The New Sanctum Fight is Incredibly Frustrating Solo

[GrapeVruit]

Title. I've spent a while practicing the new fight in the sanctum and it's one of the most frustrating experiences I've had in DST. I feel like a good chunk of that frustration comes from the massive amounts of health both the pillar men and the little snail dudes you gotta roll have, both of which can be hard to take down when they stack on top of one another. 6000 health is already a lot to get through on your own, but having 3 more guys in the arena you gotta take down just feels unfair, especially with how jank the rolling mechanic is right now. You aren't able to change directions with the movement keys, you need to position yourself in the direction you wanna push the snail guys and hope to god they fit in the holes which take a good amount a precision. However, this is only if you're doing this fight solo. In a group with other people, it's pretty manageable, and I get it, alright? DST is a multiplayer focused game. I mean, Together is in the name. But not everyone has the time to join up and play, or they mostly like playing solo. So having this thing be such a drag solo just feels bad, man. I feel the easiest way to make the fight less anger inducing is to reduce the health of the 2 mobs. Maybe reduce the health of the pillar men from 6000 to either 3000-1500, and the snail dudes to 400-250, maybe reducing their attack interval, too.

Edited May 30 by GrapeVruit

[Jakepeng99]

3 minutes ago, GrapeVruit said:

Title. I've spent a while practicing the new fight in the sanctum and it's one of the most frustrating experiences I've had in DST. I feel like a good chunk of that frustration comes from the massive amounts of health both the pillar men and the little snail dudes you gotta roll have, both of which can be hard to take down when they stack on top of one another. 6000 health is already a lot to get through on your own, but having 3 more guys in the arena you gotta take down just feels unfair, especially with how jank the rolling mechanic is right now. You aren't able to change directions with the movement keys, you need to position yourself in the direction you wanna push the snail guys and hope to god they fit in the holes which take a good amount a precision. However, this is only if you're doing this fight solo. In a group with other people, it's pretty manageable, and I get it, alright? DST is a multiplayer focused game. I mean, Together is in the name. But not everyone has the time to join up and play, or they mostly like playing solo. So having this thing be such a drag solo just feels bad, man. I feel the easiest way to make the fight less anger inducing is to reduce the health of the 2 mobs. Maybe reduce the health of the pillar men from 6000 to either 3000-1500, and the snail dudes to 400-250, maybe reducing their attack interval, too.

Use the tools the game gives you, not every boss is able to be raw-dogged.

Use ice staffs, followers, slows, whatever you can think of.

Or use the nightmare amulet in tandom with ice staffs which is the best option. Remember Flash freeze staffs are in the game too. The shadows distract them, and the ice staff is for stragglers. Using this method you don’t even need to kill them for the key.

[YouKnowWho142]

13 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Use ice staffs, followers, slows, whatever you can think of.

They told me that being able to freeze them isn’t intentional and will be changing it in the next update.

The best advice for the fight is just to wear the bone helm and work in tandem with shadow creatures, they will distract the other towers so you can fight each tower one on one. The towers deal significantly reduced damage to the shadow creatures so they stall for a very long time.

you can also use a brightshade staff + enlightened crown which will wear them down at a reasonable pace.

[yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy]

Klei provides an official solution that shadow creatures would fight with the guard towers. They are hard to kill each other, so that you can tackle one tower at a time.

The real disaster is the guidance. Shadow creatures attack physical mobs? No one can manage to realize this. The decontamination room and super sanity aura in the encounter room? They are good things of course, preventing shadow creatures spawning during the fight!

You see here is the problem, we don't know we're getting the keystone for Charlie, why would we consider Shadow as an ally?

Edited May 30 by yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[YouKnowWho142]

9 minutes ago, yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy said:

You see here is the problem, we don't know we're getting the keystone for Charlie, why would we consider Shadow as an ally?

Shadow may be more of an ally than we thought if the files are anything to go by. I won’t spoil anything, though.

[WendyHater9000]

FYI, you can use bone helmet+shadow crucible to make nightmare creature attacking towers so u won’t need to fight 4 towers at once.

Once nightmare get aggro on them, you can switch back to normal weapon

[Baark0]

You can just equip a bone helmet and a bunch of shadow creatures will rally to your cause. It's a really cool way of handling the encounter imo, especially as someone who's been wanting a way to befriend shadow creatures for a while now.

[Jakepeng99]

7 hours ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

They told me that being able to freeze them isn’t intentional and will be changing it in the next update.

Why isnt it intentional i thought it was cool. Why do they have a freeze animation then? It wasnt overpowered when i used it the fight was still hard.

[YouKnowWho142]

2 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Why isnt it intentional i thought it was cool. Why do they have a freeze animation then? It wasnt overpowered when i used it the fight was still hard.

the rest of my reply all features more effective (and most certainly intentional) ways of fighting or just distracting the towers. It isn't so hard if you don't just try to brute force it, the options are there. Ice staff wouldn't have been super effective past just doing the puzzle anyways, and bone helm is honestly way more consistent and cheaper.

[Jakepeng99]

5 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

the rest of my reply all features more effective (and most certainly intentional) ways of fighting or just distracting the towers. It isn't so hard if you don't just try to brute force it, the options are there. Ice staff wouldn't have been super effective past just doing the puzzle anyways, and bone helm is honestly way more consistent and cheaper.

