The new Ancient Guardian should have more HP

[SpoonyBardIV]

Before the beta, the Ancient Guardian merely dropped its horn and some common ruins loot. It's loot wasn't that much better compared to the rest of the bosses, and its HP/difficulty reflected that. I think it's a bit unbalanced to have such a weak boss drop the item that resets the ruins. In DST, you need to kill a very challenging boss (the Fuelweaver) if you want to get more ruins stuff. Therefore, I suggest raising the HP of the reworked Ancient Guardian to match its DST value. It won't make the fight more dangerous, but you'll still need to prepare and have more armor ready for the longer fight. I just think that resetting the ruins should be locked behind a more challenging boss, considering how important it is.

[bjanmanjs]

I feel that giving it 10,000 health would feel out of place with DS's standards for boss health. Bosses in DS have extremely low health in comparison to DST, since there's only one player. In DS, the highest health boss is Queen Womant with 3500 health, whereas in DST it's Misery Toadstool with 99,999 health (unless you count enraged Klaus since his 64% damage resistance gives him an effective 112,943 health, though Misery Toadstool itself can achieve 99% resistance), and even regular Toadstool has 52,500.

For easy comparison of the health values of all the different DS bosses, here's a list of all the DS bosses and their health values:

Spoiler

Base game:

1. Treeguard: 1400 / 2000 / 2500
2. Spider Queen: 1250
3. Deerclops: 2000
4. Ancient Guardian: 2500

Reign of Giants:

1. Bearger: 3000
2. Moose Goose: 3000
3. Dragonfly: 2750

Shipwrecked:

1. Palm Treeguard: 525 / 750 / 937.5
2. Tiger Shark: 2500
3. Quacken: 1000
4. Sealnado: 3000

Hamlet:

1. Ancient Herald: 2000
2. Pugalisk: 3000
3. Queen Womant: 3500
4. Large Iron Hulk: 3000

It is a bit strange that a large Treeguard, which can be encountered as early as day 4, has the same amount of health as an endgame boss (though the Ancient Guardian is more dangerous), and also strange that three of the four seasonal giants have more health than it.

I imagine the reason for this is that previously you only had a small window in between charges to deal damage without getting hit, and so the health was made relatively low (still tied for the highest in the game at the time) to compensate to prevent the fight from dragging on too long, but now with the new stunning mechanic there are massive windows for dealing large amounts of damage between charges.

If it's dying too quickly, I think a solution more faithful to the concept of keeping boss health low would be to decrease the amount of time it stays stunned for. This would also be faithful to the original design of only being able to get a few hits in between charges.

Regarding it being much easier to reset the ruins than in DST, it's worth noting that in DS there's also much less need to reset the ruins to get more loot, since there are three sets of ruins in each world, as each of the three sinkholes leads to a separate cave system, so you have access to three times as much loot per world as in DST, and can use the teleportato to get an infinite amount without needing to reset the ruins, and since the teleportato doesn't reset Hamlet or Shipwrecked worlds, you're not limited by how much you can bring through the teleportato.

Thus, the main advantages of being able to reset the ruins are being able to establish a permanent settlement in the RoG world without cutting off your supply of more ruins loot, and not having to locate new surface sinkholes (though you will still have to locate new thulecite sinkholes), since with the teleportato you'll first have to explore the surface of a newly reset RoG world to find the sinkholes.

There's also precedent for a feature that's locked behind a raid boss in DST being much easier to get in DS, with the bundling wrap blueprint being dropped by bees, though I don't think that is very balanced.

I don't think bugs should decide balance changes, but something interesting to note is that prior to the beta there was a bug that made all three sets of caves and ruins (but not the surface of the RoG world) reset when using the teleportato in the Hamlet or Shipwrecked worlds, so the ruins resetting feature already existed in an unintended way and without the need to kill the Ancient Guardian.

[Thieverpedia]

What if it had 4000 health? It is considered to be the endgame boss when it comes to the ruins. And it's not too high that it feels out of place for DS.