Do you want Fuelweaver to be

[Jakepeng99]

I want to see what people say.

[Midow]

I can't seem to vote. If anything, he needs a buff, especially to his health. 

[Cruvimaster]

This is the hardest boss in the game, and that's great because it justifies using its loot later on.

★ I can use two bone armors to face some bosses a second time (replayability) while having immunity, but I'm aware that to do this I had to defeat the hardest boss in the game twice.
★ I can access Ancient Pseudoscience while having immunity against shadow creatures using Bone Helm, or even farm nightmare fuel with this item. I can access the lunar island with this item without having the gestalts bothering me.
★ I can farm wood or marble on the surface using Shadow Thurible. (I've never tested it, but does it also work for Boulderborough?)

Finally, I can make the fight against AFW a little less difficult by using items (such as Weather Pain, Brightshade Staff, Volt Goat Chaud-Froid, Gunpowder, or Brightshade Bomb) or simply by using a character that gives a great advantage against this boss.

Edited January 19 by Cruvimaster

[Well-met]

the spike attack needs a buff

As for the nerfing I'm not sure... maybe stop shadow creatures from spawning if theres only one player?

[wormwood123]

Buff him buff his drops buff mike

[Echsrick]

buff BUT only if lureplant cheese returns, otherwise nerf the annoyance

[Maxil20]

My biggest gripe with the fuelweaver isn’t the boss difficulty itself, but moreso the jank when it comes to targeting mechanics. A lot of smaller issues have been ironed out with updates, but there are still some troubles with targeting. I’ve been running a mod that has a side effect of making the fuelweaver itself untargetable when the shield is up, and that makes things like dealing with the woven shadows feel much better.

As for the fight, I think it’s alright. It’s very difficult, and I can see why it’s overwhelming thanks to the game being very bad at teaching you how to properly manage the fight, but you are also compensated with very strong rewards, with bone armor easily taking place of being one of the top 10 items in the game you can have. It also helps that thanks to the thurible, killing it once will mean subsequent kills will be much easier, even if you make no difference to your gear setup from the first kill to the next. I personally think it’s a great example of how you can make a boss be difficult without having a ton of health innately, and how repeat farming the boss becomes much easier for players who want to benefit from things like ruins resets.

[Mayson71]

I don't want nerf, I want it to become interesting. His whole point is to be unbearable in solo, which is why all his basic moves are invincible shield and a cage from which you can't get out quickly without teleporting. It's just not fair.
So I have two suggestions: 
1. Bone cage can now be broken. Anything. It doesn't matter with an axe, a pickaxe, a hammer, or just a weapon, just make it so that it can be broken.
2. Shield will now activate based on HP, rather than a timer. (and PLEASE make that the player cannot attacking Fuelweaver while the shield is active)

Edited January 19 by Mayson71

[DegenerateFurry]

5 minutes ago, Mayson71 said:

I don't want nerf, I want it to become interesting. His whole point is to be unbearable in solo, which is why all his basic moves are invincible shield and a cage from which you can't get out quickly without teleporting. It's just not fair.
So I have two suggestions: 
1. Bone cage can now be broken. Anything. It doesn't matter with an axe, a pickaxe, a hammer, or just a weapon, just make it so that it can be broken.
2. Shield will now activate based on HP, rather than a timer. (and PLEASE make that the player cannot attacking Fuelweaver while the shield is active)

These are great suggestions, but I think it should be that the player has to manually target Fuelweaver while his shield is active (holding F or CTRL+F won't do, you have to click him), not that players outright can't target him while it's active. Being able to trigger AoE effects on him with stuff like Walter's stinger rounds can prevent him from healing. You're spot-on that his whole design philosophy is being unbearable solo and that it's just an unfair fight, though.

Edited January 19 by DegenerateFurry

[Jakepeng99]

2 hours ago, Midow said:

I can't seem to vote. If anything, he needs a buff, especially to his health. 

I put the buff option just to try have every option, never expected to see people who want him buffed

15 minutes ago, Mayson71 said:

I don't want nerf, I want it to become interesting. His whole point is to be unbearable in solo, which is why all his basic moves are invincible shield and a cage from which you can't get out quickly without teleporting. It's just not fair.
So I have two suggestions: 
1. Bone cage can now be broken. Anything. It doesn't matter with an axe, a pickaxe, a hammer, or just a weapon, just make it so that it can be broken.
2. Shield will now activate based on HP, rather than a timer. (and PLEASE make that the player cannot attacking Fuelweaver while the shield is active)

I actually agree with these changes.

The sheild one would need more testing to see how it works.

