Fuelweaver ... wtf

[Kacpert25]

I would understand the annoyance of solo combat, but if you're having trouble with two, well, it seems like a skill issue to me. It's only one person needs to do is focus on hitting hands and using weather pains.

[Crimson Hollow]

Wont say its a badly designed boss, but definitely a tough fight if you wanna fight him legit.

Either way, there are plenty of ways to go around it if you just dont enjoy the fight or dont wanna stress yourself. Its always an option to come back to it whenever you feel ready. Its your game and your experience after all.

[Frosty_Mentos]

Simple solution are weather pains, at least a few of them. In a team of two you could negate his healing with ease as well as stall his movement with it. Right before you get stunned by his insanity thingy you send a tornado or two to keep him busy.

[DVGMedia]

I think it's important to use fuel weavers tools against him like how the bone cage is an aoe attack  that hits anything around the player. So like you can actually position yourself to make the fuel weaver kill it's own minions. Plus like for timing you get 20 seconds for both the invincible phase and healing phase. You can make them take longer because they also got some unskippable animations.  So can get like 25 or 30 seconds of DPS on fuel weaver during his 2nd phase. Just need to position him correctly and practice the fight 

[Theukon-dos]

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Oh boy, where to begin?

• The invincibility shield should make it so you do not target him over his woven shadows or the unseen hands. This just makes it so you're fighting the controls more than you're fighting the boss. Feels like a bug more than an intended mechanic, should be fixed. Serves literally no purpose but to be frustrating.

Never really found this to be a problem, but also not something I'd disagree with being changed.

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• The fossil RNG, while a funny haha reference to the flaws of early paleontology, is... kinda pointless, and yet another aspect of this fight that's just annoying.
  • Getting the fossils for Fuelweaver does all but require you to clear out non-renewable Spilagmites, which sucks for any Webbers you might have with you, since spitters are great and manufacturing them rather than recruiting them isn't worth the cost. 

Spilagmites have a 100% chance to drop atleast one fossil with a chance for extra. And regular stilagmites have a chance to drop them aswell.

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• There is simply not enough time for you to attack him between dealing with his healing phase and his invincibility phase, so this boss with 16000 HP drags on for an obnoxiously long amount of time because you're actually dealing damage for a tiny portion of it. So, he should have a longer cooldown on making himself invincible and trying to fully heal

Fuelweaver has amongst the lowest HP of all the raid bosses introduced by a new reign. That 16000 HP is being compared to Klaus with 15000 HP, Bee Queen with 22500 HP, and Toadstool with 52500 HP. So the downtime is already compensated for.

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

•  

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• His bone ring attack (where he rains bones in a circle) is largely decorative, I don't think I've ever even seen anyone get hit by it. What's the point of it? 

...honestly yeah.

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• His bone cage spam is cancerous and requires you to spam teleports, and dodging it by running three times the attack distance of Dragonfly with no indication of where it ends, which also happens to take up 90% of the Atrium is not a good workaround.
  • The fact that highly skilled players who try to minimize sanity loss have to abuse the cage not forming properly on the edge of the arena is an indicator that it's too frequent. You will end up using probably at least two Lazy Explorers, which you otherwise are not likely to fully use up, meaning the fight requires you to sacrifice something you could've kept for your whole playthrough. Solution? Make him do the bone cage less frequently.

Ancient fuelweaver costing resources isn't a flaw.

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• He heals way too much from Woven Shadows, making it feel too punishing if you miss even a single one. That means using 2-3 Weather Pains (more if you screw up at all), because they don't all spawn at once and instead move slowly towards him, so each heal phase requires multiple uses. 
  • The voltgoat horn's famously bad drop rate means that you're going to feel each one you burn on him, especially if you're Warly and have better uses for those horns.

Once again, a boss costing resources isn't a flaws. If anything, more bosses should have weird item requirements like this.

