The Fuelweaver could use a QoL update

[Falkenpelz]

Edit on top: Due to the many answers I have realized that some of my complaints are simply a question of training and other people don't struggle that much with those, I had a wrong impression about that. I would still stick to a player scaling mechanic about the woven shadows. Anyways, I'm changing the title a little.

While I really love the dark, lore-heavy aesthetic design of the fight and the big preparation this endgame boss appropriately requires, the fight mechanics to me are a ridiculous hell. I feel like I need at least three hands for this, simply for constantly juggling your Lazy Explorer, nightmare amulet, weatherpain, heals, sanity food and weapon around. The attacks look cool as heck and in theory the concept of a boss that shields and heals and therefore appears as an equal is the right approach for FW, but... this whole fight is mainly about tossing your hand items around right now.

Example: At the start of the 2nd phase, you use the weatherpain, get trapped in a cage, need a second for aiming your teleportation with the mouse, another split second to put on the amulet, you move towards the first hand and bam, the WP effect is already over and FW ate two shadows that spawned right inside his a... Of course I'm speaking out of frustration here, but there are too many factors that add up to make this fight painfully unfair as singleplayer. 400 hp per shadow is incredibly much for max 68 damage per hit and the fact that they spawn directly under FW sometimes almost guarantes that he will heal huge chunks of health before you can react. I think one issue is, that a shield, massive healing and two methods of stunlocking the player for a long time come all at once immediately at phase 2. You need to swiftly take out two different groups of minions (unseen hands and shadows) at the same time, while also constantly switching between different tools to avoid stunlocking. There is nothing intuitive or strategic about this, you just have a precise timeframe to press the right inventory keys, or the fight basically starts from the beginning.

This fight looks like it could be really fun with two or more players, because you can split tasks (e.g. one deals with the woven shadows, while the other one takes down the shield), but the reality is, that not many multiplayer servers ever get to endgame bosses, so people rather solo them.

One solution would be giving FWs moves a scaling basef on the number of players, meaning less shadows and less hp per shadow for a solo player.

And generally it might be a more fun fight, if he did use less bone cages in the shield phase, because you already have to deal with avoiding the mindcontrol stunlock and using the weatherpain every 5 seconds while running through the whole arena.

Aaand for a solo player, the intervall between the shield/minion phase could maybe be made long enough to actually deal some damage lol.

Rant over, what are the forums opinions on this? Again, I very much like the design and general idea of the fight, but I feel like it is more about juggling tools around to an absolutely unforgiving timer right now.

[Cassielu]

I'd rather say that needs to change is item switching and boss health vary with the number of players... AF itself? It's one of the most perfect bosses.

[NekoSoulx]

1 hour ago, Falkenpelz said:

While I really love the dark, lore-heavy aesthetic design of the fight and the big preparation this endgame boss appropriately requires, the fight mechanics to me are a ridiculous hell. I feel like I need at least three hands for this, simply for constantly juggling your Lazy Explorer, nightmare amulet, weatherpain, heals, sanity food and weapon around. The attacks look cool as heck and in theory the concept of a boss that shields and heals and therefore appears as an equal is the right approach for FW, but... this whole fight is mainly about tossing your hand items around right now.

Example: At the start of the 2nd phase, you use the weatherpain, get trapped in a cage, need a second for aiming your teleportation with the mouse, another split second to put on the amulet, you move towards the first hand and bam, the WP effect is already over and FW ate two shadows that spawned right inside his a... Of course I'm speaking out of frustration here, but there are too many factors that add up to make this fight painfully unfair as singleplayer. 400 hp per shadow is incredibly much for max 68 damage per hit and the fact that they spawn directly under FW sometimes almost guarantes that he will heal huge chunks of health before you can react. I think one issue is, that a shield, massive healing and two methods of stunlocking the player for a long time come all at once immediately at phase 2. You need to swiftly take out two different groups of minions (unseen hands and shadows) at the same time, while also constantly switching between different tools to avoid stunlocking. There is nothing intuitive or strategic about this, you just have a precise timeframe to press the right inventory keys, or the fight basically starts from the beginning.

This fight looks like it could be really fun with two or more players, because you can split tasks (e.g. one deals with the woven shadows, while the other one takes down the shield), but the reality is, that not many multiplayer servers ever get to endgame bosses, so people rather solo them.

