DST Boss Reworks

[Shrumal Ogre]

Since the start of Don't Starve, it's no secret that the quality of content has just been increasing. Especially with Klei focusing on reworking characters over the past several years, and even giving them all a second rework in the form of skilltrees, it's no secret that you like to redo old content. And some of the more dated DST content is some of the Bosses. They're all fine, and do what they're supposed to, but when you compare Bee Queen to something like Nightmare Werepig, Celestial Champion, Reworked Guardian, or the brand new Frostjaw, there's an apparent quality gap. 
In addition, a newer player fighting the Werepig would somewhat easily be able to figure out the battle without the use of guides or wikis. Just dodge the dashes, and hit it when it's stunned. However, if they were to fight the Dragonfly for example, not only would they struggle with kiting her, but also they would get quickly overwhelmed by the Lavae. In the end, the Raid Bosses range from skillful bouts against terrifying foes to resource sinks and cheese methods. 

And yes, these bosses are significantly less overwhelming when playing in a group. And I understand that DST is a game balanced around a group of people. However, this could be circumvented without changing the fights too much by scaling some portions of boss difficulty, like making Dragonfly & Bee Queen spawn minions proportional to player count, or Fuelweaver spawning less Unseen Hands if you're playing solo.

As someone who absolutely loves this game, and has beat every boss far too many times, I think some of the older bosses could definitely use a bit more love. Many bosses feel like they're less about skill and more about bringing the right obscure pieces of equipment. So, in my abundance of free time now that I'm off for the semester, I've done some thinking about how the bosses could be changed. Obviously, on the off-chance a Klei dev is reading this, you can and probably should change these ideas... you undoubtedly know this game better than me!

- Bee Queen: slightly less grumble bees, or maybe some kind of stunning method like the newer bosses. For example, maybe attacking her mid-scream will cause her to fall down. 

- Dragonfly: Already a very fun fight, but I notice that people rarely actually fight the Lavae... they usually just use a wall to keep them out. Maybe if they had a little less health, people would bother with them? Either way, they should probably be able to break through stone walls. It would prevent most cheese methods.

- Klaus: Actual perfection! Slightly annoying to spawn, but you could probably figure it out. Self-explanatory attacks, cool elemental attacks, enrage mechanics, very nice! My only minor complaint is that the Gem Deer do a weird amount of melee damage. Like, more than a single swipe from Klaus. That doesn't really matter though.

- Shadow Pieces: These three are perfect! Well, maybe the Bishop should be possible to dodge without any damage, and the Tier 2  & 3 Knights might need a range decrease... Oh, and spawning them is a little bit obscure. The Scrapbook helped, but it's kinda hard to figure out the New Moon thing. But other than that, I LOVE this trio!
- Toadstool: This guy has a lot of health, and the Mushcap phase is kinda unforgiving... other than that, a fun fight! (maybe it could use a new reward or two, but that's besides the point.)

- Misery Toadstool: No change needed! A perfect meme hidden boss!

- Ancient Guardian: You already reworked this one a few years ago, and to perfection might I add.

- Eye of Terror: Very fun early boss! I don't think the fight needs any change! That being said, wouldn't it be cool if it could randomly attack like Deerclops and Bearger? Or maybe that could be a world setting defaulting on for the Taste of Terraria preset... but that probably wouldn't work with its 'fleeing in the daytime' gimmick.

- Twins of terror: As much as I'd like Retinazor to have a lazer attack and Spazmatism to have green flames, I can see why they don't, it would probably be a lot of effort for this one fight. That being said, they should probably be forced to stick together, or have a shared aggro system. That would force people not to lure Spazmatism away, kill it first, then kill Retinazor. 

- Ancient Fuelweaver: A very very difficult final boss monster... I think it should have the time between invincibility phases lengthened, but that's probably just because I'm not very good at this fight. It's also a fairly obscure one to summon. I could easily piece together that the Key had to go into the Gateway, but I didn't realize that I also had to bring a random fossil there and the shadow heart from earlier. Oh, and I couldn't find the Atrium without a guide. But that's unrelated to the boss itself.

- Malbatross: It's annoying to spawn, it's drops are mediocre, and the fight is tedious at best... If its wave attacks pushed your boat slightly less and its aggro didn't randomly vanish mid-fight, I'd like it a lot more.

