Could the Fuelweaver fight just not have nightmare spawning?

[Lardee]

Why do so many people want to nerf Fuelweaver? It's the final boss and IMO the toughest challenge in the game. It's supposed to be extremely difficult.

If the fight was impossible, I'd understand the criticism. But there are tons of ways to deal with it ranging from things that require absurd skill to playing someone like Winona and letting your catapults remove most of the difficulty. 

Nightmare creatures are part of the difficulty, it makes sense for them to be there and they definitely don't make the fight impossible. It's just another piece of the Fuelweaver puzzle that you have to solve.

[Sacco]

I'll tell my opinion too, because why not.

I think that removing shadow creatures from the fight is pretty illogical honestly.

He is the "boss" of the Shadows, so i don't find any reason to remove them thematically.

Speaking from a balance wise problem i don't see the problem either.

Shadow creatures are meant to be in the fight, just look at the mindcontrol ability if you are insane...

Shadow creatures add a level of gameplay depth to the fight not negligible.

I've never found this fight bad designed or that super hard honestly, i can understand that the final boss is hard, you know it's the FINAL BOSS... but that's the point of it, the boss has to be hard because you have to be skilled to kill him.

All the stress/frustration it might cause you will turn in joy/happiness after you manage to kill him, knowing that you were able to kill the hardest entity in the game.

[Shining Galaxy]

I don't particularly want to side with Arubaro in the debate, but for me, I do prefer AFW over CC. Fighting AFW requires flexible switching of equipment to deal with its different skills, and this combat mode is very characteristic of DST. As for CC, all you need to do is switch between Walking Cane and Ham Bat, and bring enough armor and healing food. My only dissatisfaction with AFW is that Weather Pain is too expensive and the effect is not ideal. However, with the Brightshade Staff, there's nothing to pick on about AFW; it's good, and as a key boss on the Shadow line (and even the final boss currently), it should have this strength. What I understand even less is Misery Toadstool; killing it is as boring as trying to kill a Rock Lobster.
 

[DegenerateFurry]

27 minutes ago, Lardee said:

Why do so many people want to nerf Fuelweaver? It's the final boss and IMO the toughest challenge in the game. It's supposed to be extremely difficult.

If the fight was impossible, I'd understand the criticism. But there are tons of ways to deal with it ranging from things that require absurd skill to playing someone like Winona and letting your catapults remove most of the difficulty. 

Nightmare creatures are part of the difficulty, it makes sense for them to be there and they definitely don't make the fight impossible. It's just another piece of the Fuelweaver puzzle that you have to solve.

It's way too difficult to be manageable for the average player, is the thing, and it also gates off an ever-increasing amount of content behind killing it.

It's disproportionately difficult to its lunar counterpart, which takes a lot more time to reach regardless of skill level (yes, speedrunners can do CC by day 10, but anyone who can do that can also do FW by day 2) and thus seems more like a final boss. 

The boss you have to defeat before you can fight it is, confusingly, way easier than its lunar counterpart - the Shadow Pieces can easily be solo'd by a single weremoose with all weremoose perks and good uses of charging, but Crab King is way harder. This further makes it feel like Fuelweaver should be earlier in progression than the fight's stupidly high difficulty makes it.

This game has two final bosses, but only one of them (Celestial Champion, the lunar final boss) is actually balanced the way a final boss should be. It has a lengthy questline to reach it, and the fight is difficult enough that I've seen it wipe entire 12-player servers (this happened the first time I fought it in a pub - we only won because I got our Wandas some reeds for extra night armors and they kept reviving everyone), but it's ultimately something you can manage deathless if you've beaten it a single time, and it's actually quite fun. Even if you're very familiar with the game, you are going to have one hell of a time spawning CC before spring while playing solo simply because of all the stuff you need to do first. It usually takes me about 11 days just to finish Pearl's quest.

Fuelweaver can be accessed as early as day 1 with absurd luck and speedrun strats or, otherwise, in your first winter, and the gulf in difficulty between it and Celestial Champion (who, need I restate, is meant to be its counterpart) is just nightmarishly absurd.

