Celestial Scion's fight is too easy because of Shadow Prison

[Phoenix_Cobra]

Using shadow prison on Celestial Scion makes the fight too easy for such a boss. In fact, the hardest boss becomes easy, you can lure him to the edge of the map, put him in shadow prison and when he attacks the area, just walk through him or use teleport in the arena. In this scenario, the hard boss is Warbot, not Celestial Scion.

Considering that shadow prison is essentially shadows and Celestial Scion is the most powerful moon force, he can easily break shadow prison and continue the fight.

Edited June 11, 2025 by secretgalaxy

[Wigfridge2137]

They could make him break free from the prison and just make it collapse each time he is dashing

[Cruvimaster]

If we start comparing the powers of all the characters, we will come to the conclusion that the only character Klei should allow Wilson.

[Phoenix_Cobra]

49 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

If we start comparing the powers of all the characters, we will come to the conclusion that the only character Klei should allow Wilson.

 

While other bosses can at least hit you in Shadow Prison, Maxwell literally controls the Celestial Scion's movement, taking away the ability to move and destroy the arena with his area of effect attack, essentially robbing him of two of his three attacks.

50 minutes ago, milsonmeow said:

I think this is more of a problem with Shadow Prison invalidating EVERY SINGLE MOB, including BOSSES. This sole mechanic is what makes Maxwell overpowered in the first place, and I think it's about high time Klei actually nerf this; or at least make it not as effective on bosses.

I'm not saying it's a bad ability. On the contrary, it's useful on bosses, but at least they can still hit you. And for Celestial Scion, moving around the arena is important.

Edited June 11, 2025 by secretgalaxy

[Cruvimaster]

28 minutes ago, secretgalaxy said:

 

While the other bosses can at least hit you in the shadow prison, for Celestial Scion it literally takes away the ability to move and ruin the arena with its area attack, which essentially takes away two of its three attacks.

I'm not saying it's a bad ability. On the contrary, it's useful on bosses, but at least they can still hit you. And for Celestial Scion, moving around the arena is important.

Do you think 1 Maxwell can defeat him faster than 6 Wolfgangs with Volt Goat Chaud-Froid?

Wigfrid can also trap the boss in a corner with her shield. So is Wigfrid a problem too?

I'm not saying you're wrong. And it's likely we'll see Wurt or Winona players melting this boss in seconds.

Edited June 11, 2025 by Cruvimaster

[Phoenix_Cobra]

32 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

Do you think 1 Maxwell can defeat him faster than 6 Wolfgangs with Volt Goat Chaud-Froid?

Wigfrid can also trap the bos in a corner with her shield. So is Wigfrid a problem too?

Compare for yourself if Maxwell eats Volt Goat Chaud Froid will hit harder and his duelists, whose maximum damage, as far as I know, is 60 units and 6 Wolfrangs, considering that one Wolfrang has a maximum damage with good armor and weapons, damage can be 100-120, and then multiply this number by 6. In my opinion, 6 Wolfrangs will be much more effective.

Wigrfried can not hold Celestial Scion in the corner and her shield will break almost immediately with a bad parry.

 

Edited June 11, 2025 by secretgalaxy

[Cruvimaster]

32 minutes ago, secretgalaxy said:

Wigrfried can not hold Celestial Scion in the corner and her shield will break almost immediately with a bad parry.

You didn't know how to play Wigfrid, because a simple move from you and the boss wouldn't have gone to the center of the arena. And if Maxwell misses the time to use the prison, he'll die with only 75 HP. Wigfrid will be fully equipped with the damage reduction and her 200 HP.

But what impresses me is pointing out Maxwell's abilities and trying to protect Wigfrid. Is she the one you play as your default character?

[Phoenix_Cobra]

8 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

You didn't know how to play Wigfrid, because a simple move from you and the boss wouldn't have gone to the center of the arena. And if Maxwell misses the time to use the prison, he'll die with only 75 HP. Wigfrid will be fully equipped with the damage reduction and her 200 HP.

But what impresses me is pointing out Maxwell's abilities and trying to protect Wigfrid. Is she the one you play as your default character?

Do you mean perfect parry?

[Sacco]

shadow prison should have a cooldown, like other spells…

Edited June 11, 2025 by Sacco

[Cruvimaster]

18 minutes ago, secretgalaxy said:

Do you mean perfect parry?

