The Ancient Fuelweaver has already been nerfed by the devs.

[Cruvimaster]

No teleportation needed (lazy explorer), which simplifies the fight.

Sanity a problem? Each Deadly Brightshade will give you 2 Leafy Meat to make the best sanity recipe in the game: Jelly Salad.

Shield, Unsee Hands, and Woven Shadows are completely negated by Brightshade Staff without needing any movement around the arena.

Take the Celestial Champion path first or simply activate the rifts in the game settings on day 1.

Done! AFW dropping in under 4 minutes for Wilson. Want it easier? Use Wolfgang or any other characters that deal more damage.

Does Brightshade Staff need a nerf? No. This item fulfills its function of providing accessibility to the most difficult boss in the game.

Edited January 30 by Cruvimaster

[Bumber64]

He hasn't been nerfed. You're doing the RPG equivalent of of skipping an early boss, then going back and whaling on him with endgame equipment. Wow, this boss is just too easy! IDK what everyone's complaining about!

If you're going to enable early rifts, you might want to turn off sanity monsters and decrease damage taken while you're at it.

Edited January 30 by Bumber64

[Cruvimaster]

4 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

He hasn't been nerfed.

It's an indirect nerf, as it completely breaks the boss's mechanics by introducing an item many years later. To directly nerf AFW, the devs would first have to prevent the staff from negating the boss's mechanics. None of that is necessary in my opinion.

If the boss's design remains stuck in 2016 and the characters have become stronger, and the game offers new items that deal more damage or neutralize mechanics, TO ME that is indeed a nerf, even if it's indirect.

[Well-met]

Hunger has been nerfed because meat stews exist!

sorry I don't think that's how it works.

[Jakepeng99]

Please, compress your videos.

[Bumber64]

And yet we're still stuck using only lazy explorer to escape bone cage. Weather pain on woven shadows unless your particular character has an AoE skill, or you went and did the other boss first.

My recommended changes:

Pickaxe and hammer works on bone cage. This takes a few hits, so AFW still gets to smack you, but you can probably prevent him from healing too much.
Give an early warning he's about to use the cage. Enough to swap items comfortably. Slight increase on cooldown?
Bone cage fully forms on arena edges. You can't cheese out of it this way.
AFW consumes woven shadows more slowly. You don't have to walk him away from the center of the arena, but it still helps in preventing his heals.
AFW attacks any constructed pillars blocking his path to targeted player/gateway, and he's impossible to hit from outside the arena.
Make fossil spikes harder to dodge. Only buffs for this attack.
Hostile shadows deaggro better when sane.
Can't target AFW during shield.

The need for multiplayer scaling is an issue that affects all bosses. Health/defense scaling per participant is mandatory (not necessarily linear). Boss summons and abilities can scale too. 4 players nearby? More woven shadows, lavae, etc. Some extra loot justified by difficulty.

Edited January 30 by Bumber64

[Cruvimaster]

1 hour ago, Well-met said:

Hunger has been nerfed because meat stews exist!

The terminology used to describe the fact that all the old bosses are being weakened with each update compared to the original experience is irrelevant. There's no need to call it a nerf. Give it another name. Trivialization, accessibility, or democratization of bosses—the name doesn't matter; what matters is the observed phenomenon.
 

It's important to know that AFW has a secret difficulty menu, and you can select the first difficulty using the Brightshade Staff.

Edited January 30 by Cruvimaster

[Evelo]

"I'm right, you're wrong, I'm going to insult you all now." - Cruvimaster

[aidancode]

4 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

And yet we're still stuck using only lazy explorer to escape bone cage. Weather pain on woven shadows unless your particular character has an AoE skill, or you went and did the other boss first.

My recommended changes:

Pickaxe and hammer works on bone cage. This takes a few hits, so AFW still gets to smack you, but you can probably prevent him from healing too much.
Give an early warning he's about to use the cage. Enough to swap items comfortably. Slight increase on cooldown?
Bone cage fully forms on arena edges. You can't cheese out of it this way.
AFW consumes woven shadows more slowly. You don't have to walk him away from the center of the arena, but it still helps in preventing his heals.
AFW attacks any constructed pillars blocking his path to targeted player/gateway, and he's impossible to hit from outside the arena.
Make fossil spikes harder to dodge. Only buffs for this attack.
Hostile shadows deaggro better when sane.
Can't target AFW during shield.

