Gaints, Sanity, And the myoptic beast who wants to kill you.

[IceBurst]

I want to start this off with, I don't care about the health values that much. Though health on giants should scale depending on players in-game/nearby, thats not the big issue here, nay the issue here is 
Kiting giants
Now Bearger, and Goose/Goose, are pushovers, as a Wigfrid main I gobble them up wiith little help from neutral mobs the dragonfly is easy with the help of a couple players/beefies. Nay though, as the title suggests I don't have gripes with them, its the deerclops. Mainly his ungodly sanity drain. I understand he was added during the time where sanity was the hip new and cool thing to utterly ruin your life with, but deerbutt's crap is simply ludicrous.
 With a sanity drain of -400/min when in combat with him, You simply cannot stay sane. I was practicing giants earlier and found that a Wigfrid actively fighting him with a top hat on still causes my sanity to drain within SECONDS From 120 to 0. Sure her sanity is low, extremely low in fact, but the fact she gains sanity from hitting enemies should make up for that, with a top hat on for goodness sake! Its extremely hard, if not impossible to kite deerclops without getting FUBAR, or maybe I just don't know how. I mean you can sick neutral mobs like pigs or beefs on him, before they're frozen and killed en masse. I don't know why they chose to make the giants of fall and spring so easy while the giant of winter is seemingly sundowner tier.

Am I doing something wrong?
Is he just to be avoided?
I don't understand!

[Starlogy]

Deerclops is hard? As Wigfrid?? Whatever you're smoking, I want some of that.

But really, Deerclops isn't that difficult, at least for me anyway. Deal with the sanity drain, the shadows are really easy to deal with too. I'm honestly surprised that you think Bearger is easier than Deerclops, actually.

[IceBurst]

Its the sanity drain. Bearger and Goose/Goose have very little sanity drain. Making it easy to kite them forever. Deerclops on the other hand, is just like, oh your freezing to death? Oh you're already having a tough time with sanity both in-game, and in real life due to winter being a real jerk? Lets bundle that up with, if you make a mistake kiting him, you get frozen and o-Блять-erated, either with another hit from deerclops, or if you're unlucky, a nice complete hoedown with the shadow monsters as well. Its hard to deal with those shadow hallucinations while swipe-n-freeze is hot on your heels.

[Auth]

Deerclops isn't hard, you're just bad!

This sounds ridiculous, but if you're good at kiting, you'll trust me completely.

Jerky, tam o shanter, dapper vest, walking cane and dark sword(or whatever melee, note dark sword has highest DPS against things that move commonly, wheras thulecite club has higher if you're just planning on facetanking, and the additional flinch animations will mess up kite timing). All you need to focus on is fighting him, don't worry about your sanity at all. pretend it doesn't exist. A wigfrid that lands every hit and doesn't get hit once will probably only start to go insane at the very end of the fight, to which you can just finish him off and eat 2 jerky and be on your merry little way.

Or, if you're a super insanely good player, just equip the bee queen hat and you'll have no problems whatsoever with sanity.

Or if you have friends, get one to distract deerclops while you kill off the shadows (as killing them yourself gives back sanity)

Or if you meet a willow, just ask them to craft 9 gazillion bernies and keep one on you 24/7. it's what I do.

And yes! Finally someone else agrees deerclops is more tricky than bearger. Bearger just has more health than deerclops is all.

[Maslak]

17 minutes ago, Weirdobob said:

Deerclops isn't hard, you're just bad!

Agreed
 

17 minutes ago, Weirdobob said:

And yes! Finally someone else agrees deerclops is more tricky than bearger. Bearger just has more health than deerclops is all.

Damn. I don't really think this way, because:
Log suits/battle helmets/marble suit(s) + brand new fresh hambat + campfire = Rektclops. Even if you go insane before you kill him, it's no problem since you tank anyway.
You can't kill bearger like this.
 

[DimWhat]

I have only killed bearger by leading it into the swamp and it eating monster meat to death. And I have killed Deerclops that way too.

[Maslak]

 Hah, fun times. Once in DS i wanted to clear reed trap setpiece out of tentacles using Bearger. He killed around 40-50% of them and died, because he ate all the monster meat.
 Bearger isn't hard either, it's just more time consuming. Just lead it to forest and let treeguards do the job.

[DimWhat]

1 minute ago, Maslak said:

 Hah, fun times. Once in DS i wanted to clear reed trap setpiece out of tentacles using Bearger. He killed around 40-50% of them and died, because he ate all the monster meat.
 Bearger isn't hard either, it's just more time consuming. Just lead it to forest and let treeguards do the job.