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• You're pretty much required to use the Nightmare Amulet to fight him, which has an obnoxious tendency to rapidly spawn multiple Terrorbeaks. 
  • The Terrorbeaks tend not to despawn once you take the amulet off for several seconds, so while everything else is going on, you are also being chased by a fast nightmare creature that does 50 damage a hit and attacks rapidly, and there's probably multiple. 

I actually agree that the terror beaks thay spawn are annoying. But AFW having unique mechanics tied to sanity isn't a flaw.

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• The Bee Queen crown is essential for the fight if you don't want to burn a crazy amount of sanity food.
  • Because of how small the windows are where you're not teleporting, killing Wovens, killing Unseen Hands, or managing sanity, you're encouraged to tank. This means you are going to lose a lot of durability on a very useful sanity restoration tool, or possibly even lose it, unless you're hot-swapping your armor in addition to everything else.

Once again, a boss costing resources isn't a flaw.

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• The way item swapping works in this game means your inventory will be constantly rearranging itself if you're using number keys to swap between items. With how many different things you're swapping between in this fight (Lazy Explorer, your chosen weapon, Weather Pain, shadow amulet, a different chest slot item that's probably either armor or a mag, and ideally Bee Queen crown and a helmet), this gets really chaotic fast if you're not overly careful and requires a level of inventory management that far exceeds anything else in the game. 

I would say ypur point about the inventory re-arranging itself is demonstratably untrue- atleast to the degree you make it out to be. But I'm not actually sure that's the case with number keys specifically. I'll have to experiment later once I'm home. 

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

•  
  • This is a problem mostly because the fight is so fast-paced and so punishing if you miss your chance or make a small mistake. Toning down how punishing it is or slowing it down a little would help considerably.
  • The required item list for this boss is longer than it is for any other boss, and you may genuinely struggle to find room for everything in your inventory without a backpack (which isn't an option since you need an amulet for parts of the fight).

Once again, bosses taking resources isn't a flaw. Also, you can keep spare items on the ground to pick them up as needed.

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• Fuelweaver is available far earlier than his lunar counterpart, which is a problem when he's substantially more difficult and less forgiving. 
  • You can pretty reliably fight Fuelweaver by mid-winter or Spring if you're mildly experienced, but Celestial Champion - by virtue of requiring you to do Pearl's quest, visit the ruins for a Star Caller, do the moonstone event, Crab King, start up the archives, assemble all three altarflaws. the lunar island, ideally kill Bee Queen for bundling wrap, grow a potato, and then do the moonstorms - will likely not be fought until at minimum autumn 2 if you're solo.

If you ask me, the flaw here is that Celestial Champion takes to much to fight, not AFW taking too little.

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• • Celestial Champion's combat loop is overall far more inline with what the game typically expects of you, although it is more difficult
• • Fuelweaver is infinitely more punishing than Celestial Champion because he'll despawn if you even leave the Atrium, whereas Celestial Champion lets you leave and resume the fight whenever you want.

OK just a moment. What is it that you think the game expects out of the player? Because while it is the hardest of the raid bosses, the demands of the fight are consistant with all the other raid bosses introduced by ANR. Klaus, Toadstool, Bee Queen, and AFW all despawn if you abandon the fight. In addition, BQ spawns a constant stream of minions that have no set pattern or openings, and will happily stunlock you if you let them. Beating BQ as a solo player demands penty of preparation itself, including a ton of pan flutes to get the grumble bees off your back long enough to get an opening. While Toadstool will regularly spawn mushtrees that bolster it's massive HP with extra DR and attacks damage. These mushtrees can be chopped with very little equipment, but doing so takes an extremely long time and drags an already slow fight on very long. Not to mention that Toadstool's spore clouds will quickly spoil any items in them or the inventory of players in them. Meaning you either need to rely on weapons and healing that doesn't spoil, or need to be very careful with how you story those things. 

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• • Celestial Champion and Fuelweaver are meant to be equivalents for their side and at the same point in progression, they're just not (since Fuelweaver is accessible earlier, but is way harder). How do I know this? They both give you access to loot that helps you considerably with countering the other one. The Bone Helm is to Celestial Champion as the Brightshade Staff is to Fuelweaver. There is no reason to do this unless they're counterparts, and the skill trees also equate them as locks for planar perks.