The need for multiplayer scaling is an issue that affects all bosses. Health/defense scaling per participant is mandatory (not necessarily linear). Boss summons and abilities can scale too. 4 players nearby? More woven shadows, lavae, etc. Some extra loot justified by difficulty.

I do want to point out that some people really like current fuelweaver, which I can respect. I'm not saying this idea is bad, but it's just really hard to change something so important.

2 minutes ago, Evelo said:

"I'm right, you're wrong, I'm going to insult you all now." - Cruvimaster

Doesn't look like an insult. By the looks of it cruvimaster wasn't even trying to argue a point in this post, was more just an acknowledgement of something interesting that could serve as an argument against nerfing fuelweaver. 

4 hours ago, Well-met said:

Hunger has been nerfed because meat stews exist!

sorry I don't think that's how it works.

I wouldn't call this an insult either but if you want to pinpoint when it gets petty, it's right here. I feel like the initial point, whether you agree with it or not, is pretty clear.

[RubLog6]

I believe it's called a power creep

[Gashzer]

Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

All praise the return of the Moonlight Shackle!!! Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/158295-moonlight-shackle-new-celestial-altar-craft-suggestion-afw-nerf/

 

 

[Mike23Ua]

You guys must have missed the entire *point* of rifts content somewhere. So I’ll give you a brief Rundown, Rifts in short are Lunar & Shadow Related, you can activate One & ignore the other, you can activate BOTH & suffer the consequences of having both, or you can choose to not activate them at all & ignore their existence. To activate rifts (for either side) you have to complete a specific list of RPG style quests like fetch supplies & appease/kill gods (Grabby Granny & her Boyfriend) and beat up some more bosses that cause bad juju to start happening globally (CC, AFW)

the reward for doing so? Powerful Armor, Weapons or Tools that are used to Obliterate the opposite rift faction.

Yes you absolutely heard me right and there’s dev log recorded evidence (somewhere but I’m too lazy to search for it) that states it- Rift content is purposely designed to counter the opposing rift content.

So ding ding there you have it: AFW is Easy with a Brightshade staff because that’s the staffs entire designed purpose!

[Bumber64]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

Yes you absolutely heard me right and there’s dev log recorded evidence (somewhere but I’m too lazy to search for it) that states it- Rift content is purposely designed to counter the opposing rift content.

So ding ding there you have it: AFW is Easy with a Brightshade staff because that’s the staffs entire designed purpose!

AFW isn't rifts content, last I checked. No planar defense.

Edited January 30 by Bumber64

[Mysterious box]

8 hours ago, Well-met said:

Hunger has been nerfed because meat stews exist!

sorry I don't think that's how it works.

I don't think this comparasion holds up take megaman for example a difficulty slider in that series is if a certain boss is too hard for you what you should do is instead fight the boss whose weapon is stronger against that boss making the overall fight easier while you could use a e tank so you can take more hits that doesn't necessarily make the fight that much easier by comparsion.

If someone were to make a comparsion using food though I'd point towards the drying rack buff and the bearger bin as techinically those could be legitimate cases even if we all agree it was a good thing.

 

That being said if you are fighting a boss with tools specifically designed to counter them that is techinically a nerf to a boss.

Edited January 30 by Mysterious box

[DegenerateFurry]

Nice try, but your argument's invalid because Fuelweaver's accessible way earlier in progression than Brightshade gear. The game's design tells you indirectly to do Fuelweaver first, but Fuelweaver's fight is designed in such a way that it's easy with 2-3+ people and frustratingly hard solo without postgame gear. 

I can do Fuelweaver before winter starts as Walter solo if I get slightly lucky with sussy marble spawns on day 1. It'll take at least until spring for me to do CC as any character even with other players helping because of how much more involved and lengthy his questline is, and then I still have to wait for rifts to spawn and do rifts. And that's if I'm putting equal amounts of effort into doing them as fast as possible, with the same level of luck. 

[DegenerateFurry]

29 minutes ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Nice try, but your argument's invalid because Fuelweaver's accessible way earlier in progression than Brightshade gear. The game's design tells you indirectly to do Fuelweaver first, but Fuelweaver's fight is designed in such a way that it's easy with 2-3+ people and frustratingly hard solo without postgame gear. 

