Crab King is the worst designer boss

[WilsonHiggs]

24 minutes ago, Well-met said:

if it involves a trawler, bees or a flute im not interested

 High protection armor, healing, boat patches and boards, an empty boat and i like to use malbatross peak but the driftwood paddle would do the work. Idk where comes the believe of needing a lazy explorer, isnt need at all.

Just destroy the closest turret, kill or ignore the closest claws and go straight to ck and hit him until the ice spawn, if there are claws close to you use the paddle and create momentum to keep hitting while evading the claws. Heal boat, jump onto the ice and break the ice barrier, ignore the minions, they have little range so you can kite them while hitting CK or just tank them... they deal very little damage. Ice breaks, return to boat, heal boat, heal yourself, kill crabs that might jump into the boat and repeat

I dont get why people say that the fight requires WP, lazy explorer, tons of resources, boring cheese or other unnecessary stuff. Is a very straightforward fight, just hit CK as much as possible without wasting time on anything else

[Cheggf]

What even is the point of the Lazy Explorer? You're right next to him. I watched that video linked and the teleport distance was so short it didn't even look like it saved any time. 

[Well-met]

27 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

What even is the point of the Lazy Explorer? You're right next to him. I watched that video linked and the teleport distance was so short it didn't even look like it saved any time. 

it saved his life a few times though

[Popian]

1 hour ago, Well-met said:

it saved his life a few times though

It is not as if the game forced a commit or else situation, it's a consequence of the choices to:

• use Grass Boats
• not repair boats
• idle during wave phases

It can help as a backup option or save a few clicks, but is by no means required.

[aidankocherhans]

5 hours ago, Well-met said:

if it involves a trawler, bees or a flute im not interested

Only the pan flute, but that's no real issue because of the free one you always get

I'm not talking about a cheese strat

[Steorra]

You should try to learn the difference between "bad design CK" and "bad design sailing system"

[somethin]

Pearled crab king is a bit annoying, but it's a 1 time thing. Repeated fights though? Oh boy, I love me some steamed crabs with treasure bottles as sides

 

[WilsonHiggs]

1 hour ago, Steorra said:

You should try to learn the difference between "bad design CK" and "bad design sailing system"

And you should try to learn what is related to sailing and what is related to boss mechanics being there for nothing despite any sailing system

[oregu]

even if the fight has much to be desired, i cant hate it because it has these things that make the cutest sounds. at least you dont need to freeze ck anymore to have a chance soloing him in a timely enough manner.

[Steorra]

1 hour ago, WilsonHiggs said:

And you should try to learn what is related to sailing and what is related to boss mechanics being there for nothing despite any sailing system

If you have nothing to complain about the sailing/sea mechanic during the CK fighting, then I have no idea why you complaining about CK itself.

The current CK is well designed which is interesting, challenging, customizable and with various different solving methods for different playstyle. Most people could find their most interested way to deal with CK - even you DO hate every method of CK fighting, you could easily cheese him by using killer bees. You have the option.

And for the CK, he is far better designed than most bosses/mobs in current DST - others mostly only force you to repeat the "hit x times, dodge, hit x times" loops, boring.

14 hours ago, Catuna_ said:

mechanics in the form of never upgrading the towers,

Tbh that's a personal choice. If you have interest for different challenge, you may upgrade the tower a bit and to clear them by using range weapon on boat - then we found that CK is one of the rarely design which have valid interaction when players using range weapon.

[WilsonHiggs]

31 minutes ago, Steorra said:

you have nothing to complain about the sailing/sea mechanic during the CK fighting, then I have no idea why you complaining about CK itself

It would be even worst with a simplier system like sw boats

Read OP, i never mentioned anything related to dst boats being the problem

[Catuna_]

4 hours ago, Steorra said:

You should try to learn the difference between "bad design CK" and "bad design sailing system"

Nope, CK is just bad design. The rowing system is fine, you can do a lot with it for a boss fight.

