If you play alone, do you play with the Health Scaling mod?

[dontbob]

The bosses in DST are designed to be fought by multiple people, so the devs have scaled their health accordingly. I know Dragonfly got a 10x health buff when they added it to DST. But their health doesn't change in accordance to how many players are fighting it.

So, do you fight the bosses in their vanilla state when you're playing alone, or do you prefer to use a mod to balance things out?

I've been playing with the Don't Starve Alone mod and I've found that the boss experience is much more manageable now. Although, ever since I did, Deerclops and Antlion feel like a joke...

[grm9]

13 hours ago, dontbob said:

The bosses in DST are designed to be fought by multiple people, so the devs have scaled their health accordingly

they were taking a solo player into account too, almost all ANR bosses require less in comparison to 8 mins for killing them with x1 damage multiplier

13 hours ago, dontbob said:

I know Dragonfly got a 10x health buff when they added it to DST

because it turned into a different boss entirely since it wasn't permanently enraged any more

13 hours ago, dontbob said:

So, do you fight the bosses in their vanilla state when you're playing alone

yes

13 hours ago, dontbob said:

But their health doesn't change in accordance to how many players are fighting it

the problem's that in that case people might've started not wanting newbies to try and fight the boss since they might end up not hitting it often but still increasing it's hp and being detrimental

[Riddla]

Playing in vanilla state during solo. I personally feel fine with the massive HP bosses have, considering the rewards you reap upon beating them.
Plus things get fun when you're tense and under adrenaline if you're limited on resources, you're enduring this whole battle of attrition against tanky bosses and focus on keeping up your rhythm & not make any mistakes.
In multiplayer I'd go as far as say that I enjoy when boss HP is scaled up.

This is all up to player's preference at the end of the day, and it's a respectful decision to change the world in a way that makes you have fun.

[Uedo]

I don't use health scaling mods, I think you absolutely should though if you want to - I just like the rewards and satisfaction when you take them down, makes up for the frustration of when you mess up or find it difficult.

[gaymime]

i don't but i do still feel frustrated with several of the bosses as a semi-solo player(the eople i usually play with tend not to be able to boss-fight). i have mostly just been using mobs to help whittle bosses down enough to be manageable

[abrocator]

Vanilla. Bosses being too easy with 3+ people is a bigger issue.

[NoodlemanNed]

i play in group servers often and it feels like bosses are far more balanced when fought solo compared to doing it with a team.

[Mike23Ua]

I play on Xbox, we don’t have access to mods, but what we do have that comes close is server settings.

Reducing the damage you take from enemy attacks to 40% less or enabling Lunar Rifts so you can gain access to a just barely slightly better Darksword (deals a few points more damage but doesn’t constantly drain your sanity while being held) or Picking Wolfgang who by just existing effectively cuts all bosses health down to half.

These are things that make boss fights more manageable for Solo players, without needing to use “Alone Mods”

[GimplyGoose]

Back when they added all the ANR bosses, I did think they had too much HP for solo players, but I no longer think that. Partly because the game has changed since then and partly because strategies to deal with those large HP pools have been developed.

[Guille6785]

11 hours ago, dontbob said:

The bosses in DST are designed to be fought by multiple people, so the devs have scaled their health accordingly.

This is a myth, while the major bosses from ANR were obviously made with the expectation that most people would fight them in a group they were absolutely designed while making sure they were accessible for single players as well (hence toadstool getting reworked only 5 days after coming out because the developers ultimately didn't like the direction they took with the fight); the large health pools are especially fair when you consider that as a single player you don't have to share any of the loot

also dragonfly having x10 the health does not mean you're expected to fight it with 10 players

[Gashzer]

DST bosses are in a weird state atm, on one hand the fights are way too easy with 3+ people but too drawn out solo. And the loot is perfect amount when solo but not nearly enough with 3+ with a long 20day respawn timer at minimum.

Not only do the bosses need a slight hp scale down while solo but they also need higher hp if 3+ with a good bit increased loot to match the increased player count.