I can do Fuelweaver before winter starts as Walter solo if I get slightly lucky with sussy marble spawns on day 1. It'll take at least until spring for me to do CC as any character even with other players helping because of how much more involved and lengthy his questline is, and then I still have to wait for rifts to spawn and do rifts. And that's if I'm putting equal amounts of effort into doing them as fast as possible, with the same level of luck. 

Just to show what I'm talking about, here's each questline done quick.

Fuelweaver

1. Collect the three sussy marbles and assemble them at the broken statues to summon the Shadow Pieces. Can be done literally day 1 as several characters, even solo, with halfway decent RNG.

2. Kill the Shadow Pieces. Should be doable within a day or two. They're not too big of a challenge, especially as some characters and in the right order.

3. Kill the Ancient Guardian in the ruins. You kinda need to go there anyway as most characters for a means to teleport and hope you get a Lazy Explorer from AG if you don't have teleportation already, and it also gets you good gear to fight Fuelweaver with. AG is literally one of the easiest bosses to rush, shouldn't take you long at all. 

4. Get 8 fossils by mining spilagmites. Trivially easy, just go to red mushroom biome. 

Optional step 5. Kill Nightmare Werepig so you can activate shadow rifts immediately.

6. Build a shadow manipulator and craft a nightmare amulet. Get some sanity and healing food, but you've been killing bosses and should've been doing that anyway so it's fair enough to assume it.

7. Summon Fuelweaver, kill Fuelweaver. Questline complete.

 

Celestial Champion

1. Gather an entire shopping list of items for Pearl's house and questline. If you do this correctly, you can pretty easily have everything you need except the fish before the first rain. This shopping list is already longer than anything required for the Fuelweaver questline. Make sure to make an umbrella. You will need at least a piggyback to carry everything, but it's best to bring Chester too. 

2. Acquire living logs somehow, better hope your world has totally normal trees and that you found one or two if you're not Wormwood. Otherwise, you'll have to visit the Archives early and waste time farming mushgnomes.

3. Find Pearl's. Easy enough if you happen upon a bottle, and you probably will. 

4. Visit a salt shoal on the way, also pretty easy to do. 

5. Do every task you can at Pearl's, give her an umbrella during autumn rain, and then rush down to the ruins. 

6. You might as well kill AG for the loot, but all you really need right now is a star caller staff, and with how pressed for time you are, you might want to just craft one and a helm or two and leave. Best to get a deconstruction staff too if you have the time to spare before night 11. If you're able, it'd also be good to get the chair blueprint so you can do that task and possibly skip Fallounder. Oh, and don't forget to get your favorite set of Crab King gems while you're down there.

7. Rush back to the surface once you have your star caller, craft a bunch of walls, and do the moonstone event. 

8. Run back to your boat, go fishing, try to get a Fallounder before autumn ends, and catch as many heavy fish as you can for Pearl. Heavily RNG-based and can be done quickly or can take the rest of the season depending on if heavy Fallounders feel like spawning or not. 

9. Clear Pearl's waters, which will kill a day because it's tedious. You should get the pearl at this point. 

10. Disassemble your moon caller, hope you've got enough everything to make it through the approaching winter, and rush down to the Archives. Oh, and find them first, that's important.

11. Activate the archives, clearing out obstructing Sentrypedes first so they don't bother you while you do the RNG-based archive puzzle to get the locator.

12. Return to the surface with the locator, it'll guide you to lunar. 

13. Assemble the altar on the lunar island once you get there with whatever method is available to you. 

14. Use the locator to find the two hidden terrestrial altar pieces. 

15. Bring them to lunar.

16. Use the locator to find Crab King, who's honestly more of a challenge than Celestial Champion even now. 

17. Kill Crab King. 

18. Take his altar to lunar and assemble all the altars in a triangular fashion. 

Optional step 19. Kill Bee Queen for bundling wrap so you don't have to worry about anything expiring while you do the moonstorms in what is almost certainly now winter. 

20. Visit the scrapyard for a potato to craft a necessary item for the moonstorms.

21. Do the moonstorms, acquiring a second shopping list of items in so doing. 

22. Get the celestial orb. Hopefully it's dropped by now, they did make that less RNG-based... somewhat.

23. Assemble everything on the lunar island. 

24. Summon CC, kill CC. Questline complete. 

 

So, yeah, not exactly equal choices here? CC takes way more time investment and game knowledge to summon than Fuelweaver.

Edited January 31 by DegenerateFurry

[Mike23Ua]

3 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

AFW isn't rifts content, last I checked. No planar defense.