- Crab King: So... I'm sure you've heard enough about this guy in the past. Don't worry, I'll be brief. In general, fighting on the sluggish boat is not very enjoyable, and it's further hindered by the Imposing Claws. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I don't think this fight needs too much change. Just make the Claws take longer to respawn, and add some way to easily stop his healing phase. Other than that, I absolutely adore the concept of building your own bossfight using Gems. So unique and fun! (you might want to rebalance the gems though, everyone just uses 8 purples and Pearl's Pearl)

And honestly, everything else made after Celestial Champion is perfection! You guys have really been hitting it out of the park recently!

Now I know that a lot of these will probably just seem like me complaining about the difficulty of the game, and I don't want that to change! I love the uncompromising survival game you've created. I just think some of these bosses need to be a bit more self-explanatory. When players rely on an ultra-specific fine-tuned strategy they found online, it just doesn't feel right. When players can figure out the boss just by fighting it, without any external guides or weird strats, it is a very well-made boss. And I'm sorry that this devolved into me ranting about DST bosses, I just can't help but think about cool concepts for my favorite game! Can't wait to see what you guys cook up in the future! <3

[Gotheran]

I've frequently suggested Queen bee and her grumble bees get some behaviour tweaks, changing how she fights and make the grumble bees adopt behaviour similar to Batalisks so they aren't just brain dead swarmers with a boss behind them that causes massive slow down effects.

I can't say I have too much experience with most of these bosses. Klaus feels alright I suppose if a bit, much i suppose for a solo player without speed buffs. I'm a smooth brain solo player and while I happily carry my walking cane everywhere I go once I get it, hot swapping it with my weapon in combat is not something I'm used to doing or needing to do for that matter.

I would advocate some tweaks to Celestial Champion tbh, notably phase 2 nerf the sawblade attack so its not as much of an armor shredder or instant death even if you only get caught by the last couple of frames. And Phase 3 needs some sort of prevention of item spam as the pulsating crystals leave behind so much moon glass it slows the game down making the fight harder for slower systems, I couldn't even see the beam attacks i just got hit by them every time because the game was chugging from the 100s of individual glass items on the floor after a few minutes.

[Yuuko]

I'm not against boss re-works, the AG one gave us a much more approachable and engaging fight - but I'd be a bit concerned if Klei tried to re-make all of the old bosses according to their current methods which is basically giving every boss a stun mechanic you have to play around because the bosses just bull doze through everything else.  It makes them seem interesting at first, but they all feel so same-ish after a few loops through them.  I have more fun with current dfly for the variety of ways I can approach the fight then I do for NMWP, and the zombosses who are basically scripted :\

So yeah I'm in favor of spicing up these fights some, but I do NOT want them all to become some dumb combat event.  This isn't an RPG, using our environment is not cheese, it is the game.

[grm9]

18 hours ago, Shrumal Ogre said:

Twins of terror: As much as I'd like Retinazor to have a lazer attack and Spazmatism to have green flames, I can see why they don't, it would probably be a lot of effort for this one fight

no it wouldn't, i was able to make a mod rework for the fight in about a day some time ago (not available on workshop yet, will be after i figure out what to turn the final phase into to make it not sleep inducing), surely an entire development team with multiple employees would be able to do it faster and better

fight demonstration:

Spoiler

green first, no armor

always attacking whichever one is active, first attempt at the fight to show that dodging stuff isn't as easy as it looks

 

 

18 hours ago, Shrumal Ogre said:

Bee Queen: slightly less grumble bees, or maybe some kind of stunning method like the newer bosses. For example, maybe attacking her mid-scream will cause her to fall down

no need for this, the fight is supposed to be a puzzle so you can use a lot of strats for it (bramble husk, shadow prison, abigail, bunnymen, pan flutes etc.) instead of doing the fight easily in one specific way independently of the character you're playing as and the equipment you have aside from worse weapon meaning longer fight, that sort of design would've been fine if the bosses would've been as hard as bosses in other games with similar bosses in comparison to the new ones, e.g. souls likes, the new bosses are boring because it's easy to figure out what you should do and it's easy to do the fight, FW is better than all of the new bosses imo, since he has parts of both (harder fight than rift bosses, multiple ways to do the fight)

18 hours ago, Shrumal Ogre said:

That being said, they should probably be forced to stick together, or have a shared aggro system. That would force people not to lure Spazmatism away, kill it first, then kill Retinazor

that would be bad without any other changes because one twin might be charging at you during almost the entirety of the fight, and if they get desynced, you'd get 4 minions per 10 seconds from the yellow one anyway