Celestial Champion was added to the game four years after Ancient Fuelweaver. And rifts weren't introduced for another two years after that. AFW being such a bigger hurdle isn't a sign that it's poorly designed. It's a sign that Klei decided to tack a faux-hard mode to the end game despite the fact that Don't Starve wasn't designed to work with that sort of progression. Why are you blaming AFW here and not Klei's own short-sightedness?

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• Due to his status as the boss that enables shadow rifts, he is sadly not skippable like Toadstool (whose fight also drags on way too long and eats too many resources, but that's just because his HP is too high). 

Shadow rifts are optional. But otherwise, read above.

10 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• A rework would make him less controversial. My polls over the years have indicated that close to half of players want him to be changed in at least small ways (such as scaling his attacks down for solo players), and the vast majority of players like Crab King post-rework (or at least don't have a negative opinion of him, which was the smallest group in the poll). Crab King was at least as controversial as Fuelweaver pre-rework. Therefore, a rework could absolutely make Fuelweaver more fun for more players, and it's something Klei should seriously consider doing soon, especially if they're gonna keep focusing on stuff that happens after you beat him.

I'm going to pass over this point for now because I think I finally understand where you're coming from on AFW and why you're so adamant about it being so poorly designed. Barring smaller mechanical points like the shield or sanity mechanics, nearly all the problems you list come from comparisons to content that came way later. 

 

"Ancient Fuelweaver expects to much of the player": because those expectations where lowered over the years. 

"Ancient fuelweaver is way harder than it's lunar equivelent": because that lunar equivalent was added 5 years later.

"AFW is way harder than Celestial Champion despite serving the same role in progression": because that progression wouldn't be added until nearly a decade after the fact.

Dst has changed a lot over the years. And for as much as you beguile the people who like Ancient Fuelweaver and call them elitests, those kinds of players are the ones that the game was made for back in the say. And Ancient Fuelweaver requires so much more management than other bosses because it was designed to be fought as a group, and doing it solo is an explicitly sisyphean task.

 

That's not a flaw, that's just a sign of how much the game's direction has shifted over the years. And as they say, one must imagine Sisypheus happy.

 

[Risar]

8 hours ago, WilsonHiggs said:

Best fight in the game precisely, in a big portion, for needing to manage sanity to break the hands. By pressing ctrl+F you hit the closest target so you simply need to get close to a hand, equip your amulet and press ctrl+F, you can also rush CC to get a BS staff before killing FW. If you have problems equiping the amulet remeber you can use numbers and extra buttoms from your mouse to quick equip, othet than that, learn to organize your inventory and practice fast switching with your mouse or the keys i mentioned

Being 2 players can make things harder if you dont coordinate but you will have, atleast, double wilson dps so, if you do stuff barely ok, FW will fall pretty quick

The fight feels hard and some people hate it because is the first time klei make us use more than 1 buttom instead of being one of the most skilless games tagged as survival in the market. Most games require a lot more skill than the required for this fight which boss is slow as F and his attacks are easily avoidable 

Is sad that this game cant have cool fights despite you being able to win everything with enough resources easily amassed, reviving being nearly free and having a very low skill cap... we are doomed to receive only weak bosses like NMW which can be killed in 1 minute... is the same reason why some people, what a coincidence being mostly the same, hate sailing, it requires something more than pressing WASD

We managed to take him down once we had a 3rd (moose) who could essentially wipe out the multiple hands and wovens with a charge and we spammed the hell out of weather panes. 

I actually want hard fights, and has a player since before DST existed I've beaten most of the bosses solo or in tandem even pre-skill trees (except toadstool). The problem is micromanagement of clicking and inventory isn't really a "hard" fight, its just tedium. 

In fact I'd prefer they give him stronger attacking and dodging mechanics, which honestly more bosses should have, rather than the tedium. You know a fight isn't well designed if in players minds it benefits from client side mods, working around game issues with inventory management etc. Complicated != good.

