Raid Bosses vs Wolfgang (x2) & Boss scaling controversy

[Well-met]

10 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

My problem is that the games product description says you can play with friends, or strike out on your own. There’s even a (Semi**) Offline Mode to play Single player, but unlike what the product description would lead you to believe, the game is almost entirely designed with Multiplayer in mind, leaving the Solo player experience to either be frustrating, extra Grindy or Machivoest levels of skill required to actually enjoy it.

Right now Risk of Rain 2 is on sale on Xbox Live, and it’s product description ALSO reads you can play with friends or alone. But is the game actually playable alone???

I haven’t actually bought RoR2 in order to be able to accurately tell you, but when it comes to DST.. you either “Get Gud” or you “Get Friends” there is no single player as the game plain and simply isn’t designed to accommodate for it.

But as long as 2 Wolfgang’s can take 27,500hp raid boss down to 6,875 just by picking Wolfgang, I will ALWAYS have to ask why the game doesn’t have actual proper boss & content scaling..

Why if something as broken as two Wolfgang’s can exist, why things like the Moonstorm Event can’t have a hard cap on how many birds are allowed to spawn on a Solo Player who is attempting to do the Moonstorm event alone.

Is it doable? Yes.. is it more easily doable with friends? Also yes… but is it content that’s in the game that the developers coded for people to see and enjoy yet due to the event itself requiring a specific skill threshold or a group of “Together” players that locks casuals & newbies out of reaching and experiencing? 100% Absolutely.

Could there be less birds during the event when there’s less players around to protect the process? Absolutely..

Can bosses be scaled down or upward to provide an adequate challenge to solo players and larger groups? Also absolutely.

Despite the product description: Is DST perfectly playable solo? No.. no it’s not, you either grind a lot, become highly skilled, or you get frustrated and give up.

the bird defense thing is easily soloable with goggles and a cane, I don't know why you use this as evidence

[Frosty_Mentos]

Winona literally builds thermonuclear bombs what are you talking about.

Meanwhile Wilson and Woodie are kinda the coughing babies in this case.

[Cruvimaster]

2 hours ago, GrapeVruit said:

I mean, I can sort of relate. I've been playing Fortnite ever since 2018, and while I got a good few wins under my belt and decent building skills, I get smoked by most players that aren't bots. Guess some players are built different.

Fortnite enemies are real players. DSTs are NPCs with a standard moveset.

For example, Sekiro is considered by many players to be the most difficult game from From Software. After 50 to 80 hours of gameplay, everything becomes easier due to learning throughout the journey.

In DST, players with over 1000 hours still complain about bosses.
 

What game doesn't get easier after 200 hours? The answer is DST, because even after 5000 hours, they still haven't bothered to learn the bosses' attack patterns.
 

And combat is part of the DST package.

 

I think people bought tickets for the wrong movie. They should maybe be playing Stardew Valley or Roots of Pacha.

Edited June 3 by Cruvimaster

[GimplyGoose]

While I understand the appeal of multi-player scaling to preserve the fun of challenge, I don't think it really makes sense in the context of DST.

There are a lot of issues I can think in the implementation of health scaling. Which enemies get scaled? How much do they scale? Is the scaling proximity based or based on players on the server? What happens if the player count changes mid fight? How are non-player damage sources like followers or other bosses handled? (I could go on but I'm stopping myself here).

For the health scaling there would be folks who would want bosses to have more health than they have now with more players, but there are also folks who would want the bosses to have less health than they do now when there is only one player. Finding the right balance for the scaling would be difficult. Especially since what feels right is subjective.

There is also the immersion breaking aspect of scaling health for enemies. Why would enemies become stronger just because someone else is around? This part isn't as important as the implementation issues because for me, gameplay is more important than immersion, but I thought it would still be worth mentioning.

I'll also mention that as long as you aren't playing on console, there are several mods out there that alter the health of bosses with a lot of customization available.

[AliceShiki]

1 hour ago, GimplyGoose said:

While I understand the appeal of multi-player scaling to preserve the fun of challenge, I don't think it really makes sense in the context of DST.

