Moonlight Shackle - New Celestial Altar craft suggestion - AFW nerf

[Gashzer]

Moonlight shackle would act as an ingame method to cripple ancient fuelweaver before starting the fight with him.

Crafted beside the celestial altar needing: 

• 20 lune tree blossoms
• 20 glass shards
• 1 iridescent gem

The moonlight shackle appears similar to Klaus's shackle in size and shape but is made out of lune tree blossoms woven with glass shards with an iridescent gem in the center.

Attaching this item to the fully completed odd skeleton while in atrium then giving it the shadow atrium will cause ancient fuelweaver to spawn chained with the moonlight shackle.

The moonlight shackle effect will only kick in when phase 2 of the fight begins. Ancient fuelweaver will attempt to spawn shadow hands to form a shadow shield around him however the moonlight shackle will glow with lunar power and instantly break his shield/destroying shadow hands.

Everytime his shield is destroyed, one of the 4 glass blossom chains on the shackle will break showing that the shackle is also weakening. 

Ancient fuelweaver will summon woven shadows as normal but instead of them healing his health directly, everytime he trys to consume one, the shackle prevents him but takes damage in the process. 5 shadow wovens blocked will also cause a chain to break off the shackle.

If all 4 chains are broken the moonlight shackle will be destroyed and ancient fuelweaver will be back at full power.

I think this is a pretty fun way to nerf ancient fuelweaver which is optional to only those who would need it.

[Well-met]

no thank you. Just craft a brightshade staff.

[Gashzer]

3 minutes ago, Well-met said:

no thank you. Just craft a brightshade staff.

Dont have to use it if you dont want to.

And it allows those who dont want to kill Celestial champion first or activate the rifts, a way to weaken ancient fuelweaver.

To quote a wise forum member:

"it's fascinating that people're willing to argue to prevent others from getting fun even if that wouldn't affect them"

[Theukon-dos]

Ancient Fuelweaver is supposed to be hard. For years it was, for all intents and purposes, the final boss of DST. And even now, it's still the big filter boss before opening shadow rifts.

 

And honestly? He's not even that hard. The inventory management can be a hassle, sure. But once you get a feel for how to deal with the woven shadows, it's not all that bad to avoid them. And that's really the only thing keeping the fight from being a battle of attrition.

 

But you know what? Let's assume that the Ancient Fuelweaver fight is just as hard as you make it out to be in previous threads. A fight that's so difficult, so brutal, and so uncompromising:tm: that you need thousands of hours of experience just to have a chance of beating it. If that where the case...

 

...Then who the hell cares?

 

The game doesn't owe you a victory over the Ancient Fuelweaver. In fact, it doesn't owe you anything. If you're not willing to learn how to beat the poor sod, that doesn't mean the game needs to bend over backward to hand you it's corpse on a silver platter. It means you either need to learn how to fight it or accept that you're just not good at the game.

 

In other words: skill issue.

[Gashzer]

Just now, Theukon-dos said:

Ancient Fuelweaver is supposed to be hard. For years it was, for all intents and purposes, the final boss of DST. And even now, it's still the big filter boss before opening shadow rifts.

 

And honestly? He's not even that hard. The inventory management can be a hassle, sure. But once you get a feel for how to deal with the woven shadows, it's not all that bad to avoid them. And that's really the only thing keeping the fight from being a battle of attrition.

 

But you know what? Let's assume that the Ancient Fuelweaver fight is just as hard as you make it out to be in previous threads. A fight that's so difficult, so brutal, and so uncompromising:tm: that you need thousands of hours of experience just to have a chance of beating it. If that where the case...

 

...Then who the hell cares?

 

The game doesn't owe you a victory over the Ancient Fuelweaver. In fact, it doesn't owe you anything. If you're not willing to learn how to beat the poor sod, that doesn't mean the game needs to bend over backward to hand you it's corpse on a silver platter. It means you either need to learn how to fight it or accept that you're just not good at the game.

 

In other words: skill issue.

To quote a wise forum member... Again:

 "it's fascinating that people're willing to argue to prevent others from getting fun even if that wouldn't affect them"

[Primalflower]

I think your idea is fun enough. I can beat fuelweaver perfectly fine, but i don't find him fun. I strongly prefer celestial champion, although this is apples to oranges of course, lol. I think the things you have to do to deal with him (specifically wait until a certain moment to deal with the unseen hands so his spells are lined up and he's not doing them one after the other, and also optionally doing the stupid hell thing of just barely escaping the invisible bone cage radius so it misses without a thurible, etc etc), while certainly points of skill expression, aren't actually fun at all to execute for me. They're tedious inputs you have to do and honestly a little immersion breaking for what feels like very little gain. I kind of wish that the fuelweaver fight could just be reworked entirely, but i'm only considering myself when i say that.