People hate it because it's designed to be fought by three players, or two if one is Wolfgang. It's a raid boss, but unlike the others (Toadstool being the main exception), there's no really good non-character-specific strategies to screw up its obnoxiousness and make it actually fun. Also, people don't really like having to switch character to deal with a single boss or enemy - it just feels bad.
Bee Queen? Make an X out of fences with the hive as the center and build roads, now you aren't being constantly pincushioned by grumbles as long as you kite Bee Queen over the fences when they catch up.
Dragonfly? Build walls, now you don't have to worry about lavae and you can actually focus on mastering its tricky kiting pattern. 
Celestial Champion? No special strategy needed - it doesn't do anything obnoxious that overwhelms you, it's just a fun and fair fight.
Crab King? Use a mixture of gems fitting your character's strengths and bring anything that'll help you deal with its summons. 
Klaus? Again, no special strats needed - you just fight it fairly and it won't be a stressful mess.

[Lardee]

56 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

It's way too difficult to be manageable for the average player, is the thing, and it also gates off an ever-increasing amount of content behind killing it.

It's disproportionately difficult to its lunar counterpart, which takes a lot more time to reach regardless of skill level (yes, speedrunners can do CC by day 10, but anyone who can do that can also do FW by day 2) and thus seems more like a final boss. 

The boss you have to defeat before you can fight it is, confusingly, way easier than its lunar counterpart - the Shadow Pieces can easily be solo'd by a single weremoose with all weremoose perks and good uses of charging, but Crab King is way harder. This further makes it feel like Fuelweaver should be earlier in progression than the fight's stupidly high difficulty makes it.

This game has two final bosses, but only one of them (Celestial Champion, the lunar final boss) is actually balanced the way a final boss should be. It has a lengthy questline to reach it, and the fight is difficult enough that I've seen it wipe entire 12-player servers (this happened the first time I fought it in a pub - we only won because I got our Wandas some reeds for extra night armors and they kept reviving everyone), but it's ultimately something you can manage deathless if you've beaten it a single time, and it's actually quite fun. Even if you're very familiar with the game, you are going to have one hell of a time spawning CC before spring while playing solo simply because of all the stuff you need to do first. It usually takes me about 11 days just to finish Pearl's quest.

Fuelweaver can be accessed as early as day 1 with absurd luck and speedrun strats or, otherwise, in your first winter, and the gulf in difficulty between it and Celestial Champion (who, need I restate, is meant to be its counterpart) is just nightmarishly absurd.

People hate it because it's designed to be fought by three players, or two if one is Wolfgang. It's a raid boss, but unlike the others (Toadstool being the main exception), there's no really good non-character-specific strategies to screw up its obnoxiousness and make it actually fun. Also, people don't really like having to switch character to deal with a single boss or enemy - it just feels bad.
Bee Queen? Make an X out of fences with the hive as the center and build roads, now you aren't being constantly pincushioned by grumbles as long as you kite Bee Queen over the fences when they catch up.
Dragonfly? Build walls, now you don't have to worry about lavae and you can actually focus on mastering its tricky kiting pattern. 
Celestial Champion? No special strategy needed - it doesn't do anything obnoxious that overwhelms you, it's just a fun and fair fight.
Crab King? Use a mixture of gems fitting your character's strengths and bring anything that'll help you deal with its summons. 
Klaus? Again, no special strats needed - you just fight it fairly and it won't be a stressful mess.

The average player can't beat Deerclops, so "beatable by the average player" is a standard that doesn't make sense for FW.

All the arguments that you've made about comparing CC to FW can be easily reversed. One could say CC is too easy because FW is much harder, therefore CC needs to be harder. One could say CC takes too long because FW can be accessed quicker, therefore CC needs to be shorter. So these arguments don't mean much since they can just be flipped.

What the last paragraph really boils down to is you're not skilled enough (yet) to enjoy the FW fight without character switching.

IMO "The boss is too hard for me to have fun" and "character switching gives me the ick" aren't sufficient arguments for changing the final boss and effective hardest challenge that the DST community has spent fighting and familiarizing themselves with for 7 years. The only thing that would warrant such a monumental change in the game would be if the boss was broken or impossible, neither of which are true in this case.

 

[Dwight34]

2 hours ago, Lardee said:

Why do so many people want to nerf Fuelweaver? It's the final boss and IMO the toughest challenge in the game. It's supposed to be extremely difficult.

If the fight was impossible, I'd understand the criticism. But there are tons of ways to deal with it ranging from things that require absurd skill to playing someone like Winona and letting your catapults remove most of the difficulty. 

Nightmare creatures are part of the difficulty, it makes sense for them to be there and they definitely don't make the fight impossible. It's just another piece of the Fuelweaver puzzle that you have to solve.