There are a lot of issues I can think in the implementation of health scaling. Which enemies get scaled? How much do they scale? Is the scaling proximity based or based on players on the server? What happens if the player count changes mid fight? How are non-player damage sources like followers or other bosses handled? (I could go on but I'm stopping myself here).

Personally speaking, assuming that it was an off by default option in the setting that made the scaling happens, I'd just balance it like this.

Every opponent tagged internally in the game files as a boss or miniboss would get its HP multiplied by the number of players in the server.

The idea would be that this setting would be made for people who want to play with friends and want to fight bosses together with friends, so there would be no need for a proximity thingy or the like. It would just assume that players would organize themselves for a boss fight.

Followers and the like wouldn't be counted because it's not related to player count.

This is how I would personally handle it, but this, of course, only makes sense as an optional setting that is off by default.

Edited June 4 by AliceShiki

[YouKnowWho142]

On 6/2/2026 at 3:25 PM, AliceShiki said:

I would be fine with an optional setting that is disabled by default that increases boss HP if you're playing with multiple people.

As in, a setting that would let bosses not be melted by friends who know what they are doing, want a bigger challenge, and are playing together.

Players shouldn't be punished for wanting to play with their friends though, hence why it should be optional and off by default.

This is all i'd really want. The power scaling in the game is so high now with characters, I don't really think any characters except like Wilson and Wes struggle to fight all the bosses solo. With all the skill trees and whatnot, I actually think the game is pretty well balanced for singleplayer as a veteran.

However, I do think the game gets way too easy when multiple players with super powerful mechanics and abilities all fight together, which is kind of a problem in a game designed with multiplayer in mind and really takes the fun out of a lot of bosses and threats that are just completely trivialized.

My issue isn't that the current health values are too high to solo (they're really not), it's that they're too low for multiplayer. An optional setting to scale boss health higher would be really impactful for playing with friends, since I'd love to actually interact with boss mechanics with friends instead of deleting them in under a minute.

[Tigris Nano]

22 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

shrugging off hits

Shrug off hits with t3 maul, double echo, lunar affinity, bone armor and brightshade helmet

[IAmAFurrz]

tbh, id be fine with the giant health pool if the bosses were a little more interesting and better designed. it just means i get to enjoy it more but most of em are just hit and dodge, not much variation

[Captain_Rage]

On 6/2/2026 at 8:56 PM, Mike23Ua said:

All of them??? They need to be easier Solo, (scaled down..) while harder when there’s 2+ Wolfgang’s hitting it (scaled up) this isn’t just about DST, it’s about the balance of the franchise as a whole.. Don’t Starve, Reign of Giants, Shipwrecked, Hamlet, Together, and Soon: Elsewhere.

What about when the players learns how to fight the boss elegantly and defeat it fast? Players who enjoy how to fight the boss as it is? Is the magic algorithm going punish learning playing the game and scale the boss back mid-fight? xd

In the case of two hard-hitting characters, what is the point of them hitting fast if the game steps and gimps them where they should be excelling? Makes no sense.

 

The game already rewards consistency and proper kiting in some fights. If the HP of the Celestial Scion starts dropping too fast the boss starts attacking faster, which makes the already dangerous fight even more risky. The fight is clearly made to be rewarding if you end it fast, but without nuking the boss crazily.

[Mike23Ua]

2 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

What about when the players learns how to fight the boss elegantly and defeat it fast? Players who enjoy how to fight the boss as it is? Is the magic algorithm going punish learning playing the game and scale the boss back mid-fight? xd

In the case of two hard-hitting characters, what is the point of them hitting fast if the game steps and gimps them where they should be excelling? Makes no sense.

 

The game already rewards consistency and proper kiting in some fights. If the HP of the Celestial Scion starts dropping too fast the boss starts attacking faster, which makes the already dangerous fight even more risky. The fight is clearly made to be rewarding if you end it fast, but without nuking the boss crazily.

