What kind of boat do you fight Crab King with?

[DegenerateFurry]

Simple question with a simple poll: what kind of boat do you use to fight Crab King? I also want to see how that correlates to people liking or disliking the fight, if it does at all. 

[Arcwell]

I use wooden boats but I would use grass rafts if CK's mechanics weren't favorable to specifically wooden boats (i.e. wood boats lets you attack CK without getting hit by claws even while they're surrounding the boat)

I do not like either old or new CK iteration, for different reasons. 
The issue I have with current CK is that it leans too heavily into RNG. Here are some examples of random mechanics that I think make the fight much worse.

• Aim and attack speed of cannon towers: Your boat takes random damage, basically. Also means there is basically no reason to try to dodge these.
• Spawn position of cannon towers coupled with push force and angle of waves: Sometimes you get through phase 1 fine, sometimes you get pushed straight back into a cannon tower and cause a hull breach.
• Spawn positions of crab minions: Sometimes you're able to panflute all the crabs, sometimes they hang around the edge for a while and then come to attack you once CK starts healing.

[DegenerateFurry]

7 minutes ago, Arcwell said:

I use wooden boats but I would use grass rafts if CK's mechanics weren't favorable to specifically wooden boats (i.e. wood boats lets you attack CK without getting hit by claws even while they're surrounding the boat)

I do not like either old or new CK iteration, for different reasons. 
The issue I have with current CK is that it leans too heavily into RNG. Here are some examples of random mechanics that I think make the fight much worse.

• Aim and attack speed of cannon towers: Your boat takes random damage, basically. Also means there is basically no reason to try to dodge these.
• Spawn position of cannon towers coupled with push force and angle of waves: Sometimes you get through phase 1 fine, sometimes you get pushed straight back into a cannon tower and cause a hull breach.
• Spawn positions of crab minions: Sometimes you're able to panflute all the crabs, sometimes they hang around the edge for a while and then come to attack you once CK starts healing.

Those are all fair points, actually. My most recent time fighting reworked CK was with Walter, and towers are a non-issue as Walter since I can just outsnipe them with ease, so I didn't have that problem. 

Have you tried using an ice staff against his minions instead of a pan flute? They stay frozen a long time and are pretty easy to freeze (they don't get freeze resistance no matter what gems you use, is my understanding of it).

[Arcwell]

20 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Have you tried using an ice staff against his minions instead of a pan flute? They stay frozen a long time and are pretty easy to freeze (they don't get freeze resistance no matter what gems you use, is my understanding of it).

I have, but it has more of a range problem than panflute does. Ice staff has a range of 8 whereas panflute has a range of 15. Ice staff also carries with it other issues like needing to be cast twice per crab (so at least 40% durability per cycle, more if you use purples) and not freezing for the entire duration of CK's heal.

[DegenerateFurry]

Just now, Arcwell said:

I have, but it has more of a range problem than panflute does. Ice staff has a range of 8 whereas panflute has a range of 15. Ice staff also carries with it other issues like needing to be cast twice per crab (so at least 40% durability per cycle, more if you use purples) and not freezing for the entire duration of CK's heal.

Oh, I see. Walter's freeze rounds, meanwhile, have huge range (especially if you're using the thulecite frame to alt-fire them), have an AoE, and freeze multiple crabs per hit if they're close enough to each other, and you get 30 per blue gem with the right perks. So, they're honestly better than the pan flute. 

Man, they really ought to buff the ice staff.

[Cheggf]

I place a wooden boat down with nothing on it except maybe an anchor and just row around. I don't want to use a real boat for fighting, it makes it harder and the punishment for failure is 10,000x worse.

[DegenerateFurry]

10 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

I place a wooden boat down with nothing on it except maybe an anchor and just row around. I don't want to use a real boat for fighting, it makes it harder and the punishment for failure is 10,000x worse.

That's fair. I used a normal boat and forgot an anchor the last time I did it, but did just fine. An anchor is probably a good idea.

[Echsrick]

i use empty boat....and then use some gun powder....i feel like he got worser with his rework, towers...ugh...i LOVE instand dying because one of the towers just...spawns inside of the boat without warnings...restart the day is a must

[Walrusst]

42 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Oh, I see. Walter's freeze rounds, meanwhile, have huge range (especially if you're using the thulecite frame to alt-fire them), have an AoE, and freeze multiple crabs per hit if they're close enough to each other, and you get 30 per blue gem with the right perks. So, they're honestly better than the pan flute. 

Man, they really ought to buff the ice staff.

A lot of the early magic items that aren't straight damage maxing feel like they have fallen off pretty hard, it would be nice to see a little love for them. Ways to care for them/maintain them would make me happy even if it was expensive.

[Primalflower]

I liked Crab King's original iteration a lot, the mechanics it presented were best treated like a puzzle to be solved rather than a sort of directly mechanical test of reflexes and all that. Almost oxygen not included-like. That being said, I do quite enjoy crab king's current iteration

I feel like people don't understand how to deal with the towers. If you kill them then they don't break your boat, so it's a matter of both positioning and you having to know when to drag your attention. It's reflexes but its fun once you get the hang of it

[aidankocherhans]

52 minutes ago, Echsrick said:

i use empty boat....and then use some gun powder....i feel like he got worser with his rework, towers...ugh...i LOVE instand dying because one of the towers just...spawns inside of the boat without warnings...restart the day is a must

Make sure to move your boat away from the ice as soon as it starts breaking, the towers spawn right around the ice arena

[DegenerateFurry]

14 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

I liked Crab King's original iteration a lot, the mechanics it presented were best treated like a puzzle to be solved rather than a sort of directly mechanical test of reflexes and all that. Almost oxygen not included-like. That being said, I do quite enjoy crab king's current iteration

I feel like people don't understand how to deal with the towers. If you kill them then they don't break your boat, so it's a matter of both positioning and you having to know when to drag your attention. It's reflexes but its fun once you get the hang of it

I was never a big fan of Crab King's original design pretty much for the exact reason that you say you like it: for most characters, it felt like a punishing puzzle with only one solution. Wickerbottom's refresh actually made her uniquely suited to it, though, which made her my favorite character to fight Crab King as: her grumbles could interrupt his healing without the need for a Weather Pain and keep damage up while she repaired the boat or dealt with his claws, and her temperature book would unfreeze them after Crab King did his freeze attack. 

