Do you want Fuelweaver to be

[Maxil20]

8 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I dunno that does the opposite of what you want achieved.

Bit confused on what you mean by this. I mostly mean it as in both the damage and time triggers have to be met in order for weaver to cast the shield again. To give an example, if the damage threshold was 2.5K, the “average” for a normal damage character would be around 5 shield cycles with average gameplay and a few mistakes of wovens being eaten. A higher damage character could potentially do it quicker by dealing more damage in the time window, but I feel that’s fairly justified because you’re playing as a higher damage character.

(Might be a bit confused by this myself, I myself had a bit of a rough night and didn’t sleep too well…)

[Jakepeng99]

3 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

Bit confused on what you mean by this. I mostly mean it as in both the damage and time triggers have to be met in order for weaver to cast the shield again. To give an example, if the damage threshold was 2.5K, the “average” for a normal damage character would be around 5 shield cycles with average gameplay and a few mistakes of wovens being eaten. A higher damage character could potentially do it quicker by dealing more damage in the time window, but I feel that’s fairly justified because you’re playing as a higher damage character.

(Might be a bit confused by this myself, I myself had a bit of a rough night and didn’t sleep too well…)

It just makes it way easier for multiplayer. Fuelweaver can often die in 20 seconds.

 

Punishes solo players for playing solo by giving them more sheild phases, make the fight even easier for groups by letting them skip most the fight and just dps it to death in seconds significantly harder than before.

 

Its just making it pointlessly easier for groups and higher dps chatacters (why make something specifically easier for chatacters who already have a massive advantage?)

17 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Y'know, another thing I hate about Fuelweaver that I rarely see anyone mention is how high the threshold for mind control is. You don't have to be insane for him to do it, nor do you even have to be close to insane for him to mind control you. You basically have to keep your sanity full the whole fight because there's no clear indicator of when you're vulnerable and not otherwise. 

Ironically i agree with very few of these nerfs.

Mainly just the hammer the bone cage and this one. 

[Popian]

51 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Its just making it pointlessly easier for groups and higher dps chatacters (why make something specifically easier for chatacters who already have a massive advantage?)

You've misunderstood the suggestion if you think it will result in that. Because larger groups will "always" reach the hp threshold it will behave the same as it does without it.

The hp threshold is there to help those who have been less productive in the small damage window so they will be punished less by the healing that was scaled around having ~2 players. There is a minor downside in that it can make things less predictable if things don't go according to plan, but with enough experience one should be able to work out a sense for it.

[Bumber64]

11 hours ago, Cruvimaster said:

AFW is only the most complained about boss by that minority of 17% of the votes because it's the hardest boss. As soon as it becomes a trivial boss, that group will start attacking the other boss that occupies the new position. But that group will never complain that an easy boss should be buffed. That's their logic.

This minority makes so much noise in the forum that it seems like the majority. That's why polls are good.

Was old CK harder than AFW? No, people just hated the mechanics. It didn't matter that you could just kill him with bees.

[DegenerateFurry]

16 hours ago, Mr Giggio said:

You guys wanting to change the best concept of a fight the whole game has since the introduction of it just shows how it's impossible to make everyone happy.

Nothing will be more DST than the fuel weaver fight in every aspect possible and baffles me all this resistance just cuz it's a hard fight to learn

Like what is even the sense of reward if you defeat a final boss with a couple of easy clicks and hold F,  I just can't understand 

Nah, you know what's a hard fight to learn? Last Judge in Hollow Knight: Silksong, she walls the hell out of new players. You know what's a well-designed and fair fight? That one right there, you'll beat her if you keep at it and master the basic mechanics. Same for most every other boss in Silksong, yes, even widely-hated ones like Savage Beastfly (honestly overhyped) and Groal the Great. 

What makes them well-designed for Silksong? Simple: they don't require you to do anything special aside from maybe having an arena hazard here or there, they just make you use the same skills as every other enemy and boss in the game does. You don't have to get a nightmare amulet and equip it for a second to make Karmelita vulnerable, you just have to git gud at reading her movements, reacting faster, and doing all the same attack and movement skills you've learned, but at a higher level. You don't have to constantly juggle six mandatory items to fight Shrine Guardian Seth when nothing else in the game requires that. Why? Because Team Cherry actually knows what they're doing, unlike Klei when they designed Fuelweaver.

Don't Starve Together's combat is, for the most part, very simple, and that's fine. That's what the game should be. Games like DOOM: Eternal and Hollow Knight: Silksong can get away with more complex enemies and bosses because they give the player an intuitive, well thought-out, but largely static toolset and design the entire game to force you to master it if you want to progress. 