I just mean that with JoeW making the current roadmap clearly all about restructuring the Early & Mid Level Gameplay that a conversation like this is inevitable to come up, with so much content that has been added into DST since 2017 until now… what exactly can we even call Early/Mid Level Gameplay? And to that point… What parts of the game that exists currently need to be altered and changed (which would include making some bosses easier, or providing other ways to approach obtaining their Rewards)

A PERFECT example of this is Antlion, sure you can go fight and kill it… but ever since the Cult of the Lamb Crossover update you can now literally “Trade” with Antlion to receive everything from her that you’d get for fighting her. In this very specific case: You only ever fight Antlion now days to enjoy the fight.

So I will ask again, What exactly do we define as early & mid game??? What parts of the currently existing gameplay need to be altered and restructured to ease newbies into the game, And help them to reach the more late game content??

using myself as an example this week for the first time EVER I have activated Moonstorms & summoned the celestial champion, but my process in doing so involved looking it all up online through a Wikipedia page and watching online videos of how to do it- because in actual Gameplay there isn’t nearly enough information conveyed to the player to ever do so on their own. I had to look online to figure out how closely to place the Alters together (information Klei could provide in game themselves if a simple Green Outline like the new GRID Placement showed the player the shapes of the other not yet placed alters near the first one you place down)

What does any of that have to do with boss health scaling you ask? I’m getting to that hold on, My particular experience reaching Moonstorms and constructing the Lunar Siphonator involved having to collect Moongleams & Infused Moonshards with those items being on a constant Perish timer, I had to wait until a Moonstorm opened up convinently closest to my Lunar Island, Mine the required resources for constructing the Lunar Siphonator and then I had to sail a boat from the main land out to Lunar Island (having to take trips back and forth when I ran out of time and they lost their charge becoming regular moon glass) Klei expected me to have killed the Bee Queen and unlocked Bundling Wraps to make the process off keeping these items fresh long enough to sail to Lunar Island & build the Incomplete Experiment. 

So should Bee Queen be made easier to kill?? Maybe we should make her fight completely avoidable like trading with Antlion by I don’t know.. appeasing her by placing flowers around her hive?? 
Bundle Wraps were originally unlocked in Solo DS just from hammering down a simple Bee Hive, Why do they NEED to be locked behind a hard annoying raid boss in DST?

I eventually solved my infused Moonshards Pershing too quickly problem by placing them inside of a insulated backpack I had constructed from a previous Bearger fights Fur Tuft, I could have also probably built fridges on my boats to stuff the quickly perishing shards over inside to help slow spoilage.. but Should Bundling Wraps a huge game changing craftable, still be locked behind fighting the Bee Queen?

Since the current roadmap is all about smoothing out early/Mid level gameplay, these types of questions are the exact things we should be asking.

[Maxil20]

41 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

but ever since the Cult of the Lamb Crossover update you can now literally “Trade” with Antlion to receive everything from her that you’d get for fighting her.

You've been able to do this since Antlion came out. In fact, fighting her came out later, and trading was the intended method to get the blueprints.

In addition, fighting antlion is less so about the loot; it completely stops sinkholes/cave ins from occuring for the season. Trading has the niche of stalling this up to a point, while fighting makes sure it doesn't occur again. This is a choice between if a player wants to ignore the antlion (especially in the caves, since the boulders can be of benefit), appease antlion every now and then to prevent the incidents from occuring, or challenge the antlion to stop them outright. There's choice to what you can do!

45 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

I eventually solved my infused Moonshards Pershing too quickly problem by placing them inside of a insulated backpack I had constructed from a previous Bearger fights Fur Tuft, I could have also probably built fridges on my boats to stuff the quickly perishing shards over inside to help slow spoilage

I am also especially confused about this argument. You came across an obstacle (the spoiling shards/gleams), and you managed to utilize a workaround (putting them in the pack) instead of needing to fight a boss for bundle wraps. I'm confused why you think bundles are the problem in this case when the workaround you planned and used achieved the goal you wanted of constructing the siphonator...

