Suggestions for the new crab king rework

[mhn2]

What's this topic?

After thinking about it for a while, I came up with a set of solutions to make the new crab king boss fight to be improved, and I decided to put all of them in a single topic, so I can hear your feedback. (And hopefully Klei would add some of them to the update.)

What are my hopes and expectations for the new crab king fight?

In my opinion, the balancing should be focused on the pearl version of the fight, because it's the version of the fight that is mandatory to defeat the celestial champion.

I think the gem upgrade thresholds should be categorized as the following:

• 0 to 2: Easy
• 3 to 5: Difficult
• 6 to 8 : Hard and Challenging
• 9 and more gems: Unfair

This pattern should keep the boss fight fair, interesting, and balanced. Players wouldn't become forced to deal with extra, unnecessary challenges just because they are fighting the pearl version. And this should discourage players for over using a specific gem.

What should the gem upgrades do and what changes do I suggest?

First, I'm not 100% sure which aspects of the towers are effected by red and yellow gems, I haven't found a reliable and consistent source about it, so excuse me if it is already the case: The red gems should increase the health and attack, but the yellow gems should increase the count and the range. I'm suggesting this because adding tower range, is effectively similar to adding more towers, so they should be part of the same gem upgrade.

Second, I think orange gems should decrease the taunt duration, so the downside of over using orange gems wouldn't get ignored. I also think green gems should add an ability to the claws, which I'll discuss in the next section.

Finally, the important thresholds of each upgrade should be changed to the following to match the categorization mentioned above, and to hopefully improve the boss fight for the better:

Blue Gems:
6+ gems: Crab king is guaranteed to heal at least once if the player is using a fresh ham-bat or worst.

Red Gems:
6+ gems: Tower shots now cause a small leak. Ramming the boat to a tower is no longer enough to take it down.
9+ gems: Tower shots now cause a large leak.

Purple Gems:
6+ gems: Crab knights become immune to a single pan flute use.
9+ gems: Crab guards become immune to a single pan flute use.

Yellow Gems:
6+ gems: The towers now reach the center of the arena. The player's boat can't leave the arena without defeating at least one tower.
9+ gems: The towers now reach the entire arena. Pretty much maximum tower count.

Orange Gems:
6+ gems: Crab king is guaranteed to heal at least once if the player is using a dark sword or worst.
9+ gems: Crab king no longer taunts.

Green Gems:
9+ gems: The claws can now attach to the boat like they used to.

Final Notes:

I'm not a game designer, and I'm not a great don't starve together player. But I'm really glad that Klei is reworking the crab king boss fight, and it would be a shame if the boss fight remains unbalanced after the rework. Feel free to share your opinions and suggestions about these changes (and even come up with better solutions). I hope Klei reads it and takes these suggestions into consideration.