Why Malbatross is the best designed boss in the game (At being a survival focused boss)

[Jakepeng99]

Im not talking about the fight itself, thats your own opinion, but the way this boss works as a middle ground of an optional and naturally occuring boss.

If you want to fish in deep sea bass shoals for food (this is suprisingly viable), malbatross is an obstacle for this. It threatens your survival by eating these fish, and making waves. The option to fight it is there, it functions more as a superpowered mob, than a boss with its only purpouse is to fight it. Killing it awards you safe fishing for 15 days. Actively looking out for it to kill is a pain, but it still functions perfectly as a survival threat to the player, rather than being an optional challenge. You can still ignore it and run away. its not as forced of an encounter as deerclops, bearger or antlion. Its not as avoidable as the raid bosses, moose goose, or the other bosses in the game. Its a perfect balance, and perfect challenge for those who fish.

(One key problem, not much people fish. I reccomend trying fishing in these shoals for the purpouse of food, its actually really fast. You will better understand my point.)

 

It also threatens your trawler nets too, but its weird.

Edited May 30, 2025 by Jakepeng99

[GenomeSquirrel]

The last time I tried to spawn this thing was with a group of other players, not one spawned, and we starved

being tied to ocean fishing is unfortunate for it, it's predecessors faults cause it to fail so hard that it might as well not exist

[Jakepeng99]

3 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

The last time I tried to spawn this thing was with a group of other players, not one spawned, and we starved

being tied to ocean fishing is unfortunate for it, it's predecessors faults cause it to fail so hard that it might as well not exist

Not really relevant to my point. Im talking about how it’s the works well as a survival boss.

[Evelo]

I think Antlion is the best DST addition that is survival focused sorta, but I do greatly appreciate Malbatross. I know this post sort of originated from a beta thread, but do wish we had more survival bosses, be them like Antlion/Deerclops/Bearger, or Malbatross and... oh wait...

Edited May 31, 2025 by Evelo

[GenomeSquirrel]

1 hour ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Not really relevant to my point. Im talking about how it’s the works well as a survival boss.

Survival bosses need to threaten survival, this doesn't exist enough to do that

[Bumber64]

5 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Survival bosses need to threaten survival, this doesn't exist enough to do that

And even if it did, you don't need ocean fish to survive. Evidently you can starve just trying to get those.

[Edible Coal]

why would a survival threat be optional? hunger, weather changes, rain are survival threats because they chase after the player

[Jakepeng99]

7 hours ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

Survival bosses need to threaten survival, this doesn't exist enough to do that

It does threaten survival for fishers. It serves its purpouse.

2 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

And even if it did, you don't need ocean fish to survive. Evidently you can starve just trying to get those.

No thats not true, id assume you have no experience with fishing in shoals.

[Tranoze]

14 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

 threatens your survival by eating these fish

Fishing doesnt provide enough resources to assist survival. Just gather bait and eat raw bait give you more hunger than gather bait and use bait to fish. I fish for fun and collections, but for food, even if i prepare full stack of baits, i lost hunger faster than i fish if i eat raw fish. (Normally i use mod to fish so i wont lost bait, but if shark appear at the wrong time, that bait is lost.)

I need filler like honey from pearl and monster meat from knobbly forest if i want my hunger to be filled.

Fish have to give more hunger if we want fishing to be more worth it. Like killing fish give 50% chace to drop fish roe, 75% for heavy fishes, and roe can be used to craft bait, or you can eat them, so you can sustainable fishing game, instead of you run out of bait due to shark and now you are unable to fish.

14 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

for the purpouse of food, its actually really fast.

If you prepare full stack of bait before hand, yes, but the time needed to prepare bait might aswell can be used to farm real food.

[Gashzer]

Tbh bearger, deerclops and antlion are nowhere near aggressive enough, we need a late game survival boss that is highly aggressive.

Late game survival should be about protecting your base, because in the late game you have so many revive options that dying isn't a big deal but the ultimate survival boss in my opinion will spawn off screen somewhere away from you and your base and you can track it on the map, if you dont actively seek it out and defeat it, it will slowly hunt down and destroy every structure you have ever made.

Forum users want difficulty, but the real difficulty are bosses that target the most precious thing DST players have which are their bases.

In the late game the player dying isn't a lose state like it is in the early game, merely a minor inconvenience at worst. 

Edited May 31, 2025 by Gashzer

[Bumber64]

2 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

No thats not true, id assume you have no experience with fishing in shoals.

I explored the entire ocean in my world and was never able to identify what a "shoal" was. This was before trawlers were added, but I found it actually easier to just eat seeds than engage with fishing. (Grabbing something from land is more advisable, though.)

Edited May 31, 2025 by Bumber64

[Jakepeng99]

4 hours ago, Tranoze said:

Fishing doesnt provide enough resources to assist survival. Just gather bait and eat raw bait give you more hunger than gather bait and use bait to fish. I fish for fun and collections, but for food, even if i prepare full stack of baits, i lost hunger faster than i fish if i eat raw fish. (Normally i use mod to fish so i wont lost bait, but if shark appear at the wrong time, that bait is lost.)

Why are you using bait, use lures. Thats your problem.

2 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

I explored the entire ocean in my world and was never able to identify what a "shoal" was. This was before trawlers were added, but I found it actually easier to just eat seeds than engage with fishing. (Grabbing something from land is more advisable, though.)

The shoals are the areas where malbatross spawns. Try fishing in them, it’s fast and quick food. The fish are caught so fast.

[Szczuku]

Hard agree, the seven times I've encountered Malbatross in the past 5 years definitely made me think that it was a really impactful survival addition to the game

[Tranoze]

4 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Why are you using bait, use lures. Thats your problem.

