Inimical Gestalts needs a major tweak/rework in their Agressive Behavior

[twitchgabo]

After defeating the Celestial Scion, we receive two late-game items: the Terramite and the Celestial Jewel.

While the Terramite isn't particularly exciting, mainly because we already have several strong tools for chopping wood and mining (like the Bearger, Fuelweaver, and even pigs), a much more pressing concern is the introduction of the Inimical Gestalts, which are unlocked after defeating the Celestial Scion. These creatures now spawn during every new moon and also appear whenever you insert 5 Celestial Jewels into your Enlightened Crown.

Their behavior is somewhat similar to the Bone Helm's shadow creatures, but with key differences that make them much more problematic:

• They are significantly tankier than normal nightmare creatures.

• Their attacks deal AoE damage, meaning if any other enemy aggroes them while you're nearby, you can get hit—even if you’re not directly involved.

• They can instantly kill you if you're not wearing armor.

This becomes especially frustrating when trying to farm the Celestial Champion for more Enlightened Crowns or Shards. Not only do the Gestalts interfere with the fight without helping(they do not damage the Celestial Champion), but you also run the risk of accidentally hitting them by attacking with CTRL + F, which usually results in being shredded to pieces by their powerful AoE retaliation.

Another issue is that they have a terrible synergy with Wormwood's Brambleshade armor, due to the fact the torns also make the Gestalts aggro you.

Suggestion: Please consider granting immunity to Inimical Gestalts while wearing the Enlightened Crown. Since the Crown already lacks any defensive properties (unlike helmets), this would be a fair and welcome tradeoff that would make combat significantly less frustrating.

Also, the Terramite could really use a buff or a quality-of-life tweak, especially considering how difficult it is to refuel relative to its utility.

I understand that Klei is planning another small update for the new content—just please don’t overlook these frustrating mechanics. A few thoughtful adjustments could go a long way in improving the late-game experience.

Edited July 5, 2025 by twitchgabo

[Maxil20]

I assume a future beta will rework them, since a lot of players have expressed general issues (myself included) about their general prevalence and how much they disrupt the experience, especially related to how they can accidentally hit (and likely kill) you and how getting hit by AOE from things ranging from bramble armor to catapults is also especially bad. Until then, this mod can be used to disable them outright for now, if you find they drag the experience down too much.

[twitchgabo]

1 hour ago, Maxil20 said:

I assume a future beta will rework them, since a lot of players have expressed general issues (myself included) about their general prevalence and how much they disrupt the experience, especially related to how they can accidentally hit (and likely kill) you and how getting hit by AOE from things ranging from bramble armor to catapults is also especially bad. Until then, this mod can be used to disable them outright for now, if you find they drag the experience down too much.

Wow, nice mod! I will use it until a patch fix happens! Thanks!

[Aztronat]

Yeah they still cooking: 

and also I just noticed this in the wiki which is from the Dev Cast stream and has got me thinking:
(but might just be a deprecated thing) 


I agree with all the issues that you've brought up, I'd like to add: if I'm not mistaken, these Inimical Gestalts aggro if you are wearing shadow gear and don't aggro with max lunacy, which the upgraded crown would give immunity to, comparing it to bone helm and shadow creatures which unlike the Inimical Gestalts do not care about gears and just go after you if you are low sanity UNLESS provoked, which requires Force Attack. And if I'm also not mistaken, the Inimical Gestalts aren't just per player, like shadow creatures. If they are there, they are there for every player and every mob (another difference, since shadow creatures cannot interact with mobs). And this can cause a loooot of problems as well. For example one might want to use shadow gear against Celestial Champion, but having these Inimical Gestalts, from someone else, would contradict.
And also would like to add that other AOE attacks could also become problematic, but I haven't tested yet, so take them with a big grtain of salt, for example: Brightshade bombs, Wigfrid's spear, Weremoose's charge, Walter's AOE rounds, Willow's blasts, Winona's catapults, etc.
Edit: Brightshade staffs I know aggro them.
Not saying that they have to be a carbon copy, just trying to draw a better picture of the situation. 

And also in the topic, I'd like to say that it'd be also very nice if the minor gestalts could also not hit anything that is on their path. This causes a lot of problems, for example it can trigger a deadly brightshade or a whole herd of enemies while fighting a single mob. 

Edited July 5, 2025 by Aztronat

[IAmAFurrz]

whats also fun is gestalts just punishing you for having friends that want to use shadow armor. bone helm shadows not only neutralizes every single one including insanity ones that are aggressive to teammates, they also dont force other players to have to play around the stupid things. it helps instead of actively punishing players around you for not using crown/bshade helm. its incomprehensible how this was made, went through beta, and somehow still is as is today

the inimical gestalt is a half thought through mob that only ever slows down fights (because they do obscene boss level of damage) and also incompatible with multiplayer

[AliceShiki]

I personally feel like they're mostly fine for late-game mobs.

Making them immune to player AoE while they're friendly (most notably, Brightshade Staff), and making them despawn after some 10~20s in environments without lunacy could be nice though.

[Antynomity]

I'd just outright rework them. The Enlightened Crown rewarded you for beating CC, while the jewels actively punish you for interacting with new content. Idk make them mutate mobs instead of existing there to unfairly insta-kill you, that'd "increase difficulty" without being a punishment outright.

[JazzyGames]

What bugs me the most is how incompatible the crown is with other lunar rift gear. Brightshade staff will target them if no hostile mobs are available. Brightshade armor will insta-aggro them onto you if they hit you on their way to hitting their actual target (I've heard Wormwood's Brambleshade armor is even worse). Then they all swarm and kill you. Happened to me yesterday on a boat with cookie cutters.