There are multiple useful replies in the thread that Klei should review, best option I've seen is when he is invulnerable make him non-targetable or shift priority to literally anything else on the battle field. 

[WilsonHiggs]

27 minutes ago, Risar said:

We managed to take him down once we had a 3rd (moose) who could essentially wipe out the multiple hands and wovens with a charge and we spammed the hell out of weather panes. 

I actually want hard fights, and has a player since before DST existed I've beaten most of the bosses solo or in tandem even pre-skill trees (except toadstool). The problem is micromanagement of clicking and inventory isn't really a "hard" fight, its just tedium. 

In fact I'd prefer they give him stronger attacking and dodging mechanics, which honestly more bosses should have, rather than the tedium. You know a fight isn't well designed if in players minds it benefits from client side mods, working around game issues with inventory management etc. Complicated != good.

There are multiple useful replies in the thread that Klei should review, best option I've seen is when he is invulnerable make him non-targetable or shift priority to literally anything else on the battle field. 

Using numbers or the mouse to switch items isnt tedium, is part of the skill the player has to do fast actions like in other games... i think you are blaming the game instead of practicing 

[SpookyXy]

I would find FW a lot more bearable if he didn't heal 400 for every woven shadow you miss and Terror beaks wouldn't spawn the millisecond you put on the nightmare amulet and stick around so long after you take it off.

[DegenerateFurry]

1 hour ago, Risar said:

I actually want hard fights, and has a player since before DST existed I've beaten most of the bosses solo or in tandem even pre-skill trees (except toadstool). The problem is micromanagement of clicking and inventory isn't really a "hard" fight, its just tedium. 

In fact I'd prefer they give him stronger attacking and dodging mechanics, which honestly more bosses should have, rather than the tedium. You know a fight isn't well designed if in players minds it benefits from client side mods, working around game issues with inventory management etc. Complicated != good.

Yeah, that's something I've said in the past: the fight's honestly just tedious, but in a stressful way due to how fast-paced all that inventory management has to be. 

56 minutes ago, SpookyXy said:

I would find FW a lot more bearable if he didn't heal 400 for every woven shadow you miss and Terror beaks wouldn't spawn the millisecond you put on the nightmare amulet and stick around so long after you take it off.

Tell me about it. Persistent Terrorbeaks popping in the moment I put on the Nightmare Amulet really screwed me over last time I tried fighting him.

[W0l0l0]

12 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

• His bone ring attack (where he rains bones in a circle) is largely decorative, I don't think I've ever even seen anyone get hit by it. What's the point of it? 
• His bone cage spam is cancerous and requires you to spam teleports, and dodging it by running three times the attack distance of Dragonfly with no indication of where it ends, which also happens to take up 90% of the Atrium is not a good workaround.
  • The fact that highly skilled players who try to minimize sanity loss have to abuse the cage not forming properly on the edge of the arena is an indicator that it's too frequent. You will end up using probably at least two Lazy Explorers, which you otherwise are not likely to fully use up, meaning the fight requires you to sacrifice something you could've kept for your whole playthrough. Solution? Make him do the bone cage less frequently.

I don't understand why you're complaining about one move being too weak, when your opinion seems to be the fight is too difficult?

You can exploit the moves by staying near the centre of the arena to trigger the bone circle instead of the cage, which I think is an example of interesting strategy

I don't even disagree with the opinion that the bone cage is too strong (I wish going around the edge of the arena to dodge it was more reliable), but seeing you complain that one move is too weak and one move is too strong, when your overall point is that the fight is too difficult just seems disingenuous.

Sanity and weather pain requirements are also annoying but I really think it's a small issue for the final boss. Skilled players have shown they're not strictly necessary. I'm happy to burn a weather pain if I've made a mistake.

A lot of the other complaints are somewhat valid, such as the targeting, inventory, and the stupid pillars blocking the view, but I feel like these are to do with the game itself fighting against us, not specifically the boss.