There are patch notes that specifically state the Brightshade staff was overly buffed to assist with the AFW fight, mostly to make it actually do-able without a keyboard and mouse but still… the notes exist out there somewhere, I’m just far too lazy to dig through the forums to search for it.

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Nice try, but your argument's invalid because Fuelweaver's accessible way earlier in progression than Brightshade gear. The game's design tells you indirectly to do Fuelweaver first, but Fuelweaver's fight is designed in such a way that it's easy with 2-3+ people and frustratingly hard solo without postgame gear. 

I can do Fuelweaver before winter starts as Walter solo if I get slightly lucky with sussy marble spawns on day 1. It'll take at least until spring for me to do CC as any character even with other players helping because of how much more involved and lengthy his questline is, and then I still have to wait for rifts to spawn and do rifts. And that's if I'm putting equal amounts of effort into doing them as fast as possible, with the same level of luck. 

This only works if you feel you need to fight fuel weaver first nothing compels you to do so to use Walter as an example again it's like a Walter who fights bee queen with only a big Woby and gold or marble rounds. You certainly can do that if your feeling confident but if you want to have a safer experience you can prepare the thulecite frame and slowdown rounds as well as healing food after clearing the ruins. You could even use a beefalo for even more safety. Yeah prepping gear to make fights easier does use up time but unless your min maxing does it really matter that much?

Edited January 31 by Mysterious box

[DegenerateFurry]

59 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

This only works if you feel you need to fight fuel weaver first nothing compels you to do so to use Walter as an example again it's like a Walter who fights bee queen with only a big Woby and gold or marble rounds. You certainly can do that if your feeling confident but if you want to have a safer experience you can prepare the thulecite frame and slowdown rounds as well as healing food after clearing the ruins. You could even use a beefalo for even more safety. Yeah prepping gear to make fights easier does use up time but unless your min maxing does it really matter that much?

There's an almost infinitely massive difference between basic Walter Queen Bee prep (i.e. visiting the ruins to get slingshot upgrades and thulecite rounds, making slowdown rounds, and maybe killing NMWP for dread pebbles) and doing the entire CC questline plus lunar rifts. You're not comparing apples to apples, you're not comparing apples to oranges, you're comparing apples to solar systems.

Also, the reason I "feel the need to fight Fuelweaver first" is that I can summon him before the first winter easily, but I never usually get around to beating Celestial Champion until half or more of a year in because of how involved his questline is. There is something that compels me to fight him first: basic game design principles. 

That's the fundamental flaw with rifts: you can activate the shadow ones way earlier than the lunar ones and you can even get some of the shadow materials (needed for certain shadow-aligned perks) before beating any boss but Nightmare Werepig, but all the lunar stuff's locked off until after you activate lunar rifts (further suggesting that lunar's meant to be after shadow), which goes against the fundamental concept of these two warring factions you're supposed to pick between and use your choice against the other. If it was equally easy to summon CC or equally time-consuming to summon Fuelweaver, the suggestion of actually using lunar rift gear against Fuelweaver would be a valid one, but the imbalance is so ridiculous that it's not. 

Edited January 31 by DegenerateFurry

[Edible Coal]

12 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Please, compress your videos.

i was woundering why it takes so long to load even though my internet is beefy lol

[linabagel]

First of all, the design of Ancient Fuelweaver is unparalleled. He asked players to use different items to complete battles—Weather Pain, Nightmare Amulet, Lazy Explorer, and Bee Queen Crown—I love these combinations because they give expression to objects that no one would normally use. DST has so many items. As the game updates, some items gradually fade out of people's sight and are hardly noticed by anyone. However, a few simple mechanisms can make them worthy of attention, which is very good. （For example, in Winona's ST there is Night Light, in Wurt's ST there is Strident Trident, in the battle of Crab King use Scalemail, in the battle of Crystal Deerclops use Fire Staff. ）These mechanisms encourage players to experiment with different combinations, which is a manifestation of great freedom and rich choices. Ancient Fuelweaver really doesn't need any mechanical nerf. 

What's more, there are now Skill Tree and Brightshade equipments, cheap Banana Shake and Dragonpie, the difficulty of battles has been greatly reduced. Players can even use Walter's cheese to easily defeat all the bosses. 

If players still find it difficult to defeat the Ancient Fuelweaver, they can upload their battle videos. This can directly help them identify the key points of the problem.

