About King Crab

[RAFAEL-Y]

Klei, can you add some good loot to King Crab? King Crab has become an unpopular boss.
(My native language is not English, sorry if the description is incorrect.)

[Theukon-dos]

"Become" an unpopular boss implies he was ever popular to begin with.

[minespatch]

Maybe just another qol with Crab King like they just did qith Ancient guardian?

Maybe the devs should ask for ideas?

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, minespatch said:

Maybe just another qol with Crab King like they just did qith Ancient guardian?

Maybe the devs should ask for ideas?

I think his gem balance is a bit whack and he could do with some qol touchups, but I don't believe he will ever be a popular fight. He's rather complex and even starting the fight requires you to gather gems, make a boat, and sail around to find him, then you fight him on boats which are foreign and unfamiliar.

From what I've seen on Klei servers and Reddit most players don't like sailing and don't like putting in a lot of effort to accomplish something. I don't think he should be made super accessible, though. An unpopular boss is a lot better than another deerclops. 

[minespatch]

15 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Klei servers and Reddit most players don't like sailing and don't like putting in a lot of effort to accomplish something

Yeah, that should be a upcoming qol in maybe ten months or so. Estimating what other projects they might do in the future.

[Theukon-dos]

22 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

I think his gem balance is a bit whack and he could do with some qol touchups, but I don't believe he will ever be a popular fight. He's rather complex and even starting the fight requires you to gather gems, make a boat, and sail around to find him, then you fight him on boats which are foreign and unfamiliar.

From what I've seen on Klei servers and Reddit most players don't like sailing and don't like putting in a lot of effort to accomplish something. I don't think he should be made super accessible, though. An unpopular boss is a lot better than another deerclops. 

I don't think that's entirely fair. Ancient Fuelweaver is an extremely complex fight, yet is a fan-favorite boss, last I checked. The issue is that CK is just really poorly designed.

He gives the player no time to breath, all his attacks are insanely dangerous, he has DoT, Minions, and stuns. He can stunlock the player for no good reason. And his loot is bad. It's entirely possible for CK to be a good fight, Klei just missed the mark by a lot.

 

Also, Sailing's bad in general, and I'm not sure what you're on about with "Players don't like putting much effort to accomplish something"

[minespatch]

2 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Sailing's bad in general, and I'm not sure what you're on about with "Players don't like putting much effort to accomplish something"

Would be nice if the devs could do polling on what and what doesn't work with sailing so they can pinpoint what they can fix.

[Capybara007]

sailing isnt bad in general

[mr. brj]

I think the Crab King only needs tweaks to the effects of the gems inserted, especially for the yellow and blue gems. Then we would also be encouraged to try out different gem combinations and not get punished almost instantly. In short, I wish for rowing to dodge geysers against the pearled Crab King as any character other than mighty Wolfgang to become a viable strategy. 

[ArubaroBeefalo]

6 minutes ago, minespatch said:

Would be nice if the devs could do polling on what and what doesn't work with sailing so they can pinpoint what they can fix.

since the last changes to paddles and general boat control, the only problem i see is the lack of content

and about CK the problem is that for 1 person is hard and punishing and more if you dont use the ice method but killing him by rowing to kite his geysers is really fun. An unique fight

1 minute ago, mr. brj said:

I think the Crab King only needs tweaks to the effects of the gems inserted, especially for the yellow and blue gems. Then we would also be encouraged to try out different gem combinations and not get punished almost instantly. In short, I wish for rowing to dodge geysers as any character other than mighty Wolfgang to become a viable strategy. 

you can easily with a malbatross peak even before the rowing changes but is true that is hard to deal with the claws with default damage characters

[mr. brj]

1 minute ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

you can easily with a malbatross peak even before the rowing changes but is true that is hard to deal with the claws with default damage characters

Oh yes definitely, although I was talking about pearled Crab King. With 6 claws and no damage bonus, rowing is a huge, huge pain and a massive resource sink.

[Ohan]

I just want it to drop a piece of its shell that we can then put different kinds of gems in for different effects. 

most obvious application would be armor but could also be a weapon like uncomp iirc or even a structure or whatever.

The gem slotting mechanic has a lot of potential and would be a really unique and fun addition to the game.

[SonicDen220]

3 hours ago, Ohan said:

The gem slotting mechanic has a lot of potential and would be a really unique and fun addition to the game.

This already exists, but I agree. We still only have 3 structures that use socketed gems - lazy deserter, moon dial and ocuvigil.