[YouKnowWho142]

6 minutes ago, W0l0l0 said:

Sanity and weather pain requirements are also annoying but I really think it's a small issue for the final boss. Skilled players have shown they're not strictly necessary. I'm happy to burn a weather pain if I've made a mistake.

This is when I can really appreciate skill trees, I hate making weather pains and I for one am glad that there are more consistent character-specific methods of handling the woven shadows. 

The only fuelweaver move I really really hate is the bone cage, yeah, even aside from the fact that having your movement stopped in any game isn't that fun it can be excessively punishing if you don't have the exact right counter for it or cheese it, especially since fuelweaver already has another impairment move for if your sanity becomes too low, and if you do have the lazy explorer for instance it's just another thing to micromanage which makes it even more unapproachable to new to intermediate players

[Guihhza]

I enjoy the Fuelweaver fight
I like when bosses have different mechanics that require unique interactions that go beyond the usual atack-only nature other fights take.

But I do have a few issues with it:

   The nightmare amulet sometimes immediatly spawns shadow creatures and even if you take it off they take sooo long to despawn. Because of the already fast paced nature of the fight being chased by a terror beak while at full sanity feels unfair and overwhelming.

   Also fuelweaver sometimes mind controls you even if you take off the amulet in time. Im not sure if this is a lag issue or something but this is sooo annoying.

   Fuelweaver becoming untargetable during his invincibility phase was something mentioned here that I never thought of but would actually be pretty nice tbh.

[DegenerateFurry]

39 minutes ago, W0l0l0 said:

I don't understand why you're complaining about one move being too weak, when your opinion seems to be the fight is too difficult?

You can exploit the moves by staying near the centre of the arena to trigger the bone circle instead of the cage, which I think is an example of interesting strategy

I don't even disagree with the opinion that the bone cage is too strong (I wish going around the edge of the arena to dodge it was more reliable), but seeing you complain that one move is too weak and one move is too strong, when your overall point is that the fight is too difficult just seems disingenuous.

Sanity and weather pain requirements are also annoying but I really think it's a small issue for the final boss. Skilled players have shown they're not strictly necessary. I'm happy to burn a weather pain if I've made a mistake.

A lot of the other complaints are somewhat valid, such as the targeting, inventory, and the stupid pillars blocking the view, but I feel like these are to do with the game itself fighting against us, not specifically the boss.

The comment I replied to was one saying "there's next to nothing that should be changed", so I was pointing out that the fight is, in fact, extremely far from perfect. That's why I included things that feel like bugs (invincibility taking target priority away from things you can hit, Terrorbeaks rapidly spawning when you equip the Nightmare Amulet and staying around to harass you after you take it off, bone cage not forming properly on edges, etc) and the one part of the fight I feel is actually too weak (bone circle) in addition to all the stuff that's way too strong. 

My opinion is indeed that the fight is far too difficult for solo players. That doesn't mean I can't acknowledge the many other problems it has.

[Swiyss]

Practice makes perfect. Just practice the fight and you'll be doing it no worries.

Just watch big DST streamers, they do fw solo on wilson looking at chat while also animation cancelling. Rollback is a feature for a reason.

[Well-met]

I appreciate the way his fight works like a puzzle however its usually the sanity monsters that overwhelm solo players. Which is why I think they should be disabled for the fight if the server only has one player active.

Also the cage range thing appears more like a stupid limitation than a deliberately learnable tactic. It should be made obvious to the eye with extra FX.

[Gashzer]

If only we had an optional item that is lore appropriate that could solve all the problems while not nerfing the boss for people who enjoy AFW as is.....

Reintroducing the one, the onlyyyyyy , MOONLIGHT SHACKLE!!

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/158295-moonlight-shackle-new-celestial-altar-craft-suggestion-afw-nerf/

 

[DegenerateFurry]

35 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

If only we had an optional item that is lore appropriate that could solve all the problems while not nerfing the boss for people who enjoy AFW as is.....

Reintroducing the one, the onlyyyyyy , MOONLIGHT SHACKLE!!