1 hour ago, Steorra said:

Tbh that's a personal choice. If you have interest for different challenge, you may upgrade the tower a bit and to clear them by using range weapon on boat - then we found that CK is one of the rarely design which have valid interaction when players using range weapon.

There's no reason for the player to not pick the easiest route available, this was a massive criticism of the old CK fight. The rework didn't really fix this, there's still gems that you have no reason to use. Self-imposed challenges are fun and all but I don't think that's a good argument for them.

[Steorra]

16 minutes ago, Catuna_ said:

There's no reason for the player to not pick the easiest route available, this was a massive criticism of the old CK fight. The rework didn't really fix this, there's still gems that you have no reason to use. Self-imposed challenges are fun and all but I don't think that's a good argument for them.

1. Different players has different opinions toward the "easiest route".

2. If your logic is always valid for DST, why there's many players who choose characters other than Maxwell, Wurt and Wolfgang?

16 minutes ago, Catuna_ said:

Nope, CK is just bad design.

Then I wondering what the definition of "bad designed boss" for you.

For me, it's about -

1. Unnecessary boring repeating gameplay (toad, and the old CK, you could also say treeguard is bad design in this logic, they just don't bother me alot like toad and CK)

2. Randomly spawn, and force you to prepare something which is rarely used in daily gameplay. And the preparation means inventory slot occupied. (See reference GDW if you have to feeding it. Also see reference rictus for non-AoE characters)

3. High risk, no reward, which means you'd better avoid them rather than challenge them (Old CK, and GDW. Also the scrappy werepig could be one of them).

4. Full of bugs, almost completely broken. (Frostjaw. Though I like his interaction of combat. But too many bugs. Too many, I mean.)

[WilsonHiggs]

1 hour ago, Steorra said:

Randomly spawn, and force you to prepare something which is rarely used in daily gameplay. And the preparation means inventory slot occupied. (See reference GDW if you have to feeding it. Also see reference rictus for non-AoE characters)

Wat

[AwkwardPerson]

I'm really surprised the new CK has drawn this level of ire from the community. Looking at some of these comments and some popular youtube videos, perhaps CK is just misunderstood. 

I look at the most popular video (Jazzy) and he implicitly assumes that +1 point for each perk is equal across the perks [they are not; some perks are worse than others]. At least Jazzy suggests that gem variety is the name of the game - it's just that he doesn't really go over the "easiest" gem combo

Then you have beard with his normal complaint video and he doesn't even use gem combos 

Then you have the speed runner Amselari (i probably butchered his name) who recommends all orange gems. This is a terrible idea if you don't animation cancel or play solo

 

Overall, this new CK fight is easy. I beat it with old wanda with 1 grass boat (no repairs). Spawn -> platform -> 1 round of claws -> platform -> dead. This is much easier than the old fight. 

I don't think it really matters if you ignore the claws or fight them. I fought them and it did nothing to prolong the fight. I didn't take towers out either and I didn't die; boat didn't sink. Maybe some people would call this "sub-optimal" but there's many ways to play DST, and clearly the gem set I was using made it quick and easy (despite my possible "inefficiencies"). 

It's also nice that they made the loot worth fighting for (bottles to get ancient seeds, crab king bumper for sailing enthusiasts). 

 

That being said, the new fight does have drawbacks.

- The tower spawn pulverizing the boat was brutal but I haven't had that problem in a while so perhaps they patched it

- Accidentally hopping off to a disintegrating ice floe because you're trying to attack something is also annoying. So I don't row or attack anything while there are floes in the water. It doesn't prolong the fight significantly waiting that extra 3 seconds for the field to clear. 

- Like Variant said many pages ago, the water around the battlefield can be messy with all the meat and potentially grass from grass boats. I have been caught in situations where I can't deploy a boat to get off the ice sheet. But seeing how low resource and easy the fight is now, I might just use a wooden boat and carry 3 boards with me. Considering the loot this comes with, it's totally worth it. 

 

These drawbacks don't make the fight one of the worst fights in the game though. People wanted multiphase, unique fights. 