[arubaro]

Makes 0 sense to add an item which only function is to make a well design good fight into kitting a skelly treeguard

If someone wants cheap invulnerability and inmunity to shadows they should git gud or use the tools the game already givew like BS staff, volt goat jelly, catapults, characters with high damage, gun powder, etc

Or, you know, cheese him with a hondious since that fight without his cool mechanics is as fun as being afk waiting him to die (not much different from being afk holding F against a treeguard)

 

[Gashzer]

4 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

I think your idea is fun enough. I can beat fuelweaver perfectly fine, but i don't find him fun. I strongly prefer celestial champion, although this is apples to oranges of course, lol. I think the things you have to do to deal with him (specifically wait until a certain moment to deal with the unseen hands so his spells are lined up and he's not doing them one after the other, and also optionally doing the stupid hell thing of just barely escaping the invisible bone cage radius so it misses without a thurible, etc etc), while certainly points of skill expression, aren't actually fun at all to execute for me. They're tedious inputs you have to do and honestly a little immersion breaking for what feels like very little gain. I kind of wish that the fuelweaver fight could just be reworked entirely, but i'm only considering myself when i say that.

My thinking behind this idea is to reward those who explore for the lunar island with items that will not only help with the ancient fuelweaver fight itself but the description for the moonlight shackle could give clues about the fights existence.

Klei have made a big story arc of moon verses shadow. Be cool if they made powerful items to reflect this.

Maybe a shadow variant of the moonlight shackle could also be implemented. Instead of a shackle it could be a shadow trap attached to the Lunar Siphonator that causes multiple shadow tentacles to attack celestial champion as it absorbs the altars lowering its max hp for all three phases by 20%.

There are so many fun, creative and lore friendly ways to nerf bosses that could require ingame effort to pull off that makes the player feel rewarded for obtaining the nerfs.

4 minutes ago, arubaro said:

Makes 0 sense to add an item which only function is to make a well design good fight into kitting a skelly treeguard

If someone wants cheap invulnerability and inmunity to shadows they should git gud or use the tools the game already givew like BS staff, volt goat jelly, catapults, characters with high damage, gun powder, etc

Or, you know, cheese him with a hondious since that fight without his cool mechanics is as fun as being afk waiting him to die (not much different from being afk holding F against a treeguard)

 

This item would be an optional nerf for AFW and requiring an iridescent gem makes it expensive.

As anyone who defends voidwalking or other bugs or asking for an ingame way to bring old crab back says, "if you dont like it just dont use it"

When i come up with ideas i actually do try to keep the people i normally disagree with on the forums happy by using their logic... 

[Evelo]

While this would help immensely with individuals with disabilities that struggle to fight AFW solo, I don't think this is a proper method. Props to giving the Iridescent Gem a use though.

[Gashzer]

Just now, Evelo said:

While this would help immensely with individuals with disabilities that struggle to fight AFW solo, I don't think this is a proper method. Props to giving the Iridescent Gem a use though.

Well this is what the forums is for after all.

We brainstorm ideas and klei filters out good ideas from bad ones or gains inspiration from a bad idea to create a good one.

Yeah iridescent gem needs to be in more crafting recipes.

[Evelo]

Just now, Gashzer said:

Well this is what the forums is for after all.

We brainstorm ideas and klei filters out good ideas from bad ones or gains inspiration from a bad idea to create a good one.

Yeah iridescent gem needs to be in more crafting recipes.

Ye. Personally I think having the little woven shadows scale based on number of players present in the Atrium would help a lot in easing the fight, as it is mostly the healing that is a limiting factor, at least from my experience. It would still be difficult as you have to deal with the mechanics but as solo you'd have a little bit more time to deal with the woven shadows. Simultaneously not relying on a Weather Pain to kill them for you.

As someone mentioned the Brightshade staff does make AFW a lot easier, the downside of that naturally is requiring CC to be killed which eliminates the optional aspect of "which of the two 'final' bosses do I want to defeat first" so having an alternative maybe worse brightshade could be the solution requiring an Iridescent gem, but not repairable?

[Gashzer]

1 minute ago, Evelo said:

Ye. Personally I think having the little woven shadows scale based on number of players present in the Atrium would help a lot in easing the fight, as it is mostly the healing that is a limiting factor, at least from my experience. It would still be difficult as you have to deal with the mechanics but as solo you'd have a little bit more time to deal with the woven shadows. Simultaneously not relying on a Weather Pain to kill them for you.