DST has simple combat because it's a game with countless equipment options where you can make any threat you don't actively seek out go away by letting it knock down enough trees or running to a pig village. The combat in DST is optional, the game doesn't care to teach you to get good at it. This is arguably a game design flaw, but it's normally not too bad since learning most bosses comes down to learning attack range and timings. Then Fuelweaver strolls up and says, "oi bruv, ya got a nightmare amulet, two lazy explorers, 40 cooked green caps, 20 pierogis, weapons and armor, multiple weather pains, and that mod that makes you not target my shield?", and you have to do all of that on top of dodging and attacking like normal. 

And of course, even if you did watch some guide telling you to bring all that oddly specific prep material, you're gonna struggle to use it because nothing in the game has even made the slightest effort to prepare you for this. The inventory system item-switching is total jank. I can only imagine what agony it is to fight this boss on console, where you don't even have number keys or a mouse to work with. Fuelweaver's fight doesn't belong in this game at all, but at least it'd be less hair-rip-outingly frustrating if it was toned down a bit.

Edited January 21 by DegenerateFurry

[Evelo]

18 hours ago, Mr Giggio said:

You guys wanting to change the best concept of a fight the whole game has since the introduction of it just shows how it's impossible to make everyone happy.

Nothing will be more DST than the fuel weaver fight in every aspect possible and baffles me all this resistance just cuz it's a hard fight to learn

The fight is mechanically fine, the combat system of DST is atrocious and could heavily benefit from a complete overhaul. Especially since Klei is pushing toward a combat focus with all the bosses.

Edited January 21 by Evelo

[Mr Giggio]

6 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Nah

Nah

[AliceShiki]

11 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

It just makes it way easier for multiplayer. Fuelweaver can often die in 20 seconds.

Punishes solo players for playing solo by giving them more sheild phases, make the fight even easier for groups by letting them skip most the fight and just dps it to death in seconds significantly harder than before.

Its just making it pointlessly easier for groups and higher dps chatacters (why make something specifically easier for chatacters who already have a massive advantage?)

From what I understood, the suggestion is an "and", not an "or".

As in... If you do 2500dmg and 20s have passed, invul phase procs again.

If 20s passed, but you didn't do 2500dmg yet, it won't proc.

Similarly, if 2500dmg was dealt, but 20s didn't pass, it won't proc.

Both conditions would need to be fulfilled, which would essentially increase the windows you have to attack Fuelweaver.

[Cruvimaster]

12 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

Similarly, if 2500dmg was dealt, but 20s didn't pass, it won't proc.

This would benefit characters that deal a lot of damage (Wurt, Wolfgang) and large numbers of players. It would also make it easier to use gunpowder packs or Brightshade Bombs.

[AuRuS]

12 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

This would benefit characters that deal a lot of damage

what the hell? did everyone lose their reading comprehension skills on this thread?

It literally does not change anything for groups/high dps characters, the only one who benefits from this "2.5k dmg AND ~20s have passed" are low dps characters like wes and people who don't know what they're doing 

[Jakepeng99]

7 minutes ago, AuRuS said:

what the hell? did everyone lose their reading comprehension skills on this thread?

It literally does not change anything for groups/high dps characters, the only one who benefits from this "2.5k dmg AND ~20s have passed" are low dps characters like wes and people who don't know what they're doing 

fuelweaver can die in under 20 seconds. It’s a reasonable thing to accomplish in a group.

 

even then, worst case is it’s just one sheild phase and you kill after that.

[Cruvimaster]

1 hour ago, AuRuS said:

what the hell? did everyone lose their reading comprehension skills on this thread?

It literally does not change anything for groups/high dps characters, the only one who benefits from this "2.5k dmg AND ~20s have passed" are low dps characters like wes and people who don't know what they're doing 

I think it was you who didn't understand or didn't want to accept the importance of the double limit. In 20 seconds, a normal character will hardly be able to deal 2500 damage, but a Wurt would end the fight without even activating the shield once. The developers already worked on Warbot/Scion to make the experience different based on the damage dealt to the boss, and it wouldn't make sense to worsen it for AFW.

As I know the path the devs are taking from the last boss onwards (which was a very good stance, by the way), I'm calm about your request being denied.

If your point of contention were about increasing the time limit from 20 to 30 seconds, for example, I wouldn't disagree/I would be neutral. But I categorically disagree with the elimination of the double limit.

