Gunpowder not always effective against Toadstool?

[PrplMonk]

Hey Everyone,

I've been playing DST for a while and recently have been focusing on fighting some of the bigger bosses. I mainly play solo and I'm not very good at melee combat, so I've mainly been resorting to gunpowder. That's been working out well (I've only blown up poor Webber a few times...) but I've run into a bit of a block with fighting Toadstool.

It seems like the stacks of powder that I set off beside Toadstool aren't always effective. In fact, it seems like most times they don't hurt him at all. Even if I put him to sleep with the pan flute and set the powder next to him and it goes off, he sleeps through it and takes no fire damage. There is an earthquake so the powder does cause that, but no damage to Toadstool. This happens even when it's the first stack, so it doesn't seem related to the explosion resistance cool -down. Sometimes the gunpowder works like expected, but I've only had it work twice in a row at most.The rest of the time it's pretty sporadic with more failures than successes.

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else has had an issue like this, or if there is something about using gunpowder against Toadstool that I'm missing. I realize that he pushes things around when he moves so I can understand him pushing the gunpowder away when he's awake, but when he's sleeping it seems like he should be an easy target. I do have the mini-map hud mod and healthbar mod, but turning those off hasn't made a difference.

Thanks in advance for any tips!

[me real life]

I imagine this is because of Toadstool being so huge and pushing away any nearby items. The gunpowder is exploding, but it's not actually close enough to them because of those mechanics. I believe you can light the gunpowder before Toadstool has spawned, then chop their cap with good timing so that they get blasted by the gunpowder before they've finished spawning.

[Yuuko]

I'm not sure how much gunpowder you are using, but its not a great tactic for Toadstool.  I'd recommend the 4 flingo method.  You only need 4 flingos, a star caller staff, and a bunch of debris you can burn.  Check this out:

PS: I've recently taken a liking to Winona for her catipults.  It takes a LOT of stone, so I used the celestial portal to swap out for Maxwell first, get like 30 stacks of stone and wood, then I swapped back to make them.  You can do a cluster of 8 catipults around 1 gemerator.  I did 2 of these for dfly with wall and I can take out dfly a lot quicker including 2 stuns.  I do 4 of these clusters around bee queen hive and they literally do the fight for me 100%.  I just run around avoiding aggro and kiting, I use 1-2 perogies and 1 football helmet.  For both of these fights I only put 2 gems in each gemerator.

I think flingo is still best for toad because he has multiple spawn locations, but he isn't that hard to fight with the flingo.  I use hambats and set it up so that when I equip my cane my ham bat goes into my backpack, I keep my healing foods there aswell, so when he does the poison cloud I switch to cane, then switch to log armor to drop back pack so I don't lose spoilage on these items.  Then I pick them back up on the way back to deal more damage.  You'll still want to have supplies for multiple hambats in case you don't get them dropped in time, and just for normal spoilage since the fight is so long.

For ancient fuel weaver you can use 2-4 lureplants to trap him in, set up a houndious shootius outside the arena, and just teleport out after summoning him.  You have to wait like 2 days for him to die, but he can die while you just sit there and watch.

((You don't need as many lureplants as they use here.  You can actually do it with only 2.  The fuelweaver does not path around them.  Note you do need to hit the fuelweaver once to ensure the shootious aggros on it before you port out.))

[PrplMonk]

23 hours ago, Sunset Skye said:

I imagine this is because of Toadstool being so huge and pushing away any nearby items. The gunpowder is exploding, but it's not actually close enough to them because of those mechanics.

I have a feeling that you're right about that. I did have some better luck with it today and I managed to get three stacks in a row to hurt it. Perhaps with some more practice I'll get the right placement every time and have success.

21 hours ago, Shosuko said:

I'm not sure how much gunpowder you are using, but its not a great tactic for Toadstool. 

I'm mostly going with gunpowder because it's what I'm used to, and it's faster. I've got 8 stacks of it, although I should only need 6.5 if all goes well. I watched a video of someone doing it that way, although it was from a couple years ago so things may have changed since then.

I appreciate your suggestion of using flingomatics! I may go with that if I just can't get it done with gunpowder. I have seen it done with catapults as well, and it's cool that you used them against the dragonfly and the bee queen. The bee queen was one of the easier ones to do with gunpowder in my experience, except that I over-killed her by mistake the first time and burned up the loot. The fuelweaver has been the hardest but I got him eventually.

[Well-met]

giants have the explosiveresist component don't they?

[PrplMonk]

16 hours ago, Well-met said:

giants have the explosiveresist component don't they?

I believe they do, but according to the wiki it is only after taking explosion damage for the first time. Often my first stack of gunpowder doesn't hurt Toadstool at all. In my case I think it is like Sunset Skye suggested and that it's due to Toadstool's size making it difficult to place the powder close enough to do damage. Once the first stack works I would need to wait 10 seconds before setting off another stack of gunpowder, to get the full effect. With Toadstool however, stack placement seems to be part of the challenge moreso than timing (at least in my case). I did get him almost halfway worn down yesterday as I had three stacks work (at least 10 seconds apart), but I think it's going to take some more practice before I get the placement right every time.

[O_Atoba_Azul]

On 29/12/2019 at 3:24 AM, Shosuko said:

You have to wait like 2 days for him to die

Add more shootiouses! it cuts the time in half!

[shadowDigga]

For toadstool:

Everything Shosuko has said + you can build chess-like wall to prevent trees from spawning as shown here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jefKLx72mJM) It takes around 20 stacks of rocks (or 5 full wraps) if you use stone walls and a lot of time to place and crush them. I also think Toadstool can only spawn when its spawn point has free space for it to emerge and while there's some code to free up the space such as uproot plants (including flowers), destroy structures and trees, there's no code to kill or push away mobs that block area, so you might as well block 2 other spawn points with 3-4 lureplants (or pen lobsters) to make sure toadstool only spawns at the same place with flingos and destroyed walls. (I didn't bother to check that but it should work)

For fuelweaver:

Everytime you kill fuelweaver make another shootius to place behind the entrance and when you have 8+ he gets down in less than 1/4 of game day which is barely noticeable and even a pair of mighty wolfgangs won't be able to take him down that fast.

[Dunk Mujunk]

Is Toadstool/Misery Toad always wet? Would Morning Stars be a solid weapon to bring to the fight if so, or are Dark Swords the best weapon to use all around?

[PrplMonk]

Just in case someone else tries fighting Toadstool with gunpowder and finds this thread, I thought I'd post and confirm that it is actually possible to win. It took a lot of experimentation and refining my method, plus a lot of practice, but I did manage it. I know it may not be ideal for most, but I'm not great at long battles, so powder just works out best for me when soloing most bosses.

I found that zooming the view in as far as it'll go helped as that makes placing the powder stacks a bit easier. I only discovered two areas where the powder is close enough to Toadstool when he is asleep to actually do damage, although there may be more. For me, the easiest of the two places is by his front foot and as close to his neck/chin area as possible. The other area is along his side (approximately midway). Getting the powder in the right spot and set off successfully, even at the easiest of the two places, was challenging. Especially with having to do it 7 times. I never did find a place where gunpowder hurt Toadstool when he was frozen, but it is possible that such a place exists and I just didn't find it.

Anyway, I hope that someone will find this helpful. I wouldn't recommend using gunpowder against Toadstool for everyone, but it is doable. It just isn't easy.