ancient fuelweaver rework is too hard

[vklfall]

Dear Klei, 

I play Don't Starve Together by myself in my own world, but now I’m stuck trying to reset the ruins. I’ve tried learning strategies and even playing as Wolfgang and Wigfrid, but it’s still not working. The Ancient Fuelweaver has so many skills and keeps regenerating. Why does this boss trap me so much? I watch YouTube players, and they don’t get trapped by the skeletons like I do. I try to follow their strategies, but it doesn’t work for me.

I’m older, so my hands aren’t as quick as other players', and I don’t have anyone to team up with to take down this boss. Some top-tier players recommend trying harder, but facing this boss alone is just too much. Damn."

Let me know if you’d like any further adjustments!

[Gashzer]

Hopefully Klei will rework ancient fuelweaver soon.

You aren't the only one with problems with this old boss. I can kill him but he's not fun to kill so I don't.

All old bosses deserve QOL touch-ups or reworks.

[Maxil20]

On 11/7/2024 at 8:32 AM, vklfall said:

I watch YouTube players, and they don’t get trapped by the skeletons like I do. I try to follow their strategies, but it doesn’t work for me.

This is likely from 2 things:

-They are performing a strat where the boss starts the cage animation, and they walk away from the range of the bone cage and don’t get snared (this requires a considerable amount of coordination and takes a good bit of practice to consistently pull off.)

-They posses a shadow thurible and are using it/dropped on the ground, which you get from killing the boss (this prevents it from using the cage attack outright in the radius, but you need to defeat weaver first for it.)

There are some things you should be able to do if you are struggling to make it a little easier. Given you are swapping characters, I would highly advise swapping to Winona to make catapults on the edges of the arena to greatly ease the fight. Doing this will cause some added DPS for weaver while also helping to greatly ease the difficulty of the battle by killing most of its woven shadows, preventing the boss from healing. Note that as the video is old, you will have to make sure the catapults are armed by interacting with them, and they stay armed via attacking the boss, given the change that occurred to them in her skill tree.

It seems that you don’t seem to struggle with the sanity/insanity elements of the fight, which is good. Remember that the moment you take out the last unseen hand to drop fuelweaver’s shield, that you have 20 seconds to attack weaver before he casts another shield. If you are using catapults, you should have a very good window of opportunity to try to get as much damage as possible.

You can try getting an extra volt goat horn/honey and swap to Warly to make volt goat chaud froid. This dish can be eaten by anyone and will multiply your attack damage by 1.5X. If you take the time to farm chili spice with peppers, this will be 1.8X. In rain, this will further increase the damage to 2.5X-3.0X respectively. This can greatly speed up the fight, and it being weaver makes this a major candidate for a fight you want to speed through.

As a bit more of a last resort, if you have progressed all the way to celestial champ, the items you get from brightshades will make your life significantly easier, most notably the brightshade staff will sweep through woven shadows as if they were nothing, and allow you to hit the unseen hands from a distance. Because of how out of the way it is, though, I don’t recommend it unless you are absolutely stuck on the boss.

I do get your struggles. Fuelweaver is a boss that demands the most coordination and the community is very split on that. I personally think the concept is neat, but I can understand how this is frustrating to a lot of players, including yourself. Hopefully it can be tackled in a way that makes both sides happy, either just making small tweaks or adjusting the boss to have multiple versions or a world option to suit player needs.

[mkemal23]

4 hours ago, vklfall said:

Let me know if you’d like any further adjustments!

Try it with Winona catapults. 

Also Both CC and Fuelweaver get much easier after you defeat them for the first time.

So My suggestion is after you defeat AFW and CC use the endgame loot to practice with an easier fight. After that try switching loadouts to test your skill.

Here's some of the endgame(spoilers) weapons that can help you a lot with Fuelwaver fight:

Spoiler

-Brightshade staff.

-Shadow Thurible.

-Void robe.

-Bone helm.

 

[Catuna_]

5 hours ago, vklfall said:

Dear Klei, 

I play Don't Starve Together by myself in my own world, but now I’m stuck trying to reset the ruins. I’ve tried learning strategies and even playing as Wolfgang and Wigfrid, but it’s still not working. The Ancient Fuelweaver has so many skills and keeps regenerating. Why does this boss trap me so much? I watch YouTube players, and they don’t get trapped by the skeletons like I do. I try to follow their strategies, but it doesn’t work for me.