[HowlVoid]

If he healed like 100~150 hp per woven shadow instead of 500 or whatever it is when only one player is fighting him; nothing about the fight would change mechanically (albeit this would raise the skill floor). Would be less of an uphill battle when a solo player makes mistakes. 

Edited January 21 by HowlVoid

[Maxil20]

17 minutes ago, Mayson71 said:

2. Shield will now activate based on HP, rather than a timer. (and PLEASE make that the player cannot attacking Fuelweaver while the shield is active)

I think this could be interesting, but I feel it would be better to incorporate both at the same time? I'm specifically thinking of where either a set amount of HP is done and the 20 seconds elapse. That way you're not bodied by playing a higher damage character, but also not at a significant disadvantage compared to a lower damage one.

[DegenerateFurry]

As you can guess from my signature, I want Fuelweaver to have his kneecaps broken by the NERF baseball bat. The best way to do this, in my opinion - which is based on experimentation with different mods that nerf Fuelweaver and allow you to customize different aspects of the fight - would be to increase the cooldown on both his shield and his ability to summon Wovens, and to make him summon less Wovens when only one player is present. Doubling the cooldowns and halving the Wovens seems reasonable for a normal player playing a normal character solo.

This keeps the overall fight the same in its mechanics, but importantly, it also lets Klei implement player-based scaling, which is the best solution to their problem. They could easily make it so that Fuelweaver's cooldowns get shorter and his number of Wovens goes up with the amount of live players in the Atrium. It also would mean supercharging the Shadow Atrium with a Pure Horror could set his baseline to the current fight's levels, which'd make it actually harder than what we have now when it scales up with more players.

It might also be a good idea to make Terrorbeaks specifically unable to spawn inside of the Atrium, because having one of those spawn while you're fighting Fuelweaver sucks ass. They keep aggro on you for long after you remove the nightmare amulet most of the time even if your sanity's full and they do too much damage to be ignored, but taking one or two out will make you miss your narrow damage window on Fuelweaver. I don't think this is necessary if his cooldowns get longer, though. 

 

Edited January 19 by DegenerateFurry

[Well-met]

Oh yeah, make characters stop attacking shielded FW automatically with F. This is a huge problem

Edited January 19 by Well-met

[DegenerateFurry]

Just now, Well-met said:

Oh yeah, make characters stop attacking shielded FW automatically with F. This is a huge problem

Yeah, it's stupid that I'll be trying to break the last Unseen Hand while a Terrorbeak spawns in, but it just doesn't work because Fuelweaver's bony backside is somehow thicc enough to completely prevent me from attacking the thing that'd disable his shield (he happens to be standing right on top of it).

Edited January 19 by DegenerateFurry

[Midow]

43 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I put the buff option just to try have every option, never expected to see people who want him buffed

His health is too low. The moment you have 3 or more players pressing F, the fight ends rather unclimatically for a boss that's supposed to be comparable to CC (in terms of being the barrier to opening rifts). And while it is difficult, he's not impossible to fight solo. He doesn't need a nerf, and it's really a matter of preparation for the method you choose to kill him with. That said, I can presume how fighting him with a controller (which I have no experience with) can cause issues. 

[DegenerateFurry]

Just now, Midow said:

His health is too low. The moment you have 3 or more players pressing F, the fight ends rather unclimatically for a boss that's supposed to be comparable to CC (in terms of being the barrier to opening rifts). And while it is difficult, he's not impossible to fight solo. He doesn't need a nerf, and it's really a matter of preparation for the method you choose to kill him with. That said, I can presume how fighting him with a controller (which I have no experience with) can cause issues. 

The thing is, what you said applies to every boss. 

Seriously, name one boss that doesn't die too fast when you have 3+ players holding F on it. The problem is the lack of scaling in this multiplayer game, we shouldn't be ruining the experience for the over half of the playerbase who plays solo instead of making boss HP change depending on how many players are in the fight.

[Ridley]

A lot of my solo boss complaints have softened over time because of alternate options being added over time. I really like Fuelweaver and my only big concerns were how punishing it is to die/learn to fight him without rolling back, how anyone would figure out how the steps to summon him, and juggling my inventory. Brightshade staff really makes the fight a lot easier to manage and can even drive the nightmare creatures back. Also I think we just aren't supposed to figure everything out on own for DST, but share ideas and knowledge as a community.

[hyoton123]

Nerfs:

 

Fix targeting issues on console and during shield. I think the former is uncontroversial.

 

Cap the healing. I think 50% of lost HP is fine, that gives eventuality but is a heavy tax if you dont ever kill any woven shadow ever. Give a big graphical indicator that it actually IS healing. Reduce the numbers of woven shadows and make them bigger. 

 

Increase time for resummoning shadows and hands.

 

Buffs: Give it an added effect on hit.

 

Increase its max HP a bit.

