How Big of a Group are Bosses Designed For?

[kiwikenobi]

Just curious. I've tried fighting several bosses solo, and also with just one friend, and they were extremely difficult. I've also seen videos of groups of ten or more people with only moderate experience and planning that tear through bosses like they're nothing.

How many people did Klei have in mind to be fighting the bosses, do you think? Because one or two isn't nearly enough, but ten seems like too many, since it makes the bosses look trivially easy.

[Frashaw27]

Depends on which one you ate talking about and what characters are being used. For example a Wendy and a Wolfgang could do very well or about as good as a team of 6 non combat people. In general I would say about 3-5 seems like the apex to properly have a challenge while it not kicking your teeth in, but there is just way too may veriables to truly say. Also note this is not based on anything bit assumptions, so don't take it for fact.

[Squirrel12]

Yeah, depends on the boss. Most bosses are doable solo, the only ones I would say you need 3-5 people are the Bee Queen, Toadstool, Klaus, Fuelweaver (you can do these by yourself as well, but they require a lot of set up). 

 

 

[Mike23Ua]

Fun fact- Xbox One consoles cap off at 6 total players, also fun fact- Dragonfly’s health is still 20,000+ regardless of rather you have 1 player in the game or 10+
 

So my best guess would be 4-6 probably..?

[Well-met]

klaus is soloable with minimum competence and without the same crazy setup as bee, crab or fuel.

toad isn't even hard, it's just the huge hp.

dragon is literally neutered by a dozen wall pieces.

[Dunk Mujunk]

Keep in mind there are plenty of variables to consider for any fight. Weapons, character selection, active buffs, etc. Fighting any boss on day 5 with spears and meatballs is an entirely different story than fighting any boss on day 200 with dark swords and a stack of honey poultices.

I think optimal player count is more of a preference than a cold hard fact.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

I think for 2 is perfect i tried with 4 friends and even being noobs the bosses were a joke (and we kite them but if you burts them is even more easy) 

Beequeen gives more problems but since you will have a good amount of different perks you will have a way to make the fight easier

[Squirrel12]

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Fun fact- Xbox One consoles cap off at 6 total players, also fun fact- Dragonfly’s health is still 20,000+ regardless of rather you have 1 player in the game or 10+
 

So my best guess would be 4-6 probably..?

You know you can beat Dragonfly solo right?

[Mike23Ua]

18 minutes ago, Squirrel12 said:

You know you can beat Dragonfly solo right?

Doesn’t matter if you CAN, what matters is the games intended design of how many players you SHOULD be doing it with, and since Xbox caps at 6 players maximum it is safe to assume that 4-6 is what the OP’s Answer is.

[CameoAppearance]

Even when you're playing on PC rather than a console platform, having more than 6 players on your server requires that you either use console commands to raise the hosting limit or run a dedicated server, so I doubt any of the boss fights are balanced with teams of more than 6 people in mind. And while it's definitely possible to beat any of the bosses solo with the right items and a way of keeping the boss from hitting you while you do damage to it, I don't think that's intended behaviour either. 3-6 would be my guess at the intended group size as well.

[Yuuko]

I'd say they are designed for 2 people.  They are much too overloaded for just 1, but with 3+ they get easy.  2 players is about right even without cheese.

[BeeClops]

I'd also say they are designed for 2, or more so they suit best 2 players judging by the difficulty. Any boss becomes a joke with 4 ppl that know a little bit what they re doing.

All of them are solo-able in the intented way, with no cheese, but some are quite difficult like that.

7 hours ago, Well-met said:

klaus is soloable with minimum competence and without the same crazy setup as bee, crab or fuel.

I personally hate it when i fight klaus with multiple people, he casts his spells all over the place. If i ever fight with someone else, i prefer to switch turns in kiting him. Out of all the bosses, Klaus is clearly the one i prefer to solo the most. Deerclops can be annoying to kite aswell with more people but at least he dies in 1 minute.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

6 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Doesn’t matter if you CAN, what matters is the games intended design of how many players you SHOULD be doing it with, and since Xbox caps at 6 players maximum it is safe to assume that 4-6 is what the OP’s Answer is.

4 is too much, i can tell you and 6 is just press F arround 10 seconds

[KeshS]

Petition to make enraged version of bosses, to have an extra challenge even with a group of people.

[Mencken]

WIth Wolfgang or Wigfrid most are easy to solo, the Bee Queen and Toad much, much harder.

[MondayNight]

As previous posters pointed, personal DST servers have a maximum of 6 available slots. Thus one would expect 6 to be the number of people KLei based their multiplayer bosses balancing upon. Also said number would be for casual players as skill level goes, because vast majority of DST owners play casually. And, for all intends and purposes, this is good - expert/advanced players are in fact a rarity/tiny minority, and their experience with game shouldn't be the norm.

Spoiler

For example on X-Box it appears only 0.55% of players managed to defeat Dragonfly, while a puny 0.30% prevailed against Ancient Guardian:

 

On PS4 people scoring a dead DF goes up to 1.6% - a bit higher yet still abysmal:

 

References: 1 & 2.

 

[themightyone]

Klaus is pretty manageable. The hardest part for me is the 3 or 4 Krampus that spawn . They can do some damage if ganged up. His other attacks are fairly dodgeable .