[layangan putus]

31 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

Yeah prepping gear to make fights easier does use up time but unless your min maxing does it really matter that much?

That subtlety leads to two opposing views. Time is indeed a precious commodity, albeit it is not of the essence in DST. Unless the devs plan to forcefully activate post-rift content or seriously increase the threat level after a certain number of days have passed, which is highly unlikely, players can play DST (dealing with AFW) however they desire. I thought the hound or the worm waves would be lethal, but everything is daijoubu. This begs the question, "What's the urgency of improving AFW fight so players can handle him earlier?" When players choose to uphold their min-max or personal immersion principle, then practicing is the only logical consequence that follows. Therefore, it's cool to hunt all bosses under a time limit, but what's the rush?

 

12 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

The need for multiplayer scaling is an issue that affects all bosses. Health/defense scaling per participant is mandatory (not necessarily linear). Boss summons and abilities can scale too. 4 players nearby? More woven shadows, lavae, etc. Some extra loot justified by difficulty.

While I like the concept, there will be an issue with the scaling logic in the code. How and when? Based on the number of players in the world or the number of players in the vicinity? Both ways can manipulate the health/armor scaling back to solo; in some cases, it can accidentally increase them when the fourth player joins the world, or accidentally in the vicinity when the fight is about to occur. Be that as it may, is it really valuable to introduce this mechanic without first checking the statistics about what percentage of DST groups consist of more than four? This healthy idea may increase the number of players, although it's been a while since I played with others.

[Mysterious box]

1 hour ago, DegenerateFurry said:

There's an almost infinitely massive difference between basic Walter Queen Bee prep (i.e. visiting the ruins to get slingshot upgrades and thulecite rounds, making slowdown rounds, and maybe killing NMWP for dread pebbles) and doing the entire CC questline plus lunar rifts. You're not comparing apples to apples, you're not comparing apples to oranges, you're comparing apples to solar systems.

Also, the reason I "feel the need to fight Fuelweaver first" is that I can summon him before the first winter easily, but I never usually get around to beating Celestial Champion until half or more of a year in because of how involved his questline is. There is something that compels me to fight him first: basic game design principles. 

That's the fundamental flaw with rifts: you can activate the shadow ones way earlier than the lunar ones and you can even get some of the shadow materials (needed for certain shadow-aligned perks) before beating any boss but Nightmare Werepig, but all the lunar stuff's locked off until after you activate lunar rifts (further suggesting that lunar's meant to be after shadow), which goes against the fundamental concept of these two warring factions you're supposed to pick between and use your choice against the other. If it was equally easy to summon CC or equally time-consuming to summon Fuelweaver, the suggestion of actually using lunar rift gear against Fuelweaver would be a valid one, but the imbalance is so ridiculous that it's not. 

One offers a easier boss line but longer quest while the other offers a harder boss line but a faster quest I feel like that's already a good balance. You not wanting to take the longer route first doesn't invalidate it. The way your trying to put is that fuel weaver first is the right way to approach the game but there isn't a right way to approach it this is game you are meant to approach at your own pace. The game offers tools to make your experience easier by tackling things in a different order and with more prep if you choose to ignore that because you want faster progress then that's not really a design flaw.

The Walter comparison does work because it can be a difference of hours depending on the player.

[DegenerateFurry]

5 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

One offers a easier boss line but longer quest while the other offers a harder boss line but a faster quest I feel like that's already a good balance. You not wanting to take the longer route first doesn't invalidate it. The way your trying to put is that fuel weaver first is the right way to approach the game but there isn't a right way to approach it this is game you are meant to approach at your own pace. The game offers tools to make your experience easier by tackling things in a different order and with more prep if you choose to ignore that because you want faster progress then that's not really a design flaw.

The Walter comparison does work because it can be a difference of hours depending on the player.

Eh, you're just ignoring basic game design principles. I can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

[hoxi]

13 hours ago, aidancode said:

Doesn't look like an insult. By the looks of it cruvimaster wasn't even trying to argue a point in this post, was more just an acknowledgement of something interesting that could serve as an argument against nerfing fuelweaver.

It's one thing to ask to have something stay as is and not be changed, but it's another to convey it like this, especially with that Wolfenstein "baby" difficulty post.

"Look, if you can't beat it the 'normal/hard' way, baby easy mode is right there if you get a Brightshade staff."

The title itself seems like it could be in response to previous discussions of this topic, which further adds to the vibe.