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/158295-moonlight-shackle-new-celestial-altar-craft-suggestion-afw-nerf/

 

I still maintain that doing a Crab King-style rework with new boss design philosophy as the default, and making the version you do as an optional challenge mode be the current Ancient Fuelweaver fight, would be better. Rework Ancient Fuelweaver, add a Misery Fuelweaver that's the one we have now with no changes except bug fixes, and we're all gonna be happy.

That said, if it's between nothing and Moonlight Shackle? Moonlight Shackle all the way.

[Cheggf]

16 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

I never said we should remove the ring attack because it's too easy to dodge, I said it's pointless. I'd actually be in favor of making the ring attack more impactful if the gimmicky invincibility, bone cage, and healing were all toned down.

Also, you either have poor reading comprehension, are willfully ignorant, or didn't read any of my points. Go back and read it again and come up with an actual counterargument or don't bother commenting on it, dismissing it wholesale because you don't feel like thinking is pretty cheap.

See, this is why I didn't waste my time doing that. Theukon-dos replied to every single individual point you made one by one addressing them and letting you know why they're valid when they're valid or why they're flawed when they're flawed, and you ignored him. You didn't reply to him at all. You just went back to finding the people are criticizing the boss so you can complain and keep repeating that we need to rework him like Crab King. Guille's image was completely accurate. 

[DegenerateFurry]

1 hour ago, Cheggf said:

See, this is why I didn't waste my time doing that. Theukon-dos replied to every single individual point you made one by one addressing them and letting you know why they're valid when they're valid or why they're flawed when they're flawed, and you ignored him. You didn't reply to him at all. You just went back to finding the people are criticizing the boss so you can complain and keep repeating that we need to rework him like Crab King. Guille's image was completely accurate. 

I told him I'm not talking to him in the other thread, and I'm sticking to it to maintain civility? I put him on ignore and thus didn't even see his message. He was very rude, more than I was to him, and embodies the worst parts of the Fuelweaver apologist crowd. He also blatantly lied about the results of a poll to serve his narrative (saying people who voted for small changes wanted no changes when no changes was a separate option). I see no use in talking to someone who does that.

For your sake, I just took a look at it, and everything he said boils down to either agreeing with me, "but I don't think that's a flaw", or at one point calling Klei short-sighted. Calling it not a flaw is neat, but it's not addressing a point when you just give your opinion without explaining why you have it like I did. I'll concede that he's right about one thing: inventory overclogging can be somewhat negated by keeping spares on the ground. The rest is largely "that's not a flaw", which... cool opinion, bro, mind telling me how you came to that conclusion?

It's unfortunate he's ignoring my request to refrain from interacting with me, but I didn't expect him to have the decency to anyway.

[Waywarbler]

13 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

I still maintain that doing a Crab King-style rework with new boss design philosophy as the default, and making the version you do as an optional challenge mode be the current Ancient Fuelweaver fight, would be better. Rework Ancient Fuelweaver, add a Misery Fuelweaver that's the one we have now with no changes except bug fixes, and we're all gonna be happy.

That said, if it's between nothing and Moonlight Shackle? Moonlight Shackle all the way.

As much as I don't enjoy Fuelweaver, I don't think a full overhaul is necessary. I just think he could stand to be less stressful (and have a visible shockwave for the bone cage's radius) so I'm not pausing the game repeatedly to get my bearings and my inventory in order.

(Thinking about it, it's a bit similar to how people who liked Crab King felt he just needed some little adjustments.)

[DegenerateFurry]

5 minutes ago, Waywarbler said:

As much as I don't enjoy Fuelweaver, I don't think a full overhaul is necessary. I just think he could stand to be less stressful (and have a visible shockwave for the bone cage's radius) so I'm not pausing the game repeatedly to get my bearings and my inventory in order.

(Thinking about it, it's a bit similar to how people who liked Crab King felt he just needed some little adjustments.)

Oh, I'll settle for reasonably scaling down his mechanics, quality-of-life/bug fixes like giving bone cage a visible radius (and preferably making that radius not 90% of the Atrium) and fixing the stupid targeting with his invincibility shield, and overall making it way less stressful. I get that a full rework/overhaul isn't as popular as I'd like it to be, and if the only way we're getting a better Fuelweaver experience is to get a less sucky version of the one we have, so be it.