Also when compared to single player dont starve. We don't have armour stacking in DST (in single player wearin a log suit and football helmet will 80% reduce damage then 80% the reduced damage amount again instead of the simple durability damage split) so you need to grind even more healing items compared with single player.

[Dr. Safety]

This post reminds me of a few nights ago when my friends and I were about to fight ancient guardian. We brought a bunch of healing and multiple weapons and armor since we aren't the best at kiting flawlessly. We then proceeded to just face tank the boss, both stages, without having to heal or anyone even going through a full armor. We were shocked but then realize we only ever fight that boss solo on our own personal worlds.

So, no I don't use that mod

[Gashzer]

1 hour ago, Guille6785 said:

This is a myth, while the major bosses from ANR were obviously made with the expectation that most people would fight them in a group they were absolutely designed while making sure they were accessible for single players as well (hence toadstool getting reworked only 5 days after coming out because the developers ultimately didn't like the direction they took with the fight); the large health pools are especially fair when you consider that as a single player you don't have to share any of the loot

also dragonfly having x10 the health does not mean you're expected to fight it with 10 players

Yeah using the old toadstool is not a fair justification for why old DST bosses are this tanky. Because if you take all the new bosses on board, most of them don't have anywhere near any of the old boss hp pools so currently klei definitely know that hp grind bosses are not fun for the majority of players hence why they aren't releasing super tanky bosses anymore.

So going on recent updates for evidence (which is the best evidence to use to gauge what klei plans for DST) high hp bosses seem to be a thing of the past and maybe older bosses need updated to fit the current direction of the game.

[arubaro]

No, i like the ammount of hp. Dst is balanced arround 1-2 players. I like to gather materials to fight in a game about gathering materials with a bland skill-less combat

One of the reasons i dont play DS and their dlcs is how poor are the fights (and when i do i simply change the tunning.lua file to raise the hp and damage), you dont need anything but a spear and some armor

Holding F during 20 seconds with a hambat while tanking isnt fun for me. I prefer to farm some materials, do a long fight so i can experience other mechanics during the fight like surprise mob waves, dealing with weather, insanity auras, acumulating mistakes, etc instead just of the simple combat during few seconds...

In hamlet, before i knew i could easily edit boss hp, i avoided to use other weapon than spear when fighting pugalisk or iron hulk because the fight became ridiculous and was so hard to die because, even if you mess up, you end up killing the thing before they can kill you 

Short boss fights are only fun in games with frenetic and challenging bosses like souls games, hollow knight, cuphead, etc

[Evelo]

I use to when I first started playing DST. I eventually decided to move more towards a vanilla experience and gradually removed more and more mods. The only thing that I use which dramatically changes game balance is Fast Picker (It halfs the time required to gather from say, a twig) and Infinite Thermal Stone Durability (It's a rock, how the heck does it break, and why does a sewing kit fix a rock?)

[arubaro]

14 minutes ago, Evelo said:

It's a rock, how the heck does it break

Changes of temperature breaks rocks. Temperatur changes is one of the ways erosion works

[Evelo]

9 minutes ago, arubaro said:

Changes of temperature breaks rocks. Temperatur changes is one of the ways erosion works

well I know that, but that is over millions of years not 1 year or less.

[DegenerateFurry]

I don't, but I do feel like DST would benefit from health scaling existing. The A New Reign bosses are pretty clearly balanced for 2-3 players - they're a bit much solo and they're way too easy with any more than that. If having more players increased boss HP and having only one decreased it, DST would be like most other multiplayer games, and it'd honestly just make more sense.

Couple this with a setting that lets you modify health scaling (disabling it, raising boss HP overall, or lowering boss HP overall) and you'd get a pretty great system that'd let you pick the level of grindiness and challenge you want in your boss fights. 

Klei has evidently realized their mistake in making the A New Reign bosses a bit too demanding for single players (as all of the newer bosses have far more reasonable health pools and tend not to constantly spam things that make them obnoxious to deal with), but they've kind of forgotten to account for the fact that having a decent-sized group of people just blends everything in the game. The ideal solution would simply be adding health scaling, since it'd also buff up those newer bosses for groups and make things like the Frostjaw and the Nightmare Werepig less of a joke to deal with when you're not alone. 