You and most of the people saying FW is perfect and should in no way ever be nerfed in the slightest are for the most part youtubers and speedrunners, if you can't see how incredibly and obviously biased that makes your group's opinion compared to 99% of players, that's a flaw on your end. You are living proof of the easy to get concept that games need beta-testers because their developers end up knowing the game too well and cannot accurately judge their game's difficulty anymore. You're in the same boat, you have trained so much, experimented, learned and analyzed so much, that you forgot how to think like how a normal player would.

Lardee, you make hours long guides about how to be S+ at every character, Guille is an incredibly gifted speedrunner. You are extreme outliers. Those discussions about balance are things you cannot objectively engage in anymore, your time would be better spent talking about other areas of the game, but not balance, you have developer syndrome. And the worst part about it, your massive experience instead of making you realize how far apart you are just makes you think you are better than everyone else at judging balance, just like it does for devs.

[SilverSpoon]

50 minutes ago, Lardee said:

The average player can't beat Deerclops, so "beatable by the average player" is a standard that doesn't make sense for FW.

All the arguments that you've made about comparing CC to FW can be easily reversed. One could say CC is too easy because FW is much harder, therefore CC needs to be harder. One could say CC takes too long because FW can be accessed quicker, therefore CC needs to be shorter. So these arguments don't mean much since they can just be flipped.

What the last paragraph really boils down to is you're not skilled enough (yet) to enjoy the FW fight without character switching.

IMO "The boss is too hard for me to have fun" and "character switching gives me the ick" aren't sufficient arguments for changing the final boss and effective hardest challenge that the DST community has spent fighting and familiarizing themselves with for 7 years. The only thing that would warrant such a monumental change in the game would be if the boss was broken or impossible, neither of which are true in this case.

When you have right equipment for AFW, such as The Lazy Explorer, Weather Pain or Brightshade Staff, Nightmare Amulet, and Sanity food, CC can be as hard or even harder than AFW... AFW's attack is the same as other giants, but CC can most severe punish players who make mistakes with instant death attacks.

One of the biggest problems with AFW is that it is not a fair fight unless you have the right equipment as mentioned above and violently spend it. I think it's　necessary to reduce the toil required to fight, even if the difficulty of the battle remains the same. For example,  making it possible to break bone cages with a pickaxe, and sanity references to the Unseen Hands check, adding allowing one player in combat to break them regardless of their sanity.

[Gashzer]

39 minutes ago, Lardee said:

The average player can't beat Deerclops, so "beatable by the average player" is a standard that doesn't make sense for FW.

All the arguments that you've made about comparing CC to FW can be easily reversed. One could say CC is too easy because FW is much harder, therefore CC needs to be harder. One could say CC takes too long because FW can be accessed quicker, therefore CC needs to be shorter. So these arguments don't mean much since they can just be flipped.

What the last paragraph really boils down to is you're not skilled enough (yet) to enjoy the FW fight without character switching.

IMO "The boss is too hard for me to have fun" and "character switching gives me the ick" aren't sufficient arguments for changing the final boss and effective hardest challenge that the DST community has spent fighting and familiarizing themselves with for 7 years. The only thing that would warrant such a monumental change in the game would be if the boss was broken or impossible, neither of which are true in this case.

 

If someone needs to switch to winona to craft catapults, use cheese or only kills the bare minimum amount of times to access new content. It's a clear sign people arnt enjoying fighting AFW. These are all band-aid fixes for a needlessly tedious fight.

People keep harping on about the difficulty of AFW as the main reason for him to get nerfed. While it is apart of it, the main reason is that AFW just simply isn't fun even if you can kill him regularly. 

I have no issues killing him on pc. I just have no desire to kill him more than the bare minimum of 2 times. AFW needs a fight design QoL update.

[arubaro]

Is sad to see how some people react and want to ruin one of the few bosses that uses other ingame mechanics than simply moving and pressing F and that requires to use more fingers...comparing fw with a bad designed boss that has no impactful mechanic and that let you retire to the mainland for as much time as you want...

[Lardee]

26 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

You and most of the people saying FW is perfect and should in no way ever be nerfed in the slightest are for the most part youtubers and speedrunners, if you can't see how incredibly and obviously biased that makes your group's opinion compared to 99% of players, that's a flaw on your end. You are living proof of the easy to get concept that games need beta-testers because their developers end up knowing the game too well and cannot accurately judge their game's difficulty anymore. You're in the same boat, you have trained so much, experimented, learned and analyzed so much, that you forgot how to think like how a normal player would.

