Event Boss Suggestion: Jack

[Sarsapiri]

Note: Wall of Text

Despite this being late for Halloween, I was inspired by the klaus boss to make this suggestion for a Halloween themed raid boss similarly.

Recommended Gear tier: Full Thulecite/nightmare gear

Jack (from: Jack-o lantern, name is mostly for concept)

Summoning: at some point during autumn (usually year 2, can be spawned in year 1 by host's preference, can spawn outside of Halloween, and the seasons after being defeated, only respawning the following season afterwards) a pair of large "Fallen robes" will spawn.

Throughout Halloween, hostile mobs will drop "curses" (at a rate similar to the ornaments from mobs during winter feast) which will change the lights of a given object by red, blue, yellow, green, purple, or orange. These curses are also drops from graves, ghosts, nightmare monsters, clockworks, and the shadow clockworks/pieces outside the event. When applied to a jack-o-lantern, they instead increase the "curse" level of the jack-o-lantern, which when all 6 curses have been applied to the jack-o-lantern, it will turned into a "cursed jack-o-lantern" When a cursed jack-o-lantern is activated on the Fallen robes, a short animation plays, and the fight begins.

Concept appearance: a large robe clad being with a large Jack-o lantern for a head and a scythe in two hands.

HP: low-med compared to other raid bosses like dragon fly or queen bee. Kind of a "Glass Cannon"

Speed: Slow 

The Fight: Similarly to Toadstool, this boss is best fought with some team mates, be it players or allied bunny-men/shadow puppets/pig men

Throughout the entire fight, he will "mark" players for his aggro for 30 seconds, signaled by a large pumpkin floating above the target's head. (Optional: Jack prioritizes aggro on the players/mobs that has done the most damage to him throughout the fight) 

Attacks:

Phase 1:

Scythe swing: Jack swings his scythe in the spirit of Halloween, in a 66.6 degree cone, dealing ~60-75 damage to an unarmored player, he only activates this attack when the marked player (and the marked player only) is in melee range, making avoiding melee range important for the marked player

Pumpkin fling: Jack flings his head at the marked player, chasing them down for either ~17 seconds, or when he hits the target player, dealing large damage around 60-75 also. During this, he leaves his robes behind for the unmarked players to attack on throughout the fight. If the unmarked players do about 5%-10% of his max hp while downed, jack will disassemble into "pumpkin spirits" at which players can hit, with each point of damage to each dealing 2-4x damage taken against jack when they re-assemble after 13 seconds.

In between markings, Jack may use this attack:

Shadow mist: This is a more "interesting" attack, with the boss shrouding the area in a "mist" where all placed light (i.e, fire pits, campfires) are immediately put out and all natural light is out (excluding head or hand held lights like mining hats or torches) for a medium-long length of time. This acts like normal darkness from the game, but: all lights strength have been halved, light producing item's durability go down at a 2x speed (torches at a 4x rate, Moggles excluded entirely from the degen) and the night monster doesn't attack. However, jack instead marks players and attacks them, with him focusing on players with the least amount of light, Moggles users/Werebeaver Woodies are ignored entirely. Players who are equipped with lights can attack a jack trying to snuff out a player (Moggles/Werebeaver Woodie users especially are advantaged) after ~5 hits, he will disengage attack on that player and seek another target after a cooldown of ~2 seconds. When a player has been marked for an attack, they will have 3 seconds to run/find light to avoid being attacked. The attack will deal ~100-150 damage to an unarmored player, making usage of light items imperative. Should a player relight a fire pit/place a campfire, a ring of shadow arms will be spawned and will put out the light after a short amount of time.

Randomly through out the fight he might use use this one:

Ghoul summon: In this attack, Jack summons 4-7 "ghouls" which are slow moving mobs with hp that takes 6 hits from a dark sword to kill. They do the same damage as a hound. Animation: Jack thrusts his left hand upwards in at the same time as the summoning of the ghouls.