 

Panic treeguards (haha).

 

[DegenerateFurry]

8 minutes ago, hyoton123 said:

Nerfs:

 

Fix targeting issues on console and during shield. I think the former is uncontroversial.

 

Cap the healing. I think 50% of lost HP is fine, that gives eventuality but is a heavy tax if you dont ever kill any woven shadow ever. Give a big graphical indicator that it actually IS healing. Reduce the numbers of woven shadows and make them bigger. 

 

Increase time for resummoning shadows and hands.

 

Buffs: Give it an added effect on hit.

 

Increase its max HP a bit.

 

Panic treeguards (haha).

 

I agree with these except for panicking Treeguards, I hope that's a joke? That's hard enough to set up as it is, especially now that they made it so we can't plant trees directly on the Atrium turf. 

[Evelo]

1 hour ago, HowlVoid said:

If he healed like 100~150 hp per woven shadow instead of 500 or whatever it is when only one player is fighting him; nothing about the fight would change mechanically (abeit this would raise the skill floor). Would be less of an uphill battle when a solo player makes mistakes. 

That's literally all I want from an AFW nerf. The healing is so punishing as solo that my go to strategy when playing WW is to make a ton of bramble traps and run around while bloomed to reset the traps that are triggered by the woven shadows. My disability makes item swapping really difficult and some bosses (like Crab King) are doable just really really tough compared to what is the normal expected difficulty.

Even with the Brightshade Staff, it is still pretty rough because of restoring the durability of the item. The fight just doesn't feel right for the current combat system in DST.

[hyoton123]

18 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

I agree with these except for panicking Treeguards, I hope that's a joke? That's hard enough to set up as it is, especially now that they made it so we can't plant trees directly on the Atrium turf. 

Yes. (I actually forgot about the atrium turf change, but i wanted a random throw in at the end just to be mean)

[Midow]

4 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

The thing is, what you said applies to every boss. 

Seriously, name one boss that doesn't die too fast when you have 3+ players holding F on it. The problem is the lack of scaling in this multiplayer game, we shouldn't be ruining the experience for the over half of the playerbase who plays solo instead of making boss HP change depending on how many players are in the fight.

I run a multiplayer server that regularly has 10+ players online, and while it’s true that most bosses melt once you have multiple people holding F, Fuelweaver still feels particularly squishy compared to other bosses.

I do understand the frustration of fighting him solo - I’ve done it solo numerous times myself - but in my experience it really comes down to preparation and approach. He’s difficult, but not unreasonable, and I personally like that the fight demands planning, strong item management, and positioning. I tend to view every encounter as a puzzle with different possible solutions, and that’s part of what makes this and all other fights fun for me.

That said, I do agree that scaling is a broader issue in DST. Bosses are clearly balanced around different assumptions depending on player count, and that tension is probably always going to exist. I’m just not convinced Fuelweaver specifically needs a nerf when the underlying issue is how bosses behave across different group sizes.

The only solution I can realistically think of would be something like an arena system similar to Warbot/Scion, where a restricted zone could dynamically increase the boss’s max health based on how many unique players enter. However, most boss arenas and encounter spaces in DST aren’t designed around that kind of system - and honestly, I’m fine with that for most fights.

[DegenerateFurry]

Just now, Midow said:

I run a multiplayer server that regularly has 10+ players online, and while it’s true that most bosses melt once you have multiple people holding F, Fuelweaver still feels particularly squishy compared to other bosses.

I do understand the frustration of fighting him solo - I’ve done it solo numerous times myself - but in my experience it really comes down to preparation and approach. He’s difficult, but not unreasonable, and I personally like that the fight demands planning, strong item management, and positioning. I tend to view every encounter as a puzzle with different possible solutions, and that’s part of what makes this and all other fights fun for me.

That said, I do agree that scaling is a broader issue in DST. Bosses are clearly balanced around different assumptions depending on player count, and that tension is probably always going to exist. I’m just not convinced Fuelweaver specifically needs a nerf when the underlying issue is how bosses behave across different group sizes.

The only solution I can realistically think of would be something like an arena system similar to Warbot/Scion, where a restricted zone could dynamically increase the boss’s max health based on how many unique players enter. However, most boss arenas and encounter spaces in DST aren’t designed around that kind of system - and honestly, I’m fine with that for most fights.

I want health scaling for all bosses, at least all player-summoned ones. Twins, Fuelweaver, CC, Warbot/Scion, Nightmare Werepig/Scrappy Werepig, Toadstool, Bee Queen, anything where the boss enters a hostile state due to player action instead of passively existing in the world. 

[Hi.]

FW is really easy in multiplayer but really annoying in single player and an easy fix would be limited his heals depending on how many players there are.