By your answer I've seen that you are the main Wigfrid. You want Nerf Maxwell, but you are afraid to touch your Wigfrid. 

[Phoenix_Cobra]

17 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

By your answer I've seen that you are the main Wigfrid. You want Nerf Maxwell, but you are afraid to touch your Wigfrid. 

Okay, I understand what you're talking about, I misunderstood you at first. You mean to stand in the corner and parry the boss. At first I thought you meant cornering the boss and holding him there with a shield. But won't the electric barrier hit you in the corner? It's disabled now because it's a beta test, but they'll put it back in the release. Plus, the boss can aggro other players, but with Maxwell, he'll stand still.

Edited June 11, 2025 by secretgalaxy

[Cruvimaster]

I'll try to be very objective. Maxwell's rework started in November 2022. Your questions about Shadow Prison are nothing new, therefore. You're not showing anything that the devs haven't known for over 2 years, and they haven't accepted any nerf requests to date, except for the prison's duration (they nerfed it).

The devs also have the real data on the most used characters, and they know that Wendy, Wigfrid, Wolfgang and Woodie are way above Maxwell. Even the new Walter is played more than Maxwell.

Regarding this beta, the developers won't even have time to implement everything they wanted. They don't have time. There's a lot of cheese showing how to defeat the boss outside the arena.

Your request is just one of dozens. Klei will only touch Maxwell in the skill tree...

... And there's a big chance that Shadow Prison will remain as it is or even be improved.

[Phoenix_Cobra]

14 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

I'll try to be very objective. Maxwell's rework started in November 2022. Your questions about Shadow Prison are nothing new, therefore. You're not showing anything that the devs haven't known for over 2 years, and they haven't accepted any nerf requests to date, except for the prison's duration (they nerfed it).

The devs also have the real data on the most used characters, and they know that Wendy, Wigfrid, Wolfgang and Woodie are way above Maxwell. Even the new Walter is played more than Maxwell.

Regarding this beta, the developers won't even have time to implement everything they wanted. They don't have time. There's a lot of cheese showing how to defeat the boss outside the arena.

Your request is just one of dozens. Klei will only touch Maxwell in the skill tree...

... And there's a big chance that Shadow Prison will remain as it is or even be improved.

I understand that Maxwell's abilities will most likely not change or will change but only a little. As for the beta itself, this is their decision and if they want to release earlier, then so be it, but they most likely know that in the future they will receive a lot of criticism because of this. As for the Celestial Scion, you can at least give him the ability to pass through the shadow prison, and not change Maxwell's abilities, I think it's not difficult to implement.

Edited June 11, 2025 by secretgalaxy

[Turbanik]

I mean, I always liked Maxwell and played as him a lot. And yeah, as any other Maxwell player I wouldn't want to get his spells nerfed, but in my opinion people who want to get Maxwell nerfed are missing another key point. Celestial Scion is the FINAL lunar boss, and the issue in not Maxwell but Scion itself. Why Klei didn't add some more attacks? Like imagine you use shadow prison to lock the boss and Scion would get those wires through the ground to follow the player like kind of tentacles? And now it seems better since you can't use spells because you have to move to dodge the attacks which would allow the Scion to get out of the prison.(maybe not the best example but still) So I simply think, Klei should have added attacks to the boss which would help him to attack players from distance while being imprisoned. Yep

[Phoenix_Cobra]

6 minutes ago, Turbanik said:

I mean, I always liked Maxwell and played as him a lot. And yeah, as any other Maxwell player I wouldn't want to get his spells nerfed, but in my opinion people who want to get Maxwell nerfed are missing another key point. Celestial Scion is the FINAL lunar boss, and the issue in not Maxwell but Scion itself. Why Klei didn't add some more attacks? Like imagine you use shadow prison to lock the boss and Scion would get those wires through the ground to follow the player like kind of tentacles? And now it seems better since you can't use spells because you have to move to dodge the attacks which would allow the Scion to get out of the prison.(maybe not the best example but still) So I simply think, Klei should have added attacks to the boss which would help him to attack players from distance while being imprisoned. Yep

I agree with you, this will also solve the problem of the boss with the shadow prison, complicating it in that you will still have to dodge ranged attacks while he is locked up.

[giovcavalc]

Y'all just need to stop saying every chatacter's unique abilities that counter bosses are overpowered in a PVE co-op game imo

The solution to your problem is so simple

If you think Maxwell makes the fight too easy for your taste: play a different character.