[aidankocherhans]

1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Man, they really ought to buff the ice staff.

 

47 minutes ago, Walrusst said:

A lot of the early magic items that aren't straight damage maxing feel like they have fallen off pretty hard, it would be nice to see a little love for them. Ways to care for them/maintain them would make me happy even if it was expensive.

The ice staff is an excellent utility item if you think through its uses, it can draw aggro, give you a breather in bosses, let you kill birds, stun one enemy so you can fight the other, and more.

Walter's ice rounds are only better because of the skill tree, before they were practically identical to the ice staff, so not worth being a unique craft

[DegenerateFurry]

1 minute ago, aidankocherhans said:

The ice staff is an excellent utility item if you think through its uses, it can draw aggro, give you a breather in bosses, let you kill birds, stun one enemy so you can fight the other, and more.

Walter's ice rounds are only better because of the skill tree, before they were practically identical to the ice staff, so not worth being a unique craft

Yeah, but it could still do all of that if it worked like Walter's freeze rounds, but maybe with the current inefficiency (so, give it the AoE and buff the durability a bit, but keep the freezing power the same). 

[aidankocherhans]

The ice staff is also an easy way to deal with mctusk 

[Walrusst]

31 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

 

The ice staff is an excellent utility item if you think through its uses, it can draw aggro, give you a breather in bosses, let you kill birds, stun one enemy so you can fight the other, and more.

Walter's ice rounds are only better because of the skill tree, before they were practically identical to the ice staff, so not worth being a unique craft

Birds just take some silk and a board to kill thanks to boomerang (If you aren't a lag wizard.)

Its great for heal breaks.

I was more thinking about the fire staff being well.... People don't like fire darts, the fire staff is well... That without 60 upfront damage.

[Echsrick]

42 minutes ago, aidankocherhans said:

Make sure to move your boat away from the ice as soon as it starts breaking, the towers spawn right around the ice arena

no need to do that if i have the power of gun powder

[Evelo]

My disability makes using a standard boat VERY difficult. CK is the hardest boss for me. Compared to AFW, CK is almost Sisyphean. But also actually fun compared to old CK.

[aidankocherhans]

9 hours ago, Walrusst said:

I was more thinking about the fire staff being well.... People don't like fire darts, the fire staff is well... That without 60 upfront damage.

The only way I could see the fire staff being a more desirable option is giving it Willow's flame effect (doesn't spread, doesn't destroy loot)

[Cheggf]

11 hours ago, Walrusst said:

Birds just take some silk and a board to kill thanks to boomerang (If you aren't a lag wizard.)

Ice staff has 2x the durability, lets you kill birds much faster, and I think is cheaper to craft since it uses blue gems & pickables instead of silk, charcoal, and boards.

[DegenerateFurry]

So, as of the current figures: looks like most players have a positive opinion of reworked Crab King or are indifferent, while only 18% dislike him either compared to the original or just generally.

Additionally, 27% of players use grass rafts while most of the rest use normal boats, except that we apparently have two gigachads who fight him solely with ancient boats. 

Of those people who dislike Crab King, it's an even split between grass raft and wooden boat users, and disliking Crab King doesn't correlate with not doing rollbacks.

[Waywarbler]

1. I enjoyed the new Crab King (even though it caused me Fuelweaver levels of stress), but I never really got a chance to learn the old Crab King. I tried and failed to use the old ice staff strat on him several times, and then beat him by just planting a load of sea weeds around and letting them kill him. Maybe I would've enjoyed it more if I actually tried rowing around, but it never occurred to me to try that or clear out the sea stacks.

2. I use the archaic boat because of its higher health, which meant I didn't really need to worry about repairs as often (that and I preferred to equip bumpers and ram into the cannon towers to destroy them).

[DegenerateFurry]

40 minutes ago, Waywarbler said:

1. I enjoyed the new Crab King (even though it caused me Fuelweaver levels of stress), but I never really got a chance to learn the old Crab King. I tried and failed to use the old ice staff strat on him several times, and then beat him by just planting a load of sea weeds around and letting them kill him. Maybe I would've enjoyed it more if I actually tried rowing around, but it never occurred to me to try that or clear out the sea stacks.

2. I use the archaic boat because of its higher health, which meant I didn't really need to worry about repairs as often (that and I preferred to equip bumpers and ram into the cannon towers to destroy them).

Those are totally legit reasons to use archaic boat, actually. I mistakenly assumed the only reason to use one would be because you hunt enough treasure that you have spares lying around and want to do something with them.

[Evelo]

46 minutes ago, Waywarbler said:

2. I use the archaic boat because of its higher health, which meant I didn't really need to worry about repairs as often (that and I preferred to equip bumpers and ram into the cannon towers to destroy them).

That is a great idea. I'll have to try that out the next time I fight CK. Might make the fight more readily doable without stress out the wazoo, or Wormwood Shroom Cheese.

[DegenerateFurry]

5 minutes ago, Evelo said:

That is a great idea. I'll have to try that out the next time I fight CK. Might make the fight more readily doable without stress out the wazoo, or Wormwood Shroom Cheese.

Oh, moon shroom sleep clouds? Do you use those just for his minions or do they work on the King himself?