I Think W.A.R.B.O.T.'s Missile Attack Is Just Badly Designed

[Lisgen]

    I'm really confused about W.A.R.B.O.T.'s missile attack. The damage is already quite high, and it's almost completely impossible to dodge by movement alone. Most current guides recommend placing down a large number of dwarf stars and thermal stones just to survive, and almost all rely on high-damage characters to get through the fight. In DST, most battles usually become more manageable with enough practice, but this mechanic just feels like "hover your mouse over thermal stones and right-click." Honestly, I really don’t understand why I’m heating thermal stones with dwarf stars in the middle of a boss fight—it feels downright absurd and out of place. Might as well let me roast some meat next time—at least I could eat while I’m at it. The whole thing is frustrating, and it reminds me of the hopelessness of having to chop down spore trees with an axe during the Toadstool fight. There’s barely any room for skill progression.

[BeargerIsCute]

You can (sorta) skip the phase by throwing brightshade bombs on it and wearing bone armor, by the time it launches its first (or second) missile attack the phase should already be over

with this you won't need too many thermal stones or dwarf stars (which should be pre-heated before the fight)

[Mr. Furman]

I have a feeling that it would be far more manageable if the dwarf stars wont get extinguished with one missile hit. 

[Cruvimaster]

1 hour ago, Lisgen said:

    I'm really confused about W.A.R.B.O.T.'s missile attack. The damage is already quite high, and it's almost completely impossible to dodge by movement alone. Most current guides recommend placing down a large number of dwarf stars and thermal stones just to survive, and almost all rely on high-damage characters to get through the fight. In DST, most battles usually become more manageable with enough practice, but this mechanic just feels like "hover your mouse over thermal stones and right-click." Honestly, I really don’t understand why I’m heating thermal stones with dwarf stars in the middle of a boss fight—it feels downright absurd and out of place. Might as well let me roast some meat next time—at least I could eat while I’m at it. The whole thing is frustrating, and it reminds me of the hopelessness of having to chop down spore trees with an axe during the Toadstool fight. There’s barely any room for skill progression.

Use 10 thermal stones and 50% of a staff. See the final part of my video below.

Spoiler

 

 

[Well-met]

just light crap up with a torch...

[gaymime]

6 minutes ago, Well-met said:

just light crap up with a torch...

[Pet Rock]

I still think it would be better if warbot had a fire extinguisher attack with a long windup so players could have a chance to relocate their heat-diversions or even lower their own temperature to avoid the missiles (not sure if this bit has been programmed in yet though).

 

This would also make more sense thematically than missiles destroying balls of light.

Edited June 13, 2025 by Pet Rock

[Wawchik]

Haven't fought the thing yet so not 100% sure. Does it always hit the player if there are no other heat sources nearby? Would be cool if the chilled amulet decreased your temperature so much that the missiles just don't see you 

Edited June 13, 2025 by Wawchik

[Well-met]

Just now, Wawchik said:

Haven't fought the thing yet so not 100% sure. Does it always hit the player if there are no other heat sources nearby? Would be cool if the chilling amulet decreased your temperature so much that the missiles just don't see you 

honestly, thats what alot of people assumed I think. 

it should be made like that

[Bumber64]

It's weird because it was stated that small creatures and items "blend" into the ambient heat, but players don't do the same. It's actually harder to hide your heat signature in summer, for some reason.

[Random Guy000]

I don't even know why they can destroy dwarf stars. Isn't being indestructable one of their selling points? I just felt like the missiles were an unnecessary and uncreative difficulty spike, with how you only have one way of countering them (can't even fool them by lowering your temperature. So much for heat seeking)

That being said, I am only speaking based on what I've heard on forums. And what I haven't heard is if there's actually no way to just... Dodge them? Lazy explorer, soul hopping, backstep watch, shadow Wobby... No nothing? I-frames don't fool them?

[Bumber64]

6 minutes ago, Random Guy000 said:

I don't even know why they can destroy dwarf stars. Isn't being indestructable one of their selling points?

If they're spooky missiles, they could haunt the star to reduce burn time.

