The new Crab King fight is not very interactive

[Arcwell]

I wanna preface this by saying I realize the Crab King fight is probably unfinished. I also want to say that I DO NOT think reverting to old CK is a good idea. All of that said, in its current state, I do not think Crab King is a good fight.

For reference, this is the strategy I'm currently using which I've found the most success with (aside from cheese, which is another story):

It boils down to:

1. Hold F while ignoring cannons and claws
2. Row a bit when waves come
3. Click panflute to ignore crabs
4. Hold F
5. Wait for ice
6. Repeat

It just doesn't feel particularly fun. It feels like I'm doing a DPS rotation against a practice dummy rather than fighting a boss.

What should be done about this? Honestly? I have no clue. I would just like the end result to be something that feels like I'm responding to the boss and the boss is responding to me in turn.

[Waywarbler]

Perhaps the little crab fellas should wake up when their king takes damage?

...in fact, they seem to sleep forever, which is probably not intentional.

[GreenBowers]

I feel like he should have a more situational bee queen shout to wake up his dudes.

Like, he gets hit 10 times in the healing phase, yells out for his guard to wake the hell up. I dunno. Being able to fully turn off that entire phase seems too much, but you should still be rewarded being able to get a lot of hits in on a panflute use.

Maybe 1-2 of the little crablings could jump onto your boat.

[grm9]

2 minutes ago, GreenBowers said:

I feel like he should have a more situational bee queen shout to wake up his dudes

that's not going to make the fight better, you'll just tank or freeze them because you won't have enough time to deal damage to him before ice breaks if you try to kill them all at least with purples

[GreenBowers]

Maybe like, bring the geyser attack back in some degree, just to make you have to move the ship out of the way?

At least then youre reacting to something the boss is doing. It might be fine if its telegraphed long enough

Without a need to move the boat, the claws are mostly a non, issue, but if you have to move to the edge of the boat to oar away from an incoming aoe, then theres an interaction there at least.

[Faintly Macabre]

The claws should grab the boat if they're left alone too long while in range. Reset a timer every time they swing at something so that instead of killing them you can choose instead to just step in and out of their range to dodge an attack every so often.

[arubaro]

They should add geysers so we are forced to row and feels dumb that the cannons dont make leaks in the boat

[GreenBowers]

I feel like they wanted to get away from just sinking the players boat, and more so just targeting the player. I wouldn't be opposed to an occassional, not spammed geyser attack so you have to row around the arena, which might force you to get into range with other cannons

[Gytre]

1 hour ago, arubaro said:

feels dumb that the cannons dont make leaks in the boat

if you give crab king red gems then they will make leaks

[Arcwell]

This is kinda why I said I have no clue what the correct way to fix the fight is.
Every solution that's been presented has its own drawbacks that could serve to make the fight even worse.

To clarify:

• I do not think panflute is the problem, I think it's a solution to an even worse problem which would be forced tanking during the ice phase. With the way that phase is structured, you are required to stop CK's healing to make any progress, which you can't do if you're spending valuable time attacking the crabs instead.
• I do not think adding back CK's old boat-restricting moves like claw grip or geysers would go well with the community given how we got here in the first place (I could be wrong on this)

[Wormboi]

Looking at the video, it seems like the ice platform phase happens way too often, is that true?

[Copyafriend]

maybe some crab claws could grab the boat and pull you away from the crab king.

forcing you to stop fighting him to deal with the claws.

 

i also think it could be interesting if the cannonballs didnt juat cause damage, but also did something, like perhaps hiting your boat rocks it, stunning you (or a longer stun on hit), while its not enough to stop you completely it should be enough to annoy you into killing the cannons instead of ignoring them

 

[Arcwell]

2 minutes ago, Wormboi said:

Looking at the video, it seems like the ice platform phase happens way too often, is that true?

It happens every time CK takes a certain amount of damage (I think it's 1.2k?) while in its default phase. This damage threshold is determined from where CK's health was at the end(?) of ice phase.

So for example: if you let CK heal to full during every ice phase (which you obviously shouldn't), the fight will never end because he will always start ice phase at the same health threshold.

3 minutes ago, Copyafriend said:

i also think it could be interesting if the cannonballs didnt juat cause damage, but also did something, like perhaps hiting your boat rocks it, stunning you (or a longer stun on hit), while its not enough to stop you completely it should be enough to annoy you into killing the cannons instead of ignoring them

Could be interesting if the cannons were more reasonable to dodge (i.e. if they had indicators where they're going to fire like Catuna suggested here). Currently, it feels like complete RNG if you can dodge the cannons with your boat or not (since it takes forever to get them moving and the cannons have a lot of spread). Dodging cannons as the player is easier, but currently it doesn't seem very incentivized.

[Cruvimaster]

Theoretically, it should have a difficulty equivalent to Shadow Pieces. In practice, it's quite easy. But I believe that's what the vast majority of players want (easy things).

I even thought I would have some difficulty the first few times I faced the new CK, but to my surprise it was quite easy. The flute completely neutralizes the minions and, unlike the ice staff, one or two uses and everything is under control.

 

[Arcwell]

Just now, Cruvimaster said:

Theoretically, it should have a difficulty equivalent to Shadow Pieces. In practice, it's quite easy. But I believe that's what the vast majority of players want (easy things).

I agree!

But my problem isn't that the fight is too easy (because I agree with the sentiment that old CK was too hard, however right or wrong that may be), it's that my gameplay does not feel meaningful in the fight.

To compare it to 2 other bosses of similar difficulty:

• Ancient Guardian: Has a straightforward strategy that gives the player plenty of windows for attack. Requires kiting. Need to watch out for shadow tentacles during vulnerability windows.
• Shadow Pieces (assuming T3 rook): Basic hit-and-kite strategy. Requires significant speedboost to work (or an alternative strategy). 

By comparison, Crab King has basically no kiting at all, at least with the strategy that seems the most reasonable atm. It is just a lot of holding F. That is easy, and to some extent that is good, but it is not fun. Frankly I had this same issue with pre-patch CK with the ice staff / weather pain strategy, I legitimately thought bee cheese was more fun because that at least involved kiting geysers.

[Cruvimaster]

Even the appearance of Rockjaw is no longer a problem with the new CK. Press F and be happy.

But before 99% of players used bees. Now at least they have the incentive to make this fight.

[GreenBowers]

I do not know how exactly to fix it, but I am firm in my belief that the way to go about it is somehow making the player more inclined to moving their boat around the arena. Reacting to something the boss is doing and moving the boat to dodge it is at least kind of fun.

Thats just why I suggest a new attack that the crab king could do. I know people don't like geysers, but i honestly think implimenting an attack involving them could help. It would need to be heavily telegraphed, not during the healing phase, and not instant, so a player has time to move their boat out of the way. We already have the animations and code for a geyser attack, so it wouldn't be a giant amount of work to impliment.

Requiring to row out of the way also opens up the player to potentially get hit by the Crab Claws, because they'd be moving to the edge of the boat to row.

Maybe its a bad idea, people could talk with me and offer an opposing view and I would listen, but I really do think something like this would help, and I'm coming from a place of wanting this boss to be both fun, and interactive.

[Fufuji]

1 hour ago, Arcwell said:

I think it's 1.2k?

2000

Destorying a cannon instantly increase the damage count by 2000.

This means if you crush onto a cannon with a speed of 2 or more, the cannon dies and CK will go into another Ice Platform stage.