One solution would be giving FWs moves a scaling basef on the number of players, meaning less shadows and less hp per shadow for a solo player.

And generally it might be a more fun fight, if he did use less bone cages in the shield phase, because you already have to deal with avoiding the mindcontrol stunlock and using the weatherpain every 5 seconds while running through the whole arena.

Aaand for a solo player, the intervall between the shield/minion phase could maybe be made long enough to actually deal some damage lol.

Rant over, what are the forums opinions on this? Again, I very much like the design and general idea of the fight, but I feel like it is more about juggling tools around to an absolutely unforgiving timer right now.

Git gud?, XD now talking seriously this boss fight is supposed to be hard, remember that he is one of the final bosses and DS series are known for their dificulty. This game is not supposed to be like terraria, the bosses are a funny thing but you can avoid them as much as you can. There are a ton of stuff to make this boss figh much more easy but you must be patient, im talking about gunpowder, darts, and a lot of others stuff that can make the fight a lot easier, of course you have to be skillful and have experience agaisnt this boss.

Dont try to run without knowing how to walk. cx What i mean is that this fight is perfect as it is, you need experience, skill, knowledge, and of course a lot of strong late game items.

[goblinball]

I like the idea of fuelweaver’s fight. Instead of trying to be some tough as nails bullet hell fight requiring memorization of attacks and extreme precision, it instead manages to be challenging through requiring intense micromanaging of your stats, items, and fuelweaver’s woven shadows and shield. It’s incredibly intense and stressful yet fun, however I do think it could be toned down in singleplayer. The healing especially is a bit ridiculous, as a few woven shadows are enough to nullify a ton of progress which you won’t be getting back anytime soon, since a lot of the fight consists of not attacking fuelweaver himself but rather the woven shadows and shield-producing torch… things (I forgot their names). It can often feel very demoralizing, seeing all of your progress getting removed near instantly if things go wrong.

I’m expecting some “git gud”s here, so let me remind you that fuelweaver is the only boss like this. (I know crab king has self healing too but that is unanimously agreed to be bad, so it doesn’t count.) Not even the celestial champion, the other “final boss” in DST, requires as much micromanagement nor can it heal so much of its HP like fuelweaver. The problem isn’t that fuelweaver is too challenging, it’s that his self healing is too punishing.

[Gashzer]

Like every other boss, if you are struggling fighting AF solo, switch to winona and build catapults around the outshirts of the arena. Switch to wolfgang,start fight, easy win.

I disagree with retuning fights, AF is one of the end game boss fights. Its meant to be hard. Almost every boss in dst can be made easier for solo play with winonas catapults, yes its abit grindy swappin to winona to build catapults but thats the price you pay for having no friends in a pve coop game 

[lakhnish]

I think FW is perfect as is.

The difficulty with FW is the inventory management. 

If you get better at the inventory management and line up the cycles right, it's very manageable.

[HowlVoid]

17 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

I think FW is perfect as is.

The difficulty with FW is the inventory management. 

If you get better at the inventory management and line up the cycles right, it's very manageable.

Unless you're on console...

[Juanasdf]

The FW fight is...fun to solo as some characters and a pain in the ass for the rest... I like the attacks... but the problem are his numbers. I'm with Falkenpelz on this one, 400 HP per shadow is a lot for a character without damage multipliers.

And if you don't want to change that, to keep your mistakes being punished, you could also change the number of woven shadows spawned, the number of unseen hands spawned and even the duration of both of his stuns.

And I don't think switching to other characters for a bossfight should be the easiest (non-cheese) strategy there is. It is a really controversial topic after all, and a lot of people refuse to use it.

Crab king is a similar battle, he has a heal, summons minions that are a pain in the ass to deal with, stuns you and heals himself. But the main difference, and why I think CK is more manageable than him, is that you only have to juggle your hand slot. (That and the fact that you don't get shadows refusing to despawn, klei pls fix)

[HowlVoid]

Less healing per Woven shadow, if there's 1 player. 

On console I teleport half across the screen and by the time I get to him he already ate like 3. Then I have to run past the woven shadows so the weather pain actually targets him;which by then he ate 2 more. 

That's all I need to make this fight fair, so I totally agree with you!

[Dextops]

21 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

Unless you're on console...

just spend 1000 dollars on a pc smh my head

[Cheggf]

You can make spiced vgcf, switch to someone like Wolfgang, make catapults, etc if you think the fight is too hard. 