[Waywarbler]

14 minutes ago, Random Guy000 said:

I-frames don't fool them?

Bone armor can block several if they all hit you at the same time. The cooldown's not fast enough to tank the entire missile barrage phase though (unless you swap between two or more bone armors).

[hoxi]

So the way it works is as follows when W.A.R.B.O.T. scans for missile targets with any entities that are found (based on some tags, not gonna go into detail for that as it's not needed), when it finds anything, it checks the following right away.

• It ignores minions (so, the drones).
• It ignores frozen entities (as in, frozen by an ice staff or so).
• If Warbot is in the arena (determined prior to iterating through targets), any found entities need to also be in the arena. Probably mainly to account people spawning Warbot outside with commands.

Then it checks for temperature in the following way:

• Get local ambient temperature based on entity position (so that it catches Eye Crystaleyezers).
• The entity's temperature defaults to that temperature, in case they don't have any sort of temperature or heat mechanics to alter it the calculations done here.
  • After modifying (or not) that temperature value, it checks if it's higher than the ambient temperature value, if it is, it is considered a valid target.
  • If that not's the case, the entity will still get added if it's an animal, monster, large creature, or character (players included), and isn't a small creature, fish, or veggie, and either was recently targeted by the boss, or isn't a companion (like a baby Tallbird or Grumble beeguards or Bernie or so, this is a bit specific to some entities).

After doing all this for all found entities, entities with higher temperatures are prioritized, the maximum number of targets is 3 (or 1 per active missile per barrage specifically, each barrage updates on its own).

This last bit also means that you need at least 3 other valid targets as V2C/Vito has said before, so that while you're forced to be included in the list normally, you'll be removed from it if you have lower temperature than them.

 

2 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

It's weird because it was stated that small creatures and items "blend" into the ambient heat, but players don't do the same. It's actually harder to hide your heat signature in summer, for some reason.

It's a bit weird, and it definitely needs to be revised.

Technically the most reliable way to ensure something has higher temperature than ambient (and you) is to have it smolder (not be set on fire), this adds +5 to whatever ambient temperature is.

Burning items, fires and things that emit heat, will either use ambient temperature or the heat they emit, whichever is higher, and due to ambient temperature in summer being extremely high, anything short of tree/structure fires, or a campfire/firepit at stage 3 or higher, will not be enough to go over ambient temperature. Unless they're within an Eye Crystaleyezer.

On the opposite end, smoldering items will barely help when temps are below 0 (or inside the radius of the Crystaleyezer) and you need to heat up to not freeze, but most exothermics will draw the missiles to them consistently so long as you don't heat up too much (don't carry a thermal stone).

There needs to be some logic where some value is added on top of the ambient temperature for other cases, just like with smoldering, it shouldn't just be the emitted heat value for most things, I think that's the biggest issue and why it can be confusing.

I made a few bug reports on all this but I missed this issue, I was focused on other things from the update as well. I feel like addressing it will make this attack feel way more consistent and intuitive.

 

EDIT: I forgot about Winona's generators, those also work like smoldering things and will add 10 degrees instead of 5.

 

39 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

If they're spooky missiles, they could haunt the star to reduce burn time.

The weird thing is that they outright instantly set their time left to 0, it should be reducing it by a set percentage like with many other things instead.

Edited June 14, 2025 by hoxi
Small bit of extra info

[Captain_Rage]

32 minutes ago, Random Guy000 said:

I don't even know why they can destroy dwarf stars. Isn't being indestructable one of their selling points? I just felt like the missiles were an unnecessary and uncreative difficulty spike, with how you only have one way of countering them (can't even fool them by lowering your temperature. So much for heat seeking)

That being said, I am only speaking based on what I've heard on forums. And what I haven't heard is if there's actually no way to just... Dodge them? Lazy explorer, soul hopping, backstep watch, shadow Wobby... No nothing? I-frames don't fool them?

The concept of homing missiles is fun but it misses the mark completely due to the utter confusion the inconsistency of temperature mechanics, even for a player with pleeeenty of hours in the game. That is my take. If the temperatures on different targets would make sense in the slightest and be logical I wouldn't have a gripe with it. The current implementation is bad. Agreed.