Edited June 4 by Maxil20

[IAmAFurrz]

6 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

Players who enjoy how to fight the boss as it is

i dont think many enjoy most of the bosses in this game with how overtuned many of the gimmicks are (df larvae/bq grumbles having too much health, woevn shadows can cause essentially a fight reset, warbot thermal missiles being what they are, scion area electric attack that can result in essentially automatic loss etc). kleis designs have been improving but a lot of bosses havent been bangers

[Bumber64]

20 hours ago, Tigris Nano said:

Shrug off hits with t3 maul, double echo, lunar affinity, bone armor and brightshade helmet

None of which helps you until you can obtain those items, which require both rifts open. What are you doing before then? Is someone carrying you, or are you slogging through bosses solo?

Edited June 4 by Bumber64

[Mike23Ua]

6 hours ago, Maxil20 said:

You've been able to do this since Antlion came out. In fact, fighting her came out later, and trading was the intended method to get the blueprints.

In addition, fighting antlion is less so about the loot; it completely stops sinkholes/cave ins from occuring for the season. Trading has the niche of stalling this up to a point, while fighting makes sure it doesn't occur again. This is a choice between if a player wants to ignore the antlion (especially in the caves, since the boulders can be of benefit), appease antlion every now and then to prevent the incidents from occuring, or challenge the antlion to stop them outright. There's choice to what you can do!

I am also especially confused about this argument. You came across an obstacle (the spoiling shards/gleams), and you managed to utilize a workaround (putting them in the pack) instead of needing to fight a boss for bundle wraps. I'm confused why you think bundles are the problem in this case when the workaround you planned and used achieved the goal you wanted of constructing the siphonator...

I had to still kill a boss to construct even the insulated storage pack, so you’re really not helping your case here. I’m asking now that so much content has been added to the game and continues to be added to the game what qualifies as Early/Mid-Game anymore? And to that effect: What parts of old gameplay need to be changed to help players reach the newer content?

Without Bundling Wraps I had to still rely on a different boss loot drop to get the Job done, but Bundling Wraps in of themselves are a game changing item, allowing players to completely prevent item spoilage altogether.

Yet… there’s an even later late game item the polar storage bin which can only be obtained by doing the entire Celestial champion questline (which again requires killing pearls Pearl socketed crab king) then opening rifts, THEN killing Bearger, waiting a few moments for a Gashalt to posses its dead corpse and THEN Re-Kill him again as Armored Bearger to finally unlock the polar storage bin which only slows food spoilage by a significant amount, but Unlike bundle wraps- Does NOT fully prevent spoilage completely.

So I ask again, What is Early, and What is Late Game?

[Cheggf]

4 hours ago, IAmAFurrz said:

i dont think many enjoy most of the bosses in this game with how overtuned many of the gimmicks are (df larvae/bq grumbles having too much health, woevn shadows can cause essentially a fight reset, warbot thermal missiles being what they are, scion area electric attack that can result in essentially automatic loss etc). kleis designs have been improving but a lot of bosses havent been bangers

The overtuned mechanic of literally just bringing an ice staff and swinging it twice while the boss' behavior is set to ignore you completely and allow you completely free reign to just click the ice staff twice with no challenge or difficulties preventing you from doing it. 

[Maxil20]

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I had to still kill a boss to construct even the insulated storage pack, so you’re really not helping your case here.

You kill not only one of the easiest bosses for a player to challenge as it's a seasonal boss, but it's also one of the easiest to Indirectly kill. Players have been killing bearger with treeguards ever since they realized how good they were at doing so when they were introduced in Reign Of Giants back in 2014. It is not remotely the same to compare the difficulty of Bearger to Bee Queen, especially when the former has applications outside of immediately killing them.

 

 

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’m asking now that so much content has been added to the game and continues to be added to the game what qualifies as Early/Mid-Game anymore?

My general "stage" of gameplay is Early game composing the first ingame year, midgame being the process between this and activating the rifts, and lategame being all of the rift content. It is very loose as that's the point; a player is going to use their first year most likely getting the basics of survival as the seasons change around them, while the midgame is moreso focusing on tackling the various obstacles needed to access the CC/Fuelweaver.
 

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Without Bundling Wraps I had to still rely on a different boss loot drop to get the Job done, but Bundling Wraps in of themselves are a game changing item, allowing players to completely prevent item spoilage altogether.