Lardee, you make hours long guides about how to be S+ at every character, Guille is an incredibly gifted speedrunner. You are extreme outliers. Those discussions about balance are things you cannot objectively engage in anymore, your time would be better spent talking about other areas of the game, but not balance, you have developer syndrome. And the worst part about it, your massive experience instead of making you realize how far apart you are just makes you think you are better than everyone else at judging balance, just like it does for devs.

First, 99% of DST players will never even encounter FW. So, we're both extreme outliers. Even then, it's pretty unfair to say "you're too good at the game, therefore your argument doesn't count".  Changes to a game shouldn't be based on simple majority rule because if that's the case, the game would be constantly changing to suit the vast majority of players who can't even beat Deerclops.

 

The merits of an argument should be based on the argument itself, not the qualifications of the person making the argument. Basing the merits of an argument on the qualifications of the person making it is a literal logical fallacy called Argument from Authority.

So if you disagree with anything I specifically said in my post, let me know and I'll address it.  Otherwise, simply saying "whatever you say is invalid based on your lack of qualifications" is itself not a valid response.

[SilverSpoon]

27 minutes ago, arubaro said:

Is sad to see how some people react and want to ruin one of the few bosses that uses other ingame mechanics than simply moving and pressing F and that requires to use more fingers...comparing fw with a bad designed boss that has no impactful mechanic and that let you retire to the mainland for as much time as you want...

Considering the amount of mobs you fight in Don't Starve Together "simply moving and pressing F", that's the concept of the game. If you don't like it, why are you playing Don't Starve Together? 

Adding things that deviate too much from the game concept would be inconsistent. Do you know those games where you're playing a top-down shooter, but suddenly PUNCH-OUT!! starts and player get beating to a pulp?

[Dwight34]

14 minutes ago, Lardee said:

First, 99% of DST players will never even encounter FW. So, we're both extreme outliers. Even then, it's pretty unfair to say "you're too good at the game, therefore your argument doesn't count".  Changes to a game shouldn't be based on simple majority rule because if that's the case, the game would be constantly changing to suit the vast majority of players who can't even beat Deerclops.

 

The merits of an argument should be based on the argument itself, not the qualifications of the person making the argument. Basing the merits of an argument on the qualifications of the person making it is a literal logical fallacy called Argument from Authority.

So if you disagree with anything I specifically said in my post, let me know and I'll address it.  Otherwise, simply saying "whatever you say is invalid based on your lack of qualifications" is itself not a valid response.

It 100% is a valid response, developer syndrome is a very well-studied phenomena and it's basic logic, if you can't admit that you and your group has a heavily biased view by default, then you're dishonest or delusional. And you brought absolutely 0 arguments, I described what you group does many times already, you ONLY talk about feasibility, yes it's doable, no one said it was impossible. You refuse to talk about design in any way, you refuse to bring any possible change to FW, you only keep parroting "he can be done, so he's fine, git gud" even towards players who have already beaten him multiple times.

The very fact you see the discussion as "bad players want him nerfed and us great players want him to stay the same", that design doesn't even cross your mind, shows your heavy bias and misunderstanding of the entire issue."DegenerateFurry" often describes your mentality very well. If you can't admit your experience is great for making guides but terrible for an objective analysis of what a normal players thinks and does, no discussion is possible because of your flaws.

[Lardee]

Just now, Dwight34 said:

It 100% is a valid response, developer syndrome is a very well-studied phenomena and it's basic logic, if you can't admit that you and your group has a heavily biased view by default, then you're dishonest or delusional. And you brought absolutely 0 arguments, I described what you group does many times already, you ONLY talk about feasibility, yes it's doable, no one said it was impossible. You refuse to talk about design in any way, you refuse to bring any possible change to FW, you only keep parroting "he can be done, so he's fine, git gud" even towards players who have already beat him multiple times.

The very fact you see the discussion as "bad players want him nerfed and us great players want him to stay the same", that design doesn't even cross your mind, shows your heavy bias and misunderstanding of the entire issue."DegenerateFurry" often describes your mentality very well. If you can't admit your experience is great for making guides but terrible for an objective analysis of what a normal players thinks and does, no discussion is possible because of your flaws.

• I

Okay so you're just going to stick to the argument from authority fallacy. No point in further engaging.

