Crab King is amazing. Thank you Klei!

[arubaro]

38 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

They shouldn't remove claws but instead nerf them to oblivion. They are so overtuned, they are a pain for a character without damage buffs.

Thr problem with claws is that they invalidates sailing to fight him...makes no sense to force players to stay still in a boat holding F... is such awful design compared to how much fun is to sail to defeat him

[Kubicska]

My goodness people, we managed to hit 200 responses on a thread of someone actually liking Crabking’s bossfight and half the forums (including me) thinking it’s sarcasm 

Also using Ice Staves technically counts as cheese since you are canceling one of the bosses main attacks unlike using Fire Staves during the Crystal Deerclops fight, but it’s the method that feels the least cheesiest.

Lets not even talk about rowing away to dodge the geyser attack since I’m pretty sure that’s darn near impossible to do while doing damage to the boss at the same time (please do not quote me about this, thanks)

[arubaro]

46 minutes ago, Kubicska said:

Also using Ice Staves technically counts as cheese

Eeem... what?

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, Kubicska said:

Lets not even talk about rowing away to dodge the geyser attack since I’m pretty sure that’s darn near impossible to do while doing damage to the boss at the same time (please do not quote me about this, thanks)

I will because it is false. You have plenty of time to hit him. Malbatross bill makes it easier. Only problem is claws.

[Yuuko]

8 hours ago, Reecitz said:

Speaking of which, do you think an update to caves in general will be expected this year? After all, I feel like they have plans for them if they were deemed worthy of having rift content there.

I'm personally more of a fan of the aesthetics of the shadow rift content, so hopefully more will be added to be at least of equal impact as the lunar side of things. 

Is there anything about the shadow rift content you actually like (ignoring planar-related aspects since I know you hate that), or do you simply find it more tolerable than the lunar side?

I've wanted a scythe tool in the game to speed up harvesting for a long time.  When they added the scythe skin for the pickaxe I really loved it, because it was a scythe, but also it sucked because it was just a skin and a pickaxe is a very different tool from a scythe lol.  The scythe's harvest ability is really satisfying to use.  Now I plant my grass, twigs, etc in a certain formation so I can harvest it all with swipes of the scythe for easy collection.

The combat properties of the scythe is just something on top that I didn't expect, but also really love.  DST has always had a bit of a split in combat where you can either dodge things, or tank them.  After a point it makes sense to tank through a lot of fights because its just faster not spending time dodging, and you have food falling out your ears anyway.  Also we have had a hard cap on damage for a long time with such a simple weapon as the Dark Sword.  Its really cool to add something that lets you get more damage while still kiting, rewarding some fleet footwork.

The aesthetic is a great fit too - for the classic scythe and robe style.  I don't like how both the BS and Void head piece completely obfuscates the character.  When rifts turn on I do feel I lose a sense of who I play since now I'm always using the same weapons and armor AND can't really see who I am anymore...

As for the rift mechanics and content - I much prefer the shadow rifts.  The shadow rifts are more interactive, burning away miasma and fighting the little shadow things.  Getting a few hits, dodging red bombs, and eventually getting the spider red bomb is a cool.  None of it is too tough to deal with, but it keeps you moving.  The Shadow Trio will spawn where you are, so you can fight them in a certain area if you want.  The fight with them is very unique with their weaving attacks.  I like that their health doesn't reset when one dies the way the shadow chess pieces do, so its not lost damage to get a few hits here or there on any target.  While the cave ins bring big boulders we got the pillars to save our structures, and aside from this nothing is being shoved in our faces so I don't feel like I have to deal with them every moment.  If I don't need tatters I just walk away from the shadow trio and do whatever I'm doing.  Acid rain does suck for turning off wetness though.

Meanwhile for the surface rifts the actual rift spawn is not very interactive.  You just mine the glass and go.  The things that spawn in there, you just walk away from them, and that's it.  I don't feel like I'm ever really doing anything at the rift, its just another rock to mine.  The zombie bosses are fun for the first time or two, but they get really repetitive after that.  They're all extremely simple, you just do the thing, get the stun, deal damage and repeat.  Sucks too because they are seasonally locked and you have to fight all of them before you can start getting spark arcs.  Once I was fighting Bearger to finish off the 3, and the rift closed mid-fight.  Had to wait a whole year to do it again...  That was really dumb.  BS plants are just a constant wave of annoying.  Like the zombosses their fight was alright at first, but its just sooooo repetitive now.  Every time I get back to base, its like I can't even put my keys down and get a drink, I gotta go clear the BS plants first.  Same thing if I go back to Pearl's island for something - oh yeah, gotta clear BS plants...  like come on.  Surface rifts are like the roommate that always leaves you to do the dishes.