The reason bundle wraps are gated behind Bee Queen is for the exact reasons you mentioned. In fact, it was community feedback that caused this change; you originally could prototype bundle wraps at a Science Machine. They moved this post bee queen because of the immense power bundle wraps give in warping how a player tackles various aspects of the game. In exchange for taking out Bee Queen, you are rewarded with an immense QoL boon. I think it creates a good gameplay dynamic of wanting to encourage a player to gear up to challenge bee queen and be rewarded with a powerful boon should you succeed.
 

2 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Yet… there’s an even later late game item the polar storage bin which can only be obtained by doing the entire Celestial champion questline (which again requires killing pearls Pearl socketed crab king) then opening rifts, THEN killing Bearger, waiting a few moments for a Gashalt to posses its dead corpse and THEN Re-Kill him again as Armored Bearger to finally unlock the polar storage bin which only slows food spoilage by a significant amount, but Unlike bundle wraps- Does NOT fully prevent spoilage completely.

I don't think you realize how unbelievably powerful a 6 slot 95% spoilage reduction is when you are at the endgame stage. While it doesn't prevent spoilage, it dramatically reduces the need to constantly unwrap/rewrap a product. Dishes go from spoiling in a season to only becoming stale after several ingame years. It also combos handsomely with icker preserves; you can create an area of a few preserves and slowly ration out items from those preserves and into your bin. I typically don't need to touch my bundles of prepared food for years because of this, as I can pretty comfortably take from my preserves and chuck it in the bin.

[Hungry French]

Because the game has a broken game balance, Mike. 
And Klei doesn't want to do anything about it, and incompetent players defend it. 
This is not a fun game. This is a game that is meant to be difficult and many are talking about it. Therefore, it must be balanced, so that every item and mechanic is useful and that it is always difficult.

The only ones who care about the balance of the game are modders. Although from my subjective point of view, they can make the same mistakes as Klei.

[Draggofroot]

16 hours ago, IAmAFurrz said:

i dont think many enjoy most of the bosses in this game with how overtuned many of the gimmicks are (df larvae/bq grumbles having too much health, woevn shadows can cause essentially a fight reset, warbot thermal missiles being what they are, scion area electric attack that can result in essentially automatic loss etc). kleis designs have been improving but a lot of bosses havent been bangers

hard disagree with scion's field, it works just fine and adds another dimension to the fight beyond health and sanity

13 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Yet… there’s an even later late game item the polar storage bin which can only be obtained by doing the entire Celestial champion questline (which again requires killing pearls Pearl socketed crab king) then opening rifts, THEN killing Bearger, waiting a few moments for a Gashalt to posses its dead corpse and THEN Re-Kill him again as Armored Bearger to finally unlock the polar storage bin which only slows food spoilage by a significant amount, but Unlike bundle wraps- Does NOT fully prevent spoilage completely.

So I ask again, What is Early, and What is Late Game?

1. Polar bearger bin preserves food so well that i end up eating it all anyway before it reaches yellow freshness, so its basically the exact same as bundle wrap
2. PBB is more convenient, no need to recraft ropes n stuff if you just want to eat one meal
3. 6 slots

i would take PBB ANY DAY over bundle wrap

[Tigris Nano]

17 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

None of which helps you until you can obtain those items, which require both rifts open

Yes, you cant use what you dont have access to, shocker. Also its not necessarily both rifts, lunar rifts already give you 2 dodges. Fw gives you one more and maul just lets you keep fighting when hurt. 

17 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

What are you doing before then?

Progress until I get those items?

17 hours ago, Bumber64 said:

Is someone carrying you, or are you slogging through bosses solo?

Solo. Not big deal especially as character with infinite healing, teleports, food, sanity. 

[hyoton123]

14 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

finally unlock the polar storage bin which only slows food spoilage by a significant amount, but Unlike bundle wraps- Does NOT fully prevent spoilage completely.

So I ask again, What is Early, and What is Late Game?

The bin slowing rot speed by 95% and giving 6 slots and not requiring rope and not spilling contents every time you use it is extremely, extremely good. The only reason I wouldnt say it’s better than wrap is because the two are good at doing different things. Have you ever actually used the bin?