But I'd love to see what Klei does to this boss if they took a rework pass at it with their modern boss philosophy. The game has evolved for the better over the years, with each fight getting more unique, and it'd probably be a big enough improvement that most people who like current Fuelweaver would like the rework more, as with reworked Crab King. 

[Theukon-dos]

4 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

I told him I'm not talking to him in the other thread, and I'm sticking to it to maintain civility? I put him on ignore and thus didn't even see his message. He was very rude, more than I was to him, and embodies the worst parts of the Fuelweaver apologist crowd. He also blatantly lied about the results of a poll to serve his narrative (saying people who voted for small changes wanted no changes when no changes was a separate option). I see no use in talking to someone who does that.

For your sake, I just took a look at it, and everything he said boils down to either agreeing with me, "but I don't think that's a flaw", or at one point calling Klei short-sighted. 

It's unfortunate he's ignoring my request to refrain from interacting with me, but I didn't expect him to have the decency to anyway.

Bold of you to call me rude when your first instinct is to call anyone who disagrees with you an elitest. I admit I was harsher than needed, and that I have a tendancy to let my emotions get the better of me. I also apologize for both of those, but at least I don't resort to name calling whenever someone says they like something I don't.

Also, I did not lie about the results of your poll. Nor did I say that voting for minimal changes is voting for no changes. Throughout your entire crusade against Ancient Fuelweaver, you have asserted them to be the worst-designed boss in the game and someone in need of a complete rework on par with the one Crab King got. Those are not minor changes. So when I say that people who voted for atleast minor changes are in favor of fuelweaver's current design. That wasn't me lying about numbers, that was me pointing out that 95% of players on these forums don't think that AFW is the worst boss in the game and in need of a complete rework.

 

Here's the kicker though, if you think that Ancient Fuelweaver can be salvaged with only minor changes; given that you consider people who voted as such to be on your side; then why in the name of Charlie's Bodacious Bosom are we arguing in the first place? Nobod- Hmm. Hold on, let me use a bigger font size to get my point across better.

 

NOBODY IS OPPOSED TO ANCIENT FUELWEAVER GETTING MINOR CHANGES.

 

Do I think that AFW needs changed? No, but I wouldn't be opposed to a few tweaks here or there. A longer cooldown on the bone cage, player scaling on the woven shadows, that sort of thing. And Guille up there even said that he'd like it if AFW had clearer tells on when and where the bone cage was going to activate. Ancient Fuelweaver isn't perfect. And nobody thinks that it is or that there aren't ways the fight can be improved. But don't act surprised when you shout to the world that Ancient Fuelweaver needs a full rework and then act surprised when they argue against Ancient Fuelweaver needing a whole rework. Minor changes are not the same thing as reworking the boss from the ground up. So people who think that minor changes are all it needs are not automatically on your side.

 

As for my arguments, no comment on the ones where I agreed with you except on them not being a problem. Sometimes people just feel different ways about the same thing. But otherwise yes, I do think that Klei is short sighted and that this directly contributing to why you dislike Ancient Fuelweaver so much. I won't completely break down why I think this is the case. But that doesn't change the fact that any and all of your gripes with AFW that don't involve specific mechanics all point towards other mechanics and design decisions that came way, WAY later and absolutely things that Klei hadn't planned ahead most.

Most notably, you say that Ancient Fuelweaver and Celestial Champion are direct counterparts because they both gate their respective planar rifts and both fights unlock something that helps in the other fight. While I do agree that they're counterparts for purely thematic reasons. Ancient Fuelweaver was released as part of the New Reign arc in April of 2017. And Celestial Champion was released in the Eye of the Storm update in May of 2021. That's 4 years where AFW existed and Celestial Champion didn't. Do you realize how long that is and just how much of a fossil that fossil is? AFW isn't just older than the Celestial Champion, it's older than the ocean and lunar island entirely, it's older than the character refreshes, and it's older than Winona, the first new character introduced by DST.