And they are so messy!!!  Lunar rain leaves glass shards everywhere, rifts uproot everything so you come through and see a mess of rocks, logs, uprooted mushrooms and cactus (rip) and other plants all scattered about.  BS plants are moving things on the ground around, and when I kill them their drops are all up in my plants so I have to harvest them to clear the BS drops.  Ooh I have soooo many BS plant materials too.  Stacks of them just piling up.  Worse then hounds teeth.  AND you get plant meats with them, so I have stacks of that just rotting away on the ground, flooding the ice chest, salt box, everywhere.

Yeah, even putting planar aside the cave rifts are much better than the surface rifts.  The zombosses are especially disappointing b/c if the game is going to be about fights like THAT now... these are way too similar and uninteresting.  We have so much more variety in other bosses, in what to bring and how to fight - dfly, bqueen, shadow pieces, AG, AFW, CK, CC, MGoose, all very different fights that can be approached in different ways.  The only thing I need to remember differently for zombosses is to bring a fire staff for deerclops, and there isn't much more to it.

[grm9]

9 minutes ago, Yuuko said:

MGoose

?

[Yuuko]

23 hours ago, grm9 said:

?

Is there more to that question mark? lol  Do you mean to ask "how is moose goose a unique fight that can be approached different in different ways?"

She has the honk disarm attack, and mosslings which differentiate her fight from others, and lead to different ways you can approach her fight.  Especially if you get the set piece with a few mgoose in close proximity, the flood of mosslings can be a problem.  Defeating the mgoose early to pop the eggs one by one, or setting up bait traps to kill them before fighting the mgoose are good options.  Also when she honks you can swap weapons to have something else flung from your hand instead, then switch back to your weapon to get another hit in.  OR you can bring a beef and just not have a hand slot equip so its free attack time.

Her aggro is also erratic.  While it can be frustrating it is also it's own little nuance to stay close to the pond, which might also have frogs and trees near it, to fight around.

Mgoose is a simple boss, but still more then "wear planar gear, dodge this, now stun for 5 seconds, repeat."

Edited February 25 by Yuuko

[Reecitz]

46 minutes ago, Yuuko said:

I've wanted a scythe tool in the game to speed up harvesting for a long time.  When they added the scythe skin for the pickaxe I really loved it, because it was a scythe, but also it sucked because it was just a skin and a pickaxe is a very different tool from a scythe lol.  The scythe's harvest ability is really satisfying to use.  Now I plant my grass, twigs, etc in a certain formation so I can harvest it all with swipes of the scythe for easy collection.

The combat properties of the scythe is just something on top that I didn't expect, but also really love.  DST has always had a bit of a split in combat where you can either dodge things, or tank them.  After a point it makes sense to tank through a lot of fights because its just faster not spending time dodging, and you have food falling out your ears anyway.  Also we have had a hard cap on damage for a long time with such a simple weapon as the Dark Sword.  Its really cool to add something that lets you get more damage while still kiting, rewarding some fleet footwork.

The aesthetic is a great fit too - for the classic scythe and robe style.  I don't like how both the BS and Void head piece completely obfuscates the character.  When rifts turn on I do feel I lose a sense of who I play since now I'm always using the same weapons and armor AND can't really see who I am anymore...

As for the rift mechanics and content - I much prefer the shadow rifts.  The shadow rifts are more interactive, burning away miasma and fighting the little shadow things.  Getting a few hits, dodging red bombs, and eventually getting the spider red bomb is a cool.  None of it is too tough to deal with, but it keeps you moving.  The Shadow Trio will spawn where you are, so you can fight them in a certain area if you want.  The fight with them is very unique with their weaving attacks.  I like that their health doesn't reset when one dies the way the shadow chess pieces do, so its not lost damage to get a few hits here or there on any target.  While the cave ins bring big boulders we got the pillars to save our structures, and aside from this nothing is being shoved in our faces so I don't feel like I have to deal with them every moment.  If I don't need tatters I just walk away from the shadow trio and do whatever I'm doing.  Acid rain does suck for turning off wetness though.

