retsam1 replied to Thoughts on the bosses March 23, 2022 @ 1:24:38 pm PDT
I just finished my first full play through and the bosses are a little underwhelming for me, but they all have a lot of promise. I also just want to say the aside from Moder's breath attack, I haven't died to any other boss.
Eikthyr: Although the easiest, he's probably also the best mechanically speaking. His attacks are well telegraphed and every build is viable. Bows, hammers, maces, swords, spears, round shields, tower shields, they'll all work just fine.
Elder: Really big with some flashy moves, but ultimately you're just going to use fire arrows. With a lack of fire weapons or enhancements and the Elder having much stronger melee moves than ranged ones, there's no reason to do anything other than fire arrows. His melee attacks all hit like trucks and have AOEs to match. His ranged attacks tickle and are very easily dodged. His tentacle summons are pretty neat, but you can just walk away from them quickly making them a non-issue.
Bonemass: Probably the worst boss in my opinion. He has 3 gimmicks. Poison, Damage resistance, and summons. His poison is a non-issue if you have poison resist mead leaving the last two gimmicks. Although he's resistant to almost everything, he's weak to blunt and so are every one of his summons. This means there is 1 way to fight him and only one, grab a mace. This is extremely boring because even if you have a full server of 10 people, much like with the Elder, everybody is going to use the exact same set up. Chug a potion and face-tank while spamming the mace.
Moder: Not super interesting. Basically the Elder but you use poison/obsidian arrows and dodge the powerful flying breath attacks. You can go melee, but with the slopped terrain of the mountains, it's better just to bring a stack or two of arrows and hunker down. She's just a bigger version of a normal enemy.
Yagluth: Really cool but disappointing as the current final boss. (I know that'll change). You can at least fight him either melee or ranged, but you're only going to be doing it with frost arrows or the frost hammer. His attacks are all pretty much the same attack as well, do a mix of fire and physical damage over a large area.
TLDR: The bosses have potential but are being squandered right now. They are pretty boring for the most part and really only have 1 good way to kill each of them (except for Eikthyr). I really think having a way to infuse weapons with elemental damage (or just having more weapons like the frost hammer) plus lowering the melee damage of most bosses would allow for more fighting styles to emerge.
Other than the bosses, I'm definitely having a great time with this game though. Can't wait for the Mistlands :>
For one, as you readily pointed out in your post, it is a bit of a challenge to assess the bosses currently because:
1. Due to early access/development progression, they'll likely have changes as time goes on.
2. Not all biomes and features of the game are in/completed. This means we are actually playing the game out of context to the final intention/implementation of the game by the devs.
With both things kept in mind, its thus better to not be too critical yet concerning the current state of the game/bosses and best just to take things with a grain of salt.
12:13 am, March 24, 2022