I’m older, so my hands aren’t as quick as other players', and I don’t have anyone to team up with to take down this boss. Some top-tier players recommend trying harder, but facing this boss alone is just too much. Damn."

Let me know if you’d like any further adjustments!

try catapults or the brightshade staff or weather pains
re-connect before the fight so that your nightmare counter is reset and you won't have to deal with them as often
 

[Gashzer]

Klei wants to get rid of swap characters they said on stream...  go to solution for Ancient fuelweaver swap to winona  or be shoehorned into very late game post-rift content before being able to challenge him, very unfun choices for a unfun boss.

Edit: I was shoehorned into post rift content (brightshade staff) and swapped to wolfgang to have a somewhat easier time in killing AFW to unlock shadow affinity for my Nintendo switch account... 10/10 terrible experience, thanks klei for not reworking AFW.

[Catuna_]

4 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Klei wants to get rid of swap characters they said on stream...  go to solution for Ancient fuelweaver swap to winona  or be shoehorned into very late game post-rift content before being able to challenge him, very unfun choices for a unfun boss.

Edit: I was shoehorned into post rift content (brightshade staff) and swapped to wolfgang to have a somewhat easier time in killing AFW to unlock shadow affinity for my Nintendo switch account... 10/10 terrible experience, thanks klei for not reworking AFW.

weather pains are still an item you can use, also what's wrong with recommending someone that wants to beat fuelweaver catapults? its a method that takes little input from the player and that's what they're asking for

[This14Real]

If you don’t mind cheesing, Maxwell, 1 Lazy Explorer, 1 Houndius Shootius, a stack of Nightmare Fuel and a stack of Sanity food makes it super easy. You should have these available around your second year playing the game. It isn’t the most optimal but it’s something doable, just need some preparing.
Place Shootius outside of the arena and telepoof out when you give him his heart, after the Shootius aggro on him, use Shadow Prison and don’t let him take a single step out of it, Shootius should kill it no problem. It will only cost you a lot of Nightmare Fuel but if you place more Shootius after resetting the ruins it becomes easier and easier. Fuelweaver is a real pain in the rear to solo, especially with a controller so I get you.

Another strat requires a second player, one tanks the boss while the other goes around dealing with hands and torches.
Good luck.

[Well-met]

this is a good thing.

endgame bosses should always be feared.

[Evelo]

2 hours ago, Gashzer said:

Klei wants to get rid of swap characters they said on stream

Source? Cause that is awesome to hear and I don't want to get my hopes up.

[arubaro]

8 hours ago, vklfall said:

Dear Klei, 

I play Don't Starve Together by myself in my own world, but now I’m stuck trying to reset the ruins. I’ve tried learning strategies and even playing as Wolfgang and Wigfrid, but it’s still not working. The Ancient Fuelweaver has so many skills and keeps regenerating. Why does this boss trap me so much? I watch YouTube players, and they don’t get trapped by the skeletons like I do. I try to follow their strategies, but it doesn’t work for me.

I’m older, so my hands aren’t as quick as other players', and I don’t have anyone to team up with to take down this boss. Some top-tier players recommend trying harder, but facing this boss alone is just too much. Damn."

Let me know if you’d like any further adjustments!

You shouldn't exclusively watch top tier players gameplay to learn how to fight fw. Try to watch regular players also

Farm a lot of weather pains

The spells have an individual cooldown that starts once you break the last torch/kill the last minion. Pay attention to that

If you use thulecite armor, fw only deals 10 damage per hit so you can resists many hits before dying which means that you can delay healing when he is casting his spells. Dont waste time when the shield is down to heal, that time needs to be used to deal as much damage as you can

Telepuffing consumes a lot of sanity so i recommend you to tank. That will also make you deal more dps

Lean to organize your inventory correctly and get used to use the keyboard to switch items. If you have a mouse with extra buttons you can use them to switch items via settings

Dont be ashamed of using what the game offers to set the difficulty down. You have volt goat jelly, catapults 

I recommend you to use food that gives sanity and healing so you dont have to eat that much which requires timing to dont be canceledby fw's atacks. Surf n turf is very good for this fight and cheap

Over prepare

 

This boss is hard but not as hard as many bosses from many games. X6 damage already cuts the difficulty by a lot if you are getting frustrated and rollbacks are for learning

[Well-met]

1 hour ago, Evelo said:

Source? Cause that is awesome to hear and I don't want to get my hopes up.

they meant making everyone equally overpowered / unbalanced

not nerfing the portal.

[W0l0l0]

Spamming Weather Pains can clear the woven shadows and stun the Fuelweaver in place when invulnerable.