18 hours ago, Shrumal Ogre said:

Other than that, I absolutely adore the concept of building your own bossfight using Gems. So unique and fun!

no one uses anything other than purples or blues if they're lacking purples 

18 hours ago, Shrumal Ogre said:

Just make the Claws take longer to respawn, and add some way to easily stop his healing phase

just reduce the claws' hp and make it so you can place boats over birds and dropped items, heal can already be cancelled solo without weather pains even when pearled, it's just very hard to do   

18 hours ago, Shrumal Ogre said:

Either way, they should probably be able to break through stone walls. It would prevent most cheese methods

nah, that's just one of the ways to do the fight

18 hours ago, Shrumal Ogre said:

Maybe if they had a little less health, people would bother with them?

use ice staff

18 hours ago, Shrumal Ogre said:

I think it should have the time between invincibility phases lengthened

no need, it's fine as it is because it's compensated by the fact that he has the least hp out of all ANR bosses aside from shadow pieces                      

[Gotheran]

40 minutes ago, grm9 said:

no need for this, the fight is supposed to be a puzzle so you can use a lot of strats for it (bramble husk, shadow prison, abigail, bunnymen, pan flutes etc.) instead of doing the fight easily in one specific way independently of the character you're playing as and the equipment you have aside from worse weapon meaning longer fight, that sort of design would've been fine if the bosses would've been as hard as bosses in other games with similar bosses in comparison to the new ones, e.g. souls likes, the new bosses are boring because it's easy to figure out what you should do and it's easy to do the fight, FW is better than all of the new bosses imo, since he has parts of both (harder fight than rift bosses, multiple ways to do the fight)

I don't see where Queen Bee is a "puzzle" even if you go through the effort of putting the bees to sleep its easy to accidentally wake them and she'll summon more as her health drops, most strategies I've seen recommended involve pig or bunnymen spam and many of the options like shadow prison and bramble husk didn't exist when Queen Bee was introduced, so the argument she was meant to be countered with stuff that only came out later is kind of a bad defence for not giving her a rework. She sticks out to me as the one most in need of one as there's not much the player can do unless they play a specific character.

In Solo while fighting the giants head on is entirely viable and even the best way to handle it for certain characters, very often the solution is to find alternative methods of dealing with them, be it just avoiding them and letting them despawn, or hiring an army of followers or find durable hostile creatures that can stand toe to toe with them such as clockworks, a herd of angry beefalo, or the tried and true giant killer of Rock Lobsters.

I also see D-fly as having the same issue due to the lavae spawn though she doesn't seem nearly as aggressive about spawning them and it seems like a mechanic very dependent on having a group of players to handle the extra summons, which leads to setting up walls for solo fights to be viable, it works and its not a character dependent solution but it none the less railroads the solution to DST d-fly into one option.

As for the Twins, they were incredibly tedious to fight, even with a mod to nerf health values their damage output is so high you risk being 2 shot even with armor. I get DST is a multiplayer game but the lack of consideration for how a player might take some of the tougher fights solo is a bit tiresome. Not everyone has a super beefy PC and the fastest internet speeds to play with a server full of people without a ton of lag so playing solo is often the only option and some parts of this game just aren't reasonable solo, and silly youtube videos of people soloing things and taking 30 minutes with what was probably several hours of edited down prep time does not mean its a reasonable task for the average player. Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be treated like the intended or only solution.

[grm9]

28 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

I don't see where Queen Bee is a "puzzle"

you need to figure out a way to deal with the minions and there are many ways    

28 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

shadow prison and bramble husk didn't exist when Queen Bee was introduced

doesn't matter since they do exist now, there still were tentacles, bunnymen, abigail, pan flutes etc. back then

28 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

it seems like a mechanic very dependent on having a group of players to handle the extra summons

use ice staves so you only need to tank/dodge one hit after dfly comes back after spawning all lavaes to freeze the last lavae, then do the fight the same way you would using walls except there isn't a chance for it to go spawn lavaes again after all lavaes die instead of enraging and you can attack it while it's summoning    

28 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

She sticks out to me as the one most in need of one as there's not much the player can do unless they play a specific character

everyone can use pan flutes and almost everyone can use bunnymen except wortox and webber and most characters have another way to kill it anyway, shadow prison in case of maxwell, spiders in case of webber, merms in case of wurt, abigail in case of wendy, ignite all enemies nearby thing in case of willow, tentacles in case of wickerbottom, catapults in case of winona, bramble husk and moon shrooms in case of wormwood, maybe shock enemies after they attack you circuit in case of wx idk i didn't try that one, panic song in case of wigfrid etc.                                                                