For me he killed the all then died via monster meat.

[Maslak]

In Don't Starve Together he has doubled health, so it kinda explains it. Not sure about tentacles. It also depends on how you act. If you try to make him slam the tentacles then lure him away to dogde regular swings and then again lure him into the trap to do the slam it should work pretty good.
Come on and slam, and welcome to the jam!

[DimWhat]

1 minute ago, Maslak said:

 Hah, fun times. Once in DS i wanted to clear reed trap setpiece out of tentacles using Bearger. He killed around 40-50% of them and died, because he ate all the monster meat.
 Bearger isn't hard either, it's just more time consuming. Just lead it to forest and let treeguards do the job.

For me he killed the all then died via monster meat.

[DimWhat]

26 minutes ago, Maslak said:

You can't kill bearger like this.

I have only killed bearger by leading it into the swamp and it eating monster meat to death.

[Pruinae]

1 hour ago, Weirdobob said:

Deerclops isn't hard, you're just bad!
Jerky.
Or, if you're a super insanely good player or play with Wickerbottom, just equip the bee queen hat and you'll have no problems whatsoever with sanity.

Or if you have friends, get one to distract deerclops while you kill off the shadows (as killing them yourself gives back sanity)

Or if you meet a willow, just ask them to craft 9 gazillion bernies and keep one on you 24/7. it's what I do.

 

53 minutes ago, Maslak said:

Log suits/battle helmets/marble suit(s) + brand new fresh hambat + campfire = Rektclops. Even if you go insane before you kill him, it's no problem since you tank anyway.

This.

Since I play using Wickerbottom my strat usually evolve around using the first deerclops to kill tentacles and get tentacles spots, using the acquired tentacles spots to kill bee queen and using bee queen crown to kill (kiting) every deerclops after the first one, you can use a campfire or a star from the star caller staff to stay warm.

[CaptainChaotica]

As a Willow semi-main (yes, really)...massive sanity drain + possibly being hit by one of his actual attacks + insanity makes you freeze faster + winter + ADDITIONAL freezing attack = THIS is why I went back to oldschool Willow, people!  (With a mod.)  This right here.  (Well...technically for me it was being chased by a treeguard in the winter night and not being able to put down a fire to warm up without getting hit by a shadow creepy-crawly, but same deal--just ramp that up the right amount for Deerclops.)

Me, I've never been good at kiting and I end up playing alone more often than not, so I usually get rid of the giants using guile.  Especially on the first winter, when you just don't have very good equipment yet (thulecite clubs and star-caller staffs are more of a "later-on" food). And if you like to randomise the seasons like I do and end up with a short fall...even more so!

Which I realise isn't really relevant to the "How do I single-combat him without going insane?" question--but if you're all by yourself with no eqiupment fancier than a logsuit and normal spear, there is _no shame_ in luring the Deerclops into a tentacle trap...or spider area...or large beefalo herd (and then leave once the fight starts so some of them stay alive through the If Nobody SEES It It Doesn't Happen principle...)

...or sheer dumb luck.  My favourite Deerclops kill so far happened when I was exploring the desert on what turned out to be _exactly_ the wrong/right(?) winter night...and ended up "distracting" him...with the Dragonfly.
And by "distracting", I mean "lava-seared Deerclops flesh".  Mmm-MM!  Just like mom used to make!  If mom was some kind of a psycho.

And if you _must_ be a badass...there's always next year.  Next winter, you'll (hopefully) have access to better stuff.  The FIRST year, your equipment depends largely on where you've happened to explore or not.  The jerky "GIT GUD!" crowd will _insist_ you absolutely MUST be able to facetank even the toughest creatures or else you don't "count" as a player, you're doing it "wrong", you're being "afraid"...but even if you _do_ care about their opinion, there's no time-limit on "gitting gud".  As long as you DO.

Or, you can just..._not_ single-combat bosses.  Ever.  I mean, hey--a large portion of gameplay IS built around using the environment against itself, and personally I find that a lot more fun!

...Notorious

[HutGenerator]

Isn't that you can eat sanity restore food while fighting? Just prepare some jerky, taffy, or cooked green cap.

It is the same like all other rpg boss fighting. You need potion. 

[Sinister_Fang]

Pffft. All these suggestions recommending restoring sanity. Honestly, if you're fighting clops alone, then you WILL go insane. Not much you can do to stop it. So I say you should grab a dark sword and an ice staff. Maybe even some night armor as well if you feel you need the extra defense. Once you go insane, freeze clops, kill Them, return to fighting clops. Repeat until you have a large pile of venison and a gigantic eyeball on the ground and nightmare fuel scattered all over the place. That's how I usually do it anyway. And I guess there's always tooth traps too if you want to use those. They help to soften him up a bit, but it's possible to fight him without them.

