The state of dragon fly with new polling options

[Jakepeng99]

From this post, but the poll options on that post are not very fluent, so i made a more detailed poll

The state of Dragonfly. Should there be a rework? Is the fight Fair, Unbalanced, Well designed or cheap?

 

[Gashzer]

Dfly is still fun atm. Its a pure test of kiting skill and timing. Kite too late you get hit but also kiting too early you also get hit which is unique to dragonfly. 

However the larve phase is practically pointless and not fun right now. The wall cheese is overwhelmingly the easiest, lowest prep time and most effective way to deal with the larve. 

People say you can use ice staff or ice rounds to freeze or use big bernie but why would i? The wall method means i dont waste blue gems and freezing/fighting the larve isnt exactly fun. 99% of randoms in pubs default to the wall method so you cant even do these other methods in a real life situation with a team unless you are playing privately.

Enraged dragonfly is a cool concept that could be the center of the rework. Instead of spawning larve and instead of gaining a speed boost in enraged form, enraged dfly could create a massive ring of fire wall around the entire arena preventing us from leaving by doing massive fire damage if we walk into it (uno reverse wall cheese ) while also spitting several AoE lava projectiles that creates temporary lava pools where they land. Willow and characters with scalemail can pass the ring of fire and escape the fight.

Edit: the ring of fire wall plus the lava projectiles that create lava pools reduce the area we can move around in while also increasing the likelihood of us taking fire damage or being set on fire.

The lava projectiles would be spat out in random directions giving us time to attack dfly while she does this move. If we do enough damage to enraged dfly while she does the lava spit she gets stuns an can drop a scale like normal, we can no longer stun dfly in her normal state.

We then have to try to avoid enraged dfly for long enough while avoiding the ring of fire and the newly made lava pools until they despawn and she does the lava projectile attack again. Or kite enraged dfly if you got the skills. 

Enraged dfly will last for 90secs unless we can extinguish her with an ice staff or waterballoons. She is now immune to sleep while enraged so cant be deraged with pan flute anymore.

[Yuuko]

imo dfly is a great introductory "hard" boss that sets you up better for bqueen, afw, and all the rest.  It is the first big boss I tackled in this game.  It took a lot of hours and work to get good at it even using a wall.  At first I was pretty dependent on the wall and felt the lavae were too much, but as I played more and importantly was broken of my unfounded hate / jealousy of combat focused characters (Wolfgang) I now find the lavae phase fits well.

What I like most about dfly is how I can approach it differently, and what factors might influence my decision in how I approach it and how none of the options completely disable the fight.  Even using a wall and pan flute you're still attacking and kiting, although in a very controlled environment.  This makes her approachable even if you need 20 football helmets and 40 perogies.  When I'm playing a combat character I can forgo the wall and just kill the lavae as they appear using an ice staff to cover if dfly spawns 2 lavae from 1 pond.  I still use a flute to suppress her rage mode but I have cleared her without the flute as Wanda since her backstep watch counters the lunging attacks very well.  Warly is probably my favorite b/c you can wet dfly with some water balloons and get bigger damage then either Wolf or Wanda with just a hambat ! And you have the added requirement of fluting her before she goes rage mode to preserve wetness.  I mean, normally I sleep her before the last lavae dies anyway, but with Warly it matters that I do it.  Of course any character can easily do dfly without a wall if they have enough blue gems.  They probably won't have enough blue gems to do this first autumn unless they focus on it, but after the first winter its easy to have the staffs needed.

I don't feel dfly is really locked behind any "veteran only" or "this strategy only" barrier that would make it bad or need changes in any way.

All in all I think the wall-hate is over-hyped.  The wall is a perfectly reasonable solution to a problem in DST, and there are plenty of non-wall solutions.  No one is capped in their creativity and expression here, which is a good thing.  I think it is antithetical to DST to have linear engagements where there is only 1 specific approach to a problem.  Surely it will happen, but Klei should always work to leave the game as open ended as possible - even if it means someone might *gasp* cheese a boss in a co-op game run mostly on private servers.................

[Mike23Ua]

I think building the wall to fight dragonfly is honestly a highly outdated tactic, one that doesn’t quite make any sense. This is a FIREBREATHING Dragon Boss, and you can pretty much Cheese the entire fight by building a wall between you and its Larvae, the new Undead Possessed Varg has cooler Fire effects then Dragonfly… the Boss in a Biome with Chared survivor skeletons, burnt away trees & rocks!

