Named monster

Every quest or raid has named monsters that have special abilities, damage reductions, immunities, and importance to the quest or raid objectives. Often, named monsters are bosses--monsters that, once defeated, often complete a quest's central objective.

Despite the use of the term "monster," your enemies might be more humanoid, such as a human or elf, or be a non-humanoid, such as a pit fiend. "Enemy" and "monster" are used synonymously in DDO.

Named monsters are often designated by the color of their name as shown during a quest, which will differ from the typical blue-white names of monsters in a mob.

Named monsters often have greater than average hit points than the mobs that accompany them.

Here are general characteristics of named monsters by color type.

Orange-named monsters
Orange named is generally used to denote a more powerful foe when compared to a standard non-named foe of the same type. While they generally posses no additional immunities*, they can still pose a major threat. Orange-named enemies can appear in large groups, unlike their more powerful counterparts.
 * Note: There is one exception to the lack of immunities: On epic difficulty only, oranged named monsters all posses the effects of Deathblock.

Red-named monsters
Red-named monsters are quite powerful and often can't be beaten by a single player character by themselves if the player character matches or is less than the quest's level difficulty. Most quests feature at least one red-named enemy, generally the end boss.

Red-named monsters:
 * Are immune from negative level effects
 * Are immune from instant kill spells and effects, such as vorpal weapons, banishing, Finger of Death, and the like
 * Cannot be stunned, held, paralyzed or stopped by any similar effects or spells, such as Flesh to Stone, Web, and the like
 * Are highly resistant to statistic-draining damage: Only 10 points of ability damage is counted and cannot be made helpless (or have any ability score reduced to zero)
 * Are often highly resistant, if not immune, from specific elemental effects, such as fire or cold
 * Often have specific damage reductions that require one or more weapon types in combination to bypasses the damage reduction (such as Silver and Pure Good weaponry against vampires)

One notable monster, General Xanti'lar, the boss of Stormcleave Outpost, is a quintessential example of the power of a red-named monster, complete with challenging damage reduction and immunities which can and often need to be disabled in order to defeat him.

Purple-named monsters
Purple-named monsters are rarer. They are found primarily in raids, such as the Hound of Xoriat or The Reaver's Bane, as well as some other challenging quests which require flagging.

Many of the special abilities of red-named monsters apply to purple-named monsters. In addition, purple-named monsters:
 * Are completely immune to any ability damage
 * Immune to the debuff Ray of Enfeeblement
 * Cannot be slowed down by any spell
 * Can be affected by some de-buffing spells if the player can defeat the enemy's spell resistance (if it has any)
 * Most have True Seeing, so their attacks are not affected by concealment effects such as Blur. They aren't able to see through the concealment effects of a spell (the "fog" in Acid Fog, for instance)

Some purple-named monsters are often colored as such to warn the player characters that this boss type cannot or should not be defeated until the players (and their party) complete a specific task(s) that either enables the players to damage the purple-named monster at all, or compels the monster to unlock a specific task that completes an objective.

Some notable examples:
 * Sor'jek Incanni, the boss atop Tempest's Spine, cannot be damaged by the raiding party until a special puzzle atop the mountain is solved (using runes found in the raid), switching off the boss's weather control and damage immunities.
 * Xy'zzy, the mother hound in the Hound of Xoriat, is completely immune to any damage, except that from her brood of puppies--if you can make them turn against her.
 * Arraetrikos, the boss of The Shroud raid, is a quintessential example of the power of a purple-named monster, complete with challenging damage reduction and immunities. He is so tough that you must slay him twice in the same raid.

Listing of named monsters
Named monsters listed on this page are either bosses or special monsters that only appear once in a quest, or for that matter (most of the time), only once in the whole game.

Bosses