First Experiences with Lunar Varg and Armored Bearger (and Hail)

[GelatinousCube]

Had some pretty interesting/funny moments with two of the new bosses last night. 

So first Varg hunt ended literally metres away from a large beefalo herd. As I haven't fought these new bosses yet I wanted to go in overprepared the first time so as I was unbundling Thul Helms, spiced jellybeans, hound whistle etc a safe distance away and preparing to actually take on the Varg then consequent Lunar Varg a fight broke out between the Beefalo Herd and Varg. 

The herd decimated the Varg with some help from me (took out some approaching summoned Hounds and got some sweet sneaky hits in on the Varg) pretty damn quickly. They're actually an unneeded herd in a really weird location so I was fine with the Lunar Varg wiping them out which I assumed would almost definitely be the case. It was almost somewhat helpful for it to do so in all honestly. Hahahaha nope they absolutely wiped the floor with him and basically did the entire fight for me. Was pretty hilarious to see. Big bad new Lunar Varg and his hounds vs Chilled out Fuzzy boys (they weren't even in heat) resulted in one very dead Varg. I think one Beefalo died (maybe two?).

I thought this was a bit anti-climatic (although entertaining) plus I didn't think it had registered in the Scrapbook somehow (Lunar Varg is a creature not a boss in the scrapbook turns out) so I decided to fight another Lunar Varg in a "clean" (still using Whistles and Brightshade staff to avoid getting overwhelmed by numbers - plus strong gear) fight. Only got hit by the Frost breath attack a couple times as the Hounds temporarily under my control kept taking the brunt of his attacks while I got sneaky attacks in from behind. Was a fun and rewarding fight overall. The Whistle and Brightshade staff are huge to manage crowd control. 

Waited for Autumn and Bearger to come around. Again overprepared for the fight to be extra safe and prepared. Spawned a bunch of treeguards with Treeguard Idols nearby my big Deerclops/Bearger battle arena (no catapults or houndius or anything just a massive paved area in the middle of a big forest) as a failsafe that I could lead Armored Bearger to if I get overwhelmed. Let a treeguard help take down normal Bearger (couldn't be helped as he committed the cardinal sin of destroying a tree too close to the guard) and waited for the real battle to begin. 

Did not anticipate how quick or destructive a force Armored Bearger would actually be and through his own frenzy he attracted the attention of way too many Treeguards (that forest is absolutely full of them nowadays thanks to how many Rifts appear in that part of my world plus the bunch I specifically spawned with Idols) as I dodged his various nasty attacks. Due to there being quite a few Treeguards around I thought it would be a repeat of the Beefalo herd decimating the Varg while I just stood by and watched. Quite the opposite this time around, yes they did a fair bit of damage to him but he killed like 5 or so Treeguards at least, just absolutely shredded the hell out of them (nice top up of Living logs for me!). I did the rest of the fight myself and damn he's not a pushover at all. I was completely unused to the new changes to Bearger overall as well (his swipes having a much larger range in front of him but not being AOE anymore) so I admittedly wasn't doing a great job but was hanging in there. Only managed to stun him after his buttslam like twice, my god that window is so small I honestly think it could be a tiny bit longer. Its quite hard to achieve on console as you want to ideally dodge the attack with a walking cane equipped then need to change to Brightshade staff to try and attack and stun him - its real tricky. 

Eventually beat him but it took a while as I was trying to avoid getting hit as much as possible and actually learn his attacks. I kept going behind him as much as I could to try and bait out the buttslam and try to get him stunned but it became nearly impossible to get him to ever attempt it past a certain point in the fight. I would walk behind him during one of his attacks but then he'd just snap around facing me instantly after his attack. Do you have to be RIGHT up in his grill and run behind him as he attacks? I was doing so more diagonally from a bit more of a distance than just right in front of him and just couldn't get him to buttslam. Eventually beat him anyway but with quite a lot of help from Treeguards at the start obviously. Another fun and challenging fight although I definitely accidentally cheesed it somewhat as those Treeguards probably took like half his HP or more before I did the rest. 

Need to wait for Winter to kill Lunar Deerclops and actually start getting my hands on those three new mega drops/crafts but am very keen to do so later today when I finish work and get home.

I am also loving the new Hail Mechanic! During Spring I found that I still encountered Rain a fair bit while rifts weren't active but I would also experience Hail as well on occasion. Perhaps it won't replace rain quite so much as many of us worried it would and wetness will still be a mechanic we can utilize for extra DPS with Volt Jelly, Morning Star, Electric Darts etc. I also really enjoyed trying to dodge the hail but also picking up the Moon Shards and Infused Moon Shards (so damn amazing to be able to gather these for Brightshade Bombs without turning Moonstorm on, holy hell) as I dodge. It was actually an enjoyable little mini game of sort - I also like that it can be additional DPS against us during Boss or Mob fights. 

