Crab King entirely prevents me from progressing the game

[Dwight34]

I used the bee cheese before, and as much as old CK was bad, at least he was doable. The new CK brings me to tears with how unfair he is, how much absolute perfection he requires, how much of a resource-sink he is, he is by far the hardest boss in the game, he is leagues above the rest, he belongs in something like the hardest of bullet-hell games, his difficulty is so punitive and vicious I just can't do it and it's breaking my mind that a supposed mid-game boss fight requires such perfection and is just kicking me in the balls relentlessly and gloating about it.

A billion summons all the time, instant healing that means the only way to prevent it is to panflute the minions otherwise you'll get shredded by them or he'll have healed full health by the time you killed all the minions, the canon towers spawn underneath your boat and instantly provoke a massive flood, the very hitbox of healing your boat with planks is extremely small and placing a boat on the water requires 0 obstacles of any kind so even those simple actions require extreme precision in a fight that is frenetic, no idea what to even do when there are so many claws and cannon, what am I even supposed to do, fight the claws and get pelted by the towers, or spend multiple minutes killing all the towers and then spending even more circling CK doing 2 hits at a time before circling again because the claws are constantly following... And gunpowder is still useless because it doesn't touch anything further than 2 pixels from it so it doesn't even work against CK when I tried it and placed it as close as possible to him on the ice platform.

I don't care about the 0.01% most invested players who all have youtube channels and make this game their entire life, I'm a regular player, and as a regular player, this update legits makes me want to cry out of pain. I used to be able to progress, to get to CC, kill it and with the post-rift gear manage to get AFW. Now with this update I have been beaten in the street, told that I don't deserve to experience the endgame anymore, and I have 0 recourse to progress normally anymore. The game has been utterly ruined for me, and I know the youtubers and others who make this game their entire lives and spend hundreds of hours practicing in test worlds will only have words of visceral hatred for me. I used to enjoy the game, I've been kicked out of it, and I know people will hate me for telling this simple truth, that average players are despised and hunted down by this kind of community.

[grm9]

he was literally made easier and's now 1 of the easiest bosses in the game so that's extremely funny, i've no idea about how did you do FW if you can't do current CK

either way you can use gun powder to kill him before inserting the gems, not sure if it drops the altar even with pearl that way but you can get enough gun powder to make it end up with 200 hp left for you to finish it off after activating it through 4 ham bat hits

i'd record a video of doing the fight with only a ham bat, a pan flute, an oar and boats but i get like 10 fps when recording after ice arena broke because of all the ice

[Captain_Rage]

Feel free to post a recording of your attempt trying to beat the boss.

[Reiko24]

is this rage bait? the only thing you need to do to beat the new crab king is hold f and repair your boat like ONCE. what????

 

Edit: The minions aren't even a problem... Just hold F... They will not shred you... If you don't believe me, ask me to record a fight where I only hold F. I will do it.

[Tranoze]

31 minutes ago, Reiko24 said:

ask me to record a fight where I only hold F.

Please record a crab king fight with these rule:
-The only key you can use is F (W/A/S/D not allowed. Ctr is also not allowed. All other key is also not allowed.).
-Mouse can only be used to repair boat once after you done socketing gems. (Use mouse to walk is not allowed. Use mouse to eat food is not allowed. Use mouse to animation cancel with equipments is not allowed)
-No console command / mod before and during you fight crab king.

You can use any legit weapon of your choice. (i dont mind you use wolfgang + warly food)
You can use any legit armor of your choice.
You can use any legit boat of your choice. (i dont mind having sail/nautopilot to make sure boat sail toward crabking for easier F pressing.)

Tks.

[Frosty_Mentos]

I simply got a boat with bumpers, panflute, green gems for socketing, repair for boat, three bee mines and some armor. He is rather easier now to defeat if you don't get towers upgraded or minions of his buffed.

Any other gem that is not red, yellow or purple is basically better options overall. Imo Green gem crab king is easiest, somehow.

[Reiko24]

56 minutes ago, Tranoze said:

Please record a crab king fight with these rule:
-The only key you can use is F (W/A/S/D not allowed. Ctr is also not allowed. All other key is also not allowed.).
-Mouse can only be used to repair boat once after you done socketing gems. (Use mouse to walk is not allowed. Use mouse to eat food is not allowed. Use mouse to animation cancel with equipments is not allowed)
-No console command / mod before and during you fight crab king.