Meanwhile for the surface rifts the actual rift spawn is not very interactive.  You just mine the glass and go.  The things that spawn in there, you just walk away from them, and that's it.  I don't feel like I'm ever really doing anything at the rift, its just another rock to mine.  The zombie bosses are fun for the first time or two, but they get really repetitive after that.  They're all extremely simple, you just do the thing, get the stun, deal damage and repeat.  Sucks too because they are seasonally locked and you have to fight all of them before you can start getting spark arcs.  Once I was fighting Bearger to finish off the 3, and the rift closed mid-fight.  Had to wait a whole year to do it again...  That was really dumb.  BS plants are just a constant wave of annoying.  Like the zombosses their fight was alright at first, but its just sooooo repetitive now.  Every time I get back to base, its like I can't even put my keys down and get a drink, I gotta go clear the BS plants first.  Same thing if I go back to Pearl's island for something - oh yeah, gotta clear BS plants...  like come on.  Surface rifts are like the roommate that always leaves you to do the dishes.

And they are so messy!!!  Lunar rain leaves glass shards everywhere, rifts uproot everything so you come through and see a mess of rocks, logs, uprooted mushrooms and cactus (rip) and other plants all scattered about.  BS plants are moving things on the ground around, and when I kill them their drops are all up in my plants so I have to harvest them to clear the BS drops.  Ooh I have soooo many BS plant materials too.  Stacks of them just piling up.  Worse then hounds teeth.  AND you get plant meats with them, so I have stacks of that just rotting away on the ground, flooding the ice chest, salt box, everywhere.

Yeah, even putting planar aside the cave rifts are much better than the surface rifts.  The zombosses are especially disappointing b/c if the game is going to be about fights like THAT now... these are way too similar and uninteresting.  We have so much more variety in other bosses, in what to bring and how to fight - dfly, bqueen, shadow pieces, AG, AFW, CK, CC, MGoose, all very different fights that can be approached in different ways.  The only thing I need to remember differently for zombosses is to bring a fire staff for deerclops, and there isn't much more to it.

I will say, it sucks that the void hood is required in order to even use the shadow reaper's combat gimmick; I would much rather prefer it being base-kit while the hood improved it, like how the brightshade gear is handled. 

[Guille6785]

5 hours ago, Kubicska said:

Also using Ice Staves technically counts as cheese since you are canceling one of the bosses main attacks

Kiting is cheese because you are completely negating the damage dealt by the boss which is a central mechanic

[Jakepeng99]

12 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

Kiting is cheese because you are completely negating the damage dealt by the boss which is a central mechanic

Pigmen, merms and many other mobs kite, so kiting mobs and bosses is 100% intended.

[grm9]

21 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Pigmen, merms and many other mobs kite, so kiting mobs and bosses is 100% intended

So you're supposed to run away and stay still for a few seconds after hitting an enemy once, hitting them more times before running away is cheese, or perhaps that's even more cheese because of creatures doing it, maybe the devs didn't intend for the players to be able to do the same thing creatures do, similarly to how you can't spawn bone cages

Edited February 25 by grm9

[hoxi]

I don't think freezing him is cheese, but that being one of the most viable methods simply because the claws don't let you move around and take forever to die, and the geysers being too much to deal with if hit by too many of them, just doesn't feel good.

 

I do have to say though, regarding the healing mechanic? There's improvements that can be done with very simple code changes to make it less unintuitive, while keeping it the same. I've been doing more things related to mods, and realized I missed the fact that stategraph mod post inits are a thing, and they allow you to do whatever you want with them, this led me to try to change his mechanics a bit more properly.

So what I did was:

• Extend time window to interrupt healing right before Crab King heals.
• Number of hits to interrupt can count as soon as the healing animations start. Interruption can still only happen during the time window. This counter is set to 0 on a heal or interruption, as usual.
• Clamp amount of required hits to interrupt to 2. Orange gems still boost healing as usual otherwise.

After testing, these changes alone would massively improve on the healing mechanic and make it less unintuitive. Your hits will contribute to interrupt even if you start hitting for what now the game tells you "that's too early", and you have time until just before the heal applies to land the amount of required hits to interrupt it.

Clamping the amount of required hits to 2 is done so that orange gems are a valid option and don't make it impossible to interrupt (the healing per rock is massive). That said, this could be skipped, since people might just resort to orange gems like they currently do with purple gems. So orange gems could be left as a "Crab King gets no other bonuses as long as you bring more things to land hits as he heals, be it extra players, bees, bunnymen, weather pains, etc", but at least making the base 2 hits required from Pearl's Pearl not a pain already does a lot for the fight.

