Should Klei add boss hp bar?

[Aztronat]

I wouldn't say this needs a 'Health bar' but the latest boss, the Scion, when deaggroed, resets the floor and also resets all HP back to full INSTANTLY (even if you don't die or leave the arena).
CC or for example Nightmare Werepig also regenerate HP, and also no cues.
The issue is that none give any hints that they regenerate HP.
I saw a streamer, who is a veteran player, resetting Scion a few times, and I couldn't tell them, cause they didn't speak English. But that is PAINFUL. They were playing in a 7K+ world with no rollbacks or anything and just kept dying over and over and wasting resources going back and forth, until they gave up and just quit. And Scion is already very punishing and I don't know how anyone could find out that it resets it's HP when it resets the floor.
Some tiny hints and cues would go a very long way  bosses could also have different "hurt" looks, based on their HP.

[GamePlayer42]

10 hours ago, Cruvimaster said:

I think that even if Klei ever put a mod for this, I would still use Epic Healthbar. In fact, I still use Geometric Placement + Geometric Drop.

I'm very familiar with all the signs that the devs leave on the highest HP bosses, like the 4 phases of the Bee Queen or the phases of the Misery Toadstool. But it's fun for me to see the boss's life draining away on my PC screen.

Making a boss easy, for me, is using Wolfgang with Volt Goat Chaud-Froid with Chili Flakes. If people really wanted to make it harder, they would play Wes. In the end, it's all just empty rhetoric, because the player will always come up with a strategy to make a fight easier when it's a difficult boss.

couldnt agree more

[SapoLover]

Well, Klei has been focusing on combat for a while. I can't think of a reason why not. An stylized version of epic healthbar that changed with the bosses, yeah that'd be nice. My only "no" would be numbers, I don't like numbers on screen.

[Lardee]

No because healthbars make the game less immersive. 

[Edible Coal]

2 hours ago, Lardee said:

No because healthbars make the game less immersive. 

On 7/3/2025 at 6:18 PM, Edible Coal said:

i think we think too hard.. klei can just add a new hat that shows boss health, just like gardener hat and hori expander.

i imagine you can optain one in early game for a simple hp inspection, and a upgrade one that shows you the enemy attack cd and even their exact attack range

just like gardener hat and hori expander.

[NeoDeusMachina]

I get both sides. I get that some think DST should be hard and challenging and be given as little info as possible. I also get that a lot of people just want to enjoy the game and would appreciate this feature to be added. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, that doesn't mean they should want it to be forced onto others just because they think it's the "best" way to play the game (i.e., 100% subjective).

There's obviously a lot of interest for having a boss hp bar (majority, based on a decent participation to the poll compared to usual participation rates).

I agree that we are overthinking this, but I honestly think gatekeeping hp bars behind an item defies the purpose of it to begin with. This needs to be simple. Either they add an hp bar for bosses that you can see with an option to turn it on/off to accommodate preferences, or they don't at all. Then, then can decide what level of details should be included, whether it should include phases or not, etc.

Who wants an hp bar and sincerely believes having to juggle an extra item mid boss fight will really improve the boss fight experience? I've already seen a lot of complaints about having to juggle items during fights, and how cumbersome it is especially for console players. This extra item to swap is going to make it even more painful for those people. Console players don't have access to mods, as far as I understand. Why turn a feature that should make their playing experience better into a feature making it worst?

I think if it is gated behind an item, it will fall in a category of poorly executed feature that nobody ends up using because it's more a hassle than it's worth. This might make those who don't want an hp bar happy, but I'll be surprised if it also makes those who want one happy. There might be some, probably not the majority.

 

Edited July 5, 2025 by NeoDeusMachina

[Kaioh]

Imo yes they should, even if it's just a toggle option

[linabagel]

Oh,~players still think the BOSS is hard to deal with.Alright, KL,just give them a bar.

[Well-met]

everytime klei adds in a mod from the workshop, it's just inferior in every way so no thanks

[reddocc]

real players use math. The scrapbook tells you all the enemies hp and weapons dmg.

[Wawchik]

8 hours ago, reddocc said:

real players use math. The scrapbook tells you all the enemies hp and weapons dmg.

What if the boss heals or has some other way of surviving for a long amount of time

Edited July 6, 2025 by Wawchik

[Frosty_Mentos]

I don't believe in bosses needing HP bars, but they should get visual indicators like Crab king where they have their scales, skin, limbs or something chipped off to look like they're nearing their death.

I think Crab King as a boss with that indicator made himself actually one of most exciting bosses to beat up cause you can feel yourself nearing victory.

[Hollow soul 3]

Give the console players the option. It doesn't lower the skill requirement to beat the bosses. I'm not trying to call anyone out, but the bosses aren't too hard to manage once you learn their patterns or over prepare. The noticable mention would probably be the eye of terror or the twins, or bosses that heal such as afw or spider queen where expanded knowledge could help. 

