TL;DR
A Stagfather Shrine starts a repeatable hunt trial. Interact with the shrine, kill the three spectral Wyrddeer that scatter before they escape, then touch the shrine again to claim your loot. Drink a Last Stand potion right before you activate it so stamina stays pinned at 100% for the chase, then lean on King's Power to slow time and line up the kills. There are nine shrines, three in each of three regions. First clear of any shrine hands you three recipes: The Stag's Defiance, The Stag's Woe, and Wyrddeer Stew. Every clear after that drops Wyrd crafting materials.
What a Stagfather Shrine actually is
The shrine is the trigger for a Miscellaneous Quest you can run again and again. No NPC hands it to you, and there are no prerequisites. You walk up to any Stagfather Shrine, interact with it, and the trial begins on the spot.
The moment you activate it, three spectral Wyrddeer spawn and bolt in different directions. Your job is to run all three down and put them in the ground, then return to the shrine and interact a second time to close the trial out. Completion is worth 100 XP, but the XP is not why anyone does this. The recipes and the Wyrd materials are.
The challenge is the chase. The deer flee fast and will get away if you dawdle, so this is a race more than a fight. Treat it like a sprint with a deadline you can feel.
The fast-clear tactic
We open every shrine the same way. Drink a Last Stand potion in the seconds before you touch the shrine. It locks your stamina at 100% for 60 seconds, which means you can swing or sprint without ever stopping to catch your breath while the deer are running. That single buff turns a frantic chase into a controlled one.
Then use King's Power, the King's Soul time-slow ability, the instant a deer breaks for open ground. Slowing time lets you close the gap and place a clean hit on a target that would otherwise be out of reach. Pair it with strong burst damage, ranged or melee, so each deer drops in as few hits as possible. If you are built for a bow, the slow plus a charged shot will often one-shot a fleeing target. A ranged setup like the archer build is the cleanest fit for this trial.
Build: f9ae25daf09dOne more habit that saves clears: sweep the area for regular enemies before you activate the shrine. A patrolling pack that aggros mid-chase will eat your attention and let a deer slip the net. Clear the ground first, drink, activate, hunt.
Where to find all nine shrines
Three regions hold three shrines each. Any one of them can start the quest, and all nine can be cleared for their first-time recipes. The directions below are wayfinding, not exact coordinates, so use your map markers and the nearby landmarks to home in.
Horns of the South
| Shrine | How to get there |
|---|---|
| Near Deserted Settlement | Head east into the forest, staying north of the road. |
| Near Ruined Broch | Travel northwest, past the rocky outcroppings. |
| Near Abandoned Village | Go north to the bridge, cross it, then turn west. |
Cuanacht
| Shrine | How to get there |
|---|---|
| The Swamp | Move east through the twisted trees. |
| Wyrd Tower | Follow the road southwest, then veer east. |
| The Plains | Take the east road through the grasslands to the open plain and head south. |
Forlorn Swords
| Shrine | How to get there |
|---|---|
| Zone Gate 2 | South past the Northern Gate, follow the path to a rocky outcropping, then continue south up the slope. |
| Frozen Lake | North across the bridge to the crossroads, then look northeast. |
| Ulfr Village | East, take the wooden lift down the cliff, then head north hugging the wall. |
What you get
First-clear recipes
The first time you finish any single shrine, you bank three recipes. These are one-time unlocks, so a player chasing all of them only needs one clean clear to add them to the crafting menu. Folding these into a broader crafting routine keeps the materials moving instead of sitting in storage.
- The Stag's Defiance
- The Stag's Woe
- Wyrddeer Stew
Repeat-clear materials
Every completion, including the very first one, drops a set of Wyrd crafting materials. These feed high-tier crafting and alchemy, which is the reason to keep coming back to shrines you have already cleared.
| Material | What it is |
|---|---|
| Wyrddeer Pelt | Hide from the hunted deer. |
| Wyrd Antler Fragments | Broken antler pieces. |
| Wyrd Bones | High-value crafting bone. |
| Wyrd Venison | Cooking ingredient. |
| Ethereal Cobwebs | Sought-after alchemy reagent. |
Ethereal Cobwebs and Wyrd Bones are the standout pulls here. Both turn up in recipes you will want deep into a run, so farming a nearby shrine repeatedly is a clean way to stock up without scouring the whole map.
The follow-up: Hunt for Wyrddeer
Clearing a shrine trial opens a second Miscellaneous Quest, Hunt for Wyrddeer, given by Margh at Hunter's Camp. If you are already farming Wyrd materials from the shrines, swing by Margh to fold that work into another reward track rather than letting the kills go to waste. The full walkthrough places this alongside the other side trials worth picking up along the way.
One quick disambiguation
The name "Stagfather" shows up twice in this game. The shrine trials covered here are one thing. The horned hunt-god of the Sveinn tribe is another, and he sits at the center of the God's Cure quest in The Breach, where you decide whether to purify or kill the Stagfather's Avatar. That decision is a separate questline with its own branching outcomes. If that is what you came for, you want the God's Cure walkthrough, not this hunt guide.