 

Here's a kind of representation about this with values:

Spoiler

FIRST HEAL
Vanilla
Interruption enabling starts at: 	0.53333333333333	Then gets disabled at: 	0.9	Heal occurs at: 	1.0333333333333
Modded/Suggestion
Interruption enabling starts at: 	0.53333333333333	Then gets disabled at: 	1.0	Heal occurs at: 	1.0333333333333

HEAL LOOP
Vanilla
Interruption enabling starts at: 	0.13333333333333	Then gets disabled at: 	0.66666666666667	Heal occurs at: 	0.96666666666667
Modded/Suggestion
Interruption enabling starts at: 	0.13333333333333	Then gets disabled at: 	0.93333333333333	Heal occurs at: 	0.96666666666667

Vanilla
Hit count for interruption only counts during time window.
Modded/Suggestion
Hit count for interruption counts as soon as the healing animations start, but interruption is still restricted to time window.

And if these values look weird, here's why:

local FRAMES = 1/30

print("FIRST HEAL")
print("Vanilla")
print("Interruption enabling starts at: ", 16*FRAMES, "Then gets disabled at: ", 27*FRAMES, "Heal occurs at: ", 31*FRAMES)
print("Modded/Suggestion")
print("Interruption enabling starts at: ", 16*FRAMES, "Then gets disabled at: ", 30*FRAMES, "Heal occurs at: ", 31*FRAMES)
print()

print("HEAL LOOP")
print("Vanilla")
print("Interruption enabling starts at: ", 4*FRAMES, "Then gets disabled at: ", 20*FRAMES, "Heal occurs at: ", 29*FRAMES)
print("Modded/Suggestion")
print("Interruption enabling starts at: ", 4*FRAMES, "Then gets disabled at: ", 28*FRAMES, "Heal occurs at: ", 29*FRAMES)
print()

print("Vanilla")
print("Hit count for interruption only counts during time window.")
print("Modded/Suggestion")
print("Hit count for interruption counts as soon as the healing animations start, but interruption is still restricted to time window.")

As well as an example of one of these in code (vanilla, heal loop):

        timeline=
        {
            TimeEvent(4*FRAMES, function(inst)
                inst.sg:RemoveStateTag("nointerrupt")
             end),
            TimeEvent(12*FRAMES, function(inst)
                if inst.sg.statemem.rightarm then
                    inst.SoundEmitter:PlaySound("hookline_2/creatures/boss/crabking/repair")
                    end
             end),
             TimeEvent(16*FRAMES, function(inst)
                if not inst.sg.statemem.rightarm then
                    inst.SoundEmitter:PlaySound("hookline_2/creatures/boss/crabking/repair")
                    end
             end),
            TimeEvent(20*FRAMES, function(inst) inst.sg:AddStateTag("nointerrupt")  end), --isn't it weird how this happens way before the heal?
            TimeEvent(29*FRAMES, function(inst)
                inst.fixhits = 0
                heal(inst)
            end),
        }

My point is, even from a technical to gameplay standpoint (and more specifically, player feel), there's a lot of room for improvement with very little changes. Allowing hits from the start of the animations, and not making the time windows end too early, would do a lot for that aspect of the fight, right now it feels too clunky and out of the player's control, unless they know the very specific timings.

I also did a test with 4 orange gems, 2 green gems and 2 purple gems, and it was pretty decent. This was with some of the changes I mentioned here. Claws were a bit of a pain, but didn't instantly wreck my boat, only when I couldn't kill them right away, and had to freeze Crab King to deal with 4 of them at once. I might try to get a video of some test runs tomorrow or so.

[Jakepeng99]

Freezing him his not cheese but it feels like a dirty way to kill the boss, and it feels even dirtier that this is the most practical way to kill it since you ignore all the boating mechanics essentially.

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, grm9 said:

So you're supposed to run away and stay still for a few seconds after hitting an enemy once, hitting them more times before running away is cheese, or perhaps that's even more cheese because of creatures doing it, maybe the devs didn't intend for the players to be able to do the same thing creatures do, similarly to how you can't spawn bone cages

Also this is nonsense.

[Antynomity]

On 2/23/2024 at 2:42 PM, Cruvimaster said:

 

Ridiculously easy fight ONCE YOU LEARN.

As for the drops, there are parallels with Shadow Pieces and the drops there are also bad, as what matters is the item for the final boss. Klei followed this logic.

I would also like the drops to improve, but that wasn't a topic I covered in the thread.

I didn't quite understand what you meant and my question is whether you are attacking the person of the arguer for not being able to attack the arguments themselves.

But that doesn't matter to me.

For me, mechanics like Crab King, Ancient Fuelweaver and the new plantation systems only show Klei's creative ability.

Oh I'm not attacking anyone, if you feel attacked that's Good Game for you Sir!

[Spep]

UM crab king my beloved

[arubaro]

4 hours ago, Spep said:

UM crab king my beloved

compromising mod

The idea makes him look way funnier but feels like is way too nerfed 

Edited February 27 by arubaro