 

Edit: I also wanted to mention that everyone wants to panflute the minions for some reason. It helps that I have a high damage character (but are we really going to pretend that other survivors don't have ways to dish out extra damage with the skill trees now?) but half the minions usually get caught on the ice barrier and can't get to me anyways. 

[Guille6785]

52 minutes ago, AwkwardPerson said:

I'm really surprised the new CK has drawn this level of ire from the community. Looking at some of these comments and some popular youtube videos, perhaps CK is just misunderstood. 

Overall, this new CK fight is easy. I beat it with old wanda with 1 grass boat (no repairs). Spawn -> platform -> 1 round of claws -> platform -> dead. This is much easier than the old fight. 

I don't understand your point, I think you might be mixing up people's complaints about the design of the fight with them thinking the fight is too hard?

52 minutes ago, AwkwardPerson said:

Then you have the speed runner Amselari (i probably butchered his name) who recommends all orange gems. This is a terrible idea if you don't animation cancel or play solo

fyi crab king was changed after this, this was during the beta, if you watch the video he doesn't behave like that anymore

[AwkwardPerson]

15 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

I don't understand your point, I think you might be mixing up people's complaints about the design of the fight with them thinking the fight is too hard?

 

Well this is a bit of a convoluted thread. The author does mention some design issues, to which Helenar on page 1 addressed. Then you have the author of this threat post on page 4 of this thread that people equate anything that requires skill with bad design. So basically there are design elements being discussed here but the difficulty plays a role in these discussions. You don't see people complaining about moose goose or dragonfly, and it's not like those fights are designed any better. 

 

19 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

fyi crab king was changed after this, this was during the beta, if you watch the video he doesn't behave like that anymore

Makes sense. So i guess anyone who doesn't understand the mechanics of the gem effects (which can only be found on the dst wiki.gg), will just have to go off of social media posts and personal anecdotes to draw conclusions about gem combos/fight difficulty. 

[hyoton123]

I dont like how crowded the water gets with junk and theres a little too much rng with the tower spawning under boats, and I swear theres been bugs where I just drown. But it’s fine, more or less. it fulfillls its job of explaining to me why pearl is better off single.

[Catuna_]

9 hours ago, Steorra said:

1. Different players has different opinions toward the "easiest route".

2. If your logic is always valid for DST, why there's many players who choose characters other than Maxwell, Wurt and Wolfgang?

The easiest route has a rather objective meaning here, max red gems is a lot harder than max green. I agree that people can struggle with different things but when it comes to CK upgrading the towers is objectively more difficult than claws for example. There's no reason why I wouldn't upgrade claws when I know that I can entirely avoid them as a mechanic consistently.

I never claimed my logic was "always valid for DST". I am right when I said that in this particular context though, people will look up guides and take content creator's words and methods on how to beat bosses. Look at Fuelweaver, people will opt out for weather pains or brightshade staves just because they're easier. Look at Toadstool, many people will opt out for weather pains and moonglass axes when torches work just as well. People want to take the path of least resistance with bosses because no matter how you approach a fight (with pearled CK for example for the sake of sticking with the OG topic of the thread) the reward is always the same. Meanwhile, DST characters will try and reward the player for different play styles and objectives with varying levels of rewards with different amounts of input.

9 hours ago, Steorra said:

Then I wondering what the definition of "bad designed boss" for you.

I already provided my two cents on why I think the new CK is flawed and a downgrade when it comes to the concept of the boss and the way it plays out. I was very looking forward for Klei to fix Crab King to make him more universally enjoyable but they ended up scrapping his unique concept and going for a much more mundane one that I personally see as a downgrade.

On 3/11/2025 at 7:40 PM, Catuna_ said:

I really dislike this iteration of crab king; I wish they stuck with the original concept and tried to fix it to be more accessible for less experienced players.
CK is way too easy in a lot of ways now, and I wish they kept a bit more challenge. Yes, he's kind of a parallel to the shadow pieces which are easy, but I think those kinda leave a lot to be desired too... The idea of a boss that only targets your boat is just so much cooler, now CK is just a fight that just kinda gets bullied by any character...