[Dwight34]

4 minutes ago, Lardee said:

Okay so you're just going to stick to the argument from authority fallacy. No point in further engaging.

>I describe an objective phenomena
>"Muh authority fallacy"

Point to one single design change/proposition you have made, please go on. But you don't, you only keep spamming about feasibility and current methods available.

[Auth]

"I like ____ and think it's fine as-is" is a valid opinion. No further elaboration is needed to make it valid.
"I dislike ____ and think it should be different" is a valid opinion. No further elaboration is needed to make it valid.

There are no objective opinions. An opinion does not need to be "rational", and also does not need to be universally agreed on.

You cannot encourage discussion by labeling half of it as wrong. You should be able to think, feel, and talk about whatever you want.

Please keep the conversation civil, and avoid more personal attacks. I'm no moderator or anything, I just don't like seeing this hostility.

Hope this helps.

[arubaro]

8 hours ago, Guille6785 said:

but I thought I was grm

And how can you be sure you and I arent the same person?

[cropo]

Dark Souls 2 is a better game than Dark Souls 1.  Dark Souls 1 did really stupid things like polish the game and balance enemy encounters around the games strengths, but this just makes the game too easy. Dark Souls 2 really stepped up by introducing a much needed challenge to the game.  Like for example in Dark Souls 1, the developers knew the game was designed heavily around 1v1 combat due to the camera lock in, clunky animations, and emphasis on resource management. They very rarely ambushed the player, and in almost every case balanced the enemies with the knowledge that the game is not built well for multiple engagements, this polish and attention to detail made the game far too easy and is clearly the inferior game.

Dark Souls 2 really stepped up here, by introducing multiple mid-boss level mobs that forcibly aggro the player together in groups with near-inexhaustible attack chains so that the player only has a split-second to do damage safely before being forced to retreat again and wait about 5 minutes to get another opening. This is a clear example of the developers knowing that difficulty is the most important thing in a game, and that the game is made better because of it. I have no idea why people think the developers should have changed the balance of the game, after all it's beatable? Like hello?

So let this be a lesson to people asking for changes to Ancient Fuelweaver, you see the rest of the game has never taught the player how to swap their inventory around like a Pro-Tournament Runescape player, nothing else in the game has foisted this expectation upon the player or allowed them to naturally learn how to do it on their own. This adds a layer of depth, complexity and most importantly, difficulty to the fight that makes it one of the best bosses in video game history. Having nightmares randomly spawn into the fight, who attack completely out of sync with the boss, who already has multiple different attacks on cooldowns you have to remember instinctively by heart adds yet another layer of complexity, challenge, and depth to the fight. I cannot understand why people would want to nerf this? As we have learned with Dark Souls, polishing a fight makes it easier and more possible to beat, difficulty must be maintained at all costs here, after all, it is beatable, why aren't you having fun?

[DegenerateFurry]

8 hours ago, Lardee said:

The average player can't beat Deerclops, so "beatable by the average player" is a standard that doesn't make sense for FW.

All the arguments that you've made about comparing CC to FW can be easily reversed. One could say CC is too easy because FW is much harder, therefore CC needs to be harder. One could say CC takes too long because FW can be accessed quicker, therefore CC needs to be shorter. So these arguments don't mean much since they can just be flipped.

What the last paragraph really boils down to is you're not skilled enough (yet) to enjoy the FW fight without character switching.

IMO "The boss is too hard for me to have fun" and "character switching gives me the ick" aren't sufficient arguments for changing the final boss and effective hardest challenge that the DST community has spent fighting and familiarizing themselves with for 7 years. The only thing that would warrant such a monumental change in the game would be if the boss was broken or impossible, neither of which are true in this case.

 

The average player absolutely can beat Deerclops. Even if they suck at fighting, they can lead it into a forest and make treeguards kill it. Also, Klei reworked Deerclops to have a more forgiving kiting pattern that rewards running behind it (they got rid of the full 360 AoE), so that kind of kills the very foundation of your argument there and instead supports mine: Klei saw that newbies were having more difficulty than they should and added more counterplay. 

