My "first" attempt against Dragonfly!

[AliceShiki]

14 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

this is what we meant, Dragonfly for example has strong evidence that it was primarily designed for 2 (or max 3) players, and also some platforms don't even allow you to have more than 4 players in a game

Thanks for clarifying!

On another note, I decided to look up more videos of Enraged Dragonfly fights to use as reference, and I actually ended up finding one of your videos where you fought it and... Whoa! That one does serve as great reference! I think I'll try using that!

Like, I dunno if I'm misremembering things and actually had seen your video before and misremembered the hit count, or if it was a different video I couldn't find again, but I remembered seeing a video where the person used 2 hits before getting away from Enranged Dfly, while you used 3, and your timing seems much easier to replicate than if I was using 2 hits only.

Though I think you aren't much using a rhythm and more like reacting to her hand movement when doing the dodge, which is not something I'm confident on doing myself (it's honestly an amazing feat in itself to be able to react to it that fast), but I think I can try getting a rhythm for it myself. I probably won't be perfect with it, but I'll probably get better results than doing what I'm doing now.

So uhn... Thanks for doing that video 2 years ago! It's a great reference for me to use! It's still definitely going to be pretty tough, but I think it will help me get Enraged Dfly done right!

15 minutes ago, finn from human said:

We're talking about a feature that's remained almost entirely unchanged since like, 2016. She was absolutely designed in a time where all bosses assumed a whole server of 6 players (a very very common sight back then) would all gather up and do this challenge together. Heck, the current state of the Bee Queen (world's tankiest boss ever) is purely because of Glermz saying back in the day that she was too easy with a server full of players all fighting her at once. Raid bosses from ANR times were absolutely designed as a thing the whole server does together, that's why it used to be seen as impressive (rather than the standard) to be able to take them down solo.

14 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

the metric of 6 players or somewhere in that ballpark comes from a new reign klei streams where they were showing off bee queen (or was it toadstool?) and they mentioned thats the sort of player count that they designed raid bosses with back in the day

dragonfly was designed as a raid boss and fits in this category as well - the switch is a new element and does not retroactively mean that bosses were not designed this way

I wasn't around back in the day, since even though I've owned DST for many many years now, I only have like... 29h of total playtime or something, so I certainly can't comment on what Klei did or said back in the day. So I'll just take your words at face value here.

If there is official word from staff members that say that Dfly/BQ is designed around 6 players, then I'll believe it since I have no reason to believe that they're lying.

I can also more easily believe that (Misery) Toadstool was designed around 6 players simply because of its absurdly high health pool.

That said, Dfly in particular really doesn't seem to be designed around 6 players from what my solo experience against it so far has been like, so uhn... I dunno? It just feels like 2-4 players would be perfect for it? At least that's how it feels to me.

So uhn... Yeah, those are my personal thoughts on it at least. If Klei designed it around 6 players, then it was designed for 6 players and that is that. Right now it feels like a great boss for 2-4 players to me though... Which feels about right from a game design perspective to me, since I think it's very safe to assume that Klei designs those bosses both for pubs and for people playing with friends, and 6 friends playing together is a fairly unrealistic number.

[Mike23Ua]

6 is the total number of players that can be in a game (on Xbox and PlayStation Consoles) 

The Nintendo Switch is slightly less powerful than the PS4 and Xbox One- therefore it had to have an even lower maximum player limit of 4.

That said, while I’m glad that you find current dragonfly enjoyable- I however do not… I think it’s boring and needs a lot more Depth.

And the best way to compare that is Ancient Guardian Rework & Crab King Rework..

I drew some concepts of an improved Dragonfly fight if you want to see them click the little Spoiler icon- 

Spoiler

The plan was to copy how bosses work in most RogueLites/Likes.. instead of as you said at the beginning of your post here: It just being a 27,500 hp Beefalo fight.

Why am I posting this here? Well with Ancient Guardian and now also the crab king getting full reworks, it’s safe to assume that Klei is looking into ways they can improve and make the old baddies more exciting and engaging to players.

[Guille6785]

53 minutes ago, finn from human said:

Heck, the current state of the Bee Queen (world's tankiest boss ever) is purely because of Glermz (the main streamer Klei kept an eye on and would actively publicly interact with back then) saying back in the day that she was too easy with a server full of players all fighting her at once. 

proof:

[AliceShiki]

10 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

The plan was to copy how bosses work in most RogueLites/Likes.. instead of as you said at the beginning of your post here: It just being a 27,500 hp Beefalo fight.