[HowlVoid]

7 minutes ago, Dextops said:

just spend 1000 dollars on a pc smh my head

I have a PC I can play on, bought the game and it felt super uncomfortable. 

One hand over a keyboard with my fingers stretched out in different locations and my wrist hovering, makes long play sessions torture. Similarly, another hand on a mouse with just two buttons feels like I'm limited in what I can do. Granted the optimization on console is garbage so I'm more so comparing keyboard and mouse to other games.

I'm too used to having a controller and using a controller on PC is basically the same thing, so I'll stick to console.

I'll just keep cheesing the fight if Klei doesn't feel like optimizing the fight for us. If you're gonna build 30 catapults I might as well just build a shootious and call it a day.

[Dextops]

1 minute ago, HowlVoid said:

I have a PC I can play on, bought the game and it felt super uncomfortable. 

One hand over a keyboard with my fingers stretched out in different locations and my wrist hovering, makes long play sessions torture. Similarly, another hand on a mouse with just two buttons feels like I'm limited in what I can do. Granted the optimization on console is garbage so I'm more so comparing keyboard and mouse to other games.

I'm too used to have a controller and using a controller on PC is basically the same thing, so I'll stick to console.

I'll just keep cheesing the fight if Klei doesn't feel like optimizing the fight for us. If you're gonna build 30 catapults I might as well just build a shootious and call it a day.

counter counter argument

revert time to when you were a kid learn and play violin so your fingers grow bigger than normal and problem solved (it's the meta strat that i performed)

[Gashzer]

37 minutes ago, Juanasdf said:

And I don't think switching to other characters for a bossfight should be the easiest (non-cheese) strategy there is. It is a really controversial topic after all, and a lot of people refuse to use it.

Never got why people refuse to change characters, if you are playing solo it adds so much fun to the game. Its fairly cheap to do in the later game when purple gems start to pile up.

Its the most efficient way to play solo as well, i generally switch to wolfgang for big hp (toadstool) or hard fights like AF. Then switch back to wurt or walter for general every day use, can handle the other bosses fine as them.

[NekoSoulx]

Yay lets nerf the boss cause people refuses to learn and want an easy game :D, on the other hand i alwys kill the boss with wes... idk maybe im just too good xD

[HowlVoid]

2 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Never got why people refuse to change characters, if you are playing solo it adds so much fun to game. Its fairly cheap to do in the later game when purple gems start to pile up.

See that's kind of the issue, fun is subjective. 

I feel that if I introduce another character I'm no longer playing Wormwood, but rather Wormwood + Winona, or Wormwood +Winona + Warly + Wolfgang. It's no longer fun.

Back when I used to play other characters more often, Switching characters always felt fresh using this method.

2 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Its the most efficient way to play solo as well, i generally switch to wolfgang for big hp (toadstool) or hard fights like AF. Then switch back to wurt or walter for general every day use, can handle the other bosses fine as them.

There's also the argument people like to say when others want the portal nerfed: "If you don't like it don't use it". 

Personally I think the portal is fine BECAUSE it doesn't affect me, as I don't use it. I also don't think I'm gimping myself because everything can be done with any character, you're not really locked out of anything. I don't even have an issue with misery as it's a one time fight.

The healing mechanics for CK and FW are just gimmicky imo because there's very few limited ways to counter them and that's with weather pains.

[Gashzer]

14 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

See that's kind of the issue, fun is subjective. 

The healing mechanics for CK and FW are just gimmicky imo because there's very few limited ways to counter them and that's with weather pains.

Fair enough point. I get some people are loyal to their main, im quite loyal to walter too tbh lol 

Gonna let you in on a wee secret i have for destroying CK that no one talks about. Bunnymen! You can usually find enough bunnyman houses in the caves to hammer to make 8-9houses on surface without having to grind for puffs. Use one man band, let the bunnymen attack CK while u freeze and kill claws only. CK doesn't use freeze spell if you dont attack him directly yourself. This is one of the cheapest, easiest methods to wreck pearled CK.

[Juanasdf]

23 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Never got why people refuse to change characters, if you are playing solo it adds so much fun to the game. Its fairly cheap to do in the later game when purple gems start to pile up.

