Ideas for a better Crab King fight .

[Steamerclaw]

Notes : This post was written before any Crab King changement and took me several days to correct since I'm not a native english speaker . Hope this is still understandable .

Hello there !

After toying a bit with reworked Crab King , I wanted to share some ideas and other changes I would like to see on him .
I'm someone who enjoy the 2 versions of the fight (the "old", and the beta version) , so somes of the ideas will try to incorporate the old fight into the new one and try to keep what I consider "the best" from both , while still trying to make kinda sense .

 

Ice Ice Baby !

The new ice phase would be clearly better than the old one , allowing to mix naval combat with more classic , direct combat . The problems start to show when the glacier is melting .

• Breaking fxs doesn't really feel like the ice is crumbling under our feets . This can be fixed by having a "damaged state" for the turfs that are actually about to break with cracks (like the damaged docks) would do the trick visually , and even indicates the resultation of the ice boat (cracks forming a circle at the center) .
   
• I'm used to keep the same boat during the entire fight , but sometimes I need to place a new one , which is hard (to not say impossible sometimes) with the amount of loots lying on the water during the fight .
  Between the meats froms claws and crab soliders , the kelps and barnacles from the towers , fish meats from their missed shots , the birds themself - and especially the ice from the many broken ice turfs , you could think this fight takes place on the 7th continent .
  
  Removing the ice could clean a lot the area (since for the rest you might actually fight without killing any of the summoned mobs) and make things more pleasant to navigate . This could also be corrected by making items and small creatures not block building .
   
• The glacier melts from Crab King , to the "outer ring" , and making temporary ice boat for each turf - except for the closest from Crab King since they don't have the space to spawn . If you don't pay a lot of attention , you simply drown there .
  
  I could say to make the melting of the glacier going from the "outer ring" to Crab King , to maybe avoid this and also making sense since Frostjaw's island also melts from the outer to the center . But this also means a lot of free hits against Crab King , making the fight even quicker and extremely trivial (and sad) .
  This change should be made only if Crab King could also defend himself after he is done healing , which brings me to the other changes :

 

My jaws that bite , My claws that catch !

Kings would be known to delegate all of their work to their subjects , but it looks quite sad to see him just take hits and absolutely do nothing on his own at times .

• If we consider the last change from the "Ice section" applied , Crab King himself should try to attack players that are still in close while the glacier is melting (so after the healing sequence) . We could go for a simple bite , or something fancier (that I prefer) where he takes a rock and slam the player , capable of knocking down and pushing back into the melting turfs .This attack could also break the ice where the players were standing if players dodged it.
  
  If for some reason you haven't triggered the healing phase and dealt with all the towers or claws , Crab King should try to do his geyser attack from the live version . With this , the geyser boosting from the purple gem should also be restored , but putted on the red gem instead (to stay in line with it causing leaks like the cannon towers) .
   
• Claws are not really a threat . It will often happens that little to none of them launch an attack before Crab King unsummon them to freeze the place . Or what I do when there is a lots of green gem is gathering them all on one side of the boat like a Worm wave , (sometimes dealing with the towers while positioning the claws) and so they will be stuck between the boat and Crab King , uncapable of attacking.
  
  A change I would like is for claws to be able to grab boats again (like the live version) and drag them to the nearest cannon tower (with the numbers of pinch increasing the speed of the dragging) , and so making a "combo" where nearby cannons would have an easier time pebble-ing it and prevent boats from breaking them by ramming (if this work correctly) .
  This also brings several problems :
  
  - Should claws keep the new attack against the player ? And if so , how to differentiate which claw will attack the player or the boat ?
  - What happens if the nearest tower is on the opposite direction ?
  - Does the claws grabbing the boat stays here when Crab King unleash the waves ?
  
  I can try to answer these but how it should be will come down to personal preferences.
   

1. Yes they should too ! And to know in advance what attack a claw will do , I have two options that I think would be good :
   
   - The claws only grab the boat if they missed an attack against the player or if they couldn't attack after a certain amount of time , if there is no other pinch pinching nearby (so they don't overide each other) .
   This second part is to prevent the cases where all claws are standing doing nothing while being by the boat , they don't do damage but they should still be useful to the fight .
   
   - Half of the claws can only grab the boat while the other half can only attack the player . To make the difference : a new look for one of the type of claws , like the one attacking the player having a more hammer-shaped claw or things like this (A bit like certain species of crab !) .
   I have a preference for this one .
    
2. Well , that mean the claws will drags you to Crab King since he's in the way . This can be a weird technique to stay near him , but other claws will have an easier time to beat you up (not to forget the claws still hurt your boat) , and if the speed is high enough , it can also damage the boat when colliding with Crab King , so ... Balanced ? (probably not)
    
3. They should let free the boat then dispawn . 

 

Crabs T. D. and their crabsenals !

The litlle Crab Guards are a wonderful addition that have absolutly no synergie with the actual beta kit . With the change from above (claws grabbing) , this sould be relatively fixed but I've more to suggest .

• During the healing phase , close towers are shooting the boat left behind . You have 2 choices about this :
  
  - Let them pebble your boat and deal with it later if it's still standing or place a new one later .
  - Take care of the towers on yourside before triggering the healing phase (which is preferable if you use red/yellow gems) .
  
  But what happen to the towers left on the other side , unable to shoot you boat ? Well that the change I want to talk about .
  Crabs from towers out of range should dive then jump on the ice near the player , joinning their friends into the fight . The abandonned turrets then crumble .
  This can also work the other way around , by leaving crab guards alive after the ice break , they dive to create a tower for each of them .
  
  This can make an interresting choice where you can be easely swarmed if not dealing with the towers , or getting a rain of rock if leaving the guards alone . However with this change , yellow and purple gems effect should be tuned down .
  
  "Why not make them able to swim ?" Well first , path finding is always a bit of a problem , since they will probably stuck themself on the ice walls (which is why I specified they spawn near the player during the healing phase) . But most important this mean they're gonna run to your boat after the ice break .
  This can be fun when they're 1 or 2 , but I don't want to imagine having 8 guards on the boat because I used to much yellow gems . So the crab guards have to be tuned down if you go with this option .
   
• Make the towers less prone to miss a shot at close range . This may be a bit strange to lob a canonball at your feet when you fire from a high ground , but this make sense with the claws change talked earlier .

 

All the small things

• I would like the ice fx from the ice cast back when he summon the waves .
   
• The 2 differents cannonballs used by the towers under the effects of the red gems should also be looted , dealing more damage than the classic cannonball . Will this bring back the boat canon to the meta , probably not .
   
• It happen sometimes that the Moon Quay spawn near the Crab King , which can be a problem during the fight . Raids should be disabled when the fight is started to avoid this . Or make the monkey raft be targetted by the towers and claws too .

 

And I think this wrap up what I have in mind . I've probably forget some ideas (if I remember them I'll edit the post and put an indication) . Hope you enjoyed to see those ideas , and want to see what you think about them . You'll probably see flaws that I didn't even think about but hey , that's what I ask .