[Well-met]

2 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

The concept of homing missiles is fun but it misses the mark completely due to the utter confusion the inconsistency of temperature mechanics, even for a player with pleeeenty of hours in the game. That is my take. If the temperatures on different targets would make sense in the slightest and be logical I wouldn't have a gripe with it. The current implementation is bad. Agreed.

ice amulets are so ignored it should genuinely be their time to shine for once.

Just like firestaff / torch shines for crystal deerclops

Edited June 14, 2025 by Well-met

[Antynomity]

26 minutes ago, milsonmeow said:

Yes. Imagine after running away from WARBOT (especially prominent in the last phase) and seeing it blasting rockets and you're nowhere near your thermal stones set-up and well, you ended up being the target even though you're far away from it (at least half of the arena's range). Like, come on, Klei. Can you at least ACTUALLY play through this fight yourselves???

[Random Guy000]

14 hours ago, Waywarbler said:

Bone armor can block several if they all hit you at the same time. The cooldown's not fast enough to tank the entire missile barrage phase though (unless you swap between two or more bone armors).

At that point I'd rather settle for thulicite crown RNG, honestly

Why even add an intresting and simple to understand mechanic that SHOULD have a lot of room for creativity with countering it, if all it does is exist in practical vacuum, disconnected from the entire game aside from two items? Do we REALLY not have ANYTHING else in the entire game that would fool them?

This kind of door-and-key solutions is why I stopped trying to progress return of them quest lines to begin with. You have new mobs. How do you kill them?

"Idk."

But after you do they're just an annoyance to you and a MAJOR bother to everyone on the server that doesn't have special gear. Ruins rushing with rifts enabled is kinda spicy, but ultimatly pointless because the ONLY REASON you would interract with this content is to deal with it easier. It's a door that has a key to itself locked behind it.

I really liked the new "mini events" in caves, with ickers (as annoying as they are) and mask guys spawning at random, but because they're Planar™, nobody else on the server gets to enjoy their existence because of how dangerous they are. It's like, "Wow, look at [THING]!" Cool. Moving on... They don't have good drops, they can't be interracted with in any way other than killing them, so like... Why even add it??? The mimic mobs are the only thing I can't say anything bad about aside from maybe toning down planar damage from chests.

I just hope that post rift content wasn't so reliant on post rift gear, or, in the case of warbot, didn't make you craft ten f****** thermal stones to not die to it's instant kill button

Edited June 14, 2025 by Random Guy000

[GrapeVruit]

22 minutes ago, Random Guy000 said:

At that point I'd rather settle for thulicite crown RNG, honestly

Though, you'd need to use planar body armor if you don't want to turn into creamed corn.

[Random Guy000]

2 minutes ago, GrapeVruit said:

Though, you'd need to use planar body armor if you don't want to turn into creamed corn.

Yeah, now that I think about it, doesn't planar damage bypass the crown shield?

[GrapeVruit]

1 minute ago, Random Guy000 said:

Yeah, now that I think about it, doesn't planar damage bypass the crown shield?

I haven't tested it but I don't think any damage gets through when the shield is up.

[Cruvimaster]

Missiles are an easy problem to solve for me. However, it would be amazing if the developers of this utility for this below.

Edited June 14, 2025 by Cruvimaster

[Random Guy000]

25 minutes ago, GrapeVruit said:

I haven't tested it but I don't think any damage gets through when the shield is up.

Tested it just now, and yep, planar damage pierces the crown shield (although the numbers are weird? I tested it on the chest mimic dudes and their usual PD is 20, but it goes down to 18 when the shield is up. Weird)

Probably because the shield isn't actually making you invincible but just gives you 100% damage protection, similar to the snurtle armor

[Captain_Rage]

28 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

Missiles are an easy problem to solve for me. 

How do you deal with the missiles?

[Cruvimaster]

15 minutes ago, Captain_Rage said:

How do you deal with the missiles?

10 Thermal stones and half a staff.

From 11:04

Spoiler

 

 

Another solution is to use bone armor (2)

Edited June 14, 2025 by Cruvimaster