It makes no sense! And for the record generally in most other video games NOT named DST I actually enjoy Boss Fights as one of, if not my favorite Mechanic in the entire game.

However DSTs boss fights aren’t fun, they’re not engaging, there’s only a handful of actually fun boss fights in DST.. And Dragonfly sure ain’t one of them.

When I think of Epic Boss Fights my mind instantly harkens back to the PS2, SNES & Sega Genesis era of video games- Games like Contra, Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot, Super Mario 64…

In more Modern times- Erudien Chronicles Rising had decent boss encounters, or the fabulous two player coop game, It Takes Two.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that DSTs fights (especially dragonfly..) aren’t as in Depth or Rewarding as they could & should be..

Im going to draw some poor & cheap concepts of how I think Dragonfly’s fight should be Reworked..

And Yes- It’s going to ripoff epic boss fights from games of YesterYear. The orange lines below are walls of Fire. Cause ya know.. she can summon/breath that.

Spoiler

She’s a Fire Breathing Dragon Boss.. so let’s stop treating her like a 27500 hp Treeguard using a Walking Cane with endless Minion Spam and an enraged stomp attack.

[Uedo]

It's fine as is. 

Pretty engaging, out of the many fun boss fights dragonfly is pretty cool. Not too complicated to cheese if you want to but it's as difficult as you want it to be. I like the loot, it's why i cheese it - Can't be bothered to try to manage the larvae, it's dooable but a bit frustrating solo. 

Yeah like i said i feel it's fine, to comment on Mike above though - The kiting is not the same as a tree guard, the timing is what's needed here and it keeps the fight a little bit different for your first real raid boss.

Edit: I really like Mikes idea though, i'd be open completely to a rework like that.

[Cassielu]

Dragonfly is a nearly perfect sandbox boss fight. Its strategy is mainly focused on the use of mechanics and prop selection, rather than action sequences. If any rework or change of Dragonfly took that part away from her or weakened that part, I would surely continue to revile it until the end of time.

 

Walls aren't a big problem, why a building designed to stop creatures from moving actually do what it's supposed to do is a problem? It's problem is the whatever building is between the walls, wayfinding mechanism. If this pathfinding mechanism could be fixed, it would not be a problem at all. Even if you build a wall around yourself or around the magma pool, you still can't completely avoid Lavae's problems. The Dragonfly will eventually rage and destroy your walls with aoe attacks, or keep returning to the magma pool to greatly prolong the battle. Not to mention that building such a wall itself puts you at risk from DF.

Also... Panflute is little op when used to solve the Dragonfly enraged and lavae cycle.

[Cheggf]

Fight is real fun if you fight her with no walls and 0-1 teammates, but 2+ teammates turns the fight into a brainless hold f until she dies cutscene and walls make the fight extremely repetitive. 

The only changes I'd make is giving her an AoE effect on her attacks, and causing lavae to slowly damage walls so that you need to pay at least the smallest bit of attention and repair them when needed. 

[Jakepeng99]

5 hours ago, Cassielu said:

The Dragonfly will eventually rage and destroy your walls with aoe attacks,

That doesnt happen. It is either away from the walls, or you panflute it.

5 hours ago, Cassielu said:

Also... Panflute is little op when used to solve the Dragonfly enraged and lavae cycle.

They made the other options so bad, and get worse the more you use them which is sad.

[arubaro]

15 hours ago, Gashzer said:

why would i?

so you dont have to be afk waiting for 20 minutes if she bugs and decides to do 5 lavae phases instead of 3? idk you but actually playing the game is inceptive enough to dont do the wall cheese and less when 4 blue gems even in early isnt a high cost. Seems like you only want exploits fixed because you dont have the will to dont use them 

 

edit. i dont think the wall cheese should be fixed, is a good way to make new players engage to harder content without going full difficulty.

Klei should make the fight more dynamic instead of kitting the same during 8 minutes, counting is boring and requires no skill, we should be able to telegraph atacks like with the new fights.