As for the old, exhausted, overused and dried-up "skill issue" ad-hominem: nah, you don't get to dismiss my tastes in gameplay that way. You have an out-of-touchness issue.
I don't have this problem with anything else in the game, yet I and many other people find Fuelweaver too stressful to be worth fighting. Can I beat it? Yes. Do I want to? Not any more than I absolutely have to, and its mid-game summonability and intended other-side-of-the-coin relationship to end-game boss Celestial Champion makes needing to beat CC to actually have a reasonable fight with it seem poorly thought-out.
Klei needs to either bring back one of the cheese methods, add something like Gashzer's moonlight shackle, or rework the boss, simple as - we need an option that allows people who aren't no-lifing the game and who don't play it for a YouTube career like you do to actually have fun with it, or at least get past it without burning out so badly from frustration and repeated attempts that they stop playing for a week.

As for "character switching gives me the ick", yes? People like playing their characters continuously. If I just switched to Wolfgang every time I ran into a difficult enemy or fought a boss, I'd feel like I was cheating or wasn't really playing the character I wanted to play (who's not the easy mode speedrun character with free double damage). It honestly feels like more of a betrayal of the playthrough than using a cheese method, even as someone who's played every character for multiple hours and has mained several of them for months each.
It feeling bad to have to switch character is a common sentiment, and it's good game design to avoid forcing players to do things that can actively ruin their will to continue playing a world.

Look, I get it, your entire persona is being a skilled player. Regardless, you need to consider that the access of the rest of the playerbase - not just you and people like you - to the game's content matters more, and it's never good game design to have a boss that only a handful of people actually enjoy fighting. It should be the minority of people who want extreme challenges that need to install mods for them to find bosses fun, not the majority of people who want reasonable difficulty.

7 hours ago, Lardee said:

Okay so you're just going to stick to the argument from authority fallacy. No point in further engaging.

No no, they have a point. There's a reason that competitive game developers don't solely base game balance around the top 1% of players. Hell, when some devs tried that (TF2 comes to mind), they've done things like make certain weapons completely useless because competitive players complained about them. You need to consider that we all have our biases, and yours is one that blinds you to the difficulty faced by people not in the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of skill in this game.

[grm9]

1 hour ago, cropo said:

near-inexhaustible attack chains

any example?

1 hour ago, cropo said:

you see the rest of the game has never taught the player how to swap their inventory around like a Pro-Tournament Runescape player

you don't need training for swapping between 3 items so i don't see what's even the issue

41 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

people who aren't no-lifing the game and who don't play it for a YouTube career

"anyone who's better at the game in comparison to me's a sweaty try hard with no life that doesn't enjoy the game and's just lying about doing that"

41 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

the top 1% of players

last time we had a poll about FW on the forums 90% of people didn't want a FW rework

42 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

so that kind of kills the very foundation of your argument there and instead supports mine: Klei saw that newbies were having more difficulty than they should and added more counterplay

no, they just added that because they recently started making bosses with directional attacks back then

43 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

The average player absolutely can beat Deerclops

depends on what's a player, they probably can't if we're including people that didn't even reach winter

7 hours ago, Dwight34 said:

Point to one single design change/proposition you have made, please go on

why do you think that people need to suggest a change for a thing that they want to not get changed

7 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

Considering the amount of mobs you fight in Don't Starve Together "simply moving and pressing F", that's the concept of the game. If you don't like it, why are you playing Don't Starve Together?

because fighting enemies that're that way'sn't most of the game play?

8 hours ago, Dwight34 said:

Those discussions about balance are things you cannot objectively engage in anymore

getting good at a game doesn't remove your ability to think and automatically prevent you from interacting with any player that's worse at it in comparison to you

8 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

One of the biggest problems with AFW is that it is not a fair fight unless you have the right equipment as mentioned above and violently spend it

it's a fully fair fight with out that stuff, you can consistently do it with only a weapon, magi and insanity and sanity food

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Celestial Champion? No special strategy needed - it doesn't do anything obnoxious that overwhelms you, it's just a fun and fair fight

simple and boring*

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Dragonfly? Build walls, now you don't have to worry about lavae and you can actually focus on mastering its tricky kiting pattern

make the fight extremely boring because of only needing to fight 1 enemy and wait for multiple minutes during the fight*

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

a mixture of gems fitting your character's strengths

use purples if you're going to sleep it and don't otherwise, the rest just depends on what you got and maybe oranges're more preferable with minions but iirc you can cancel heal yourself with 4 oranges*

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Klaus? Again, no special strats needed - you just fight it fairly and it won't be a stressful mess

it'll always be boring to fight*

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

People hate it because it's designed to be fought by three players, or two if one is Wolfgang

how does who it was made for matter for you? also, iirc 1 of the devs said that they did the fight solo during the stream, but the stream's lost media at this point i think

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

This game has two final bosses, but only one of them (Celestial Champion, the lunar final boss) is actually balanced the way a final boss should be

so ends up being easier in comparison to bosses that you can spawn on day 1 pretty easily?

