New boss flees "toadstool"

[BluesyBuesy]

5 hours ago, Battal said:

Honestly this is an extremely frustrating mechanic and a crappy way of making this a "raid boss".  Most good raids can be taken on by one person if they're insanely skilled; but the timer makes that literally impossible.  If one person were to spend the entire five minutes wailing non-stop at this thing, it wouldn't die.  It's physically impossible to do solo, almost definitely impossible to do with a friend, and probably impossible with 3 people.  To put it bluntly, this mechanic REALLY needs to change.

No it's not.

I remember people saying similar things about the DST Dragonfly; people thought its health was ludicrous, that the lavae were completely unfair and overwhelming, and only the most well-armed team could possibly stand a chance (but only by cheesing it with exploits of course), but now people apparently think that solo Dfly is EZ PZ. If there's a will, there's a way. 

[CaptainFun]

3 hours ago, b1b3r0n said:

i know it is dont starve together, but i only play with my gf, and i would be very upset not to have a way to kill it legit and with fun (750 gunpowder is not fun)

This is how a lot of people play, with just one other person. I would imagine that its especially true for consoles, what with splitscreen being a feature and all. 

[BOSSzombie]

21 minutes ago, BluesyBuesy said:

No it's not.

I remember people saying similar things about the DST Dragonfly; people thought its health was ludicrous, that the lavae were completely unfair and overwhelming, and only the most well-armed team could possibly stand a chance (but only by cheesing it with exploits of course), but now people apparently think that solo Dfly is EZ PZ. If there's a will, there's a way. 

I definitely don't think that. The Dragonfly DOES have ludicrous amounts of health and the Lavae ARE completely unfair.

My friends and I on the PS4 took 5 tries, fully equipped, to kill it. The first 4 times were failures from getting killed by Lavae, or just burning to death, never directly from the Dragonfly.

The 5th try? I brought a pan flute, and every time the Fly started moving towards a lava pit, I put him to sleep, and this would effectively cancel out it's cycle for the Lavae. But it still took each of us a full Thulecite Club AND Spear to kill it. We even got lucky and on it's way to the Lava Pits the third time (20% health), somehow glitched it out, and it just sat there and let us beat it to death... FOR FIVE MINUTES. We actually had to rotate wailing on it to prevent ourselves from overheating.

That's not fun. And it certainly wasn't rewarding. Some meat and an item that lets me make pretty turf, a pretty chest, or inferior armor to the Thulecite Suits we used to kill it? The gems are neat, but we already had dozens from the caves during our prep time for the Fly.

Me and my pals agreed, that after killing all the bosses on the PS4 version, that the Ancient Guardian was the best fight by far. Tons of health, but not a damage sponge, very dangerous attack patterns, and fantastic loot for killing it.

I get the feeling that a lot of people who want "harder" bosses on the PC version have very rarely legitimately killed the likes of the Dragonfly (no console commands, mods, etc.). I'm curious to see in the coming months what the opinions of people like me, on the PS4 version, are regarding the Dragonfly.

[Battal]

46 minutes ago, BluesyBuesy said:

No it's not.

I remember people saying similar things about the DST Dragonfly; people thought its health was ludicrous, that the lavae were completely unfair and overwhelming, and only the most well-armed team could possibly stand a chance (but only by cheesing it with exploits of course), but now people apparently think that solo Dfly is EZ PZ. If there's a will, there's a way. 

When I say it's physically impossible, I don't mean "you can do it if you have enough will".  I mean it literally can't be done solo.  Let's say the average player attacks about once every second.  For the sake of this argument, we'll give them a Dark Sword, which deals 68 damage per hit.  We have 5 minutes to beat the Toadstool, i.e 300 seconds.  Toadstool has 156,500 HP.  If we attack once every second for the entire five minutes, not factoring in dodging attacks or area denial, we will deal - drumroll - 20,400 damage.  That's not even coming close to a quarter of its health!  Attacking once every second for five minutes nonstop with darkswords, you would need EIGHT PEOPLE to even come close to killing it.  And since you have to dodge attacks, manage health and hunger, etc, you'd probably need even more than that!