Edited June 5 by hyoton123

[Mike23Ua]

1 hour ago, hyoton123 said:

The bin slowing rot speed by 95% and giving 6 slots and not requiring rope and not spilling contents every time you use it is extremely, extremely good. The only reason I wouldnt say it’s better than wrap is because the two are good at doing different things. Have you ever actually used the bin?

The polar Bearger bin is so late game that by the time you acquire it, you no longer require it. And by that: I mean all the areas of the game where spoilage would become a serious factor in gameplay: Such as boating trips across vast masses of nothingness or long stretches of cave paths full of nothingness, you have already done everything you needed to do BEFORE you unlock PBB, and the hilarious part about all of that??? The long RPG style quest you go on sailing around for hours to find Pearl, Crab King, the Celestial Alter parts, going down into caves and assembling the 3 Multi-Colored Easter Eggs Puzzle, Activating the Fountains of Knowledges to craft that one specific thing you need (Astral Detector I think it was called?) to then return to the service and locate the buried Altar, once you’ve done everything you would NEED the PBB for, you no longer need the PBB. So Bundling Wraps which are locked behind Bee Queen or Insulated Backpack which is locked behind Bearger, are your next best options.

[Frashaw27]

22 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

The polar Bearger bin is so late game that by the time you acquire it, you no longer require it

Do late game players just get 0% hunger rate or something once the rifts open? Even if you technically have done all these things, the character still has to eat at some point. This isn't even counting the benefits of getting hp and sanity from food, or even things like Warly's specialty dishes.

[Maxil20]

35 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

snip

People literally do the entire quest line just to get the bin for how gamechanging it is for day to day use. I genuinely don't think you understand just how impactful the bin makes the day to day experience. It's one of the best tools in the game.

[hyoton123]

40 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

The polar Bearger bin is so late game that by the time you acquire it, you no longer require it.

You don’t need the bearger bin in the sense that it’s not mandatory (bundles and the insulated pack arent mandatory either), but I don’t agree it’s that late actually at this point in the game’s life. You’ll have warbot and scion, and potentially fuelweaver plus whatever you want to play with in the world or what new content comes out. 

 

I’m not sure now if you’re saying bundles come too early in player progression or too late (you seemed to be saying this earlier in complaining about infused moon shards), or if you’re saying the bearger bin is underpowered relative to how much work it takes to get it. If it’s the latter then I just disagree, especially if you are new to post rift content and going to have to go through the growing pains of learning the content. You have lots of game left to do.

Edited June 5 by hyoton123

[IAmAFurrz]

18 hours ago, Cheggf said:

just bringing an ice staff and swinging it twice

key and lock designs are pretty finnicky, this is intuitive but not exactly interesting and basically forces you to either choose ice staff or walls, both of which reduce df down to a 22500 hp boss with no gimmick outside of panfluting when she enrages and an obnoxious attack that forces extremely tight dodging, thats just uninteresting.

wall-less and icestaff-less df is more fun but also can jsut randomly **** you over bc df randomly decides to spawn 2 (or more) larvae on the same pond, the more she does it the more exponentially hard it is to recover due to their health pool as well as the massive aoe fire aura dmg that depletes your health in few seconds. you could say 'it encourages scalemail usage' byjust leaving the fight before phase 2 starts, but key and lock design strikes once again (and scailmale is not useful at all outside of this fight nor is it good at all), this is exactly why minion health pool is extremely important for minion summoning fights, and why really most ppl go for walled DF, its easy, and you dont have to interact with the extremely overtuned aspects of the boss (this isnt even discussing enraged df being just purely overtuned for most boss stats).

5 hours ago, Draggofroot said:

hard disagree with scion's field,

it randomly just being an instant loss sucks, like genuinely no other boss just instantly kills from 1 singular mistake (and the gimmick itself is quite overtuned since you both get knocked back (sometimes twice) and slowed on top of the massive dmg that you have to tank for the first few seconds which is enough to reduce you to half health even with the current best planar protection).

i get its a ticking time bomb but that combined with the leg gimmick you can get instant loss from 2 gimmicks