Oven Knight

Oven Knights are enemies added in v1.8, the Bestiary Update. They appear to be mechanical in nature, being powered by a furnace in their chest. They will only begin to appear in biomes on 2 BSC and above. They can appear in a handful of areas, and can pose a significant threat to inexperienced players.

Behavior
The Oven Knight is a slow-moving enemy initially. It wields a breakable wooden shield that absorbs attacks from the front as well as an axe. the Oven Knight's attacks using a shield will not destroy its own shield.

With its shield active, the Oven Knight walks slowly. It will lightly ram the player with the shield, then attempt to follow up with an axe strike. The shield does not take damage from parries.

If the shield is destroyed, Oven Knights become highly aggressive, indicating the fire in their furnace turning red from blue. Their movement speed will be significantly increased and will attack the player with combo axe strikes.

Strategy
Oven Knights have two different movesets based on whether they have their shields or not. While they have their shields up, they are vulnerable from behind. Their shield bash attack comes out pretty fast however, so be prepared to roll away from it as soon as they turn around. If you do get by the shield bash, mash roll and hope you roll out of its follow up attack.

Without their shield, their attacks are more aggressive. If you try to roll behind them right when they start to attack, there is a very high chance the second swing will hit you. If you see an Oven Knight running at you, roll away to dodge the first hit, then approach it after the second hit to hit it at melee range. If you need to roll behind it, do it at the last second and jump away to minimize the chance of getting hit.

If an Oven Knight is far away enough from you, deal with the other faster enemies first. At 4+ BSC, run away to a longer platform if you need to.

Whips (Valmont's Whip, Wrenching Whip, Electric Whip) can easily kill Oven Knights since they can avoid damaging its shield, thus preventing their aggressive behavior.

Trivia

 * Prior to v2.1, aka the Malaise Update, these enemies were called Guardians.
 * Despite this, the developers had promised to rename this enemy since the patchnotes for v1.9.