I know a lot of people also like to lure clops into the swamp and use tentacles to kill him. So that's an option too I guess.

[IceBurst]

I find some humor in the fact that someone with a terrorbeak for a profile is saying its futile to not go insane

But in all seriousness I've sort of accepted that its not very much of an option to honorably fight the brute.

[EuedeAdodooedoe]

@IceBurst I think I know what the issue here is, multiple ones actually; it's the fact that more often than not, or rather always, you'll be fighting the guy in a harsh season as well as at night, making it tougher by default, where as Bearger, when he arrives, it's at day time on the first day of Autumn and Gmooses can be fought at any time of Spring and rain isn't as hard to avoid as freezing (put on 100% protection from rain and you're basically all good, whereas in winter, if you put on good heat insulative clothing, you'll still need to make the occasional campfires and by the time Deerclops arrives, you may need to boot it out of your camp with a cold thermal or whatever). Also, night gives an insanity drain as well, so combining that with Deerclops' insanity drain makes it larger than when fighting Bearger on the first day of Autumn and Gmoose doesn't have an insanity aura at all.

All of these giants are pushovers once you know how to beat them. The tougher ones like Toadstool and Dragonfly are too, just a bit less and requiring more preparation in general. I really wish that attack patterns of giants and bosses was more randomized as well as the amount of types of attacks being higher.

I would certainly think it would be a good perk if by fighting Wigfrid could sustain her sanity quite high, even when fighting giants, so perhaps the sanity gained from killing creatures could scale up depending on how much sanity each creature actually drains? This would mean that there would be incentive to play as her more than just crafting cheaper, more reliable and more durable helmets for everyone all the time.

If there were more bee queens, you could use their crowns to keep sane as well, but, considering Bee Queen's toughness in comparison to these other bosses is much higher, it really defeats the purpose. Diminishing Bee Queen health, adding in more of them in the world and buffing giants that are actually giants could change this balance however and I think it would be for the best as I honestly see Bee Queen more like a generic boss, a very great boss, but a generic type, like Spider Queens and Tree Guards, so that's why.

[CaptainChaotica]

...until you've got better stuff, anyway.  And the problem with just letting yourself go insane is...what if you now have to dodge and kite both Deerclops AND the shadow-creatures at the same time, mid-battle?  Maybe _some_ people are that coordinated!--but I sure ain't.

(And I am also SO not fighting him as Newschool Willow.  Nuh-uh.  : P  Not that anybody asked me to but good LORD would that be a bad combination of character + fight!)

The first time I killed him, incidentally, was in singleplayer with a big pile o' tooth traps.  So yeah, I'm not big on the dramatic single combat thing...as Wigfrid, I'll singlehandedly take out Spider Queens, or there was that one time I fought three treeguards _in a row_.  While starving.  But Deerclops?  Mmmm...let's go see what that swamp looks like, shall we?  Do de doo...  Oh, this?  Um, I...always wear armour to the swamp!  Yeah!  It's a tradition!  Think nothing of it...

...Notorious

[Sinister_Fang]

3 hours ago, CaptainChaotica said:

And the problem with just letting yourself go insane is...what if you now have to dodge and kite both Deerclops AND the shadow-creatures at the same time, mid-battle?  Maybe _some_ people are that coordinated!--but I sure ain't.

And that's why ice staves are such a glorious item.

[CaptainChaotica]

Hitting the winter snow thing with _ice_ is...kind of counter-intuitive!  But maybe I'll try that sometime.  Heaven knows you don't want to hit a rampaging ANYthing with a _fire_ staff...(although Willow, of course, would disagree.)  I do tend to end up with a bunch of gems dropped from hounds just kinda sitting in my chests...  (Well, the IDEA is to eventually make a Snow Chester.  But by the time I've got 9 blue gems and it's also the full moon, I've...completely forgotten what I was gonna do.  : P)

...Notorious

 

[Starlogy]

Sorry, might've been rude in my original post. I was just a little surprised that people have trouble with Deerclops.

Granted, that used to be the case for me, but that was when I've never seen Spring before. Just try to kite Deerclops, it's better to get at least a single hit in. As long as the health goes down, do what's necessary to avoid it.

although since youre wigfrid facetanking it isnt a terrible idea either

Also, shoutouts to you using military terms. Always thought codewords like that were neat.

[Myself49]

Just make him fight the Bee Queen or Dragonfly.