Why am I posting this here? Well with Ancient Guardian and now also the crab king getting full reworks, it’s safe to assume that Klei is looking into ways they can improve and make the old baddies more exciting and engaging to players.

Oh, I wouldn't be against a rework of the "Beefalo phase" of the Dragonfly, since it is kinda boring. I essentially use it as a lull time to recover HP and the like. It really is the most boring part of the fight.

My point of it not needing a rework IMO was about the Larvae/Enraged phases being fun to me, as those seem hard and seem to have enough depth as is.

That said, I do kinda like having a lull phase in the fight, as a complicated normal phase would be kinda troublesome during Night (and the fight is long enough that reaching night on a solo fight is quite likely, I'd say), but... Hey, that could be part of the fun too. I definitely wouldn't be against a better normal phase, because Beefalo phase is indeed quite boring.

[Primalflower]

7 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

proof:

its the sort of thing thats going to sound inherently fantastical but i can assure you this is not a delusion - this is just,, how it happened back in the day

[Guille6785]

1 hour ago, finn from human said:

We're talking about a feature that's remained almost entirely unchanged since like, 2016. She was absolutely designed in a time where all bosses assumed a whole server of 6 players (a very very common sight back then) would all gather up and do this challenge together.

wait how was dragonfly designed around players ganging up to kill dragonfly if dragonfly didn't exist before it was designed???

[Primalflower]

the dude was personally called by one of the klei devs after the tencent sale

[Guille6785]

44 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

Thanks for clarifying!

On another note, I decided to look up more videos of Enraged Dragonfly fights to use as reference, and I actually ended up finding one of your videos where you fought it and... Whoa! That one does serve as great reference! I think I'll try using that!

FYI this was before it was indirectly nerfed, it's easier now because she flinches from almost every hit which can be used to set up dodges that have much more leeway

[AliceShiki]

13 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

FYI this was before it was indirectly nerfed, it's easier now because she flinches from almost every hit which can be used to set up dodges that have much more leeway

Oh, good to know! Thanks!

I guess the idea is to make her flinch right before the attack so as to have more time to run away?

I'll try keeping that in mind!

[AliceShiki]

I did it!!!! \(^^)/

I wish I knew how to do the in-game emote to celebrate, but I didn't know how to, so I just quit the game after killing it.

Also, I reached day 20 enough times in these attempts that I actually unlocked a new Insight perk, which is why I started the video getting a new Insight perk.

Anyways, before this one I almost won an attempt, but I ran out of Pieroggis, and my shields were close to breaking... It made me realize if I had one more Log Suit (instead of a torch) and some Surf'n'turfs instead of Pieroggis, I could have won on that attempt, which was a bit frustrating, but... Hey, it worked out!

Also, the Dragonfly really trolled me at the start of the fight because it took foreeeever to aggro on me. Generally speaking I just start with a parry, deal 7 blows, parry again, sing the extra durability song, hit a few times, parry, then start the cycle of 7 hits and parries, but because it took forever to aggro, I started with being hit, which was a bit annoying to lose Shield Durability for that, but... Well, my performance on the Enraged phases this time was my best ever, so it worked out anyways.

Another thing I learned during the attempts was to throw 4-5 logs in the Endothermic Fire Pit after the 2nd larvae phase starts... In yesterday's best attempt I ended up dying to darkness of all things because this Endothermic Fire Pit had too little fire, and I was also starting to freeze, so like... That was something I used as a learning opportunity. To counter the freezing though, I started positioning myself in-between the lava pool and the Endothermic Fire Pit, as that kept my temperature controlled.

What else...? I also learned to better position myself near the start of Enraged Phase to stay close to the road, because it's much easier to kite in while in the road, and in previous attempts I started Enraged Phase while seriously far from it, which was far from ideal.

Lastly, I guess I wanted to point out what I'd really like as an improvement to Dragonfly after killing it... Make it hardcoded that the last 2 larvaes can never be spawned from the same lava pool. That's it. As long as the last 2 larvaes aren't spawned from the same lava pool, you can usually manage to kill the last larvae in time... But if both are spawned from the same pool you're at the mercy of the 50/50 (unless you have friends or an Ice Staff) which just stinks.

Anyways, the fight was really fun, and I was really happy to clear it at last! \(^^)/

[GimplyGoose]

Congrats! I don't have much to add to this conversation except that I am happy for you and glad that you shared your progress. Hope you have fun fighting the boss with your friends!