Killing a Leviathan is a fun fleet check, but it is also how you get some of the best empire-wide traits and tech in Stellaris. The problem is that the wiki spreads the rewards across a dozen separate pages, so it is easy to either skip guardians entirely or send a fleet in blind and lose it to the wrong weapon loadout. This guide puts all the guardian rewards, the Dragonslayer and Drake-Scaled traits, the Artificial Dragonscales tech, and the reanimation mechanic into one place, plus the puzzle-path details for the Enigmatic Fortress that the wiki doesn’t spell out clearly.
Space Dragon traits and tech
“Leviathan traits” specifically refers to the empire and commander bonuses tied to killing one of the three Space Dragons (the Ether Drake, Shard or Sky Dragon). These are the rewards worth planning around, more so than the one-off resource payouts from other guardians.
Dragonslayer is a Commander trait. It goes to whoever leads the fleet that lands the killing blow on the Ether Drake or Sky Dragon. If you sent multiple fleets in waves, only the commander of the first fleet that engaged gets credit. So if you want the trait on a specific admiral, make sure they lead the opening attack and not a mop-up wave.
Drake-Scaled is an empire-wide trait, and it has a timing requirement that is easy to miss. You need to have completed the Genetics tradition tree, or adopted the Nucleotide Isolation tradition, before you kill a Space Dragon. Kill the dragon first and you do not get it retroactively, so plan your tradition picks ahead of the fight. The same kind of planning applies to your ascension perks, since Biomorphosis is the path that leads to the genetic trees.
Artificial Dragonscales technology goes to whichever empire kills the Sky Dragon, or builds a starbase in the Ether Drake’s home system (Dragon’s Hoard). If you have already unlocked it through one dragon and then deal with the second, you will get a consolation payout instead: somewhere between 100 and 4,000 Minerals plus 1,000 to 100,000 Society research, scaling with circumstances.
Space Dragon stats
All three Space Dragons share the same base profile: 150,000 Hull, 105,000 Armor, 0 Shields, 160 Speed, 25% Evasion, and roughly 825 average damage per day. Their weapons are energy-based (Dragon’s Breath, Wing Skewer, Drake’s Lightning). The Sky Dragon specifically has been confirmed around 47,000 fleet power with 150k hull and 104k armor.
Since they run zero shields, a shielded fleet running energy weapons is the standard counter. You soak their energy damage behind shields while your own weapons chew through their unshielded hull and armor.
Mind that there is no single magic fleet power number that guarantees a win, even though the question comes up in r/Stellaris threads all the time. Ship design and tech quality matter more than raw power. A fleet with a big power advantage but the wrong weapon type for a guardian’s defense profile (for example energy weapons against a shieldless but heavily armored target) will still lose. Before you worry about hitting some fleet power benchmark, check the guardian’s defense gaps and build your loadout to exploit them.
Full guardian roster and rewards
Below is every guardian, its defenses where relevant, and what killing it gets you.
| Guardian | Defenses / Counter | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Opus Sentinel | Regular ship components | Removes Machine Hulk blocker; unlocks terraform-to-Gaia special project |
| Asteroid Hives | Strike craft only, bring carriers with point defense | 500 Energy + 2,000 Society research |
| Automated Dreadnought | Regular components | Salvage it (5,000 Energy + 1,000 Alloys + Engineering research) or repair it into a controllable ship (50,000 Engineering research); grants the Dreadnought achievement |
| Enigmatic Fortress | Multi-stage puzzle chain, not a straight fight (see below) | 1,000-5,000 Research in each field, research options for the Enigmatic Encoder and Decoder |
| Infinity Sphere | Non-hostile, the only guardian that will not attack you | Orbits the black hole “Gargantua”; no fight required |
| Ether Drake (Space Dragon) | 150k Hull / 105k Armor / 0 Shields, use shielded energy weapon fleets | 300 Influence, Ether Drake Trophy relic, possible Ether Hatchling (~7k fleet power) via special project, “Hear me Roar” achievement |
| Shard (Space Dragon) | Same dragon profile as above | See the dedicated Shard guide for full fight strategy |
| Sky Dragon (Space Dragon) | ~47k fleet power, 150k Hull, 104k Armor, “Here Be Dragons” origin only, starts allied | Dragonslayer trait, Drake-Scaled trait (if eligible), Artificial Dragonscales tech |
| Stellar Devourer | Feeds on stars; retaliates against your systems if you don’t deal 67%+ of its HP in one engagement | Removes the star-devouring threat to your systems |