[lenship2]

17 hours ago, Shrumal Ogre said:

They're all fine, and do what they're supposed to, but when you compare Bee Queen to something like Nightmare Werepig, Celestial Champion, Reworked Guardian, or the brand new Frostjaw, there's an apparent quality gap. 

i agree with everything but this, the new giants feel very linear and the stun mechanics feel really awkward. a giant desperately who is desperately trying to kill you literally just standing still and taking a bunch of hits from the thing it was trying to kill just doesn't feel as fun or rewarding as anr giants

it was fine with ancient guardian, since the implemented stun mechanic still allowed liberty over the approach to the fight through random boulders and dynamic positioning from both aggressors

however, the giants after that feel very scripted and not as intuitive as anr giants

[Ridley]

5 hours ago, lenship2 said:

however, the giants after that feel very scripted and not as intuitive as anr giants

I don't think you can say a boss like Bee Queen is intuitive. Recently fought her solo as Wilson and the boss kept countering my plans. I tried freezing the bees with flingos and smoldering items, but apparently Bee Queen's scream can unfreeze her minions. Don't know how the extra motivation swings that.

Tried sleeping the bees but it was just as much of a waste of time. Tried tanking but its insanely expensive. Also that honey creep and her kiting phase just made combat an absolute slog. Tried using gunpowder to reduce her health down to 2000 but I got kited and swarmed down because I underestimated how hard that final 2000 would be. 

Finally spent a few real life days getting a enough Bunnymen together to have them kill the boss for me. Even then I used the advice of a guide suggesting I help kill the grumbles so the rabbits don't get distracted which can ruin everything.

 

I think Fuelweaver delivers a suitablely epic fight, but there is nothing intuitive about him. Does anyone fight this boss without looking up how to do it? Does anyone spawn the boss without looking up how to do it?

[Gotheran]

There's a lot to be said for the shift in focus from being a survival game to what seems like an action rpg that Klei have taken DST in, since all the giants from the base game were intended to keep things fresh but also prevent turtling in your base 24/7, they were uniquely dangerous encounters from the typical hound waves or hunting dangerous mobs like tentacles and spider queens, with equally unique rewards, for the most part (lookin at you D-fly)

Most of the bosses added in DST lack this, Klaus seems to be a fall back to get ahold of things incase you disabled, missed, or simply don't want to fight other bosses.

Gating bundling wrap behind queen bee is a bit rough for its somewhat limited utility, her crown is nice for sanity taxing fights though.

Antlion gives you, a hat version of a pitchfork, faster but ultimately a side grade if anything, and a teleporter that only works if you have people to use it with. Though the fight at least looks manageable solo compared to Queen Bee

Never even found Malbatross in my last go and you don't even need to fight it to get the sail, and its paddle beak that can make a watering can for farming? Not high on the list of upgrades for tools.

Eye of Chthulu is fine but its made worse by adding a second one with both of them dealing twice the damage and spawning more minions than before (really the minion spam fights are some of the worst) Eye helmet is pretty good but the shield is not worth the effort as its identical to the hat besides being a weapon and it can break, I see that the Brightshade tools have been updated to not permanently break when used up and instead enter an unusable state that needs to be repaired, I think this would be a good change for the eye shield for the effort it takes to even get one, as well as boosted durability since its pulling weight as both a weapon and armor.

Can't recall what Crabking gives but its probably not spectacularly worth it burning dozens of planks on.

Celestial Champion grants literally a single item for the effort and its a decent one if redundant by the time you get it, if we're going to deal with fights this over the top and complex we better get indestructible gear out of it.

Haven't fought Fuel Weaver, but the Bone gear seems alright for the kind of combat later bosses were built for which again feels more action rpg than survival game.

Nightmare Werepig, its literally just dreadstone isn't it? I fought him once and all the while he kept knocking me off my beefalo even when I was miles away from his attacks, and I wasn't having latency issues though that is no longer the case as whatever performance improvements Klei made have since been reverted.

Noticing a pattern that most of the items aren't QoL or Survival focused loot but combat gear. In general I don't mind tougher more thoughtful combat encounters than smacking deerclops's shins 2-3 times then back off, but many bosses just aren't that, again with Queen Bee being possibly the most lacking as you simply have to have some sort of way to deplete her minions faster than she summons them or trap them so they can't be a bother, there's no real nuance its just deerclops with a gank squad.