[BOSSzombie]

10 minutes ago, Battal said:

When I say it's physically impossible, I don't mean "you can do it if you have enough will".  I mean it literally can't be done solo.  Let's say the average player attacks about once every second.  For the sake of this argument, we'll give them a Dark Sword, which deals 68 damage per hit.  We have 5 minutes to beat the Toadstool, i.e 300 seconds.  Toadstool has 156,500 HP.  If we attack once every second for the entire five minutes, not factoring in dodging attacks or area denial, we will deal - drumroll - 20,400 damage.  That's not even coming close to a quarter of its health!  Attacking once every second for five minutes nonstop with darkswords, you would need EIGHT PEOPLE to even come close to killing it.  And since you have to dodge attacks, manage health and hunger, etc, you'd probably need even more than that!

It really does seem like 15,650 Health instead of 156,500 is better suited for this boss.

Yes, a boss with a timer for how long you can fight it can be cool.

Yes, a boss with INSANE amounts of health can be cool.

Both at the same time? No no no.

They should have two different bosses:

• One with absurd amounts of health that DOESN'T reset it's health when you leave, so that you have a constant goal throughout the game.
• One with a short timer, but not crazy health to have an interesting boss fight.

[JohaneBrote]

To me it feels like there must be something we missed that makes the fight easier, like the new darts dealing a lot more damage to Toadstool or a sick exploding canaries strat that no one's figured out yet. And even if there's not, I don't mind an insane boss that makes you improve in hopes of one day finally beating it and getting the epic loot. But I have to agree that so far the math doesn't add up, especially for the default maximum number of players (which is 6 if I recall correctly?).

Still, lets not give up just yet guys. Think of the bragging rights! 

[CaptainFun]

17 minutes ago, JohaneBrote said:

To me it feels like there must be something we missed that makes the fight easier, like the new darts dealing a lot more damage to Toadstool or a sick exploding canaries strat that no one's figured out yet. And even if there's not, I don't mind an insane boss that makes you improve in hopes of one day finally beating it and getting the epic loot. But I have to agree that so far the math doesn't add up, especially for the default maximum number of players (which is 6 if I recall correctly?).

Still, lets not give up just yet guys. Think of the bragging rights! 

Didn't something in the files refer refer to doing 5x damage to it while it was "channeling"? 

[JohaneBrote]

9 minutes ago, CaptainFun said:

Didn't something in the files refer refer to doing 5x damage to it while it was "channeling"? 

I think you're right, haven't checked for myself but now that you mentioned it I remember reading something about it. It is quite possible that Toadstool is not fully implemented yet and once it is it will be much easier to beat.

[BluesyBuesy]

1 hour ago, Battal said:

When I say it's physically impossible, I don't mean "you can do it if you have enough will".  I mean it literally can't be done solo. 

I understood what you meant. 

[rezecib]

@BluesyBuesy The only condition that allows the dragonfly to be fought easily is that you can exploit the fact that the lavae don't attack walls and the dragonfly will fly over them. So you can effectively remove the lavae from the fight.

There's no way to get around the timer on escape... I spent a decent amount of time checking if there was any way to cancel/reset it, and it's simply not hooked up anywhere in the code. So you HAVE to kill it in 5 minutes, which would be a challenging task on its own even if it didn't fight back, because that means about 522 dps. So if you have 10 people with a couple of dark swords each that's possible, but I kind of doubt there's a way to exploit it enough to completely ignore its secondary attacks. And as for smaller groups of players killing it... doesn't even look remotely possible at the moment. Even gunpowder apparently doesn't work because it pushes it away.