I still don't think it ever needs to be something that damages mobs (unless we get really solid and dependable ways to protect them from stuff like this) and should instead just panic them and make them go wild. I wouldn't mind it even being ramped up against players doing more damage and perhaps being hit enough times by it reduces your body temp and makes you start to freeze as well regardless of season. 
I did end up turning rift frequency up to high (to ensure one was active during Bearger fight) and that may result in rain being far more scarce and for the most part being replaced by Hail so I'm not sure about that one, will need to turn rifts back down to less frequent once I have those new epic items. Overall though I really like Hail and think its a great addition (again.. so long as it doesn't damage mobs), added more flavour and consequences to the world from rifts being open and looks really great as well. 

So far I enjoy the new bosses (the two I've fought at least) and content but my feedback/notes on them would be:

-Lunar Varg can be spawned from the seasonal Gingerbread Varg but NOT the Clay Vargs from Year of the Varg. I tried this at the start as I have two Clay Vargs in really great spots for big battles but they wouldn't reanimate into a Lunar/Possessed Varg when beaten. 

-Lunar Varg may be able to hit hard, call a lot of hounds and perform some fancy new attacks but he ain't no match for a Herd of Beefalo!

-Lunar Varg can actually be tamed by the Dog Whistles from Year of the Varg!!! Multiple times when I would use the Whistle to force more Hounds to be loyal to me the Lunar Varg made the same howling animation to show its now allied and it would fight the Hounds that were not affected and were still aggroed on me! I had to attack it a few times after this occurred specifically to lose its allegiance and get the friendly Hounds to actually attack it. You could probably achieve some interesting situations with this and get the Lunar Varg to help you fight other foes/threats.

-Armored Bearger (on console at least) doesn't seem to do the Buttslam anywhere near as easily as I thought he would, maybe you need to really be right up in his grill and dodge to being behind him rather than running in diagonally to position yourself behind him. Need more experience with him to know for sure but it seemed really hard to get him to do it past a certain point in the battle. 

-Buttslam seemed really hard to punish and achieve the stunned state (on console at least) as you get such a small window to actually hit him with a Planar weapon. If he gets you with the buttslam the being hit animation takes too long for you to be able to get a hit in and stun him (that's how it seemed at least but I was keeping my distance for the most part so I could be wrong) and even when it doesn't connect you need to have lightning reflexes to get that Planar weapon hit in and get him stunned. I think the timing could be extended by just a tiny bit. Might not be anywhere near as much of an issue on PC but on console its damn tricky. I could maybe just need more practise though but my first impression was the window should be a little longer. 

-Armored Bearger absolutely shreds Treeguards. It's like he's getting revenge for all those endless times players use Treeguards to kill him. If Saruman had a few Armored Beargers up his sleeve the Siege of Isengard might've turned out very differently!

 

 

[GelatinousCube]

As for the other new content:

Sawhorse is awesome and I love the new decorative structures and items. The portrait is a little weird but I guess as it gets more skins it might be a little cooler. I have no real reason personally to have pictures of Merms up around my base. I guess its pretty awesome for Wurt but doesn't make much sense for other characters. The base skins for these new items are pretty bland though, I shelled out some money for the new skin sets for them as they're really aesthetically pleasing. Going to use the fancy wooden skins for my main base and the swamp/forest themed natural skins for some of my outposts in areas like the Swamp, deep in the Forest etc. The mushroom looking seat will probably even work as pure decoration in some areas rather than as an actual seat for use or anything. Always nice to have new decorative pieces and crafts/structures, hope we get more and more function for what we do have (let us put way more things on the tables please!!). The "Art?!" item is also a little weird and for me personally at least probably something I won't use very much.

Warbis armor set I haven't played with yet as I've only managed to get the crafting recipe for the Helmet and the repair item (Auto-matic-crank or whatever its called) but not the body slot yet and from what I read in the beta section of the forums its not really worth using the Helmet unless you use it with the body armor as well? Correct me if I'm wrong and just the Helmet alone is worthwhile. 

Gramophone is just amazing, looks fantastic, sounds fantastic and is really helpful with crops. I have two separate four tile farms as my main actual farm I use in my base and plopping down a Gramophone in the middle of each four tile farm covers the whole area. They last forever (I know the music doesn't but the disc's don't ever break or degrade or anything) and honestly I think they'll replace Friendly Fruit Fly for me for tending to crops (whilst not playing Wormwood at least) as the Fly as cute and helpful as he is, is very slow whereas the Gramophone tends all plants at once. I'm not big on the Gramophone skins so far though and the original just looks so much better than the other two. Really hope we get more discs with some of the banging tunes this game has to offer. 

Edited October 21 by GelatinousCube

[Fufuji]

Armored Bearger has a indeed small window for melee weapons to stun him. BS staves should do this better. 

And his rush&butt slam attack cannot be dodged without a speed boost which is quite humorous since in the beginning of BETA there's a rwp streaming saying that bosses' each attack is designed to be able to dodge with no speed boost.