[grm9]

1 hour ago, Gotheran said:

you simply have to have some sort of way to deplete her minions faster than she summons them or trap them

that's the point, you need to figure out how to deal with that part of the fight, with the execution being the easier part but still being harder than rift bosses in case of most strats, i've said this thrice and you're repeating the same thing and everything else you said is unrelated

1 hour ago, Gotheran said:

Celestial Champion grants literally a single item for the effort and its a decent one if redundant by the time you get it, if we're going to deal with fights this over the top and complex we better get indestructible gear out of it

CC is easier than most ANR bosses even if you fight it using only a ham bat                         

1 hour ago, Gotheran said:

I fought him once and all the while he kept knocking me off my beefalo even when I was miles away from his attacks

why are you talking about bosses and how they should be changed if you don't know how to fight them, you're supposed to go to the side in case of the lunge and to the side or away in case of the slam   

1 hour ago, Gotheran said:

Can't recall what Crabking gives but its probably not spectacularly worth it burning dozens of planks on

and that just shows that you don't know how to fight him, grass boats are better if you aren't using ice staves or if you are, you don't need to take boat damage unless you mess up/claws, the main reward for killing CK is the third celestial altar for activating moonstorms 

1 hour ago, Gotheran said:

the shield is not worth the effort as its identical to the hat besides being a weapon

the point of it's existence was being a weapon for daily fights with 50 damage per hit for reaching hp breakpoints for bees, spiders, hounds etc. that can be easily repaired using the stuff that spiders, hounds etc. drop but now it's useless because you'd use brightshade sword for that instead, with the materials for repair kits being obtained almost automatically                    

[chirsg]

I don't think the bosses should be adjusted to be more fair or easy at this rate. A buzzword that is used is "Power creep" in the character skill trees and I'm not entirely sure how accurate that is. I see the skill trees bringing certain combat elements up to Wolfgang's level. A few characters are beginning to deal with certain threats almost as seamlessly as Wolfgang does and if a certain character does not, even as a result of the skill tree, that's fine. Not every character needs to be a combat behemoth. 

A lot of the bosses are a bit unfair, but with how some of the character skill trees are coming to pass, the unfairness is being shored up with additional options.

When I saw a day 3 Willow vs Bee Queen fight during the beta of her skill tree, the fight literally resembled a conventional boss fight in other boss rushing games. My opinion is that this is not a bad thing. You still need game knowledge to be able to attempt this and practice as well. If you booted up a world and went "Monkey see, monkey do," You wouldn't be able to defeat the boss.

 

The game is progressing in an interesting way for me, but if I had to say anything about future bosses, I think we've come to a point now that "Stun mechanics" should be done away with against some bosses that are post rift. A good amount of characters are too strong to be left with an opportunity like that. 

[Gotheran]

9 hours ago, grm9 said:

 i've said this thrice and you're repeating the same thing and everything else you said is unrelated

You are the one repeating yourself, citing specific strategies on dealing with something. You aren't contributing to the conversation of why the bosses need reworks, and I have pointed out multiple times that Queen Bee needs it worst due to her just being minion spam, for a solo player its just stunlock city. I am not familiar with most of the games bosses as I mostly have played solo and DST has awful performance.

[grm9]

2 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

Queen Bee needs it worst due to her just being minion spam, for a solo player its just stunlock city

that's why i've said four times that she doesn't need one because you can use all of the strats that i've mentioned when playing solo

3 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

I am not familiar with most of the games bosses as I mostly have played solo and DST has awful performance

i'm playing on a 2012 (RAM is a bit newer but still) PC and i've done all bosses solo so that's hardly an excuse, although it doesn't matter why you don't know anything about them, just don't talk about them needing or not needing a rework if you don't know anything about them regardless of why you don't know     

4 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

You aren't contributing to the conversation of why the bosses need reworks

i'm saying why BQ doesn't need a rework, she's fine as it is because there are many strats and you need to choose which one is most optimal depending on your situation and the fight is fun to execute in case of most of the strats

[Gotheran]

Your logic is that of looking at speedrunners and saying if thats possible the game should be designed that way, its not constructive. Enough.

[grm9]

15 minutes ago, Gotheran said:

Your logic is that of looking at speedrunners and saying if thats possible the game should be designed that way

there's a ton of people that aren't speedrunners and are able to kill BQ solo so that's pointless 

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, grm9 said:

there's a ton of people that aren't speedrunners and are able to kill BQ solo so that's pointless 

It is either bunnymen, character exclusive strategy, the really slow and expensive panflute method, or cheese.