[KoreanWaffles]

     You know, Toadstool really reminds of of Moldorm from Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
     You're trying to get the pendant of Wisdom and unlock the Master Sword but you have to deal with Moldorm.
Moldorm. That giant ugly yellow worm that just won't die.
     You get knocked off the stage 50 million times and have to redo the boss fight 50 million times. Every time you get knocked off the stage, Moldorm's health resets to 100%. This makes him easily one of the most frustrating bosses to deal with, and it seems that the Toadstool has the same frustrating mechanic. Shout out to @Lumina for suggesting that Toadstool's health should stay where you last left it as. Instead of having a timer for a single fight, why not have a timer for multiple fights? Maybe you can only awaken the Toadstool only every so often; sort of like a respawn timer, except the health points stay the same. This makes it still rewarding if you just beat the Toadstool just before it flees, (so you don't have to wait for the cooldown) but still a raidboss type of mob.
     Maybe even stretching this idea a bit, you get bonus rewards if you slay it within the first few rounds, maybe like 100% guaranteed drops if you slay it before its first escape, and then scaling down the more rounds you take to beat it. (Although this may still make it a bummer for solo players, so maybe set a cap to the percent drop rate. This is still just a suggestion though.)

Moldorm for reference...

Spoiler

I really hate this boss.

[BOSSzombie]

12 minutes ago, KoreanWaffles said:

     You know, Toadstool really reminds of of Moldorm from Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
     You're trying to get the pendant of Wisdom and unlock the Master Sword but you have to deal with Moldorm.
Moldorm. That giant ugly yellow worm that just won't die.
     You get knocked off the stage 50 million times and have to redo the boss fight 50 million times. Every time you get knocked off the stage, Moldorm's health resets to 100%. This makes him easily one of the most frustrating bosses to deal with, and it seems that the Toadstool has the same frustrating mechanic. Shout out to @Lumina for suggesting that Toadstool's health should stay where you last left it as. Instead of having a timer for a single fight, why not have a timer for multiple fights? Maybe you can only awaken the Toadstool only every so often; sort of like a respawn timer, except the health points stay the same. This makes it still rewarding if you just beat the Toadstool just before it flees, (so you don't have to wait for the cooldown) but still a raidboss type of mob.
     Maybe even stretching this idea a bit, you get bonus rewards if you slay it within the first few rounds, maybe like 100% guaranteed drops if you slay it before its first escape, and then scaling down the more rounds you take to beat it. (Although this may still make it a bummer for solo players, so maybe set a cap to the percent drop rate. This is still just a suggestion though.)

Moldorm for reference...

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I really hate this boss.

You ever fight the "Link's Awakening" version? It's even worse. That's what I would compare the current state of the Toadstool to.

[Auth]

Man I can't wait for cutting a tree to have a 2-second timer before the tree flees, inspiring you to take a team with the best axes together to chop it.

 

I play alone. I like to play alone. I like the new mutliplayer content and the ability for my friends to pop in, so I don't play just the base game.

Stop forcing me to play with multiple people doing exactly what I want them to at my whim. I'm not friends with enough professional players to call them over and say "Hey, wanna kill a near unbeatable frog for totally unrewarding drops?" at any time.

[spiderdian]

The real battle would be after killing it, to decide which of the 15 people will keep the Shroom Skin. rolf

[MrDeepDarkmind]

33 minutes ago, spiderdian said:

The real battle would be killing it, to decide which of the 15 people will keep the Shroom Skin. rolf

then it would be civil war, after that civil war. It would be a massacre for the trophy 

[Pyr0mrcow]

5 hours ago, JohaneBrote said:

To me it feels like there must be something we missed that makes the fight easier, like the new darts dealing a lot more damage to Toadstool or a sick exploding canaries strat that no one's figured out yet. And even if there's not, I don't mind an insane boss that makes you improve in hopes of one day finally beating it and getting the epic loot. But I have to agree that so far the math doesn't add up, especially for the default maximum number of players (which is 6 if I recall correctly?).

Still, lets not give up just yet guys. Think of the bragging rights! 

...there's a historic precedent for bringing canaries into caves, and they were added at the same time. I wouldn't be surprised if they were somehow related to the Toadstool.

[GuyNamedChris]

1 hour ago, spiderdian said:

The real battle would be after killing it, to decide which of the 15 people will keep the Shroom Skin. rolf

/roll

[CaptainFun]

I like how beating it legit is just a theory right now. 