As someone mentioned the Brightshade staff does make AFW a lot easier, the downside of that naturally is requiring CC to be killed which eliminates the optional aspect of "which of the two 'final' bosses do I want to defeat first" so having an alternative maybe worse brightshade could be the solution requiring an Iridescent gem, but not repairable?

The brightshade staff is very obviously designed to destroy ancient fuelweaver but its such a lousy solution for the reason you stated.

Ive no opinion on boss scaling at the minute because it would be down to how klei execute it if i like it or not.

[Gashzer]

Bump 

[NoodlemanNed]

i think they should add something like this instead of reworking the fight to make it easier on newer players.

if you like fuelweaver being difficult, hes still difficult as long as you dont craft this one specific item thats specifically designed to make it more accessible.

[arubaro]

Just now, NoodlemanNed said:

i think they should add something like this instead of reworking the fight to make it easier on newer players.

if you like fuelweaver being difficult, hes still difficult as long as you dont craft this one specific item thats specifically designed to make it more accessible.

They are updating every character with skill trees to make content more accessible to new players

Also i dont get the point of making things more accessible.  Each game have their difficulty levels so players just deal with it

I dont see hollow knight adding flying boots to make difficult areas more accessible to people who dont want to make an effort 

[NoodlemanNed]

14 minutes ago, arubaro said:

Also i dont get the point of making things more accessible.

the point is to make it so less people feel like its a requirement to either play solo or spend hundreds of hours practicing a single fight. Ancient fuelweaver is the hardest fight this game has to offer, and i know from my experience in public servers that a lot of a people have not only never fought the boss (which is to be expected from the average player) but they also dont believe its even possible for them.

the difficulty level of this one fight is so far above anything else in this game it makes sense to tone it down for people who arnt dedicated enough to learn everything there is to know about the boss. The reason i like the shackle idea so much is because it does that WITHOUT sacrificing the experience for people who do want a challenge, or those who simply like the current flow of the battle.

tldr: i would really appreciate if we could avoid repeating the crab king rework but on another boss.

[abrocator]

Nice thinking outside of the box. But optional nerfing is never gonna fly.

Like someone else alluded to we can somewhat set the difficulty level by grinding gear and other items prior to the battle.

[Theukon-dos]

17 minutes ago, NoodlemanNed said:

the point is to make it so less people feel like its a requirement to either play solo or spend hundreds of hours practicing a single fight. Ancient fuelweaver is the hardest fight this game has to offer, and i know from my experience in public servers that a lot of a people have not only never fought the boss (which is to be expected from the average player) but they also dont believe its even possible for them.

the difficulty level of this one fight is so far above anything else in this game it makes sense to tone it down for people who arnt dedicated enough to learn everything there is to know about the boss. The reason i like the shackle idea so much is because it does that WITHOUT sacrificing the experience for people who do want a ssssss

To repeat what I said earlier: That's fine. Ancient Fuelweaver is a hard boss, and if you don't have the chops to beat it, that's fine. No shame in not being able to beat one of the hardest challenges in the game. But that's just it, "challenge". Again, the game doesn't owe it to the player to ensure that they're able to win. If they can't, then so be it. There's still plenty of ways for them to enjoy the game without ever beating the Ancient Fuelweaver.

[arubaro]

49 minutes ago, NoodlemanNed said:

the point is to make it so less people feel like its a requirement to either play solo or spend hundreds of hours practicing a single fight. Ancient fuelweaver is the hardest fight this game has to offer, and i know from my experience in public servers that a lot of a people have not only never fought the boss (which is to be expected from the average player) but they also dont believe its even possible for them.

the difficulty level of this one fight is so far above anything else in this game it makes sense to tone it down for people who arnt dedicated enough to learn everything there is to know about the boss. The reason i like the shackle idea so much is because it does that WITHOUT sacrificing the experience for people who do want a challenge, or those who simply like the current flow of the battle.

tldr: i would really appreciate if we could avoid repeating the crab king rework but on another boss.

And what is the difference between needing to practise a boss and repeating a boss until beating it in other games? Is bad needing to fight a boss multiple times to learn how to beat it?

If we are going to consider average players we might considere removing all seasons but autumn, add op anime character (klei is at it with the skill trees...), add unbalanced items made of basic materials or even add unbalanced extra slots so the average player dont sh*t their pants while thinking on equiping armor before fighting 

There are people that enjoy hard games and people that just try hard games for the praphics, for being popular or because they watched a video/stream to simply dropped it after the 1st rock they found in the path so they come back to their idle game or to a moba so they can blame other players from their own failures 

[Gashzer]

13 minutes ago, arubaro said:

And what is the difference between needing to practise a boss and repeating a boss until beating it in other games? Is bad needing to fight a boss multiple times to learn how to beat it?