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

the fight is difficult enough that I've seen it wipe entire 12-player servers

were they all fighting armorless or only got 2 hours played?

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

It's disproportionately difficult to its lunar counterpart, which takes a lot more time to reach regardless of skill level (yes, speedrunners can do CC by day 10, but anyone who can do that can also do FW by day 2) and thus seems more like a final boss

since when does a final boss mean "a thing that requires spending a lot of time on summoning it and's very easy to kill"

[Dwight34]

1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said:

As for "character switching gives me the ick", yes? People like playing their characters continuously. If I just switched to Wolfgang every time I ran into a difficult enemy or fought a boss, I'd feel like I was cheating or wasn't really playing the character I wanted to play (who's not the easy mode speedrun character with free double damage). It honestly feels like more of a betrayal of the playthrough than using a cheese method, even as someone who's played every character for multiple hours and has mained several of them for months each.
It feeling bad to have to switch character is a common sentiment, and it's good game design to avoid forcing players to do things that can actively ruin their will to continue playing a world.

Your entire post is great, but I want to mention this part in particular. Balance of the game should objectively be centered around the assumption that the player plays a normal Wilson, not a Wolfgang with Warly food that gets a 600% damage multiplier (like the other guy did when I pointed out CC wasn't a boss the player could tank, and they go with the 600% damage as if that was in any way representative of a normal way of playing).

Volt-Goat Jelly on anyone else than Warly should be rightfully considered a niche, irrelevant scenario for game-balance, the assumption should never be made that the player uses it in the first place, and especially not that the player uses a 600% damage multiplier, games should be centered around normal play, not around meta-play abusing every possible mechanic available.

2 hours ago, cropo said:

Dark Souls 2 is a better game than Dark Souls 1.  Dark Souls 1 did really stupid things like polish the game and balance enemy encounters around the games strengths, but this just makes the game too easy. Dark Souls 2 really stepped up by introducing a much needed challenge to the game.  Like for example in Dark Souls 1, the developers knew the game was designed heavily around 1v1 combat due to the camera lock in, clunky animations, and emphasis on resource management. They very rarely ambushed the player, and in almost every case balanced the enemies with the knowledge that the game is not built well for multiple engagements, this polish and attention to detail made the game far too easy and is clearly the inferior game.

Dark Souls 2 really stepped up here, by introducing multiple mid-boss level mobs that forcibly aggro the player together in groups with near-inexhaustible attack chains so that the player only has a split-second to do damage safely before being forced to retreat again and wait about 5 minutes to get another opening. This is a clear example of the developers knowing that difficulty is the most important thing in a game, and that the game is made better because of it. I have no idea why people think the developers should have changed the balance of the game, after all it's beatable? Like hello?

So let this be a lesson to people asking for changes to Ancient Fuelweaver, you see the rest of the game has never taught the player how to swap their inventory around like a Pro-Tournament Runescape player, nothing else in the game has foisted this expectation upon the player or allowed them to naturally learn how to do it on their own. This adds a layer of depth, complexity and most importantly, difficulty to the fight that makes it one of the best bosses in video game history. Having nightmares randomly spawn into the fight, who attack completely out of sync with the boss, who already has multiple different attacks on cooldowns you have to remember instinctively by heart adds yet another layer of complexity, challenge, and depth to the fight. I cannot understand why people would want to nerf this? As we have learned with Dark Souls, polishing a fight makes it easier and more possible to beat, difficulty must be maintained at all costs here, after all, it is beatable, why aren't you having fun?

You've expressed this feasibility issue magnificently, thank you for this post

1 hour ago, grm9 said:

"anyone who's better at the game in comparison to me's a sweaty try hard with no life that doesn't enjoy the game and's just lying about doing that"

"Anyone" Kek, we have in this very thread an expert who makes hours long guide and has a youtube career based on the game, and a speedrunning madman with thousands of hours of training. Yeah those are just "anyone", I guess if you're less good than Mike Tyson in his prime at fighting, "anyone" can beat you. Nobody can take you seriously when you're THAT dishonest.

