Next Year's Hallowed Nights Idea

[Kelloggs Dogfry]

I love this game, and one of my unabashedly favorite things about it are the bosses--with Klaus reigning supreme. The hunt and preparation for it, the atmosphere created by winter and the soundtrack for his fight, the actual combat, and the loot style--all of it is flawlessly executed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but all of this stemmed from Winter's Feast at some point, and so I was thinking that Hallowed Nights is a prime candidate for another similar style of boss. This is more of a rough template of sorts that kind of slowly snowballed in the shower, but as a concept I think it is interesting to consider.

• Preliminaries

These events will take place during fall (during Hallowed Nights I'd assume it would follow Klaus re-spawn rules during Winter's Feast) and has a unique hunt style that could also add a new base game mechanic. Unless there already is deeper lore than I'm aware of surrounding the graves and they should remain untouched, I think they are the prime candidate for the hunt. Pigs that live near graves in the forest (or in the graveyard if they are built there) will replace graves as if they were never dug up during fall (potentially either once or a after X amount of time) and loot can be obtained from them once again. Assuming they are replaced once, digging them up during Fall has a chance to drop a unique item where you are more and more likely to get one to the point where you are guaranteed after X digs (for now we will call it "Eerie Effigy"). The player will recognize this item as important due to quotes, and that pigs recognize it as evil and will attack players holding it.
Aside from that, in the graveyard biome, or very nearby, "A Totally Abnormal Tree" similar to Klaus' Sack and is the source of the impending battle. The player can place the Eerie Effigy near the tree and burn it to release the evil contained within, and this disturbs the tree awakening a spirit tied to the tree, and the fight begins.

• Mechanics of the fight

Upon awakening, "The Spirit" (I don't want to have to think of a cool name lol) manifests itself into a particularly ghoulish nightmare that binds itself to "The Tree. The problem for the players, is that The Tree is awakened and The Spirit is loose, creating a tag team fight. This is definitely a raid tier fight so the health values and damage should be according to that idea.

Spoiler

(This has some slight inspiration from Prince Lothric and Lorian from Soulsborne (spoiler but for reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6mzf240Ew)

There are two major caveats of the fight with one being that The Spirit and The Tree cannot die while the other is still alive. If one is defeated while the other one is still alive, after a brief delay, the other will resurrect them with a slightly lower maximum health pool than before down to a minimum (ex: after 5 ressurects of the spirit his health cannot decrease after future ressurections.) There more than likely needs to be some visual or gameplay indicator that a boss is low on health for us puritans who avoid health mods. The other is that upon burning the effigy, an indefinite night cycle begins that will not end until the boss has been defeated. The Tree's eyes burn with evil bright enough to illuminate it and a small area around it, and The Spirit glows with dark flame.

• (The Spirit)

The Spirit is highly aggressive and alternates between periods of abysmally low mobility, and high mobility. The spirit can move slowly towards the player in whatever style it moves, or it will periodically teleport to either the player or a distant location. Upon being near the player, The Spirit will perform an area of effect slam producing a wave of dark flame dealing direct damage, damage over time, and a severely increased sanity loss penalty as long as the flames persist. Upon teleporting away from the player, The Spirit will begin to charge up and blast a beam of dark flame across a line (think long range Winter's Feast Deerclops laser). The Spirit will also attempt to haunt a player who is insane. Solo, this will result in a stun, but with multiple players in the vicinity, the players can attempt to "remove" The Spirit from the player. An additional effect will be that any pigs in the area will be infested by The Spirit's magic and will become werepigs. If any players die and leave behind a skeleton, The Spirit will reanimate the corpse as a minion. The Spirit cannot be led away from The Tree, and will immediately return to it if players go too far.

• (The Tree)

The Tree has no mobility and will remain rooted in place. The Tree will raise roots from the ground in multiple locations (similar to Poison Birchnut) that attempt to track the player. There will be points of eruption that indicate where they will arise so that the player may have a second to react. The Tree will also lob explosive dark fruit at the player (sort of like mortars). Periodically, The Tree will also release Totally Normal Acorns that chase after the player, but also have a unique mechanic in that they will attempt to dive into sources of light (including stars created) and envelop them in darkness. After reaching a certain health threshold, The Tree will release a blood-curdling scream and spawn Totally Normal Treeguards based on how many players are around (think Krampus phase from Klaus) (this makes allowing the tree to reanimate especially punishing).

If the players are able to defeat both bosses within 5 seconds (or X amount of time) of each other, the fight will be over... or so we think for a brief moment.

• (Final Phase)

The Spirit will quickly in a last ditch effort place its entire being within The Tree for a final reanimation. The Tree retains its dark fruit bombs, Totally Normal Acorns, and roots attacks, but gains additional abilities gifted by The Spirit. The Tree will gain a dark flame beam that can aggressively track the player(s) instead of just travelling in a straight line. The Tree will also have an ability I will tag as Concierto that happens periodically. Dark flames will surround the tree in a full circle so that the player cannot approach it without taking severe damage over time and it will begin a very orchestrated combo of lobbing dark fruit bombs and raising multiple roots in a particular area that only deal damage (think sand spike from Antlion).

Spoiler

This is very similar to a the Organ Cannon Knight in Castle Crashers for reference https://youtu.be/jTIkACXjG1s?t=117

This will go on for X seconds where it repeatedly creates new patterns of danger zones to avoid before it is vulnerable again. If the players successfully defeat The Tree, the fight will end and the rest of that day will immediately turn into a full day of light, until the cycle goes back to normal the next day.

• Rewards

 I'm gonna be honest I don't even want to approach this, but I'm confident that Klei would come up with some appropriate style of loot. I'd assume that during Hallowed Nights the loot could include stuff specific to the event in addition to the regular stuff.

• Final Thoughts

So what started as a Winter's Feast event created a permanent boss that so wonderfully compliments the game. I am super hopeful for Hallowed Nights being able to produce another boss that does the exact same thing. Oh, and it has to have a wonderfully eerie but powerful soundtrack like Klaus does. I love the music Klei produces.

 

 

 

[Mike23Ua]

The only thing I want is for Hallowed Nights to be more like Winters Feast.. 

and by that I mean- Cool Halloween reskins and unique gameplay for most Mobs and bosses.

(example Deerclops, and Feastclops)

The first of those just walks around smashing things, the other one becomes Cyclops of the X-Men.

And at least ONE brand new completely unique Halloween Mob (Like Gingerpigs)

[me real life]

10 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

and by that I mean- Cool Halloween reskins and unique gameplay for most Mobs and bosses.

(example Deerclops, and Feastclops)

That's the only Winter's Feast reskin that has slightly different gameplay, the rest just look different than usual.

[Kelloggs Dogfry]

I definitely appreciate the smaller things that they added for the events, but I definitely would argue that Klaus was the biggest thing to come from the feast, and the fact that Hallowed Nights got pushed a little to the wayside this year makes me feel like it getting something huge like a new hunt style optional raid boss would be pretty adequate to say the least. Either way, it’ll be cool to see what happens.

[Mike23Ua]

2 hours ago, Kelloggs Dogfry said:

I definitely appreciate the smaller things that they added for the events, but I definitely would argue that Klaus was the biggest thing to come from the feast, and the fact that Hallowed Nights got pushed a little to the wayside this year makes me feel like it getting something huge like a new hunt style optional boss would be pretty adequate to say the least. Either way, it’ll be cool to see what happens.

Perfection- A hunt where instead of digging dirt you follow ghosts that float away a little bit and then disappear into the dirt, you’d have the walk around to find the next ghost to follow until you finally reached whatever it was they were leading you towards.