If we are going to consider average players we might considere removing all seasons but autumn, add op anime character (klei is at it with the skill trees...), add unbalanced items made of basic materials or even add unbalanced extra slots so the average player dont sh*t their pants while thinking on equiping armor before fighting 

There are people that enjoy hard games and people that just try hard games for the praphics, for being popular or because they watched a video/stream to simply dropped it after the 1st rock they found in the path so they come back to their idle game or to a moba so they can blame other players from their own failures 

Why you trying to gatekeep ancient fuelweaver as this super difficult boss?

My shackle idea literally doesnt affect the difficulty for you but will help those who choose to use it.

The only other shadow vs moon content we see ingame atm is when we turn on the archives. Otherwise both sides barely interact. Another item to legitimise the "war" will add to the lore.

Whats the problem?

You seem like you rather people use buggy methods to kill AFW than klei implement an optional (also costly) nerf item. 

40 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

To repeat what I said earlier: That's fine. Ancient Fuelweaver is a hard boss, and if you don't have the chops to beat it, that's fine. No shame in not being able to beat one of the hardest challenges in the game. But that's just it, "challenge". Again, the game doesn't owe it to the player to ensure that they're able to win. If they can't, then so be it. There's still plenty of ways for them to enjoy the game without ever beating the Ancient Fuelweaver.

The reason you guys are fighting this so hard is because my moonlight shackle idea is the perfect way to nerf ancient fuelweaver without changing the fight. Therefore veterans have the same fight and less skilled players have an expensive option to nerf him.

You know its true and so does klei 

Is very hypocritical to be supporting bringing back old crab king and then shooting this idea down.

54 minutes ago, abrocator said:

Nice thinking outside of the box. But optional nerfing is never gonna fly.

Like someone else alluded to we can somewhat set the difficulty level by grinding gear and other items prior to the battle.

I think strong boss inhibiting items are the way forward tbh. Perfect rewards for exploration that can fit the lore.

Its no different to the current gear grind, just one extra item that you can grind to make the fight easier. Which gives us the players more options and more lore-centric items to enforce the shadow vs moon conflict.

[Cruvimaster]

14 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Why you trying to gatekeep ancient fuelweaver as this super difficult boss?

AFW is not super difficult. It's just difficult. You want to demonstrate to us that you don't make the slightest effort to learn the boss's dynamics.

A boss designed for a group of players, but which is defeated by Wilson with very few resources. Additionally, there are several characters that simplify the fight even further.

If Klei were to rework a new boss, this monster should be Dragonfly to end the use of walls, as well as changing the process of just counting to 6 and hitting until you end up with more than 20k life in a simple repetition.

[Gashzer]

1 minute ago, Cruvimaster said:

AFW is not super difficult. It's just difficult. You want to demonstrate to us that you don't make the slightest effort to learn the boss's dynamics.

A boss designed for a group of players, but which is defeated by Wilson with very few resources. Additionally, there are several characters that simplify the fight even further.

If Klei were to rework a new boss, this monster should be Dragonfly to end the use of walls, as well as changing the process of just counting to 6 and hitting until you end up with more than 20k life in a simple repetition.

Oh yeah i want dfly reworked as well.

Mike came up with dfly attacking using a "fire maze", be fun if we had to navigate the moving fire maze and use water balloons on enraged dragonfly in the centre to stun her.

Dont worry lad i got ideas for all the bosses!

Moonlight shackle is just another optional tool like the brightshade staff, like the weatherpain, like using characters like winona and her catapults. All it is, is another option.

We lovvvvvvve options on the forums! 

No joke im very proud if this idea and klei if you are reading this please look past all my petty passive aggressive jabs at hypocritical forum users and take this moonlight shackle idea onboard on its own merit.

[Cruvimaster]

Let me take a look at this "super difficult" boss:

[Wormboi]

5 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

Let me take a look at this "super difficult" boss:

Bruh this fight is six minutes long

[DegenerateFurry]

I'd rather see an Ancient Fuelweaver full rework (like Crab King got) and a new item that, if used on the skeleton before inserting the atrium, causes him to have his current (non-reworked) AI and mechanics. 
So, instead of just weakening him and keeping the fight the same, we get a new version of him that's actually fun for most players (not just veterans who like wasting eight hours on inventory management practice to master the fight), and those people with sunk-cost fallacy who think they like it the way it is still get to enjoy suffering - they just have to give it an item that changes the fight to make it a grindy slog, sort of like Misery Toadstool. Truly, it's a compromise that'd please everyone. Y'know, except for those elitists who'll dismiss any attempt to make the game better as "pandering to new players" or whatever it is they say.