I think 156k health is more than enough incentive to bring a friend. Timer seems like overkill, especially such a strict one. 

[Lumina]

10 hours ago, Weirdobob said:

 

I play alone. I like to play alone. I like the new mutliplayer content and the ability for my friends to pop in, so I don't play just the base game.

Stop forcing me to play with multiple people doing exactly what I want them to at my whim.

I don't think that klei want to force you to anything. Two contents are designed to be a real challenge and require a lot of planning and skill. Dragonfly and Toadstool.

Two contents.

 

So maybe we can stop comparing Toadstool to cutting tree or fighting spider. Klei is not planning to change game to force people to play with others. They are just, in a beta branch, trying to add a new challenging boss that will encourage people to play together and make it rewarding in itself beating it.

 

It's a pure optional content : fight that you start (not like hound or giants attacking you), reward that aren't must have (a light, some hats).

 

So maybe it's possible to keep the comparison reasonable.

 

I agree that the boss should be doable in solo, but it's, for me, very important to keep this feeling of challenge that will encourage players to do it as a group. So, how to do that ? What will keep the challenge and allow one character to do it alone ?

- Removing the timer will probably make it a little too classic.

- As i suggested, the boss could flee at the end of the timer, but instead of recovering all his health, just be not fightable for a time, meaning that if you manage to kill it fast, you have reward now, and if not, you have to wait for fighting it again, but your progress are "saved".

- Less health is also an option, but it will mainly remove part of the challenge, or the challenge is an important part for some players.

- Create a way to interrupt the timer. Maybe as someone suggested, the base drop could be better, but if you interrupt the timer, you will have more time to kill it, and less reward. It could allow players to choose between pure challenge and better reward, or a still good challenge and correct reward.

 

[Mr. Hastings]

17 hours ago, RyanandLink said:

Well yeah, it's a raid boss. It has special mechanics that need research/trial and error to figure out- same with the dragonfly, most random games don't even get to the point where they're prepared for a fight like that. Or, as a friend would put it:

  Reveal hidden contents

also it's funny how much the fight reminded me of an MMO i play, i could just hear the "lol drg dodge the aoe ffs" echo in the back of my mind

And the sporecaps he is creating can upgrade his attack and damage from 100 to 250 on level 3 o_o

[t1morino88eex]

13 hours ago, Weirdobob said:

I play alone. I like to play alone.

You might as well just go for Don't Starve, the single player experience.

[b1b3r0n]

34 minutes ago, t1morino88eex said:

You might as well just go for Don't Starve, the single player experience.

Just no

 

what do you of all the players that play dst because it is just better that ds ?

[AnonymousKoala]

1 hour ago, b1b3r0n said:

Just no

 

what do you of all the players that play dst because it is just better that ds ?

Its not better. It's different.

The "just play singleplayer" argument was correct when they were very similar. Now they have some notable differences. They feel different, and in many ways are.

[t1morino88eex]

It is pretty obvious you can play the game alone, go ahead and do that, but the game is titled Don't Starve Together, reason for which one shouldn't be surprised if there are elements that are supposed to be fully experienced in a multiplayer/coop way.

[BOSSzombie]

I can see where a lot of people wanting a solo experience are coming from. On the main screen of DST, before you even load in, the game basically calls itself a "Sequel to Don't Starve" and "Don't Starve 2" in the little notes on the sides and bottom of the screen, doesn't it? If you understand how to play the original don't starve, DST isn't much of a jump. Things take longer when it comes to killing, sure, but that's pretty much the only difference. There's even easier tactics to deal with the giants than in Don't Starve! Deerclops can be lured to Dragonfly, Bearger can get tricked into fighting half a dozen Tree Guardians, The Spider Queen is a joke if you take her on a tour of a swamp and let Tentacles go for her, and everything else can be taken out with Gunpowder, even the Dragonfly, because Meteor Fields make Nitre a renewable resource now (Albeit a very slow one).