[Ohan]

6 minutes ago, SonicDen220 said:

This already exists, but I agree. We still only have 3 structures that use socketed gems - lazy deserter, moon dial and ocuvigil.

i wasn’t aware socketing different gems in a moonlens gave u different gameplay effects? 

Moonlens is hardly what I had in mind. The act of socketing the gem is superfluous and inconsequential for anything other than map markers. Recipe for moondial might as well have been moon rocks ice and a blue gem and nothing would have been different.  

I was talking about an item or structure where u can put different gems into according to what effect u want and also be able to swap them out when the gems run out of juice and u want a different effect. Something like this does not exist in the game. 

[Cannoli]

CK has terrible design. I think like AG his fight should be entirely changed. That gem think doesn't make any sense (everybody put 8 purple anyway). Using Ice Staff to cancel his attacks is not "fun" or wherever, it's just necessary, not fun at all.

His claws and geisers are ok if reworked, but his auto "cheese" is a poor mechanic copied from AF.

His loot is just a joke. Just a step to Lunar quest.

I do prefer use bees and forget this boy exists.

[Guille6785]

My main complaints about the fight and how I'd go about addressing them:

-The healing interruption mechanic is awful once you socket 3 orange gems or the pearl; the wiki states that 2 hits are required to cancel his healing at this point which sounds simple but in practice it's impossible for a single player to cancel the healing even while attacking repeatedly, I even tested it with anim cancelling and at best you'll interrupt like 10% of the heals, this is honestly my biggest problem with the fight because without spamming bees or something the only reliable way for a single player to cancel the healing will be to use a bunch of weather pains which I personally hate farming. I think they could address this by slowing down the healing animation to the point where one player should be able to land enough hits to cancel the heals even on pearled ck, IMO it's fair because for those unaware the imposing claws only respawn during the healing phase so the player will have to be careful to manage them while cancelling the healing simultaneously. I think this would lower the resource spam required for this fight and allow for more flexible strategies which the boss clearly lacks

-Imposing claws just have way too much fkin health which encourages freeze spam to be able to take them out before they do significant damage to your boat if you're not wolfgang or wanda. Currently they start at 500 HP and get +50 every 2 green gems; I think it'd be better if they started at something lower like 200 HP, that way pearled CK could have them at maybe 250-300 which is more manageable for someone without damage mults and it'd encourage players to socket more green gems since their health wouldn't go very high. Other than the health I think claws shouldn't do as much damage (if any) when they latch onto the boat; this is pretty much impossible to prevent if you don't have high dps or flingo spam and it simply makes the fight a massive boards sink. Maybe adding a more noticeable stun when the claws are attacked could help with this too

-Red gems scale so drastically that even considering using them is off the table for pretty much everyone; the first 2 add just 3000 HP but every increase after that goes +9000, +15000, +21000 and finally +27000 (that's as much health as dfly wtf). Not much to say here, just lower the HP increases by a lot to encourage socketing red gems

-Yellow/blue/purple: Honestly no idea, yellow gems should probably just be reworked to do something else because nobody will ever socket any significant amount of those since you're shooting yourself in the foot by reducing your opportunities to counter his attacks. If yellow gems did something else then I think purple gems should be the ones responsible for lowering the geyser casting time instead to compensate for the increased options, and maybe blue gems could reduce freeze casting time a little bit as well but the freeze range should be reduced as well maybe idk

[Dextops]

i think removing his healing and or claws and replacing them with something else would make it a lot better

[Capybara007]

having to move your boat to dodge ck attacks is so fun, he could even have an attack like quacken where in a certain area around him is filled with a substance that makes boat movement slower, making the players think where to move when he casts the geisers.

but oh whatever have 6 claws with 500 hp that dont let you move

 

[Maxposting]

Maybe make him freeze when you attack him enough while spell casting? It would reduce the resource sink a bit

[lakhnish]

Every rowing strategy that I've seen for PCK just uses multiple boats instead of Ice Staves. I'd rather just use Ice Staves instead since I feel that it's faster.

I've also never seen anyone do the rowing strategy as solo Wilson without damage buffs, it's almost always Mighty Wolfgang with or without Jelly.

[SinancoTheBest]

8 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

I don't think that's entirely fair. Ancient Fuelweaver is an extremely complex fight, yet is a fan-favorite boss, last I checked. The issue is that CK is just really poorly designed.

He gives the player no time to breath, all his attacks are insanely dangerous, he has DoT, Minions, and stuns. He can stunlock the player for no good reason. And his loot is bad. It's entirely possible for CK to be a good fight, Klei just missed the mark by a lot.