You can use any legit weapon of your choice. (i dont mind you use wolfgang + warly food)
You can use any legit armor of your choice.
You can use any legit boat of your choice. (i dont mind having sail/nautopilot to make sure boat sail toward crabking for easier F pressing.)

Tks.

sureeee bro,

if I could use W/S/A/D to at least move in the direction of crab king/my boat then I would do this. No dodging at all. If I only hold F, the character will not attack crab king, I need to come near him first. You certainly know what I meant in my previous post.

[arubaro]

What? If you can deal with such easy boss maybe you arent prepare for the quest. Feel free to progress at your own pace, nobody ask you to beat the game without the skill and the knowledge required for it

Im glad people now needs to play the game instead of being afk. Rewards require effort

[Mysterious box]

2 hours ago, Dwight34 said:

I used the bee cheese before, and as much as old CK was bad, at least he was doable. The new CK brings me to tears with how unfair he is, how much absolute perfection he requires, how much of a resource-sink he is, he is by far the hardest boss in the game, he is leagues above the rest, he belongs in something like the hardest of bullet-hell games, his difficulty is so punitive and vicious I just can't do it and it's breaking my mind that a supposed mid-game boss fight requires such perfection and is just kicking me in the balls relentlessly and gloating about it.

A billion summons all the time, instant healing that means the only way to prevent it is to panflute the minions otherwise you'll get shredded by them or he'll have healed full health by the time you killed all the minions, the canon towers spawn underneath your boat and instantly provoke a massive flood, the very hitbox of healing your boat with planks is extremely small and placing a boat on the water requires 0 obstacles of any kind so even those simple actions require extreme precision in a fight that is frenetic, no idea what to even do when there are so many claws and cannon, what am I even supposed to do, fight the claws and get pelted by the towers, or spend multiple minutes killing all the towers and then spending even more circling CK doing 2 hits at a time before circling again because the claws are constantly following... And gunpowder is still useless because it doesn't touch anything further than 2 pixels from it so it doesn't even work against CK when I tried it and placed it as close as possible to him on the ice platform.

I don't care about the 0.01% most invested players who all have youtube channels and make this game their entire life, I'm a regular player, and as a regular player, this update legits makes me want to cry out of pain. I used to be able to progress, to get to CC, kill it and with the post-rift gear manage to get AFW. Now with this update I have been beaten in the street, told that I don't deserve to experience the endgame anymore, and I have 0 recourse to progress normally anymore. The game has been utterly ruined for me, and I know the youtubers and others who make this game their entire lives and spend hundreds of hours practicing in test worlds will only have words of visceral hatred for me. I used to enjoy the game, I've been kicked out of it, and I know people will hate me for telling this simple truth, that average players are despised and hunted down by this kind of community.

I would consider just watching a guide on how to fight him if your having trouble it's not very hard but perhaps your not approaching it from the right angle.

[kroban]

What gems are you using? Because unless you are going all-in for 1 color or something like that, the new CK shouldn't be THAT abusive like you mention really. I wouldnt go as far as to call it "the easiest" but, he for sure became more fun to fight than the dull static thing he used to be. Like, can we even call the old CK a "fight" to be honest? It was just putting bee mines and staying afk, old CK was a stepping stone rather than an actual fight to progress.

- When it comes to the summons... I think you can just ignore most of them? Summons were never an issue to me (and i aint a ******* tryhard speedrunner or something like that, im an old school DS "vet" that plays casual as hell with WALTER as a main lmao). I admit that I have fought him solo like 5 times post-update so my experience may be relatively small but, I think the only things you HAVE to kill are the small crabs IF they get into your boat, AND the crab claws when they approach your boat. You can kill towers if you have one right next to your boat but, they aren't that much an issue other than causing some leak on a boat you can replace?

- If you are still having that much issue with small crabs there are ways you could easily kill them, Wormwood's thorn armor is best choice, but you could also use Winona's catapult, Wicker's bee guards, Willow's aoe fire, Wanda and Wolf 1-shot, etc etc.

- On the ice platform you can easily kite small crabs or put them to sleep if you have a panflute but, the priority at that moment should be in doing damage to crab king to cancel his healing rocks. When the ice is about to melt the character says a quote so, you could use those last seconds on the outer area of the platform to fight small crabs if you need to.

- Dont use masts or some **** like that, just use driftwood oar, you could even use some autorow mod to make the whole rowing quick.

 

I mean overall IMO the fight is far from being "the hardest", and post update I now think hes one of the most fun bosses in the game. That said I understand that some bossfights can be a pain, specially if the player thinks theres unfairness involved, doesnt like the mechanics, etc. But I hope that you can manage to kill him, good luck!