Its the most efficient way to play solo as well, i generally switch to wolfgang for big hp (toadstool) or hard fights like AF. Then switch back to wurt or walter for general every day use, can handle the other bosses fine as them.

I switch characters frequently, but I can see that it is really cheap and I can understand people not wanting to abuse it.

Balance aside, if you're doing a run with just one character, the portal is not an option.

 

[HowlVoid]

7 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Fair enough point. I get some people are loyal to their main, ill quite loyal to walter too tbh lol 

Gonna let you in on a wee secret i have for destroying CK that no one talks about. Bunnymen! You can usually find enough bunnyman houses in the caves to hammer to make 8-9houses on surface without having to grind for puffs. Use one man band, let the bunnymen attack CK while u freeze and kill claws only. CK doesn't use freeze spell if you dont attack him directly yourself. This is one of the cheapest, easiest methods to wreck pearled CK.

I tried the bunnymen men trick already unfortunately :(. I kept accidentally freezing them or sometimes I couldn't target Crabking or his claws at all. Ranged weapons are proximity based for targeting, hell sometimes it's really hard just to slot in the gems because the game keeps targeting the boat or something on the boat.

A lot of these mechanically dependent fights just aren't console friendly. It has come up more frequently as the number of console players grows, so maybe someday there will be a fix. If the controls get better I'll actually bother practicing these fights until I can do them without cheese.

[Juanasdf]

3 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

CK doesn't use freeze spell if you dont attack him directly yourself.

He doesn't? I remember needing a starcaller staff to cheese him with bees.

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, Juanasdf said:

I switch characters frequently, but I can see that it is really cheap and I can understand people not wanting to abuse it.

Balance aside, if you're doing a run with just one character, the portal is not an option.

 

Yeah if you're doing a run with one character the portal is not an option. And if you're doing a run where you aren't allowed to use weapons then suddenly even deerclops is unreasonably powerful. If you're putting restrictions on yourself you can't act surprised when the game becomes difficult. 

[Gashzer]

14 minutes ago, HowlVoid said:

Snip

Aww forgot you're playing on console.... yeahhhh dst is 1000% harder on console, i've got dst on the nintendo switch as well as on pc and i can barely kite a single beefalo without getting hit repeatly, dst on switch with the lag and freezyness plus console controls is like dst on hardcore mode. Feel bad for u console players lol

14 minutes ago, Juanasdf said:

He doesn't? I remember needing a starcaller staff to cheese him with bees.

Well he doesn't use freeze spell when i use bunnies. You can't attack him at all except freezing him tho. Dunno why he would freeze only bees hmm weird

[Well-met]

hard disagree.

as the "final boss" he should be very difficult on your own

[HowlVoid]

18 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Yeah if you're doing a run with one character the portal is not an option. And if you're doing a run where you aren't allowed to use weapons then suddenly even deerclops is unreasonably powerful. If you're putting restrictions on yourself you can't act surprised when the game becomes difficult. 

Staying on one character shouldn't be making the game harder though unless you play Wes. Characters should be preferences not difficulty modifiers, unless the game isn't balanced. The other example is just an extreme scenario where you're limiting yourself entirely from a core mechanic, they aren't very relatable to each other.

So it doesn't make sense for someone to feel like a fight is unfair on one character but extremely easily on another, that's called power creep. 

And while Klei has different survival (key word being survival) ratings for different characters, the gap for some is just too huge. Wanda can put DPS Fuel weaver's healing, which I wouldn't blame someone for calling it pay to win. 

However none of those things are the real issue, the real issue is simply the fight is tuned for multiplayer with multiplayer mechanics. The tools available for a solo player to handle multiplayer mechanics are very limited, we just need a few more tools. The entire fight doesn't have to be re-tuned, I don't think.

Speaking of, I wonder if cannons can be used reliably in the fight.

[Juanasdf]

10 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Yeah if you're doing a run with one character the portal is not an option. And if you're doing a run where you aren't allowed to use weapons then suddenly even deerclops is unreasonably powerful. If you're putting restrictions on yourself you can't act surprised when the game becomes difficult. 

You guys use weapons for deerclops? :O

Jokes aside, yeah it wasn't a valid point, i'm too tired to even try to deny it lol.

When I wrote it I was thinking about how on DS you could beat every boss with any character with not too much trouble... Then again its DS and not DST, just use a bell.

I still believe FW could use some tweaks to his numbers based on how many players are near the gate though.