 

Also, Sailing's bad in general, and I'm not sure what you're on about with "Players don't like putting much effort to accomplish something"

Heh I was in perfect agreement with you there till you called sailing bad. To me it's the single best addition DST has over reign of giants (besides being multiplayer) and the reason I can never find myself enjoying DSA: RoG. 

But yea, I think you're accurate with Crab King. On paper he can be a very fun boss. He has a unique mechanic where your aim is to protect your raft rather than yourself. Sadly he's too overwhelming to be fun; and even in groups where he's substantially more fun, the fight feels like a stressful endurance fight to kill him quicker than the thousand leaks he makes and the claws he spawns sink your boat. You should be able to row away from his geysers, but at the rate he spawns the claws in your path it's really not feasible. They can tune his behavior to give breathing space to respond to his attacks like him hiding in his shell after casting his attacks or perhaps a melee attack to place between geysers, ice blasts and claws. After that the gem balancing also needs a tuning where purple gems aren't the sole rational way to go and many combos feel unique but fair.

[Theukon-dos]

6 hours ago, Capybara007 said:

sailing isnt bad in general

Sailing in and of itself isn't bad, it's the content that surrounds it that's the problem.

1 minute ago, SinancoTheBest said:

Heh I was in perfect agreement with you there till you called sailing bad. To me it's the single best addition DST has over reign of giants (besides being multiplayer) and the reason I can never find myself enjoying DSA: RoG. 

Well, glad someone likes it.

6 hours ago, minespatch said:

Would be nice if the devs could do polling on what and what doesn't work with sailing so they can pinpoint what they can fix.

 

Don't think they need to do a mass consensus to find the problem. It's pretty easy to find the issue if you just look over everything the ocean offers.

To put simply, sailing just doesn't offer many benefits if you're not already sailing as a large part of your play style. The vast majority of what the ocean offers is food. Fish, Barnacles, Kelp, Figs, ect. But of the food options at sea, the only ones that do anything interesting are Kelp; which is good filler and decent sanity option. Stone Fruit; which is berry bush but better. And Barnacles; The best ocean food source thanks to it's unique recipes and meat/fish values. It's also worth pointing out that the first two of those are primarily from the lunar island. Which is technically sailing, through most players end up finding it by looking for patterns on the mainland. Making the act of seafaring more of a gate than an activity.

And other than sailing, there just... isn't much out at sea. Gnarwal horns aren't that useful, the Strident Trident is only good at sea. Malbatross drops an upgraded sail and watering can. Pearl only trades items for fishing, cookie cutter caps are useless, Driftwood is only used for things at sea. Treasure chests are too rare to be useful, especially with the good drops being even rarer.

The only things in the ocean that directly aid the player on land are Salt and Knobbly trees. Both of which have their own tribulations. (Salt boxes only being able to store un-cooked items, and salt being really bad at preserving food. Knobbly knuts only being able to be planted on the edge of land masses.)

 

At the end of the day, there's simply very little reason to go sailing except for the sake of sailing itself.

[Capybara007]

3 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Sailing in and of itself isn't bad, it's the content that surrounds it that's the problem. 

yup, agreed

[Cheggf]

10 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

I don't think that's entirely fair. Ancient Fuelweaver is an extremely complex fight, yet is a fan-favorite boss, last I checked. The issue is that CK is just really poorly designed.

He gives the player no time to breath, all his attacks are insanely dangerous, he has DoT, Minions, and stuns. He can stunlock the player for no good reason. And his loot is bad. It's entirely possible for CK to be a good fight, Klei just missed the mark by a lot.

 

Also, Sailing's bad in general, and I'm not sure what you're on about with "Players don't like putting much effort to accomplish something"

What do you mean AFW is a fan favorite boss? Most people have never even fought him. Where are you getting that from? Probably the same place you're getting sailing is bad from.

[Theukon-dos]

9 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

What do you mean AFW is a fan favorite boss? Most people have never even fought him. Where are you getting that from? Probably the same place you're getting sailing is bad from.

Calling him a "Fan Favorite" might be a bit of an exaggeration, I do admit. But frankly, that doesn't really change my point. When's the last time you saw someone complain about the AFW fight? Or make a video essay on why AFW is fundamentally flawed in execution. At worst, all I see is people complain that turn of tides made it so so that you can't dodge the bone cage attack anymore.

 

And as for where I got the "Sailing is bad" mentality, I've done it. I've experienced what the ocean has to offer, I've spent hours at sea, And despite my enjoyment of sailing, it has many fundemental flaws that make it "bad".