficulty tier. Clearing all four Normal stages awards the engraved medal; clearing all four Agony stages trims it, which remains the mode’s real prestige reward.

On top of that, Monumental Etching: Beastly Howl pays event rewards for completing Umbral Monument challenges during the window, following the Oroberyl-and-selection-crate pattern that previous Monumental Etching events used. Full patch details are on our Version 1.4 patch notes page.

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Watch List: What Would Change This Guide

• The Stage 4 resistance question. If the modifier really does flatten Craghowler’s resistances in-stage, the Nature advantage vanishes and team selection loosens further. If it does not, Nature and Ether comps get a clean 25% relative damage edge. We will confirm and update.
• Rockhowler and Armored Manglerbeast stat blocks. Neither is in our datamined tables yet. Once they land, Stage 3’s interrupt timing can be given real numbers instead of a general principle.
• The exact Beastly Howl reward table. The event is confirmed to pay out for Umbral Monument challenge completion, but the itemized list is not yet documented in the data we can verify.
• Verified Agony clears. The comps above are built from the series meta and each stage’s stated modifier. As players post confirmed Agony clears, particularly for Stage 2 without Arts and Stage 3 without a battery, we will swap in what actually works.

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Final Read

Howlers of the Crag is the most interesting Umbral Monument series to date, and it is the shortest. That is not a contradiction: four stages gave the designers room to make each one a distinct constraint rather than another damage check. Stage 1 breaks kill order, Stage 2 breaks stagger, Stage 3 breaks the SP economy, and Stage 4 breaks the cost of applying inflictions in your favor. If you have been running the same four operators through every endgame mode on autopilot, this series will tell you which of their contributions were load-bearing and which were habit.

Bank your four Normal clears before August 20 at 04:00 to collect the full material payout and the Beastly Howl bonus. The stages are not going anywhere, so Agony and the trimmed medal can wait until the pressure is off. For the previous series and how it compares, our Contention of Deathly Silences guide covers Series 5, and the Harrowing Æthillu Stage 5 guide is the closest example of the per-stage depth we will be adding for Series 6.

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FAQ

When does Monumental Etching: Beastly Howl end? August 20, 2026 at 04:00 server time. The event opened alongside the series on August 6 at 12:00, giving it a 14-day window. The four Howlers of the Crag stages themselves are permanent, so only the bonus event rewards are on a clock.

How many stages does Howlers of the Crag have? Four: Visitors of Qingbo, Earthshaking Hazefyre, Mangler and Friends, and King of the Crag. That makes it the shortest full series since Searing Scars, and half the length of the six-stage Turbidity Manifest and Contention of Deathly Silences series.

What element counters Craghowler? By its base datamined values, Nature and Ether hit Craghowler for full damage while Physical, Heat, Electric, and Cryo are all resisted at 0.8x. However, the King of the Crag stage modifier states that enemies have the same resistance against every element, which suggests the stage flattens that spread. Treat Nature as a mild edge rather than a hard requirement.

Why can’t I generate SP in Mangler and Friends? That stage removes operator SP regeneration entirely. The only SP source is stepping on the banana peels thrown by the rockhowlers. This means SP battery operators contribute almost nothing there, which inverts the usual team-building priority.

Why is stagger not working on the Earthshaking Hazefyre boss? The Bonekrusher Pyromancer in that stage is immune to Stagger DMG and is also harder to interrupt. Arts Burst damage is the intended lever instead: it deals bonus damage equal to a percentage of his Max HP and temporarily seals him.

What are the rewards for each Howlers of the Crag stage? Every stage pays the same in both Normal and Agony: 24,000 T-Creds, 3 Advanced Cognitive Carrier, 1 Mark of Perseverance, 8 Protohedron, and 5 Arms INSP Set. Clearing all four in Normal earns the engraved medal, and clearing all four in Agony trims it.

What level should my operators be? Around Lv. 60 for Normal mode and a fully built Lv. 90 team for Agony. Agony also raises enemies to Lv. 90 and bans Tacticals and consumables, so all sustain has to come from operator kits.

How do I unlock Umbral Monument? Complete the main mission Chapter I Process II: Paving the Way and reach Authority Level 30. Both are early-game checkpoints, so most active accounts already qualify.

Is Agony worth running if the rewards are the same? Only for the trimmed medal. The item payout is identical to Normal, so if you are chasing materials rather than prestige, four Normal clears is the efficient answer.

Which stage should I do first? Stage 1 or Stage 3, since neither requires a specific damage type. Save Stage 2 for when you have an Arts damage dealer available, because its boss is immune to Stagger DMG and needs Arts Burst to seal.

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Stage modifier text is sourced from Game8’s Version 1.4 stage pages; enemy stat blocks are from our own datamined enemy tables. This guide will be updated as the Stage 4 resistance behavior and the Rockhowler and Armored Manglerbeast stat blocks are confirmed.