WilsonHiggs Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 Crab king design has been always problematic. Now is more rewarding and the gem system has more weight and actually works to personalize the fight but the boss has a mechanically problem: you are rewarded by ignoring his mechanics - he summons claws that follows you but they are slow (and the hit box is kind of weird) so you are better of just rowing fast towards CK while ignoring them - after being hit, CK creates an ice platform (because reasons this needed to be another land fight instead of a fun sailing fight...) but the claws despawn(?) - once the platform is created he summons canons and minions and prepare for healing himself. You either fight the minions and canons and let him heal or ignore ignore them all and stop his healing - the ice platform starts melting so you need to go back to a boat. Some minions might follow you to the boat but the majority despawn. Yes another enemy despawning after being ignore. The canons stays but, unless they are on the way or you used red gems, you just tank the damage, heal the boat or use different grass boats. 3 different ways of atacking the player and you are punished by interacting with them because they either despawn, so you are wasting resources for nothing, or because CK is healing in front of you Sometimes i do destroy some canons (kinda pointless because they respawn) and even fight the claws but just for having fun, is easier to simply ignore everything, specially when is fought with a pearl Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anis5240 Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 I sure love how crab king remains horrible in both iterations, let's wait for the 3rd rework! Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805547 Share on other sites More sharing options...
WilsonHiggs Posted March 9, 2025 Author Share Posted March 9, 2025 1 minute ago, Anis5240 said: I sure love how crab king remains horrible in both iterations, let's wait for the 3rd rework! Now is funnier but the design is contradictory Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805548 Share on other sites More sharing options...
cropo Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 Only thing I really dislike about the new fight is canons spawning underneath your boat. That really drove me insane when I realized he could do that and I absolutely hate it. I don't know how people can ignore the canons, they mercilessly pelt your boat and seem to continue doing it even when you're on the ice platform and you won't know how close it is to sinking when you hop back onto it. The damage really adds up over time, maybe I'm just using a bad gem combo. The sleep lag on some minions is also kind of annoying, I can't quite understand how to fully manage sleeping all of them so I usually just expect to tank some hits while I stop the healing, Probably me doing something wrong though. But honestly the hardest part of the fight for me was trying to prevent his canons from spawning underneath my boat and comboing with the already spawned canons blasting away at it and causing it to sink in like 2 seconds. The ice platform part is pretty cool though, and makes sense that he would want to push you away to try and defend and heal himself. I think he's much better than before. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805552 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Hollow Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 1 of the reasons why I main walter The claws are okay I think, but I agree with the cannon part, having them penetrate your boat when you're not even on it is just annoying for no good reason. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805553 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Helenar Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 I disagree with your statement that you are 'ignoring' mechanics. With the towers, you need to make the active choice wether you'd like to knock some down or just head towards ck to deal damage, and risk your boat taking damage. There's decision making involved, and risk and payoff. This is much more interesting than just having to kill them. There is a lot of manoeuvering involved in dodging the claws. When you leave them alive to focus on crabking, you risk taking a lot of damage yourself. Again, there is a risk vs reward system, where you can choose between slow and safe or fast and loose. The crab guards are definitely different, as a blow of the panflute trivializes them, but I don't think this is bad per se, as it introduces a resource cost and balancing gem counts for sleep resistance. All in all, just because you're not holding down f untill something dies does not mean you're 'ignoring' it. There's a lot of decisionmaking involved in all of these mechanics, and I find ck incredibly fun to fight any time I need more bottles for treasure. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805554 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steorra Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 2 hours ago, cropo said: I don't know how people can ignore the canons, they mercilessly pelt your boat and seem to continue doing it even when you're on the ice platform and you won't know how close it is to sinking when you hop back onto it Normally I would go kill those cannons which closing my boat before I go onto the ice. Yes I can not simply ignore the cannon if the boat is my favourite boat which for daily sailing. But I could ignore the cannon if I use many boat sets for the battle. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805582 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guille6785 Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 all they had to do was improve on the original fight (which already had good ideas) and the fight would've been an objective upgrade, but instead they decided to scrap everything about the original fight including the things that worked so now its old problems were just replaced with new problems Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805588 Share on other sites More sharing options...