When jack takes too much damage outside of the pumpkin fling attack, he will randomly teleport a short distance away, and "spook" players that have dealt damage to him and are a range, causing a sanity degen and disarming them.

Phase 2 starts when his health falls below 50%, jack's "jaw" falls off and a black "ectoplasm" starts to drip out much like queen bee's honey pools. (note: does not drop the "pure ectoplasm" used to repair the tools/items dropped by the boss)

This phase is less of a drastic change than other boss phases, with the only changes being:

More quick and erratic attacking, occasional drop of small pools of ectoplasm behind him that slows players, random spooking of players throughout, increased ghoul spawn amounts, and teleporting to the marked player when out of range

Loot: Jack's drops are the same as Klaus' drops however:

Most of his drops are in goodie bags instead of presents

Instead of charcoal and life giving amulets, Jack drops pumpkins and life giving amulets instead

Instead of Volt goat milk and ginger bread cookies, He drops Halloween candy and curses.

It also drops one of these two unique items:

Ghastly Scythe: this is a weapon that is basically a dark sword intended for long term use, with the same stats as dark sword, but with less insanity per sec, and slowly regens durability when not in use (like 3.33% a day) it can be repaired by 10% instantly using the ectoplasm dropped by jack.

Jack's Head: A helmet that has the same durabililty as a thulecite crown, but only 67% damage resistance (85% against jack) and lacks the force field, and produces a passive light while equipped. it degens about 15-20% durability per day if used constantly throughout a single day. It can be refueled by 10% using the ectoplasm dropped by jack. It has the same light radius as a mining lamp

This is paired with 4-7 drops of "pure ectoplasm" which can be used on the tools above in the ways mentioned.

Bonus:

Mysterious seed: A item that has a 33% chance to drop from jack, it's use being to combine it with 1 pumpkin at a critter den to make a "pumpkinling" which is a small lizard inside a mini-pumpkin that waddles around inside of it, wearing the pumpkin like a "costume"

So what is your guys, the viewers, opinion on this? are some features to weak, or too overpowered? Feel free leave any criticism (please keep it constructive, "this is bad and it sucks" without any reasons isn't helpful.)

 

 

[IDKDude]

IMO, Jack seems like a good raid boss, with unique attacks and a decent health pool, but the drops need reworking.  Jack's head presumably gives off a passive light, yet it also acts like armour.  All light sources in DST eventually run out or have limits.  Not to mention it's regenerative abilities. I think the regenerative abilities should be removed in favour of a fuel dropped by Jack for repairing the items(Ectoplasm?).  Jack would drop 3-5 of the fuel and they repair for 33% each.  The ghastly scythe looks even more unbalanced.  High damage and long range means more DPS(longer range just means more hits per dodge when kiting), so I think it should be one or the other.  Straight up higher damage or a gimmick that results in higher damage(Spawns ghouls?), or longer range but less damage(40-50 per hit).  Or just rework the entire thing.  Dark swords are already enough to kill enemies in 2 or 3 hits.  

[Sarsapiri]

9 hours ago, IDKDude said:

IMO, Jack seems like a good raid boss, with unique attacks and a decent health pool, but the drops need reworking.  Jack's head presumably gives off a passive light, yet it also acts like armour.  All light sources in DST eventually run out or have limits.  Not to mention it's regenerative abilities. I think the regenerative abilities should be removed in favour of a fuel dropped by Jack for repairing the items(Ectoplasm?).  Jack would drop 3-5 of the fuel and they repair for 33% each.  The ghastly scythe looks even more unbalanced.  High damage and long range means more DPS(longer range just means more hits per dodge when kiting), so I think it should be one or the other.  Straight up higher damage or a gimmick that results in higher damage(Spawns ghouls?), or longer range but less damage(40-50 per hit).  Or just rework the entire thing.  Dark swords are already enough to kill enemies in 2 or 3 hits.  

I tweaked some things around, and made the scythe just a long term use dark sword, and made jack's head degen durability while in use.