 

 

[Dwight34]

10 minutes ago, kroban said:

What gems are you using? Because unless you are going all-in for 1 color or something like that, the new CK shouldn't be THAT abusive like you mention really. I wouldnt go as far as to call it "the easiest" but, he for sure became more fun to fight than the dull static thing he used to be. Like, can we even call the old CK a "fight" to be honest? It was just putting bee mines and staying afk, old CK was a stepping stone rather than an actual fight to progress.

- When it comes to the summons... I think you can just ignore most of them? Summons were never an issue to me (and im not some pro with a gaming pc, im an old school DS "vet" that plays casual and on a 30 fps potato lol). I admit that I have fought him solo like 5 times post-update so my experience may be relatively small but, I think the only things you HAVE to kill are the small crabs IF they get into your boat, AND the crab claws when they approach your boat. You can kill towers if you have one right next to your boat but, they aren't that much an issue other than causing some leak on a boat you can replace?

- If you are still having that much issue with small crabs there are ways you could easily kill them, Wormwood's thorn armor is best choice, but you could also use Winona's catapult, Wicker's bee guards, Willow's aoe fire, Wanda and Wolf 1-shot, etc etc.

- On the ice platform you can easily kite small crabs or put them to sleep if you have a panflute but, the priority at that moment should be in doing damage to crab king to cancel his healing rocks. When the ice is about to melt the character says a quote so, you could use those last seconds on the outer area of the platform to fight small crabs if you need to.

- Dont use masts or some **** like that, just use driftwood oar, you could even use some autorow mod to make the whole rowing quick.

 

I mean overall IMO the fight is far from being "the hardest", and post update I now think hes one of the most fun bosses in the game. That said I understand that some bossfights can be a pain, specially if the player thinks theres unfairness involved, doesnt like the mechanics, etc. But I hope that you can manage to kill him, good luck!

 

 

Pearl's gem + 1 of each (of course have to read the wiki to even know that) and then 2 greens since every other sounds like it would make the fight legitimately impossible. The fight is full of dilemmas and unexplained mechanics, the fact that you are forced to use panflute to hit the ice and CK without getting stunlocked by the beasts makes it extremely boring, and I don't know how much CK will heal for if you let him, is it full? Unexplained. When the ice platform disappears and you're on your boat with claws and towers, what are you meant to do, kill all the towers? Slowly bait every claw to kill them, kill towers in range then go to CK? Does he have a timer before his next phase or does he wait for you to kill something? Unexplained.
And it just feels like every decision you can make is wrong, for example dodging a tower shot means your boat takes damage, so you are punished for dodging an attack. I'm on a Wilson playthrough and trying to do things legit, I beat the boss once without Pearl's pearl, but it was incredibly difficult, stressful and unenjoyable, the fight doesn't tolerate the slightest mistake. I failed an attempt because my character jumped on one of the broken down small ice platforms 0.5 seconds before it broke, even though I never meant to go there, instant drown. Some small details also make you stress even more, slipping on ice for example (which already ruined an attempt) or the fact you cannot stunlock even the small crab guard, so you have to kite them to kill them, while watching CK heal massively, while multiple are attacking you.

When does he heal? For how much? How do his phases actually work? How do his minions interact with his timers? What should I do about the minions? Those are all entirely unexplained factors in-game, and the fact that the slightest mistake is an instant-drown is very stressful. He is the hardest boss in the game imo because no other boss comes close to this level of "you mess up, fight over", only this boss fight has you babysit a boat made of paper (and attempting to spam grass boats is super risky because the slightest obstacle and you can't place a boat, you need calm exact positioning of the mouse to place them down, all while stressed that if you take a second too long you'll drown, the mechanics of placing a boat were not intended for fast-paced gameplay) and can insta-kill you, all over bosses you pay mistakes with health, armor and maybe weapon waste. Even AFW is less punishing when you mess-up, CK is like if AFW mindcontrolled you once, it reseted the fight entirely and tped you away. Ironically enough, the boss designed to be about experimentation is the one that punishes you the most for going outside the beaten path.

Thanks for being helpful and not demeaning

[arubaro]

8 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

of course have to read the wiki to even know that

You dont need to read the wiki to know what does every gem... just a bit of experimentation since the effect is clear at the 1st sight 

8 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

The fight is full of dilemmas and unexplained mechanics

What mechanic do you need an explanation??????