Edited January 21 by Cruvimaster

[AuRuS]

16 minutes ago, Cruvimaster said:

In 20 seconds, a normal character will hardly be able to deal 2500 damage, but a Wurt would end the fight without even activating the shield once.

From what I understood from the begining of this proposal was that the arbitrary number of seconds (the 20 was nothing specific, just a value to change according to game balance) has to pass for AFW to activate shield exactly as it is now, but just on top of that make him not do it IF 2.5k dmg has not been dealt yet, this was just to make it a little easier for new players (I guess) to give them more time inbetween phases so that if they waste a lot of time after breaking the shield on running around the arena they at least can get the 2.5k dmg in without an interruption.

right now if you have enough dps you need to get through the shield/minions only once at 10k hp, the change would be that durning the lifetime AFW will not do the cycle more than 4 times (unless he heals) so that people that don't know what they're doing can actually beat the boss. It would not even be noticable for everyone else 

[Cruvimaster]

12 minutes ago, AuRuS said:

From what I understood from the begining of this proposal was that the arbitrary number of seconds (the 20 was nothing specific, just a value to change according to game balance) has to pass for AFW to activate shield exactly as it is now, but just on top of that make him not do it IF 2.5k dmg has not been dealt yet, this was just to make it a little easier for new players (I guess) to give them more time inbetween phases so that if they waste a lot of time after breaking the shield on running around the arena they at least can get the 2.5k dmg in without an interruption.

I took a cut from the post I referenced, not addressing that other aspect in my post. Take another look and you'll see it.

[wormwood123]

Decided to weigh in with an actual bit of insight into my desire for him to actually be buffed. 
 

I play on controller and from what I’ve heard that sucks for targeting compared to keyboard for dst (although I do take it with a large frying racks amount of salt because the person that tells me this hasn’t ever played on keyboard) But I don’t struggle at all with AFW but I don’t enjoy the fight too much. I think he should be made more difficult but also more fun 

 

my ideas for this are:

as someone has stated already make the bone cage breakable this I believe should be done with a pickaxe 

make it so his weaved shadows don’t heal him as much OR heal him a bigger amount but he only summons a small amount and give them higher hit priority.

 

as for his mind control I think it should have two different effects one for when only one player is fighting and one for when multiple are

when one player is fighting have it be the current effect BUT you can move at a slower pace

In multiplayer have the mind control make you attack your teammates (maybe only punching damage or a spears damage and no planar as not to be too lethal to wandas)

maybe give him some different attacks like a fun one which might be too fun for this serious boss: have him throw his skull like a boomerang and you have to hit it back at him

[wormwood123]

As for buffs I just want his health to be increased and given new attacks 

[goblinball]

I think fuelweaver is really difficult (and I’m not very good at it) but I don’t think it needs a nerf, except for maybe having the woven shadows heal for less so they aren’t that punishing. Fuelweaver is one of those fights where everything is in your control and it’s almost always your fault if you lose so I’m ok with it being as challenging as it is, especially with how beating it requires much more strategy than just “kite the boss!!!”

I love having to manage the woven shadow and unseen hand cycles, trying to line them up to maximize damage is a really cool idea and is really difficult in practice. I think any fundamental changes to those (like changing one of them to be hp based as mentioned in the thread) would make the fight worse.

I think the big problems with fuelweaver are ultimately less to do with the fight itself and moreso just fundamental issues with dst you can’t really easily fix. There’s no in-game resources explaining how the fight works (let alone how to even summon the guy!) and practicing the boss (which is important!) requires spamming rollbacks and/or cheats, which is really cumbersome.
I’d really like for the other reanimated skeletons to be reworked to serve as much smaller fights that teach you how the woven shadows and unseen hands work, (maybe give them small rewards as well) so that new players can use those as training wheels for fuelweaver. The reanimated skeletons don’t really serve much of a purpose now either so I don’t think many ppl would miss the old ones.

 

[Hi.]

One more thing I wanna add, FW isn't hard once you get used to him and once you realize you can bring as much gear as you want. What's hard/annoying is getting that gear, and yes I know there are ways to avoid needing weather pains, teleports, etc. but I don't think the average player cares enough to learn those strats. 

[layangan putus]

21 minutes ago, Hi. said:

What's hard/annoying is getting that gear

BASED

 

On 1/22/2026 at 1:37 AM, goblinball said:

There’s no in-game resources explaining how the fight works (let alone how to even summon the guy!) and practicing the boss (which is important!) requires spamming rollbacks and/or cheats, which is really cumbersome.