[Xedlord]

Wow this is a really great idea  (also just before I found this I was trying to think of a boss like Klaus but for the hallowed nights event)

 

[Xedlord]

I just thought of something: maybe instead of spawning ghouls he could spawn unfriendly scarecrows

[Arlesienne]

This sounds like quite a complex idea. Well done. I'd suggest toning down the drops - particularly the head: either only light or just 25% armour as well as the scythe being less powerful so that people still need to farm nightmare fuel - and perhaps doing something with the existing sprites. I'm talking ghosts in lieu of ghouls and perchance skeletons. If the skeleton of a player who died there can be temporarily turned against their friends, it gives a whole new meaning to staying alive.

[Sarsapiri]

5 hours ago, Arlesienne said:

This sounds like quite a complex idea. Well done. I'd suggest toning down the drops - particularly the head: either only light or just 25% armour as well as the scythe being less powerful so that people still need to farm nightmare fuel - and perhaps doing something with the existing sprites. I'm talking ghosts in lieu of ghouls and perchance skeletons. If the skeleton of a player who died there can be temporarily turned against their friends, it gives a whole new meaning to staying alive.

No. Both are balanced as is. First off: the head would literally be useless if just light (mining lamp with rarer fuels much?) 25% armor would be absolutely useless at this tier (post-thulecite, NOT TO MENTION, this helmet was designed to help with the boss itself (see: refueling only reliably using ectoplasm, a drop exclusive to this boss, and his whole "darkness" attack which can make quick work of any player) and as for the scythe, it is designed to replace usage of dark swords for general combat (hunting mobs/ doing other things outside of fighting raid bosses) as it's durability is less/the same as a regular dark sword, it's only difference from it being that it is a large amount rarer (dark swords are VERY easy to come by once you get a treeguard farm set up/fight bearger using the easiest method) having less/no sanity degen while equiped, being repairable (tho not very viably, given how difficult the boss is) with a medium/good auto repair (a whole day repairs 15-20% with out it being used) this boss also respawns every season, and only drops the scythe on a coin flip chance (50%) so you'd only get 2 every year on average, where as the dark sword can be crafted in large quantities (like a scaled chest full) with in a single season. However, the repair from ecto can be toned down for the scythe. As for the spawning monsters after death, there are two huge issues with this: Players could troll their team mates by killing themselves during the fight, and second, this boss is designed to kill even an armored player in 2-3 hits, so death would be too common for this to be a good concept to add.

[Arlesienne]

You asked for feedback, you got my three pence. The deal so far has always been sacrificing one of the slots:

- armour

- clothes

- tools

- weapons

- backpack

- light

Arguably light is the most essential thing. Let's take a look:

- hands: torch, lighter, lantern

- head: miner hat, moggles

- torso: magiluminescence

If you have a very protective helmet which also gives off enough light to stave off Charlie, you can wear a backpack or a vest and wield tools or weapons. That's rather powerful. The protection mentioned equals the armour of the werebeaver. Given how armour deduction works, it's a very viable solution in the caves if you have your ectoplasm as it lets you wear armour or clothes for protection and sometimes sanity. The idea fits the overall style of how items work in the game: apart from the morgenstern, weapons and armour are just that. They're made this way for the difficulty curve. You always need a source of light while typically wishing for armour, insulation and more inventory. I'd like a helmet which protects me from Charlie as mentioned. If you don't like it, no tragedy, make a mod and the audience will be found. Similarly with the scythe: you have no way to repair weapons and armour for now. A passive regen rate would be very powerful; you'd just need to let it rest. And typically time gnaws at items rather than repairs them - unless it's some vintage, I guess ;). Your boss respawns, unlike, say, the ancient guardian. With enough patience, players would have a chance at invincibility, because to regain full durability of their sane weapon, they'd just need to wait five days. Your boss is strong and with many attacks, but if you do conquer it, you're given really powerful gear. I just don't think THEY would like it. But that's just me and I can just skip your mod when it's done :).

[DatShadowJK]

Great idea for a raid boss! And it would also give a usefulness to ghosts to drop things, I mean, why,