| Corrupted Avatar | 15,000 Hull / 0 Armor / 75,000 Shields, 25% Evasion. Weapons ignore armor and deal -75% vs shields, so use missiles or strike craft | High-value reward guardian, notable for its shield-heavy profile |
| Tiyanki Matriarch | 125,000 Hull / 25,000 Armor / 0 Shields, 15% Evasion, +100% weapon damage buff, use energy weapons | Reward tied to defeating the buffed matriarch |
| Voidspawn | Hidden/unborn guardian, high Hull/Armor with no shields, guided weapons only | Reward for hunting down a guardian most players never encounter |
| Dimensional Creatures (Worm, Dimensional Horror, Elder One) | 100,000 Hull / 100,000 Armor / 100,000 Shields. Weapons ignore armor, -75% vs shields. Counter with shielded fleets running Kinetic Artillery or size X weapons | See the dedicated Dimensional Horror guide for full fight strategy |
Enigmatic Fortress puzzle path
The Enigmatic Fortress is a chain of events guarded by 1 Ancient Vault, 2 Guardians, 2 Wardens, 4 Defenders, and 8 Sentinel stations. The wiki lists every option in the chain but does not tell you which ones work, which is where most people get stuck or lose the reward. The short version is below; for every stage, the Tower and Star Witness choices and the full rewards, see our complete Enigmatic Fortress guide.
Part 1 (gaining entry). Two options work here: send a Demolitions Team (a troop transport, which you will lose in the process), or trigger a Local Power Surge with a science ship for 50 Energy. Either gets you through.
Part 2 (the tower). Only one option succeeds: “Rearrange the metal tori on the poles.” Every other tower option fails: the Vault repowers and the expedition ends, so you have to disable it again and start over from Part 1. Do not experiment here, go straight for the tori.
Part 3 (the pivot). Three of the four choices succeed: “Supply Dark Matter” (requires a science ship and more than 10 Dark Matter), “Black Hole Research” (a special project), and picking “the middle” option for Home System Research. The fourth option, “Use Force” with a military ship, technically “succeeds” too, but it destroys the entire system instead of giving you the normal reward. Every fleet in the system is destroyed (yours included), habitable planets become Tomb Worlds and other rocky planets turn molten, and you get no research or techs. Avoid it unless that’s specifically what you want.
If you fail a stage, the Fortress is not lost. The game repairs only the Vault, so the stations you destroyed stay gone and the second fight is against the Vault alone. Disable it again and the expedition restarts from Part 1. The game files set no limit on retries, but every failure costs you another fight and more waiting, so treat the sequence above as a checklist.
Get it right (without using force) and the payout is substantial: 1,000-5,000 Research in each of physics, society and engineering (24 months of your output in that field), the Enigmatic Encoder and Enigmatic Decoder as research options with 30% progress already done, and the Unravelling Enigma achievement. The Decoder (+5 Chance to Hit, +5 Tracking) is the one most fleets will actually use. Older guides also promise a random Super Tech and extra component slots; those rewards are no longer in the game.
Reanimating a guardian into your own fleet
If you are running the Reanimators civic or the Mechromancy ascension perk from the Necroids DLC, you will be able to bring a defeated organic guardian back as a controllable fleet through a special project costing 10,000 Society research. The reanimated guardian keeps its original strength, which is the whole appeal.
It is not free to run, though. It eats 250 Naval Capacity by itself, cannot merge with other fleets or be reassigned to a different commander, and carries very high food upkeep compared to a normal ship. A reanimated dragon looks great on paper, but it will strain your economy if you are not already running a food surplus.
Conclusion
If you are chasing the Dragonslayer and Drake-Scaled traits specifically, make sure to get your Genetics tradition tree or Nucleotide Isolation locked in before you engage a dragon, since that is the only reward here you cannot get after the fact. For everything else, the priority order comes down to what you need: Research-focused empires get the most obvious value from the Enigmatic Fortress if you can nail the puzzle path, while empires wanting a strong early relic or a shot at a controllable dragon should prioritize the Ether Drake.
Whichever guardian you’re going after, check its defense profile against your weapon loadout before you commit a fleet. Matching your loadout to the gap in a guardian’s defenses will win you fights that a bigger fleet power number alone will not.
Make sure your fleet is actually built for the fight before you go dragon hunting (here is my take on the best fleet composition). And once the guardians are dealt with, the next big threat is usually a Fallen Empire.