Sorry for my bad english, but let say consumable used during fishing, bait, lures, floats, whatever... they get destroy if shark attack you during fishing time. Often if you use pearl's loots, you only have 2~3 of them, and they will eventually run out with each of your mistake.
And there are no counter play to shark/mokeys going during your fishing time, so each time they appear middle of fishing, that bait is gone.

To fish again, you either have to sail to pearl, or go back to land and craft them, that is my point, if you fail by either way, and you run out of consumable, fishing is no longer an option until you get hold of those.

Let apply that to farming, let say hound come in and all your tool instantly vanish, that how fishing feel like.

[Mayson71]

Malbatross needs its own island, like a Tiger Shark. It's nice when I can meet the boss just by swimming in the ocean, but I also want the boss to have a fixed spawn location where I can sail to at any moment

[Jakepeng99]

18 hours ago, Tranoze said:

Sorry for my bad english, but let say consumable used during fishing, bait, lures, floats, whatever... they get destroy if shark attack you during fishing time. Often if you use pearl's loots, you only have 2~3 of them, and they will eventually run out with each of your mistake.
And there are no counter play to shark/mokeys going during your fishing time, so each time they appear middle of fishing, that bait is gone.

To fish again, you either have to sail to pearl, or go back to land and craft them, that is my point, if you fail by either way, and you run out of consumable, fishing is no longer an option until you get hold of those.

Let apply that to farming, let say hound come in and all your tool instantly vanish, that how fishing feel like.

Losing one lure once in a blue moon is barely a problem.

[FluffyBun]

Malbatross is a good boss. The issue is that the DST world is underdeveloped and boring, so Malbatross serves no purpose. This problem actually persists throughout basically the rest of the game. As Maxwell said, "when I first came here, there was nothing, but the dust, and the void...and [Malbatross]".

On 5/31/2025 at 5:58 PM, Gashzer said:

Late game survival should be about protecting your base, because in the late game you have so many revive options that dying isn't a big deal but the ultimate survival boss in my opinion will spawn off screen somewhere away from you and your base and you can track it on the map, if you dont actively seek it out and defeat it, it will slowly hunt down and destroy every structure you have ever made.

Forum users want difficulty, but the real difficulty are bosses that target the most precious thing DST players have which are their bases.

If they wanted difficulty, they would just play uncomp or something.

The fact is, people want change. Desire for change is hardwired in our neural connections. These 2 funny portals promised change, but there is no change (just annoyance), so naturally, people get peeved.

[readkey]

On 5/31/2025 at 5:58 PM, Gashzer said:

Tbh bearger, deerclops and antlion are nowhere near aggressive enough, we need a late game survival boss that is highly aggressive.

Late game survival should be about protecting your base, because in the late game you have so many revive options that dying isn't a big deal but the ultimate survival boss in my opinion will spawn off screen somewhere away from you and your base and you can track it on the map, if you dont actively seek it out and defeat it, it will slowly hunt down and destroy every structure you have ever made.

Forum users want difficulty, but the real difficulty are bosses that target the most precious thing DST players have which are their bases.

In the late game the player dying isn't a lose state like it is in the early game, merely a minor inconvenience at worst. 

Don’t forget Moose/Goose is not even a seasonal boss now. It is a seasonal raid boss. 

[Wawchik]

3 minutes ago, readkey said:

Don’t forget Moose/Goose is not even a seasonal boss now. It is a seasonal raid boss. 

It's not a raid boss, because 1. Multiple of them spawn in the world 2. Not that much health to be called one

[Johnny_Waffles]

I think raid bosses are bosses that have ok HP, and are dangerous to do solo, that's why imo AG might not be a raid boss, but Frost jaw could since it's ALOT more dangerous take on solo (doesn't mean you can't tho, I've killed him a decent amount of times solo)

[shaurun]

Malbatross is much more annoying than Lord of Fruit Flies.

• Lord will corrupt your plants unless is you fight it, but it won't destoy your farm. Malbatross, however, will DESTROY your fish farms.
• After the defeat, Lord gives you a Friendly Fly who helps with gardening. Malbatross gives you tools which don't help to automate fishing
• After the defeat, your farm is not at threat of Lord for a while. Same with Malbatross, but sometimes he DESPAWNS instead of allowing himself to be killed.

I think Malbatross needs some buff - he should provide items to automate catch with fish farms, or something which will repair nets if there're too many fishes there, or fish growing stations recipe which we won't be attacked by Malbatross. I also think it would be a much better if we can pacify Malbatross by giving him few heavy fishes.

Edited June 2, 2025 by shaurun

[Evelo]

5 hours ago, shaurun said:

Malbatross is much more annoying than Lord of Fruit Flies.

• Lord will corrupt your plants unless is you fight it, bud it won't destoy your farm. Malbatross, however, will DESTROY your fish farms.
• After the defeat, Lord gives you a Friendly Fly who helps with gardening. Malbatross gives you tools which don't helps to automate fishing
• After the defeat, your farm is not at threat of Lord for a while. Same with Malbatross, but sometimes he DESPAWNS instead of allowing himself to be killed.

I think Malbatross needs some buff - he should provide items to automate catch with fish farms, something which will repair nets if there're too many fishes there for example, or fish growing stations recipe which we won't be attacked by Malbatross. I also think it would be a much better if we can pacify Malbatross by giving him few heavy fishes.

That's the point and why it is good for survival. It is disruptive. Malbatross only despanws if you move onto land, or if you are too far away from deep ocean (no docks!)