If you actually like playing as Maxwell and the cage makes it too easy for your taste: don't use the cage, make it a challenge on yourself.

If y'all keep insisting every new fun thing that's added to X character need to be nerfed 'cause Y character has a harder time there's literally no point in ever updating the game

I'll take Wigfrid as and example: by the time of her skilltree release people were obsessed with how broken it was that she could use a couple of Battle Rönds to fight a handful of bosses while standing still and avoiding all damage. At the same time there was virtually no incentive whatsoever to use them besides those specific strategies, given that they weren't even her best weapon of choice. So if everyone complaining at the time got their wish and the item was nerfed to prevent said strategies she would now have a branch of her skilltree and a weapon that were completely useless besides "looks cool". As is the points that could be invested in the shield are usually put somewhere else because it ISN'T EVEN HER BEST CHOICE

It's a game, for Christ's sake

It's not even PVP

Just go have fun and let other people have fun stuff to play as the character they like

It's so f****** annoying to read this b******* over and over here

Edit: typos

Edited June 11, 2025 by giovcavalc

[Well-met]

1 hour ago, giovcavalc said:

Y'all just need to stop saying every chatacter's unique abilities that counter bosses are overpowered in a PVE co-op game imo

The solution to your problem is so simple

If you think Maxwell makes the fight too easy for your taste: play a different character.

If you actually like playing as Maxwell and the cage makes it too easy for your taste: don't use the cage, make it a challenge on yourself.

If y'all keep insisting every new fun thing that's added to X character need to be nerfed 'cause Y character has a harder time there's literally no point in ever updating the game

I'll take Wigfrid as and example: by the time of her skilltree release people were obsessed with how broken it was that she could use a couple of Battle Rönds to fight a handful of bosses while standing still and avoiding all damage. At the same time there was virtually no incentive whatsoever to use them besides those specific strategies, given that they weren't even her best weapon of choice. So if everyone complaining at the time got their wish and the item was nerfed to prevent said strategies she would now have a branch of her skilltree and a weapon that were completely useless besides "looks cool". As is the points that could be invested in the shield are usually put somewhere else because it ISN'T EVEN HER BEST CHOICE

It's a game, for Christ's sake

It's not even PVP

Just go have fun and let other people have fun stuff to play as the character they like

It's so f****** annoying to read this b******* over and over here

Edit: typos

pve needs balance else everybody will just do the same things over and over and make all other options redundant.

Refusing to adhere to this makes your game experience unecessarily difficult and painful and you start to question the purpose of everything else.

Not only the lack of balance causes these metas but they even poison the very persepectives and opinions around a mechanic if left unchecked too long - see dragonfly walls or toadstool ponds. The vast majority of users cannot fathom ever fighting these bosses without those tricks, throwing all of their challenge and design out the windows.

Edited June 11, 2025 by Well-met

[AliceShiki]

I mean... It's not a secret that Maxwell is OP?

[Bumber64]

Shadow prison shouldn't work on lunar mobs, TBH. It should just cause damage or something and break.

Edited June 11, 2025 by Bumber64

[giovcavalc]

55 minutes ago, Well-met said:

pve needs balance else everybody will just do the same things over and over and make all other options redundant.

I absolutely encourage rebalancing. I disagree with every edge case needing to be "removed". Each character having unique skills or gear that makes them excel in different boss fights or events is precisely the point of having multiple unique characters. And people doing the same things will probably not apply to a character exclusive strategy to deal with a boss. It's not because Maxwell or whatever other character has and easy time dealing with Scion that the entire playerbase will default to playing Maxwell and stop playing with whatever character they liked before.

56 minutes ago, Well-met said:

see dragonfly walls or toadstool ponds. The vast majority of users cannot fathom ever fighting these bosses without those tricks, throwing all of their challenge and design out the windows

Yes. There are most effect tactics available. That's meta, for you. More experienced players do sometimes approach those fights with different strategies. Dragonfly can be bugged/lured out of the spawn zone to prevent her from ever spawning lavae, you can resort to a beefalo to tank most of the damage, ice staffs and pan flutes can be used to keep her in check and deal with the lavae. Toadstool has a perfectly viable way of defeating without needing to keep him behind a pond to extend the timer between tree spawns. If theses bosses ever do get changed, people will adapt, the meta will evolve and there are solutions for that.