[Cruvimaster]

15 hours ago, dontbob said:

So, do you fight the bosses in their vanilla state when you're playing alone.

Yes.

Most bosses can be defeated alone in up to 4 minutes. Others can be defeated in a maximum of 8 minutes (1 game day). Very few take longer than that.

I spend much more time chopping wood, breaking stone or collecting resources in general than fighting bosses.

Reducing the bosses' health would be boring for my style of gameplay.

[Mr Giggio]

The way the bosses are right now even solo u take from 3 min for regular giants 8 mins to raid bosses 5 min to FW and it can take less if u nail the healing phase and shield rounds, 10-12 for CC and max to 16 min  for misery toad. Solo. 

 

[cybers2001]

Some bosses are definitely designed to be fought with multiple people, particularly the older raid bosses. This is indicative in techniques such as how dragonfly requires a certain DPS threshold to get extra scales from, or how toadstool lets you get practically no hits in if you're just conventionally addressing his mushtrees with regular axes.

There are other aspects of the game beyond mob health also scaled up to account for more players, too, which indirectly buffed bosses further. For example, most (if not all) armors have reduced durability in DST compared to DS, resulting in more resources spent replacing them.

DST is straight up a harder game than DS, at least in terms of boss battles.

Though I think the overall skill bar for the community has been raised over the years, and players are overall more competent at combat than before, in addition, of course, to the continuous power creep that exists (but DS still has some giga op things like coffee and WX).

[Maxil20]

3 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Also when compared to single player dont starve. We don't have armour stacking in DST (in single player wearin a log suit and football helmet will 80% reduce damage then 80% the reduced damage amount again instead of the simple durability damage split) so you need to grind even more healing items compared with single player.

I personally do think this was an okay change, if only to make healing more relevant later on. In DS I practically never went out of my way to make healing items because a thule suit + crown apart from being consistent loot quacken gives grants 99% protection, enough to mitigate just about every attack in the game to 1 damage. It becomes even moreso if you utilized the vortex cloak to effectively never take damage from fights and only from seasonal threats/starvation.

DST thankfully has also been pretty merciful with making nice healing options in bulk. There’s a lot of easy 30-60 healing dishes that don’t take too much effort to grind. For 80% armor purposes, you can very realistically prep up ~600 or so healing with a day or two of investment, give or take the dish choice you decide on, which has usually been the gold standard I aim for most fights.

I think the healing/armor options in DST are pretty sufficient for bosses. The bosses themselves are another story, but I think this really boils down to personal preference, so I think that’s a case that I can’t really say is good or not.

[Evelo]

2 hours ago, Cruvimaster said:

Very few take longer than that.

Cries in Bee Queen and Toadstool, (and AFW if you suck like me)

[Frosty_Mentos]

I mean, if I'm a normal character with no damage buffs I can just choose to summon twins to kill bee queen. Toadstool is another story... misery toadstool  Misery toad is the worst cause we don't have better ways to cut down his health besides grinding through it. Not to mention armor he gets makes the fight ever so longer. That boss doesn't have any breaks and been the bane of me wanting to do him just for some lamps for my base as last boss I'd finish for it. At least he feels very lategame for a boss, but napsacks feel like they really shouldn't be lategame for what they do and give.

[cybers2001]

14 minutes ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

I mean, if I'm a normal character with no damage buffs I can just choose to summon twins to kill bee queen. Toadstool is another story... misery toadstool  Misery toad is the worst cause we don't have better ways to cut down his health besides grinding through it. Not to mention armor he gets makes the fight ever so longer. That boss doesn't have any breaks and been the bane of me wanting to do him just for some lamps for my base as last boss I'd finish for it. At least he feels very lategame for a boss, but napsacks feel like they really shouldn't be lategame for what they do and give.

Napsacks definitely feel lategame, though for the wrong reasons, unfortunately. Knowing how to craft them basically means you never have to fight toadstool again, which is a worthy reward for enduring misery toadstool, though kinda silly as clearly that wasn't the intended purpose of the napsack.

Could try using some stacks of gunpowder to help whittle his health down if you want to make the fight a bit shorter.