[lenship2]

13 hours ago, Fufuji said:

And his rush&butt slam attack cannot be dodged without a speed boost which is quite humorous since in the beginning of BETA there's a rwp streaming saying that bosses' each attack is designed to be able to dodge with no speed boost.

it can be dodged without a speedboost, you just gotta run towards bearger rather than away

[prettynuggets]

1 hour ago, lenship2 said:

it can be dodged without a speedboost, you just gotta run towards bearger rather than away

i can do that in beta but after the update going live i failed miserably to fight bearger without any speed boost 

[Mike23Ua]

14 hours ago, Fufuji said:

Armored Bearger has a indeed small window for melee weapons to stun him. BS staves should do this better. 

And his rush&butt slam attack cannot be dodged without a speed boost which is quite humorous since in the beginning of BETA there's a rwp streaming saying that bosses' each attack is designed to be able to dodge with no speed boost.

You mean the same RWP streams that always showcase a bare minimum of 3 people fighting/experiencing the new content? Because if you mean those RWP streams then I’m pretty certain that with more than one player fighting.. the attacks would OBVIOUSLY be easy to dodge without speed boosts.

However, I’ve never actually witnessed the Klei dev team take on this content single player (and without admin commands) so if there ARE RWP streams that do, please link them to me.

I personally have no intention of fighting Armored Bearger, outside of getting his boss Statue, because that dude looks soooooo cool.

I’d love to have a Mini-Pet den critter of Lunar Deerclops/Bearger/Varg

[gamehun20]

5 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

However, I’ve never actually witnessed the Klei dev team take on this content single player (and without admin commands) so if there ARE RWP streams that do, please link them to me.

They don't need to show themselves testing every single thing while they develop it?

[Valase]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

You mean the same RWP streams that always showcase a bare minimum of 3 people fighting/experiencing the new content? Because if you mean those RWP streams then I’m pretty certain that with more than one player fighting.. the attacks would OBVIOUSLY be easy to dodge without speed boosts.

However, I’ve never actually witnessed the Klei dev team take on this content single player (and without admin commands) so if there ARE RWP streams that do, please link them to me.

I personally have no intention of fighting Armored Bearger, outside of getting his boss Statue, because that dude looks soooooo cool.

I’d love to have a Mini-Pet den critter of Lunar Deerclops/Bearger/Varg

I've fought it solo and speed boost-less, it is doable, but all of the new bosses are easier using other resources.

Also, keep in mind that the reason why they are balanced for the default character speed, is so that Woodie can fight as Moose. As I've seen people thinking that the only reason that it was just meant to be "easy".

[LitulLola]

17 hours ago, GelatinousCube said:

I am also loving the new Hail Mechanic! During Spring I found that I still encountered Rain a fair bit while rifts weren't active but I would also experience Hail as well on occasion. Perhaps it won't replace rain quite so much as many of us worried it would and wetness will still be a mechanic we can utilize for extra DPS with Volt Jelly, Morning Star, Electric Darts etc. I also really enjoyed trying to dodge the hail but also picking up the Moon Shards and Infused Moon Shards (so damn amazing to be able to gather these for Brightshade Bombs without turning Moonstorm on, holy hell) as I dodge. It was actually an enjoyable little mini game of sort - I also like that it can be additional DPS against us during Boss or Mob fights. 

If the "damage mob" aspect was still enabled you would of also seen how easy it was to avoid damage to any mob even without the umbrella or tall tree's. The idea of hail was way more "damaging" than the reality. I really tried to get ppl to watch megabasers stream over a long period of time or actually experience it for themselves but I  failed miserably on that. But it's A dead topic anyway.

I'm really glad you enjoyed the rest of the content, the Beefalo against Lunar Varg is a huge surprise and kind of hilarious. I'm tempted to try it now lmao

[finn from human]

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

You mean the same RWP streams that always showcase a bare minimum of 3 people fighting/experiencing the new content? Because if you mean those RWP streams then I’m pretty certain that with more than one player fighting.. the attacks would OBVIOUSLY be easy to dodge without speed boosts.

Klei streams for the past 3+ years now have been 1 person playing while another person is just talking. I cannot remember a Klei stream that's anything like what you've described here since like, the very beginning of Return of Them.

[LitulLola]

17 hours ago, GelatinousCube said:

The portrait is a little weird but I guess as it gets more skins it might be a little cooler.

I really hope the picture part gets more skin's, I'd be cool if we got pictures of Giant's in ferocious poses after we kill them! Then we can cleansweeper thru our favorite bosses!

[-Variant]

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

You mean the same RWP streams that always showcase a bare minimum of 3 people fighting/experiencing the new content? Because if you mean those RWP streams then I’m pretty certain that with more than one player fighting.. the attacks would OBVIOUSLY be easy to dodge without speed boosts.

This is usually not the case with RWP streams. You may be thinking of gameplay trailers on Youtube.

Anyways, the devs said that the bosses would have attacks and mechanics easy to dodge so people weren't always forced to use speed boosts. They do, however, make said fights easier if you bring them. Merely not required. 

[Fufuji]

9 hours ago, lenship2 said:

it can be dodged without a speedboost, you just gotta run towards bearger rather than away

I'm sorry, my bad. It can indeed be dodged without a speed boost.