Boss woes

[Commiesalami]

Is anyone else having a lot of trouble against the bosses in the most recent update?  Most specifically the bats who are a whole lot faster and immune to knock back now. I'm guessing how you fight them is to dodge them at the last second so they miss and take their sweet time coming backing around, taking that opportunity to attack. 

The problem with this strategy is that 1) The turning radius of the bats seems to be near infinite when they are really close to you making dodging near impossible and 2) Every time they hit you they heal themselves for what ever I've volleyed at them over the past few moments.  So I can't stock up on 3 dozen potions and win a battle of attrition.

I know I could just lower the difficulty, but it occurs to me that I'm missing something conceptual about these battles and lowering the difficulty will just give me bad habits.

Just to note: I'm fighting bats the same level as me with mostly up-to-date spells

[Professor Paul1290]

I usually try to figure out a nice route around the cave and lead them around while throwing spells at them.

Most of the time when you are fighting the giant shadow bats you have enough room in the cave to keep running and jumping around while they chase you as long as you be careful not to get caught in a dead end or corner.

Some oddly shaped caves can make this tricky though.

[Ozymandiaz]

I fought a few boss bats just last night. I think they were fun to fight. Even had to drink a few potions to keep myself going until I got the hang of dodging them properly.

[zebramatt]

The real trouble with them comes when you're fighting way above your level and they genuinely are so quick they're impossible to dodge - but that's intended, I believe.

Some sort of dodge spell might be pretty handy to allow you to tackle them even in those situations, if you're quick enough on the draw, without taking away the challenge.

[tigersfan]

We're adding a few things that should swing the balance back towards the player a bit in the next release, hopefully that will help.

[Terraziel]

Whilst I have gotten horribly proficient at killing bats, dragons annoy me intensely, rather they strike me as ridiculously overpowered, I spent 4 characters trying to get up one rare commodity tower because despite being 10 levels higher than the mini-boss (level 10 with  me at level 20) each of the bizarrely sentient, inexplicably level 15, bits of dragon flame did roughly 25% damage, as well as seemingly spawning all around the room not just near the boss, and given that they stack both in damage and graphics it was entirely possible for me to get one-hit killed.

As a more general boss complaint, there has to be a better way than just giving things more health for the progress from micro-boss to overlord, as without changing the attack patterns the battles just become more tedious and drawn out. I recommend give the larger bosses a greater number and variety of attacks

[tigersfan]

The dragon might be a bit OP, yeah. I'll see what Chris thinks.

As for the need to add a greater variety of attacks, everyone here agrees, and it's definitely in the works. I know Chris has a lot of ideas for a lot of bosses/boss attacks that he's keeping pretty close to the vest, but, there's no question we need more, and more is coming.

[orzelek]

The dragon problem can have something to do with damage over time. I noticed that fire bats do very large amount of damage in the over time component. And with dragon you can get hit by quite a few fires at once... and if they stack you have an insta-death.

[zebramatt]

The DOT's been the end of me a couple of times, for sure.

[relmz32]

I agree with the op, i find that shadow bat mini bosses at my level 5-shot my character, fly faster than i travel in any direction except down, and sometimes double attack when flying through my character (normal bats do as well).  This is really hard to deal with, and impossible for me to deal with in multiples. My first (and only) death has been from those stupid bats running me down in a long hallway and then ducking down through the floor, immune to attacks until they swing around to attack again. 

Hopefully, with the extra healing from potions and the bats not being able to duck out, they are a little bit more manageable.  Although i hope that doesn't mean that they attack and then turn around to attack again. 

Also their hit box seems rather largish, i dont think getting clipped by a wing is enough for them to bite me.

I have only encountered dragons in roving monster bands, and they seem very fun to fight in the open air, and very hard anywhere else.  And i also do not understand why their breath attacks spawn well away from the dragon and sometimes on top of me.

[Commiesalami]

So bosses slow down if your a higher level now?  I guess ill hold back on trying to get gems at my level and stick with ones 1 below and then over level a little before facing bosses.  By what factor do they slow down as a function of level?

[tigersfan]

By what factor do they slow down as a function of level?

Actually, scratch that stuff I had here before, that was for general enemies, not bosses. I'm not sure about the bosses.

[Cyborg]

Bosses should be hard. Please don't make it easy on the default difficulty level. I would rather see players use items, combination of spells, and so on than make carebear bosses. Adjust the tools of the player first.

Full disclosure: I ran into those bats last night, and I could not defeat them. And that's okay, the controls update should help, and I'm going to get more supplies.

[Yuugi]

With bats no longer capable of moving through walls, it is now 'relatively' easy to outmaneuver them. I managed to get a few stuck on landscape despite their improved sliding behavior, and ice-crossed them to death.

[orzelek]

I just met a dragon. And I surrender. My lvl 24 against lvl 20 dragon and it's simply impossible to survive longer than half a minute or so. And now with 2 ghosts I will need to gain 5+ levels to actually have any chances there. That was on Apprentice difficulty level.