Not sure whys thats considered a solution. Having more options is more interesting than just one option.

Also the boss is now able to be summoned pre-fuelweaver. The ice staff was good for stragglers using the nightmare amulet and was a logical counter.

Edited May 30 by Jakepeng99

[Tired_Awaii]

Just now, Jakepeng99 said:

Not sure whys thats considered a solutio . Having more options is more interesting than just one option.

Also the boss is now able to be summoned pre-fuelweaver.

You can also use nightmare amulets instead of using bone helms, so if you wanted to fight them pre-fuelweaver, you have that as an option.

[YouKnowWho142]

2 minutes ago, Tired_Awaii said:

You can also use nightmare amulets instead of using bone helms, so if you wanted to fight them pre-fuelweaver, you have that as an option.

that or keeping your sanity low, which there are plenty of ways to do. bone helm just stands out as it is the most consistent, infinite, prevents the shadows from attacking you, and is something you should have access to by that point regardless since you only have an incentive to go there in the first place if you need the keystone

Edited May 30 by YouKnowWho142

[Tired_Awaii]

Just now, YouKnowWho142 said:

that or keeping your sanity low, which there are plenty of ways to do. bone helm just stands out as it is the most consistent, infinite, prevents the shadows from attacking you, and is something you should have access to by that point regardless.

Is keeping your sanity low even really possible in that arena? I thought you had like insane levels of sanity gain while in there?

[Waywarbler]

Just now, YouKnowWho142 said:

that or keeping your sanity low, which there are plenty of ways to do.

There seems to be a constant, extremely strong positive sanity aura in the arena (+300/min) during the fight. Green caps have their -50 sanity undone in about 10 seconds.

[YouKnowWho142]

1 minute ago, Waywarbler said:

There seems to be a constant, extremely strong positive sanity aura in the arena (+300/min) during the fight. Green caps have their -50 sanity undone in about 10 seconds.

i figured that was only present in the purifying room, that would indeed make it difficult. i dont think the shadows would despawn if you get aggroed, so it isnt impossible, but it isn't really reasonable either. Bone helm seems like the obvious intended method to begin with, and it's something you should almost always have by then so it doesn't seem like too big of a concern

[Jakepeng99]

29 minutes ago, Tired_Awaii said:

You can also use nightmare amulets instead of using bone helms, so if you wanted to fight them pre-fuelweaver, you have that as an option.

Thats what i just said, the ice staff is for stragglers its not even viable as a replacement.

20 minutes ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

i figured that was only present in the purifying room, that would indeed make it difficult. i dont think the shadows would despawn if you get aggroed, so it isnt impossible, but it isn't really reasonable either. Bone helm seems like the obvious intended method to begin with, and it's something you should almost always have by then so it doesn't seem like too big of a concern

The only thing stopping you from doing it is activating the archives.

[YouKnowWho142]

44 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

The only thing stopping you from doing it is activating the archives.

My point is that unless you just really want to go through all of the effort of obtaining the fragments for telelocators the actual main incentive (the keystone) isn't really needed at all until you have already unlocked shadow rifts, by which point you're gonna have the bone helm which makes things way easier. You can do it whenever you want, but it doesn't really make a ton of sense to put so much effort into something that's done much more easily later.

Edited May 30 by YouKnowWho142

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, YouKnowWho142 said:

My point is that unless you just really want to go through all of the effort of obtaining the fragments for telelocators the actual main incentive (the keystone) isn't really needed at all until you have already unlocked shadow rifts, by which point you're gonna have the bone helm which makes things way easier. You can do it whenever you want, but it doesn't really make a ton of sense to put so much effort into something that's done much more easily later.

Well im just saying havjng ice staffs as a method was coolee.

[DegenerateFurry]

Can we give a win to ice staffs just this once? Leave them as an option, it's not better than the bone helm. Player choice is fun.

[ZeRoboButler]

would be kinda fun to make some possessed skeletons with enough fossils and hearts and have them battle one another while you solve get the key, expensive but cool I imagine. Might test it myself, I'll come back and see how good it is.

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, ZeRoboButler said:

would be kinda fun to make some possessed skeletons with enough fossils and hearts and have them battle one another while you solve get the key, expensive but cool I imagine. Might test it myself, I'll come back and see how good it is.

Thats another interesting method.

But they will cage you sometimes unless it’s post fw.

also they would cage the weavile which would be frustrating

[Reiko24]

On 5/30/2026 at 2:39 AM, YouKnowWho142 said:

Shadow may be more of an ally than we thought if the files are anything to go by. I won’t spoil anything, though.

Can you spoil me in dm?

[DegenerateFurry]

19 hours ago, Jakepeng99 said:

Thats another interesting method.

But they will cage you sometimes unless it’s post fw.

also they would cage the weavile which would be frustrating

Would they actually be Fuelweaver, though? This isn't the Atrium biome. Wouldn't they just be the cave stalker instead? 

[IAmAFurrz]

On 5/30/2026 at 7:29 AM, yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy said:

Shadow creatures attack physical mobs? No one can manage to realize this.

its not just that, we have seen nothing but greater gestalts attack nightmares (nothing else detects them, not even centripedes, so this makes even less sense)

[Jakepeng99]

3 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

Would they actually be Fuelweaver, though? This isn't the Atrium biome. Wouldn't they just be the cave stalker instead? 

The cave stalker has a cage attack like fuelweaver