I don't mind the presence of a new downside but I don't think I should have to choose between the crown and other gear from the same rift.

[Cruvimaster]

The Malbatross was the most complicated boss to face with inimical gestalts. After the boss attacked me in an area, the mobs were also hit and started to deal area damage to the giant and also to me (I only had the space of a boat in the middle of the ocean).

Another point is the fact that the inimical gestalts do not appear in the caves/ruins. We do not know if this is intentional or if it is a bug. Remember that we have Greater Gestalt in Lunar Grotto.

The problem is if it is a bug. The reason is that if Klei brings them to the underworld, it will be impracticable to use the crown against AFW, since we would not be able to use Weather Pain or Brightshade Staff.

Edited July 6, 2025 by Cruvimaster

[SilverSpoon]

1 hour ago, JazzyGames said:

What bugs me the most is how incompatible the crown is with other lunar rift gear. Brightshade staff will target them if no hostile mobs are available. Brightshade armor will insta-aggro them onto you if they hit you on their way to hitting their actual target (I've heard Wormwood's Brambleshade armor is even worse). Then they all swarm and kill you. Happened to me yesterday on a boat with cookie cutters.

I don't mind the presence of a new downside but I don't think I should have to choose between the crown and other gear from the same rift.

Perhaps that's not such a bad thing? I'll also be a motivation to the Shadow Quest. If you've completed both the Luna Quest and the Shadow Quest, you'll finally be the strongest.

[cybers2001]

7 hours ago, SilverSpoon said:

Perhaps that's not such a bad thing? I'll also be a motivation to the Shadow Quest. If you've completed both the Luna Quest and the Shadow Quest, you'll finally be the strongest.

For the time being, all your shadow maximalist friends can go back to the caves where they belong!

Edited July 7, 2025 by cybers2001

[IAmAFurrz]

8 hours ago, JazzyGames said:

What bugs me the most is how incompatible the crown is with other lunar rift gear. Brightshade staff will target them if no hostile mobs are available. Brightshade armor will insta-aggro them onto you if they hit you on their way to hitting their actual target (I've heard Wormwood's Brambleshade armor is even worse). Then they all swarm and kill you. Happened to me yesterday on a boat with cookie cutters.

I don't mind the presence of a new downside but I don't think I should have to choose between the crown and other gear from the same rift.

whats worse is it doesnt allow anyone else to use any other headgear item than crown or bshade helm  or its an insta kill for most characters

[twitchgabo]

9 hours ago, Cruvimaster said:

The Malbatross was the most complicated boss to face with inimical gestalts. After the boss attacked me in an area, the mobs were also hit and started to deal area damage to the giant and also to me (I only had the space of a boat in the middle of the ocean).

Another point is the fact that the inimical gestalts do not appear in the caves/ruins. We do not know if this is intentional or if it is a bug. Remember that we have Greater Gestalt in Lunar Grotto.

The problem is if it is a bug. The reason is that if Klei brings them to the underworld, it will be impracticable to use the crown against AFW, since we would not be able to use Weather Pain or Brightshade Staff.

The best use of crown now is in the caves due to the fact that we don't have to deal with Inimical Gestalts. That shows how bad they need a rework 

[hoxi]

On 7/5/2025 at 6:20 PM, Aztronat said:

I agree with all the issues that you've brought up, I'd like to add: if I'm not mistaken, these Inimical Gestalts aggro if you are wearing shadow gear and don't aggro with max lunacy, which the upgraded crown would give immunity to, comparing it to bone helm and shadow creatures which unlike the Inimical Gestalts do not care about gears and just go after you if you are low sanity UNLESS provoked, which requires Force Attack.

I explained in a different thread but, kinda, it goes like this:

Quote

They can actually attack whoever they're tracking after spawning, regardless of enlightenment or sanity and which sanity mode is active. The only thing that stops them from aggroing in this case is using the crown or brightshade helmet, if they're not already aggro'd (in this case, run away until they do, if you have very high enlightenment, they'll take a bit to deaggro assuming you're not letting them start attacks).

Also while they're tracking a player, they won't attack anything else (including other players) unless attacked.

(for clarification, "tracking" in this context means whoever they spawned for, this tracked player never changes until said player dies or despawns, they also don't necessarily follow this player at all unless aggro'd, they only follow fully upgraded crowns, regardless if equipped or not)

To add further: if players are close together, there's no way to tell which player is being tracked until you notice their tunnel vision-y behavior.

And to further clarify, Inimical Gestalts don't care about enlightenment to aggro to their tracked player, the only thing that stops them from aggroing is the crown (doesn't need to be upgraded) or the brightshade helmet. If you're at very high enlightenment and they're already aggro, you have to wait for them to give up their chase after several seconds.

 

 

42 minutes ago, twitchgabo said:

The best use of crown now is in the caves due to the fact that we don't have to deal with Inimical Gestalts. That shows how bad they need a rework 

And we don't know if it's intentional or not because, the fact that the Celestial Scion was killed syncs to other shards just fine. And the brightmarespawner component (what handles Gestalts and Inimical Gestalt spawns, both in the forest and in the caves shard) specifically checks for that (when on the first iteration of the Inimical Gestalts, it was checked using a component that's only in there in the forest shard).

The problem is that the caves don't fire a specific event that the Scion itself fires on the forest shard, which enables the Inimical Gestalt spawn pool.

Edited July 7, 2025 by hoxi