Also is a shame that the enrage form is something to evade rather than something to engage, only people who want a challenge do it but nobody that plays normally will sacrifice the fight when they can just use 10% of a pan flute to calm her

they can make her enrage for few seconds to split lava or fire like the new varg, idk something more engaging and fitting for a dragon than just hitting every time you count to 6 Zzzzz

[Gashzer]

24 minutes ago, arubaro said:

Seems like you only want exploits fixed because you dont have the will to dont use them 

You are 100% correct. I dont have the will to not use them. 95% of the playerbase also lacks the will not to use exploits hence why Klei needs to step in an do something to rework dfly. 

Its not up to us not to use exploits, its up to klei to decide how they want us to play. Because right now we are all using exploits like wall cheese and voidwalking and general pathfinding bugs. If klei are happy to let this continue then all these things are intentional core mechanics.

[Horsheen]

Cheese or no cheese this boss is boring because of it's bloated HP pool and the fact that it uses minions 

If they make the boss more enjoyable like they did with AG I'll happily take the wall cheese being removed.

[JustAFlower]

Dragon Fly just needs player scaling HP thingy (oooh I made a pun with scales hehe). 

He's very good for the gems so that people can still get things in the ruins.

His scales are good too.

[Jakepeng99]

21 minutes ago, Horsheen said:

Cheese or no cheese this boss is boring because of it's bloated HP pool and the fact that it uses minions 

If they make the boss more enjoyable like they did with AG I'll happily take the wall cheese being removed.

I wish it actually used fire as an attack outside of enrage mode. Wigfrid's fire flatsello would become 200x more useful. (Still bad)

[ALCRD]

4 hours ago, JustAFlower said:

Dragon Fly just needs player scaling HP thingy (oooh I made a pun with scales hehe). 

He's very good for the gems so that people can still get things in the ruins.

His scales are good too.

She*

Dragonfly spawns babies remember? :P

[Waynel]

14 minutes ago, ALCRD said:

She*

Dragonfly spawns babies remember? :P

A He can spawn babies too.

[ALCRD]

3 minutes ago, Waynel said:

A He can spawn babies too.

It's a Dragon Fly (a Fly that happens to also be a Dragon according to Pun-science) not a Seahorse

[Mike23Ua]

27 minutes ago, Waynel said:

A He can spawn babies too.

The compendium description, and Vignettes loading screens will give you a definitive answer as to what “gender” the games mobs are.

Dragonfly has always been referred to in these Official descriptions as a She.

That said- I’d Love a Dragonfly rework where they make the fight more unique, engaging and fun both when fought solo, and scaled to a group.

[HellHeater]

I'd say change him like how ancient guardian was changed. If klei were to just disable the pillar cheese and not do anything else people would collectively just hate the bossfight in general. Instead, they turned the boss into an enjoyable and rewarding fight and THEN removed the pillar cheese. I would suggest the same for dragonfly. If klei removes wall strategy, the fight will only be more annoying and resource intensive. I would not prefer a fight with walls over a fight that doesn't require them.

[Jakepeng99]

2 hours ago, HellHeater said:

I'd say change him like how ancient guardian was changed. If klei were to just disable the pillar cheese and not do anything else people would collectively just hate the bossfight in general. Instead, they turned the boss into an enjoyable and rewarding fight and THEN removed the pillar cheese. I would suggest the same for dragonfly. If klei removes wall strategy, the fight will only be more annoying and resource intensive. I would not prefer a fight with walls over a fight that doesn't require them.

Ironically, pillars are still the best way to beat them.

[HellHeater]

40 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Ironically, pillars are still the best way to beat them.

Exactly. Klei turned his cheese method to a strategy. I was going to point that out but couldn't figure out how and then forgot about it.

[Cassielu]

On 11/10/2023 at 3:31 PM, Jakepeng99 said:

That doesnt happen. It is either away from the walls, or you panflute it.

Yes, it won't happen now.

This is just my vision for if the wayfinding mechanism cheese get fixed.

Either you build a wall big enough to surround yourself, or you surround each lava pool, which requires a lot of rocks and killing the dragonfly once or somehow controlling the dragonfly to get a safe space to build it. Or you need to be reactive enough to play the panflute as soon as it gets enraged.

Both of these are sound rational enough combat strategies for me.

On 11/10/2023 at 3:31 PM, Jakepeng99 said:

They made the other options so bad, and get worse the more you use them which is sad.

Oh, I'm mainly thinking about Wetness and Frozen, which do a pretty good job up against the dragonfly, just a little overshadowed by the Hypnotized.

Some forms of hypnosis outside the panflute is indeed so bad.