BASED

 

 

The current AFW experience is fine and should remain as it is to appreciate many creative approaches against him. With that regard, why buff him when they can create the possibility to upgrade the fight to his truer form in a larger arena somewhere, and introduce more move sets? Give him a new ability to summon chess shadows based on the number of players fighting him for the first phase. Later on, make this fight personal and less summon crap - which he can borrow attacks from chess shadows and use upgraded skills (bone cage followed by a charge). Add classic enrage mode based on his health, meaning that the attacks will be more intense to challenge the muscle memory. The details are less important than the chaotic experience, but keep the beefalo and the pan flute futile for this exclusive moment. Maybe also add kryptonite for this possibility to help players who are not into combat, for the sake of their progression. In the end, I don't think they care about AFW at the moment.

 

Dev, please add a repair workbench or repair kits that work less efficiently for every item, mainly for pre-rift gears, because farming green gems is too slow.

[GetNerfedOn]

 

1 hour ago, DST enjoyer said:

The current AFW experience is fine and should remain as it is to appreciate many creative approaches against him

with this said, i find it fascinating that most of the balancing approaches and suggestions take the direct combat approach and present fuelweaver as a test of skill that is solely overcame by DST's combat system when in experience fuelweaver can be significantly eased up by a stack of gunpowder detonated right above 10k hp

sure FW is indeed a test of skill (one of the best ones, hence why i'm fine with it remaining as is) and is usually overcame by putting your skill to the test. im not discounting that the method above is foolproof and human error can heal the thing right back up to max health. but people speak as if options to ease up the fight are unavailable or invalid to use

[Mike23Ua]

due to the nature of the type of game that DST is: (Any crazy thing can happen at any given moment) The player has to not just battle a boss** but also manage weather, and any Shennigans that may occur during the boss fight (I had two RockJaw sharks invade my crabking fight once) 

Because of these uncontrollable factors: ALL bosses shouldn’t be these long raid-like grinds to fight Solo, that hilariously that same fight is over in a blink when fought by a group of players. At least Klei buffed some of the weapons and tools they intend you to use while fighting AFW, so I guess that’s good. ☺️

[Maxil20]

10 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

due to the nature of the type of game that DST is: (Any crazy thing can happen at any given moment) The player has to not just battle a boss** but also manage weather, and any Shennigans that may occur during the boss fight

This is a bit ironic, since I actually think weaver accounts for things like this moreso than any other boss, specifically with when you put a key into the gate:

-Earthquakes entirely stop occurring, even down to inducing them with things like gunpowder. The only quakes you can get are antlion induced ones, and those are only in summer and you’re also able to control.

-Worm waves entirely cease to progress. The only exception is if you are already hearing the warning sounds before putting the key in. Even so, with how the spikes toward the entrance are perma locked up, its exceedingly unlikely for any worm (or any non shadow mob, for that matter) to get inside.

-Lighting for the most part is solved due to the various beacons lighting up, and even the gateway destabilizing is a light source, allowing for it to not be a concern during the fight itself and still have a moment of respite when the fight ends.

-The nightmare phase being perma active means even if you get the worst possible generation of having the gate spawn next to a set of nightmare lights from another biome (which, in of itself, is exceedingly rare), the lights are forced to spawn a max of 1-2 nightmares per light. They will never spawn anymore shadows until the current nightmare cycle ends and another begins, which is impossible to occur unless the key is taken out of the gate. I remember this one quite heavily, as a server I used to play did a strat of having an alt account exist Just to keep the gateway loaded to minimize the amount of shadows in the main parts of the ruins. 
 

A lot of little things went into making sure the climatic end to the shadow arc had as little interference to the actual fight as possible. The only things that a player will need to account for is the cold/wetness, the former being bodied by some dwarf stars from a star caller around the arena  (which, if you are at the point of facing the weaver, you are reasonably able to have one at that point), and the latter having a niche with morning stars and can also be bodied by the umbralla after the first kill. It’s surprisingly well accounted for pretty much everything else that could incidentally occur.

[layangan putus]

11 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

ALL bosses shouldn’t be these long raid-like grinds to fight Solo, that hilariously that same fight is over in a blink when fought by a group of players.

This is a good point related to the current AFW, as the number of players affects the preparation phase. What other boss fight do you think is gonna be over in a blink?

 

[Well-met]

just fix F attacking the shielded fuelweaver please lord its all we ask for and need

[Frosty_Mentos]

He's too easy for multiple people, he's too hard for solo, theres no middle ground but should be harder for multiple people ngl