DegenerateFurry Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 Nah, the rework is largely an improvement. Towers spawning below your boat is kinda BS, though. Also, I don't see how you can ignore any of those? The towers nearest to your boat will damage you and it, the claws will swarm you if you don't deal with them, and you kinda need to Weather Pain periodically between killing/freezing/sleeping his minions to prevent him from healing. It's a silly criticism to say that killing a boss's infrequently-spawning minions is "a waste of resources". Do you see the same problem with the Eye of Terror/Twins? Anyway, the worst-ever boss design in the game is Fuelweaver, who actually wastes a ton of resources by design. The second-worst is OG pre-redesign Crab King. Reworked Crab King is decent. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805589 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anis5240 Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 7 minutes ago, Guille6785 said: its old problems were just replaced with new problems That's just average klei modus operandi Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805590 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prinha Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 4 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said: Anyway, the worst-ever boss design in the game is Fuelweaver, who actually wastes a ton of resources by design. The second-worst is OG pre-redesign Crab King. Reworked Crab King is decent. Hard disagree. Just this week I did FW with Wendy around day 60 using 1 Lazy Explorer 1 Nightmare Amulet 1 Thulecite Club 3 Thulecite Crowns 1 Jellybean, 1 Pierogie, 12 Banana Shakes 5 Spectral Cure All 1 Cursed Vexation and 20 Butterflies That's not even close to "a ton of ressources" and for this I get a full reset of the ruins with all their loot aswell as the shadowrift stuff. Calling that "a waste" seems totally out of proportion. Now let's have a look at FW fight on cooperative endless servers where people set up catapults and stuff to help with the fight. With like 3 people he goes down quickly with hardly any investment at all. I think FW is pretty much the hardest fight DST has to offer and shows the limits of what can be designed for multiplayer specifically. Crabking is kind of similar in that regard. Klei simply took the WoW approach to these fights by forcing the player to do several things at once. This is considerably easier when multiple people are assigned to do different tasks. At the same time they managed to keep the fights doable by just one person. FW has been the favourite fight in DST for many people. It's a difficult fight that challenges the player, allows for skill expression and has a very good reward. Not even close to worst design. Not in a world where Misery Toadstool exists. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805591 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anis5240 Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 6 minutes ago, Prinha said: did FW with Wendy that said a lot Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805594 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Hollow Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 25 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said: the worst-ever boss design in the game is Fuelweaver Why though? I'm kinda curious, because from my experience ck is more of a resource sink than fw most of the times Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805597 Share on other sites More sharing options...
_mylilsunshine_ Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 that begs the question: is klei bad at boss design? i play walter so i cheese crab king anyway, but the few times i fought him pre-tree, i struggled a lot and drowned a lot. the only fight in this game that is enjoyable for me is celestial champion. it's very skill expressive, if you mess up, it's because you're lacking in skills. i like that. it means as long as i improve, it will always be smooth sailing but other fights are somewhat unpredictable, bosses should have telegraphed and consistent behaviours, but sometimes when i feel like i correctly dodge/predict something, i'm still hit and punished for it. etc etc skill issues on my part? sure, i get that i'm not the best player, not even a good one, but i know i'm not that bad to fail so spectacularly at some bosses. other older bosses are just wack-a-mole simulator Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805599 Share on other sites More sharing options...