That being said, I felt like the afw fight ended very abruptly. It felt super anticlimactic. A health bar would have made that fight feel so much better for me. Watching him heal would feel more punishing, it builds tension the first time as you watch his health get lower and lower too. It kind of turned something I wanted to be a high point into a bit of a mild experience. Visual indicators would resolve a lot of this too, and theyre definitely more emersive. I just don't really know if it's a practical option for all the bosses. A health bar is probably way easier to implement with more or less the same results

[Captain_Rage]

37 minutes ago, Hollow soul 3 said:

That being said, I felt like the afw fight ended very abruptly. It felt super anticlimactic. A health bar would have made that fight feel so much better for me. Watching him heal would feel more punishing, it builds tension the first time as you watch his health get lower and lower too. It kind of turned something I wanted to be a high point into a bit of a mild experience. Visual indicators would resolve a lot of this too, and theyre definitely more emersive. I just don't really know if it's a practical option for all the bosses. A health bar is probably way easier to implement with more or less the same results

I'd say getting shoved in your face exactly how much gunpowder is needed for blowing up a boss when encountering it for the first time is anti-climatic. As opposed to seeing the numbers in the scrapbook or the wiki it still won't give away if you successfully managed to blast it with a stack of gunpowder. The latter is anti-climactic.

But yes, the windows in the Ancient Fuelweaver fight are so narrow and there is so much chaos and visual clutter, including the subtle enemies spawning and all the pillars surrounding the area covering the screen, which makes the pace and lack of visual indicators very frustrating.

[NeoDeusMachina]

6 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

I'd say getting shoved in your face exactly how much gunpowder is needed for blowing up a boss when encountering it for the first time is anti-climatic

A health bar doesn't need to display hp numbers. It can only be a bar that goes down when you hit the boss indicating progress in taking it down. Could also indicate life percentage instead of exact hp. It can have sections to show phases, or be only a single bar and leave phases to more immersive visual or autitive indicators. It also doesn't necessarily need to show damage numbers on hit etc. Even with all the numbers displayed, I'm not sure I get why it is anti-climatic, but that's probably subjective.

Edited July 7, 2025 by NeoDeusMachina

[Hollow soul 3]

6 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

I'd say getting shoved in your face exactly how much gunpowder is needed for blowing up a boss when encountering it for the first time is anti-climatic.

 It's not unless you memorize the damage number after boss explosive resistance. You also don't need an exact number to recognize overkill. You know what to expect when you cheese the fight, just learn the combat.

[Echsrick]

On 7/6/2025 at 4:25 AM, reddocc said:

real players use math. The scrapbook tells you all the enemies hp and weapons dmg.

ok....now what if klei FORGETS to add new scrapbook entires?

[Cliffford W.]

Maybe some sort of late game item that allows you to see boss healthbars.

Better make it an item that only the player carrying it will see the health. option to make anyone see the healthbar makes the game look RPG-esque

Edited July 8, 2025 by Cliffford W.

[Mike23Ua]

2 hours ago, Cliffford W. said:

Maybe some sort of late game item that allows you to see boss healthbars.

Better make it an item that only the player carrying it will see the health. option to make anyone see the healthbar makes the game look RPG-esque

Making it a late game item depleted the entire purpose of ever needing it. Honestly it should just be a HuD display toggle (which is already highly configurable on Xbox as is)

[gaymime]

2 hours ago, Cliffford W. said:

Maybe some sort of late game item that allows you to see boss healthbars.

Better make it an item that only the player carrying it will see the health. option to make anyone see the healthbar makes the game look RPG-esque

but the people who would benefit the most from a healthbar are also the people who are not going to be able to get late-game equipment

[Bumber64]

Wurt was given a healing item for merms, but can't see their health.

[00petar00]

8 hours ago, Cliffford W. said:

Maybe some sort of late game item that allows you to see boss healthbars.

Better make it an item that only the player carrying it will see the health. option to make anyone see the healthbar makes the game look RPG-esque

I could make an argument that DST is already leaning quite heavily towards RPG genre because of how many bosses we have gotten and it usually is always positive or at least neutral because it adds new fight, items and options for players. So I don't think klei will stop with bosses anytime soon.

It shouldn't be an item but it would be even worse If it was only available late game. No one wants to juggle another gear slot to check HP, @NeoDeusMachinaexplained it well already.

What we should talk about is the poll, 60 votes against and 75 for and this is quite unbelievable because most players on the forums are already very experienced and more likely to vote against things like this. If polls were implemented in game and everyone could see it as soon as they start up DST logically there would be so many more people voting to add this.

HP bar should be added as a toggle with three options for bosses, mobs and players and anyone should be able to choose which HP bar they want to see or If they don't want any. The idea is that it is turned off by default and players can turn it on.

 

[Echsrick]

1 hour ago, Bumber64 said:

Wurt was given a healing item for merms, but can't see their health.

one of wortox gimick IS being able to heal players....guess what? you cant even see the health of your fellow players

[Wawchik]

On 7/9/2025 at 6:22 AM, Bumber64 said:

Wurt was given a healing item for merms, but can't see their health.

She also has a skill that makes merms run away when low hp, you're probably supposed to use that skill but it's horrible 

[cybers2001]

On 7/8/2025 at 10:20 PM, Echsrick said:

one of wortox gimick IS being able to heal players....guess what? you cant even see the health of your fellow players

This was honestly one of the things that bugged me the most and was hoping would get reworked at some point for Wortox.