Celestial Scion Vs Wartox and two Wurts (and 33 merms)

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I'm in a 3 player Don’t Starve Together group. We were hitting a wall with the celestial scion, so we decided to try changing up characters from our mains. We historically played Wanda, Walter, Wendy; we tried Walter, Walter, Wendy; we tried Walter, Wartox, Wartox; and last we used Wurt (a), Wartox, Wurt (b) and that finally worked for us.

Both Wurts were shadow aligned (I read that having two Wurt pcs with different alignments can crash the dst server)

Preparations

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This was Wurt (a)’s skill tree

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Wurt (b) had a similar skill tree

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Wartox had this skill tree

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We spent a few sessions grinding for tentacle spots, stockpiling logs, and unlocking affinities. We gathered the tentacle spots by fighting tentacles in the swamp biome and fishing for eels in the underground salt ponds. RNG varied and I wouldn’t say one worked significantly better than the other, so it’s really a preference thing.

We gathered 33 merm warriors and 1 craftsmerm (which means we built 33 merm warrior huts and 1 craftsmerm hut)

We had the king merm outfitted with a thulcite crown and marble armor, we didn't give him the strident trident.

Inventory

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Wartox player left a Twintailed Heart with Wurt (a). Wurt (a) also had a dreaded mudslinger, brightshade helm, bone armor, a gloomerang, repair kits (only used one for the gloomerang), and food for healing.

Wartox had a stockpile of souls, a void cowl and robe, a gloomerang, repair kits, and wrapping paper.

Wurt (b) had a dreaded mudslinger, two brightshade Helms, two brightshade Armors, two brightshade Swords, 10 repair kits (only used 3), 3 life giving amulets, a precrafted superior armermry, 40 logs and 40 cut grass to supply the armermry, 3 swamp terf, a pitchfork, 13 figatoni, a star caller staff, and a grass raft.

More preparations

Wartox and Wurt (b) boated over to the hermit island on our usual-- already kitted out-- boat. We anchored a raft's length away because if the boat touches the island it can be destroyed in the fighting. We jumped across the raft. Wurt (b) pitchforked up some terf and put down the swamp tiles and Superiory Amermry. 

Once those were set up, Wurt (a) fed the merm horde and used the twintailed heart to teleport to the hermit island. The merm horde appeared at the island when Wurt (a) teleported.

The merms took the supplies from the Armermry (it had to be stocked twice), we all put on our own armor, set a few stars with the star caller staff, dropped the life giving amulets, and powered up the W.A.R.B.O.T

The Enlightened W.A.R.B.O.T.

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When the W.A.R.B.O.T changed to the Enlightened W.A.R.B.O.T., Wurt (a) used the dreaded mudslinger to change the ground to corrupted marsh and started swinging a gloomerang, which triggered the Merm horde to attach the W.A.R.B.O.T.

Wurt (b) fought with the brightshade sword, Wartox and Wurt (a) used their gloomerangs. Wurt (b) and the Merm Horde took the jump and slam attacks from the W.A.R.B.O.T., the Terramites and Warblers mostly hit the Merm Horde but some hit Wurt (b). When the heat seeking missiles went off, most hit Merms. The Beam attack targeted all players. 

Enlightened W.A.R.B.O.T. was killed pretty quickly, it only was able to do one round of heat seeking missiles and one beam attack.

The Celestial Scion

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The celestial scion spawned, and the merms went to work. We were pretty worried about the slam attack and its damaging field, as previous fights had the whole island VERY quickly had been completely charged. Thankfully, the cone of effect was fairly cooperative. I think it slammed 4 or 5 times and charged the ground, and there was just enough land left at the end for the PCs to avoid stepping in a charged area. 

In the middle of the celestial scion fight, the corrupted marsh timed out, and Wurt (b) used their dreaded mudslinger to spawn another patch. The corrupted marsh DID NOT cancel out the charged ground from the celestial scion’s slam attacks, but we didn’t expect it to.

The Scion was able to do its supernova attack twice in the course of the fight, and the second supernova knocked Wurt (b) out of the fight, unable to come back because the life-giving amulets were on ground that had been charged during a slam attack. Wartox and Wurt (a) were not able to get behind the W.A.R.B.O.T legs during the second supernova, but were able to heal through the attack and survive. The two of them finished off the Scion after the second supernova.

At the end of the fight, there were two 'living' shadow merms. This means all 33 merm warriors died, and all but TWO OF THEM died TWICE.

Takeaways

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This was a success! The fight went fairly quickly-- I don’t think a full DST day passed. It was still intense, but finally do-able for our group. It did take a while to get all the materials for the Merm Warrior huts, but if we’d played Wurt from the beginning it probably would have been a more natural progression.

I think it would have been very annoying to boat over with all the merms-- they can make it hard to click where you want to-- so I’m really glad Wartox’s twintailed heart was able to work around this.

Wurt (b) did have really low sanity by the end of the W.A.R.B.O.T fight from the shadow tentacles spawned on the corrupted marsh, but that was a non-issue as soon as the Scion turned on enlightenment. Wurt (b) player didn’t have issues with shadow monsters because of how quickly everything went. Wurt (a) player believes the gloomerang is why their sanity was fine-- because of the distance from the shadow tentacles.

I don’t think it was entirely necessary to have Wurt (b) using a sword. It may have helped to keep the W.A.R.B.O.T from targeting other players and jumping across the screen, which meant the merms didn’t have to run to catch up with it, but this is just a hunch.

We think that giving the king merm a strident trident would have made things go quicker and would recommend it if anyone else was going to use this strategy. Wurt (a) player said “With the strident trident and double mudslinger we could have almost definitely avoided the second supernova and would be saying it wasn't a challenge at all. 40% extra dps would speed it up to where more merms would have pushed through breakpoints and made it to the second boss fight. But that's just my onion”

We really liked the shadow affinity for Wurt with this, our skill trees worked well. We don’t think giving the merms ‘Sensible Swamp Fighter’ would be good for this fight, as it would mean the scion would be hit less. We did not use Pure Horror on the shadow merms to buff them, it may have helped but would have been hard to do in the fray.

With two wurts, you could potentially be more strategic with the skill trees, wurt (a) and (b) had overlap of some craftable merm huts, and instead we could have maybe given the king more hunger or had more healing from being wet. 

Our Merm king died of starvation by the time we were done cleaning up the island and putting out spoils away, probably would have been a good idea to fully feed him before starting the fight. Thankfully our merm city was far enough away that it didn’t cause any issues with merms becoming aggressive to non-Wurt players. 

We're taking things underground next! Wish us luck!