[Evelo]

24 minutes ago, Well-met said:

not nerfing the portal.

Unfortunate. :c (for me at least)

[Anis5240]

52 minutes ago, Well-met said:

making everyone equally overpowered / unbalanced

I suuuuurre love torch tree being overpowered hur dur /s

[arubaro]

2 hours ago, Evelo said:

Source? Cause that is awesome to hear and I don't want to get my hopes up.

Winona skill tree stream. 

[Mr Giggio]

Feel free to ask any question u have
For me the less itens u have in hands the more it gets clear to see whats the next move
The main focus always should deny him to heal instead of do damage, u can see that just holding F as standart damage char and weapon is enough

I didnt tried to dodge cages to show that is not necessary even tho it does make it easier when u learn how to do it 
Syncronize the shadow wovens cast with the shadow hands shield... that is the sweet spot about this fight. Always kill all the wovens before unlocking the last hand if u not sure about the timing so u have all the time to hit with the shield down without concerning about the healing and he will summon the wovens again first which allows you a window of damage that worths cuz he stuck in that animation for quite a long time.

Its a 7 minute fight if u make it work... keep practicing! I know it can be overwhelming and it was for me in my early days too but u more than able once u figure out those type of stuff.

You can short this to half the time if you use Wanda or Wolfgang, probably even more than half. I would say Wanda better because you can use Backstep clock instead of the Lazy Explorer

 

[Evelo]

46 minutes ago, Mr Giggio said:

Feel free to ask any question u have
For me the less itens u have in hands the more it gets clear to see whats the next move
The main focus always should deny him to heal instead of do damage, u can see that just holding F as standart damage char and weapon is enough

I didnt tried to dodge cages to show that is not necessary even tho it does make it easier...
- Video -

Pretty good video. though I personally still struggle with some fights (AFW and Crab King) because of item juggling around the inventory. If it was just walking cane and weapon it'd be fine but throw in additional stuff and my inability to use my mouse to move items around during combat really makes it rough. I know it is possible, considering I've beaten with my restrictions but I used Wormwood specific strategies to make it happen. (Bramble Traps and Bloom Refreshing them for the Woven Shadows, moon shrooms to sleep the guards for CK) Just depends on who you play and lean into their possible strategies if struggling.

[Frosty_Mentos]

When in doubt, gunpowder is next best choice if you want to make the fight VERY quick. A stack of it basically cripples it hard enough for you to finish it, if you can coordinate that explosion well enough you basically skip over most of the fight and will have to probably just deal with only one wave of woven shadows + unseen hands that give him barrier.

The fight is long if done in ways that might keep it long, Wolfgang cuts down on the fight fairly fast too while Wigfrid only makes it long but at least keeps you alive for longer.

Another way to deal with him is having houndius shootiuses as backup damage, or Winona and her Charlie sided catapults that kill off all woven shadows making the fight extremely easy.

[Gashzer]

9 hours ago, Evelo said:

Source? Cause that is awesome to hear and I don't want to get my hopes up.

Winona/wurt twitch stream during the beta for them. Not sure where to find it now. Tbh don't get your hopes up, klei reverted the change to make catapults winona only... which was a bad move from them.

Edit: was apart of this stream if you can find it:

finally got the right stream lol

 

 

[Waywarbler]

On 11/7/2024 at 4:08 PM, Well-met said:

this is a good thing.

endgame bosses should always be feared.

There's a difference fearing a boss for its danger and dreading a boss because you don't find the fight enjoyable.

[Well-met]

26 minutes ago, Waywarbler said:

There's a difference fearing a boss for its danger and dreading a boss because you don't find the fight enjoyable.

then use the ways which are easiest and only do him once for the rifts

[SilverSpoon]

On 11/8/2024 at 6:08 AM, Well-met said:

this is a good thing.

endgame bosses should always be feared.

Compared to Celestial Champion, AFW feels more unfair and tedious than fear.

[grm9]

9 minutes ago, SilverSpoon said:

Compared to Celestial Champion, AFW feels more unfair and tedious than fear

CC seems like a saddening joke and i'm not sure about what's unfair or tedious about FW, considering that all things that he does are counterable and relying on RNG for the fight's optional

[arubaro]

56 minutes ago, SilverSpoon said:

Compared to Celestial Champion, AFW feels more unfair and tedious than fear.

And celestial champion feels like a joke...

How is unfair? Is hard but in this game any boss is harder than the average boss of many non casual games