This fight really just revolves around ignoring all of the boss' mechanics in the form of never upgrading the towers, sleeping the minions and avoiding the claws completely which makes it feel boring. The ice platform is just ??? because at this point you're not even fighting on a boat most of the time. The fact that you can just skip phase 1 because you can hold F as any character before the claws catch up to you is equally lame, and the new gem system still suffers from the same problems as the old one where there's some gems you'd just never use unless you were actively trying to make it harder on yourself (albeit not as severe). CK being so easily shut down in his healing phase definitely feels odd to me, and even then I feel like boat gripping was a much better mechanic than spawning a couple minions with terrible pathfinding. Even if you made them immune to sleep, you'd still tank them to get the most damage off because attacking them punishes you via CK healing. You're just never winning when you interact with new CK's mechanics. He doesn't even freeze you anymore. Towers miss a lot of the time and un-upgraded towers just kinda don't really do enough to pressure the player in any capacity.

I was very stoked for a rework, but I really did end up underwhelmed by the final product.
 

 

[WilsonHiggs]

2 hours ago, AwkwardPerson said:

You don't see people complaining about moose goose or dragonfly, and it's not like those fights are designed any better. 

You can see me complaining about how repetitive and unskilled is DF even without walls. I wish klei modernize the fight soon 

Goose is a fight that shouldn't be harder because new players needs stuff to learn. It could have a modern hitbox like deerclops and bearger so new players arent hit by an invisible force when trying to hit them from behind 

I just made this topic because i realized what i described in op while fighting him last time. Just going strait to him and ignore everything else doesnt feels right and is worst without the pearl

[AwkwardPerson]

13 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

 

I just made this topic because i realized what i described in op while fighting him last time. Just going strait to him and ignore everything else doesnt feels right and is worst without the pearl

I mean if you really break this down, it's nothing new. 

When you fight bee queen, dragonfly, and the eye of terror/twins, you would ignore the minions anytime you could. In fact, I bet that's exactly what the majority of the rest of the players do. It's the most rational way to fight these bosses, so I'm not really sure why crab king gets reprimanded so harshly. 

[WilsonHiggs]

18 minutes ago, AwkwardPerson said:

I mean if you really break this down, it's nothing new. 

When you fight bee queen, dragonfly, and the eye of terror/twins, you would ignore the minions anytime you could. In fact, I bet that's exactly what the majority of the rest of the players do. It's the most rational way to fight these bosses, so I'm not really sure why crab king gets reprimanded so harshly. 

But isnt just avoiding the minions. Is about avoiding claws and turrets too

In the twins and eye they make sense because they harass you in a fight that goes against the clock 

In BQ is true that suffers from the same as CK but they are 1 kind of minion protecting her queen instead of 3 different mechanics 

[aidankocherhans]

28 minutes ago, WilsonHiggs said:

But isnt just avoiding the minions. Is about avoiding claws and turrets too

Even if you aren't killing them, you are still interacting with them in some way. On some level they are just the bosses attacks (he doesn't have a direct attack at all) and dodging around them isn't necessarily that different from dodging a boss attack

People were cancelling old crab king's moves too, just in a more direct way

[AwkwardPerson]

1 hour ago, WilsonHiggs said:

But isnt just avoiding the minions. Is about avoiding claws and turrets too

In the twins and eye they make sense because they harass you in a fight that goes against the clock 

In BQ is true that suffers from the same as CK but they are 1 kind of minion protecting her queen instead of 3 different mechanics 

If all 3 of crab king's damage dealers *had* to be dealt with, people would just complain that the fight is too difficult. That is... unless they got rid of the gem socketing and standardized the fight more. The gem customization is what made crab king so unique anyways, even if people just threw in 9 purples prior to the rework. 

[Cheggf]

5 hours ago, AwkwardPerson said:

You don't see people complaining about moose goose or dragonfly, and it's not like those fights are designed any better. 

Even ignoring whether or not those fights are better designed, if they remove moose goose and dragonfly's fights from the game entirely and replaced them with completely different fights people would start to be very critical of those new fights.