[grm9]

13 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

It is either bunnymen, character exclusive strategy, the really slow and expensive panflute method, or cheese

and?

[Jakepeng99]

51 minutes ago, grm9 said:

and?

The only legit methods available to all characters are bunnymen (not for wortox or webber, though webber uses spiders) and the panflutes. Bunnymen method is the only one that doesn't make your sainity drain irl.

[grm9]

8 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

The only legit methods available to all characters are bunnymen (not for wortox or webber, though webber uses spiders) and the panflutes. Bunnymen method is the only one that doesn't make your sainity drain irl

what's the issue with using pan flutes? The only characters that don't have their own methods are wilson, wolfgang, woodie, wes, warly, wortox and wanda and three out of them are much better at using the pan flute strat than everyone else and two of them are characters that aren't supposed to be good 

[Jakepeng99]

7 minutes ago, grm9 said:

what's the issue with using pan flutes? The only characters that don't have their own methods are wilson, wolfgang, woodie, wes, warly, wortox and wanda and three out of them are much better at using the pan flute strat than everyone else and two of them are characters that aren't supposed to be good 

You forgot Walter, and Wx. The panflute method is really slow and repetitive.

[MadMatt]

23 minutes ago, grm9 said:

woodie

Actually Woodie has a pretty cheap and effective method using the Weremoose, although it's a bit sketchy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PacP9ahKn4

You can do it without dying unreliably, but if you plan ahead with a single life giving amulet and for the second transformation avoid weremeter draining at higher levels, you can kill BQ with a relatively small amount of natural resources, two moose idols, enough healing to go from 20 to 150 once, and one life giving amulet/touchstone use consistently and in only a little over a day of combat.

Dying and reviving isn't sexy but I think this BQ method for Woodie is far preferable to the absolute slog that is panflute spam or bunnymen army.

 

[grm9]

24 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Walter

iirc you can still use beefalo/moleworm collision to trap BQ and hold F using gold ammo for a few minutes unless that got patched

24 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Wx

isn't the shock enemies after they attack you circuit good for BQ?

[Yuuko]

2 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

It is either bunnymen, character exclusive strategy, the really slow and expensive panflute method, or cheese.

or other perfectly valid strategies.

[lenship2]

16 hours ago, Ridley said:

I don't think you can say a boss like Bee Queen is intuitive.

imo having a giant that requires prep-time and strategizing seems pretty intuitive

[Trips]

7 hours ago, chirsg said:

I don't think the bosses should be adjusted to be more fair or easy at this rate. A buzzword that is used is "Power creep" in the character skill trees and I'm not entirely sure how accurate that is. I see the skill trees bringing certain combat elements up to Wolfgang's level. A few characters are beginning to deal with certain threats almost as seamlessly as Wolfgang does and if a certain character does not, even as a result of the skill tree, that's fine. Not every character needs to be a combat behemoth. 

A lot of the bosses are a bit unfair, but with how some of the character skill trees are coming to pass, the unfairness is being shored up with additional options.

When I saw a day 3 Willow vs Bee Queen fight during the beta of her skill tree, the fight literally resembled a conventional boss fight in other boss rushing games. My opinion is that this is not a bad thing. You still need game knowledge to be able to attempt this and practice as well. If you booted up a world and went "Monkey see, monkey do," You wouldn't be able to defeat the boss.

 

The game is progressing in an interesting way for me, but if I had to say anything about future bosses, I think we've come to a point now that "Stun mechanics" should be done away with against some bosses that are post rift. A good amount of characters are too strong to be left with an opportunity like that. 

I don't mind if Wolfgang is used as a baseline for combat-oriented power. Some raid bosses, notably Bee Queen, are actively unfun to fight against solo and I welcome having more ways of fighting bosses directly without cheese or investing lots of resources for structures for just one fight (why I'm not too keen to play Winona or Wurt)

Wanda's damage output when old is great, but comes at the caveat of being at death's door constantly and managing your watches to avoid damage. Maxwell almost has a third of the health of Wolfgang and managing his sanity while casting spells is a valid concern - newer players won't have a rigorous built-in muscle memory for fighting Nightmare Creatures yet, and his tiny health pool makes each hit all that more punishing.. but his damage potential too can eclipse Wolfgang in the right circumstances.