 

9 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

the fact that you are forced to use panflute to hit the ice and CK without getting stunlocked by the beasts makes it extremely boring,

I havent use pan flutes or any other crowd control item in my +10 CK fights...

10 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

I don't know how much CK will heal for if you let him, is it full? Unexplained

CK appearance change the more he is damaged or if he heals... you wont know exact numbers but is really clear that he doesn't heal that much...

12 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

When the ice platform disappears and you're on your boat with claws and towers, what are you meant to do, kill all the towers? Slowly bait every claw to kill them, kill towers in range then go to CK?

Whatever you are confortable with

I simply kill the claws, i only break towers if they are close to me or in my way since they are broke pretty easy with the boat...

 

 

I wont continue, clearly your problem is laziness and will power

[Tranoze]

2 hours ago, Reiko24 said:

If I only hold F, the character will not attack crab king

4 hours ago, Reiko24 said:

a fight where I only hold F. 

Amazing.
To be fair i expected you to use wolfgang + warly buff + **** bunch of blowdart to kill crabking before he can even summon island. Not sure if he enough dps but after they change crab hp, worth a try.

[Echsrick]

5 hours ago, Dwight34 said:

the canon towers spawn underneath your boat

this is THE reason why i hate new crabking, he can just INSTA KILL YOU pretty much because the towers just spawn inside of you...wich REALY feels like they dit not test the boss like at all, at least old one was possible with bee mines...at least bee mines had an actual use but now? who uses that even now?

[arubaro]

10 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

this is THE reason why i hate new crabking, he can just INSTA KILL YOU pretty much because the towers just spawn inside of you...wich REALY feels like they dit not test the boss like at all, at least old one was possible with bee mines...at least bee mines had an actual use but now? who uses that even now?

Just fix your boat...

[Echsrick]

15 minutes ago, arubaro said:

Just fix your boat...

....what boat? it gets INSTANDLY DESTROYED when a tower spawns ontop of it

[arubaro]

1 minute ago, Echsrick said:

....what boat? it gets INSTANDLY DESTROYED when a tower spawns ontop of it

That is a lie. It gets a lot of damage but not even close to be one shot

[Cassielu]

I was confused.

You cheese the old Crab King, obviously you're not the type of player who hates cheese, so why don't you cheese the new Crab King? Bee Mine cheese still works, and there are many new cheese to make it.

[Echsrick]

15 minutes ago, arubaro said:

That is a lie. It gets a lot of damage but not even close to be one shot

that is a lie, it gets instandly destroyed when a tower spawns inside the boat, and i am not the only person that has seen this on a random puplic server

[Danila6300]

Just now, Echsrick said:

it gets instandly destroyed when a tower spawns inside the boat

When the tower just started to puncture the boat, you need to quickly start hitting it and it will immediately return back under the water. 

[arubaro]

21 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

that is a lie, it gets instandly destroyed when a tower spawns inside the boat, and i am not the only person that has seen this on a random puplic server

Believe whatever you want. Towers dont one shot boats

[Primalflower]

3 hours ago, Dwight34 said:

the fact that you are forced to use panflute to hit the ice and CK

in my experience dealing with the minions seems on the face of it ridiculous, but it is a matter of positioning. when the ice spawns you want to get yourself in a position where only 1 or 2 of the minions can get you, and the rest just get stuck on crab king's ice. This is the biggest hurdle i faced when practicing crab king but theres a certain feel to it that you get if you keep trying.

When i started facing new crab king i thought he was super difficult, and he does require some tight input, but he's not an impassable hurdle. you can do this!

26 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

that is a lie, it gets instandly destroyed when a tower spawns inside the boat

try to keep your boat health up my friend

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, Cassielu said:

I was confused.

You cheese the old Crab King, obviously you're not the type of player who hates cheese, so why don't you cheese the new Crab King? Bee Mine cheese still works, and there are many new cheese to make it.

Maybe this is just my personal opinion on this but, I really and I mean REALLY don’t think I would consider something as “cheese” if it’s a Weapon that’s found in the games dedicated weapons category tab and intended to actually be used as a “Weapon”

[dois raios]

7 hours ago, grm9 said:

but i get like 10 fps when recording after ice arena broke because of all the ice

I can relate XD

[Evelo]

Yeah a major issue I have with CK is placing down boats once the ice phase is ending.

However I saw that if you sandwich a boat between two Fishing Trawlers, you can avoid being pushed back. Going to have to test that since that could trivialize the fight with ease, potentially.