1 hour ago, grm9 said:

why do you think that people need to suggest a change for a thing that they want to not get changed

You literally prove my point more than I could if I wrote your message myself, you're more of a strawman than any strawman I could conjure up. You have no argument that isn't feasibility, which I addressed countless times, and you keep imagining that I "didn't answer to your argument"

1 hour ago, grm9 said:

simple and boring*

it'll always be boring to fight*

Calling CC and Klaus boring when they're universally loved really doesn't help your credibility. You prove my point more and more with each message, you hate bosses that are feasible for a reasonable percentage of players. You hate that they're feasible, you refuse to talk about any design you'd like to see implemented, you simply love bosses people lose against and hate bosses people win against.

[grm9]

14 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

"Anyone" Kek, we have in this very thread an expert who makes hours long guide and has a youtube career based on the game, and a speedrunning madman with thousands of hours of training. Yeah those are just "anyone", I guess if you're less good than Mike Tyson in his prime at fighting, "anyone" can beat you. Nobody can take you seriously when you're THAT dishonest

learn to read, they were talking about people that like fighting FW and it'sn't just speed runners and youtubers

15 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

You literally prove my point more than I could if I wrote your message myself, you're more of a strawman than any strawman I could conjure up. You have no argument that isn't feasibility, which I addressed countless times, and you keep imagining that I "didn't answer to your argument"

???

it'sn't "feasibility", it's 90% of the community being fine with the boss being the way it's and there being extremely easy ways for killing it, you complained about fight being stressful and got a lot of suggestions for how to make it easy and, as a result, not or less stressful for you if that was stressful for you

17 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

Calling CC and Klaus boring when they're universally loved really doesn't help your credibility

that was just irony about how they tried to put their opinions about them as objective facts, ik that most people like simple and easy fights that don't require thinking that much

18 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

You prove my point more and more with each message, you hate bosses that are feasible for a reasonable percentage of players. You hate that they're feasible, you refuse to talk about any design you'd like to see implemented, you simply love bosses people lose against and hate bosses people win against

i explained to you why i don't like them already but you simply ignored that, go read again

[Dwight34]

3 minutes ago, grm9 said:

that was just irony about how they tried to put their opinions about them as objective facts, ik that most people like simple and easy fights that don't require thinking that much

"I was only pretending to be stupid" Kek.

4 minutes ago, grm9 said:

i explained to you why i don't like them already but you simply ignored that, go read again

"they boring :c" Such explanation, wow, much design.

[grm9]

30 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

Your entire post is great, but I want to mention this part in particular. Balance of the game should objectively be centered around the assumption that the player plays a normal Wilson, not a Wolfgang with Warly food that gets a 600% damage multiplier (like the other guy did when I pointed out CC wasn't a boss the player could tank, and they go with the 600% damage as if that was in any way representative of a normal way of playing)

a final fight requiring you to either learn how to do it or swap to an easy mode character's fine, almost all characters'll also get or already got a perk for fighting from a skill tree

30 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

games should be centered around normal play, not around meta-play abusing every possible mechanic available

you already get the choice for either figuring out how to turn on easy mode on through stuff like that or learning how to do the fight with out it, what'd be the point of a game that doesn't require neither skill nor knowledge or research?

9 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

"they boring :c" Such explanation, wow, much design

learn to read, there was a big explanation in 1 of the messages that you ignored

9 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

"I was only pretending to be stupid" Kek

no, i wasn't pretending that i'm some thing or some way, i was simply showing them how absurd their statements looked through writing statements with nearly opposite opinions similarly

[NoodlemanNed]

isnt fuelweaver balanced around fighting it as a group? the game IS called Don't Starve TOGETHER after all.

playing solo isnt the intended way to kill bosses so it shouldnt be the biggest priority when designing them.

[DegenerateFurry]

20 minutes ago, NoodlemanNed said:

isnt fuelweaver balanced around fighting it as a group? the game IS called Don't Starve TOGETHER after all.

playing solo isnt the intended way to kill bosses so it shouldnt be the biggest priority when designing them.

You're right, it is balanced around being fought by a group. 

However, we shouldn't neglect solo players. Everyone, even the most social of us, has moments when the people they play the game with simply aren't online, and in this day and age, there's plenty who don't have any friends who play the game. Other raid bosses (except for Misery Toadstool, really) have methods solo players can use to make the fight manageable, which is a reasonable compromise between wanting bosses designed to be fought by groups and not wanting to exclude everyone without a large, consistently-online friend group. Why not Fuelweaver?