Reworking a boss/removing a key bug involved in the most prevalent (as in not the only one that exists) strategy to deal with it is not the same as adding a feature purposely undertuned to the point of being nigh irrelevant.

For instance let's take the reworked Crab King fight. Most strategies revolve around trying to "nullify" one or more of his attacks. For a while the minions he spawned could be easly put to sleep making them completely irrelevant to the fight. At this point, the rework amounted to nothing. The boss would still be fought with Pearl's Pearl + 8 single colored gems to buff the one mechanic you can 100% avoid the entire fight.

Now the same gem color that buffs their health also gives them sleep resistance. And at the same time they did make the gem thresholds overall more forgiving to make sure players fighting the intended version of the fight (with Pearl's Pearl) didn't get overwhelmed by having to deal with everything else on different dificulty tier. They made sure the meta strategy wasn't to completely nullify one of his mechanics despite the amount of gems used, so there were other strategies available, but also kept the existing strategy viable in the appropriate conditions (as in not exceeding the amount of gems to give them too much sleep resistance).

 

I think it's a lot harder to measure this kind of success when nerfing unique strategies when it comes to character mechanics. Specially given that skill trees are a work in progress and the update arch on DST's "hardmode" is still incomplete. They can and probably will, once everything is done, revisit and change what feels off, after all, before skill trees were a thing they'd sporadically come up with character refreshes.

7 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

Shadow prison shouldn't work on lunar mobs, TBH. It should just cause damage or something and break.

Ahm, what exaclty is your point here? Shadow Magic shouldn't have any effect on lunar enemies? So Lunar Effects such as the gestalts from Enlightened Crown shouldn't affect shadow enemies either? So there's literally no point to the duality of shadow x moon?
That literally goes against what they've been building of Shadow affinities being more powerful againsg lunar enemies and vice versa.

If anything the direction in which they've been going indicates that the Shadow Prison would be more effective against lunar entities.

So, yeah, don't think that yours is gonna be the solution of choice

[Bumber64]

19 minutes ago, giovcavalc said:

Ahm, what exaclty is your point here? Shadow Magic shouldn't have any effect on lunar enemies? So Lunar Effects such as the gestalts from Enlightened Crown shouldn't affect shadow enemies either? So there's literally no point to the duality of shadow x moon?
That literally goes against what they've been building of Shadow affinities being more powerful againsg lunar enemies and vice versa.

If anything the direction in which they've been going indicates that the Shadow Prison would be more effective against lunar entities.

So, yeah, don't think that yours is gonna be the solution of choice

Shadow magic reacts violently with lunar magic. You can't gently hold antimatter in your hands.

[Evelo]

Maxwell being Maxwell. Not surprised by this in the slightest.

[WhackE]

It's almost like making characters too powerful goes against the entire identity of how the game was supposed to be designed, If only one of the devs said something where they intentionally designed characters to be weak! Oh wait there is! I am FULLY aware the current developers are no longer going down this route, this has changed long ago, but I am still going to complain about it because it seems like they create issues that cause more problems down the line.

Hot Take! I think shadow cage should be removed completely, it doesn't belong in the game, people are 100% going to disagree with me on this and that's fine, and I know for a fact this is never going to happen because Klei would never. 
 

 

 

 

 

[Capybara007]

9 minutes ago, WhackE said:

It's almost like making characters too powerful goes against the entire identity of how the game was supposed to be designed, If only one of the devs said something where they intentionally designed characters to be weak! Oh wait there is! I am FULLY aware the current developers are no longer going down this route, this has changed long ago, but I am still going to complain about it because it seems like they create issues that cause more problems down the line.

Hot Take! I think shadow cage should be removed completely, it doesn't belong in the game, people are 100% going to disagree with me on this and that's fine, and I know for a fact this is never going to happen because Klei would never. 
 

 

 

 

At that point id stick to singleplayer

[Phoenix_Cobra]

13 hours ago, Cruvimaster said:

You didn't know how to play Wigfrid, because a simple move from you and the boss wouldn't have gone to the center of the arena. And if Maxwell misses the time to use the prison, he'll die with only 75 HP. Wigfrid will be fully equipped with the damage reduction and her 200 HP.

But what impresses me is pointing out Maxwell's abilities and trying to protect Wigfrid. Is she the one you play as your default character?

Well, now Wigfrid can really be tanked in the corner with such a barrier.