kikia Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 34 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said: Anyway, the worst-ever boss design in the game is Fuelweaver, who actually wastes a ton of resources by design. The second-worst is OG pre-redesign Crab King. Reworked Crab King is decent. I think it was likely designed with multiplayer cooperation in mind from the start. In fact, most bosses created during the ANR and earlier give a strong impression of encouraging coordinated team strategies. Take Bee Queen, Toadstool, and the Dragonfly(in DST) as examples – their mechanics inherently reward players who divide roles strategically. When multiple players tackle their specific mechanics with assigned responsibilities, the difficulty becomes well-balanced, and everyone gains meaningful engagement during the battle. This approach differs fundamentally from that merely stacking player numbers to overwhelm through brute DPS, as it emphasizes tactical collaboration rather than quantity alone. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805603 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walrusst Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 Crab kinds a strange one because having his fight have integrity is a lot of work but getting boat combat to be smooth with lag is extremely tedious. Since like, his cannons piercing boats kinda makes sense given otherwise you could plaster is arena in boats to greatly delay his mechanics and then now its an idle boss. Like, oceangoing combat wouldn't be unfun if you had more boat mounted ranged weapons of various sizes, but currently our portfolio of base raft bosses are a boss that even newbies can accidentally facetank, and crab king. The reason I say this is having someone man the guns who can plink away at crab king defenses while someone elses paddles is a gameplay experience. I'm sorry sir but you need to paddle twice more to start hitting f creates a lot of awkwardness and inventory management that normally you are used to seeing with just high level players. Maybe if we gave Wigfrid a Battle Paddle, or more melee weapons had a reach between the whips and the standard melees more people would be interested in naval melee encounters. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805607 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakepeng99 Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 58 minutes ago, Guille6785 said: all they had to do was improve on the original fight (which already had good ideas) and the fight would've been an objective upgrade, but instead they decided to scrap everything about the original fight including the things that worked so now its old problems were just replaced with new problems Yeah i agree with this. Even if the new fight was solid, it feels like a waste of time to rework something not that broken. Nerf the health of the claws drastically, and improve gem balance, the old crab king becomes a decent boss. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805610 Share on other sites More sharing options...
DegenerateFurry Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 31 minutes ago, Crimson Hollow said: Why though? I'm kinda curious, because from my experience ck is more of a resource sink than fw most of the times Too much to manage at once for a single person unless you're playing Wendy (Abigail deals with wovens for you and Wendy's lessened sanity drain means less worrying about sanity management, and it's very easy for you to get a Bee Queen crown and jellybeans). His invincibility phase's bubble consistently screws up targeting and will make you hit it instead of the things you can actually damage. His invincibility and healing phases are too frequent and don't allow you enough time to actually fight him, so the fight is needlessly prolonged. There's no reasonable way to avoid his bone cage, so you have to spam teleports. For everyone who doesn't have them as a perk or base kit, this is a problem since it means you'll need even more sanity food. Bone cage is also obnoxiously frequent. His mind control thing can activate when you're not even insane (only like halfway) and screws you over for no reason. Nightmare Amulet has a tendency to dump 2-3 obnoxiously persistent Terrorbeaks on you if you have it equipped for more than half a second during this fight (and even then, you're probably getting at least one). So, now you have to deal with those too, or just tank multiple armor-shredding 50 damage hits until the game remembers to despawn them because you're too busy and not even insane. Crab King has zero sanity management and his minions can be slept or frozen. The Wovens heal him for a ridiculous amount and don't all spawn at once, there's too many of them, and they're small moving targets, so it can be difficult to clear them even with a Weather Pain (unlike Thicc Boi Crab King, who is of immense girth and completely sedentary, so you literally just have to cast it like twice per healing phase and there's no way to miss). Unlike Crab King, they've patched most of the better cheese methods, so there's no good option for those of us who like rift content, but hate this fight. Screwing up any of this even slightly can result in this already very prolonged fight (due to how short your attack windows are) resetting to the beginning as he fully heals himself. All of this involves the most tedious inventory management minigame imaginable as you're constantly switching between several items and healing your sanity and health, and this in a game where swapping between more than two items tends to mix up their slots for some reason. It's an incredibly stressful experience and consistently makes me lose my desire to play the game for at least a week every time I do it. Also, the fact that Fuelweaver is more accessible than Crab King (who you need to do Pearl's whole quest to get the pearl for, do the moonstone event, get a deconstruction staff and a star caller, do the moonstone event so you can activate the archives, and assemble two of the lunar altars to find with the astral detector) means it's obnoxious that he's so much harder and high-risk to fight, because you'd think being available earlier in progression would mean he'd actually be easier to solo. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805614 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guille6785 Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 10 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said: no offense but I feel like you've committed so much to denouncing fuelweaver as a terrible boss that you now desperately want the boss to be bad, to the point that whenever people show you why the bossfight works you immediately make excuses to say that perfectly valid strategies and advice actually “don't count” Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805632 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dingle Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 I like the new crab king a lot more. The only change I really want is making it so the tower cannons can't spawn underneath your boat. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805639 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bumber64 Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 8 minutes ago, Guille6785 said: no offense but I feel like you've committed so much to denouncing fuelweaver as a terrible boss that you now desperately want the boss to be bad, to the point that whenever people show you why the bossfight works you immediately make excuses to say that perfectly valid strategies and advice actually “don't count” Explaining a strat doesn't make the fight any more enjoyable for someone who doesn't enjoy the type of fight to begin with. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805640 Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverSpoon Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 27 minutes ago, Guille6785 said: no offense but I feel like you've committed so much to denouncing fuelweaver as a terrible boss that you now desperately want the boss to be bad, to the point that whenever people show you why the bossfight works you immediately make excuses to say that perfectly valid strategies and advice actually “don't count” At that point I think that is a personal attack... There are certainly strategies and advice for AFW, but it's not necessarily fun to do that. I dislike AFW far more than I dislike Crab King, and I could complain about him and how his fight is "Bad" any number of times, but since this is a Crab King thread I'll stop here. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805642 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guille6785 Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 12 minutes ago, Bumber64 said: Explaining a strat doesn't make the fight any more enjoyable for someone who doesn't enjoy the type of fight to begin with. and yet there is a difference between fundamentally disliking the style of a bossfight and spreading wrong information about said fight (while telling people that their favorite strategies either don't count for some reason or are exploits somehow) in order to justify the fight being objectively bad instead of just you disliking it Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805645 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Hollow Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said: His invincibility and healing phases are too frequent and don't allow you enough time to actually fight him, so the fight is needlessly prolonged. Maybe unrelated, but seems they made a slight adjustment to his mechanics again in recent updates, that the moment he enter phase 2, he will immediately enter his invincibility phase. Perhaps to prevent cheesing? 1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said: so the fight is needlessly prolonged 1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said: Screwing up any of this even slightly can result in this already very prolonged fight This two are very relatable, if you're not Wendy, Wortox, Wurt w 100 merms or post skilltree Walter... either you do cc first and spam bs staff attack or its gonna be pure agony, at least for casual players like me. I actually feel like this is comparable w crab king fight... Im not sure, fw resets your progress if you dont react fast enough, ck resets your progress AND sends you back if you dont react fast enough for yourself AND your boat.... 1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said: Nightmare Amulet has a tendency to dump 2-3 obnoxiously persistent Terrorbeaks on you if you have it equipped for more than half a second during this fight (and even then, you're probably getting at least one). This as well, I struggle w switching between amulet and armor a lot, especially that I play Walter and hitting the unseen hands on Woby while dodging fw attack, bone cage, the 2 terrorbeaks, and at the same time shooting the woven shadows that are oftentimes blocked by fw's huge hitbox.... Well thats quite an experience. I cant think of an example in ck fight thats comparable to this one, maybe the cannon tower spawning under boat issue? 1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said: because you'd think being available earlier in progression would mean he'd actually be easier to solo This one I actually don't quite agree, I think its more balanced this way that shadow route can be accessed earlier but has a harder boss fight, while lunar route has a much easier boss fight but takes significantly longer But again, which one punishes you harder for the lack of skills? I can see both, but I'd personally go for crab king here, simply because of the fact that you will drown and everything will be reset with maybe just one slip up. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805664 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anis5240 Posted March 9, 2025 Share Posted March 9, 2025 4 minutes ago, Crimson Hollow said: takes significantly longer it takes longer PRECISELY BECAUSE OF Pearl and CK. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/164755-crab-king-is-the-worst-designer-boss/#findComment-1805671 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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