Ancient Fuelweavers design was entirely in-line with what was expected of the player in 2017 when they where released. And is still consistant with the other two big raid bosses that where released around the same time. And even after Celestial Champion was introduced, it was another 2 years before Taking Root released in 2023 and added the Brightshade staff along with it, which is one of the items you cite as "proof" that AFW and CC are direct counterparts. Meaning that during that 2 year period, CC offered nothing to the player that directly helped in the Ancient Fuelweaver fight. Becuase the only unlock you got from it was the celestial crown, and that thing was not going to help when being insane is such an integral part of the fight.

If Klei intended for them to be thematic and mechanical counterparts from the start, then the fault isn't on Ancient Fuelweaver for being to hard, it's on CC for not following the precedent that ancient fuelweaver set years before hand. Celestial Champion got a harder quest line, easier fight, and worse loot well after everything involving the fuelweaver was set in stone. By your own logic, they're the one who's poorly designed, not AFW.

 

Also this was in your next post, but massively disagree that the games changes have all been for the better. They have some redeeming factors here and there, like Walter's skill tree or the buffed treasure chests. But if I had the power, I'd nuke the last 3 years of updates out of existence and recycle the assets into something better. There are two reasons I called Klei short-sighted. One of them are rifts, and the other is skill trees. Call me an oracle, because everything I fortold about those things two years ago has come true. Also-also, most of the people I've seen who liked pre-refresh crab king are unhappy with the rework. It just so happens that I can count the people who liked it on one hand. I actually did think that CK needed the rework, because it was effectively everything you complain about AFW, except it served the same role in progression as the shadow pieces for some reason. And while I have no opinions on the fight itself, it's very much not the direction I wanted to see it go in.

 

 

 

 

 

[Dwight34]

10 hours ago, astareus said:

Practice makes perfect. Just practice the fight and you'll be doing it no worries.

Just watch big DST streamers, they do fw solo on wilson looking at chat while also animation cancelling. Rollback is a feature for a reason.

I really despise animation cancelling. It's very obviously unintended behavior, only existing as a consequence of Klei letting you move away after an attack so you are able to dodge and not locked into animations. It's fine for glitched speedruns, but it's abusing a glitch that borders on cheating for me, and it should never be considered in any balance discussion. There is nothing fun or logical about swapping your helmet every half second each fight.

[DegenerateFurry]

11 minutes ago, Dwight34 said:

I really despise animation cancelling. It's very obviously unintended behavior, only existing as a consequence of Klei letting you move away after an attack so you are able to dodge and not locked into animations. It's fine for glitched speedruns, but it's abusing a glitch that borders on cheating for me, and it should never be considered in any balance discussion. There is nothing fun or logical about swapping your helmet every half second each fight.

Thank. You. I feel exactly the same way. I can animation cancel (albeit not perfectly), but I'd rather just, y'know, not be obligated to? 99% of the game doesn't make me feel obligated to use it, but the big dumb spooky scary skeleton in the Atrium sure does want me to maximize DPS however I can during his brief vulnerability window, so here we are. And if we're talking about whether or not a boss is balanced, we shouldn't consider cheese methods (animation cancelling included) as justification for its balance.

[Dwight34]

3 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Thank. You. I feel exactly the same way. I can animation cancel (albeit not perfectly), but I'd rather just, y'know, not be obligated to? 99% of the game doesn't make me feel obligated to use it, but the big dumb spooky scary skeleton in the Atrium sure does want me to maximize DPS however I can during his brief vulnerability window, so here we are. 

I'm a patient player, so my usual go-to is to farm a stack of gunpowder and have it explode in FW's face when it's just barely above 10k. I personally will never animation cancel as I prefer to avoid clicking too much for both my health and my mouse (which is why I use an auto-row mod, which funnily enough kinda makes normal sails useless, funny how in vanilla DST you pretty much only get a sail to avoid physical pain and/or be able to alt-tab)