Erchius Boss

I agree a checkpoint would be lovely. I've run through four different times and died and it's feeling very very tedious. I haven't played since about August of last year, or at least before the new shield/block system and I'm not very practiced with it yet at all. This feels like a bit much for a first boss, at least with the running back down each and every time.

Other than that, I am loving the new update! This is about my only qualm thus far.

 

After dying the 1st time on the boss, I just said "fk it" and ran past the entire dungeon again without bothering to attack anything. Making that bed before the boss room into a checkpoint would be a great idea

 

Honestly i think its too easy.

Now hold up a minute let me elaborate:

I beat the boss in under 60 seconds the second time i attempted it. This is not a boast, closer to a complaint in fact.
The Erchius boss is hard, its hard because some people dont figure out how to actually defeat it via the provided method instead of actually shooting it. It is also extremely easy.
I was able to pull all 4 levers before it even began its next attack, hence causing me to press the four levers fast enough to avoid damage altogether, the second time i even tried to kill it.

Don't nerf the boss, redesign it. Decrease time between laser attacks and maybe make the levers stand out somehow.

That is my take on it.

(also the mission really, really needs a checkpoint of some sort.)

 

(I'm going to copy-paste what I wrote in the other thread)
Having the Double Jump tech helps A LOT.
In addition, you can take advantage of the fact that he has a long animation when he takes a shot, if you have the Double Jump tech you can activate two of the switches before he even start to spam the lasers. It is just a matter of knowing the boss, I died only once and beat him on the second try because knew what he was going to do.

I actually like this boss a little, but being the very FIRST boss you have to face in the game can be a huge letdown for some players.

 

as someone who finally beat this boss after 14 tries AND knew to activate the switches for the the cannon on the first try, i have this to say: YOU HAVE GOT TO BE F**KING KIDDING ME!

think about how this fight plays out-- you are dropped into a large room with a boss monster that has a room sweeping attack and also has the ability to spawn monsters. naturally, one would try to learn the attack pattern. first attack pattern? easy enough. second attack pattern? a bit tricky, but not too much trouble. the final attack pattern? DREKING MURDER! it leaves the player with only 10-or-so degrees of safety on the top and bottom platforms. learning that took several frustrating tries and several runs through the entire dungeon. add the fact that you'll potentially have several enemies to contend with while you yet figure out the boss and you have NO CHECKPOINT before it-- THIS IS AN EXERCISE IN FRUSTRATION!

most players will use the exploit of waiting under the bottom platform to heal themselves and deal with the additional mobs... and it IS AN EXPLOIT, obviously not an intentional part of the fight. but it was several more time before i even learned of this fact. through the fight, if done properly, one will notice that the lasers CLEARLY FIRE THROUGH THE PLATFORM. seeing that, contrary to the facts, one would most likely logically work out that there is no safety to be found under the bottom platform.

...this is even before the fact that if the player didn't choose the bounce tech, they'd also have to worry about losing the fight if they botch the jump on the upper platforms (let alone being skillful enough to deploy the tech AND evade the boss's attacks). unfortunately, starbound's mechanics aren't keen on precision platforming. it'd be a different story if the player could take his/her time throughout the fight, but for obvious reasons cannot.

and about YOU-- you may claim to not be boasting about your alleged fight progress, but given the prevalence of players who aren't necessarily unskilled but nevertheless have issues with this element of the quest, your comment really only serves to amplify your patronization, be it intentional or not.

...at least we are in agreement that a checkpoint before the boss is necessary.

in truth, if one could restart this fight with little to no waiting period, the key issues of this fight would not be so grave.

 

Seriously, all we need right now is a checkpoint and then maybe the boss wouldn't seem so bad, right now it's just ridiculous. Which is a shame because the mission up until the boss is fantastic. the mood, the atmosphere, how you get introduced to the aliens. The beginning of the mission makes me feel like a completely awesome space marine!

 

I have a question. Is it normal if my ship, after my first death in this lovely place, is back to the beginning of the game ? When I mean beginning, I mean no more stuff and a broken ship who just let me go to the mission ?
I just want to know if I have to create a new character before killing the boss and not having a terrible surprise ! Thanks !


Well, it was not...

 

I sincerly doubt that "most players" use exploits on that fight. I doubt most players would even have a issue.

I didnt (i found the boss easy and defeated it on my second try without even losing health, while on the first try i died from a foolish mistake) and im at most average (most likely even slightly below average) at platform gameplay.

I hope they dont nerf the boss in anyway, but as mentioned a checkpoint before the boss might be a good idea regardless.

 

i think you are clearly out of touch with the general consensus (just check out this forum and the starbound reddit board). and i'm moderately competent at platforming in games (at least with a gamepad), yet this fight gave me serious trouble.

however, we are in agreement that, yes, CHECKPOINTS WOULD BE QUITE NICE.

 

It occurs to me that last night, in my haste to write that comment on the previous page, I wasn't as constructive as I would've liked, so my apologies for that. I'd agree with the others, just making that bed before the boss a checkpoint would improve the mission massively. In fact, when I saw the bed, two decades of playing video games led me to think out loud "ooh, a checkpoint!", which sadly was not so. Everything about that part screams 'checkpoint before the boss' so I really feel strongly that that would be a very solid change, even better if it's optional for those who were against the idea.

On another note, the second boss was laughably easy IMO, did it first try with no difficult moments. Still lots of fun though, even if the persistent map changes the way it plays out, not necessarily for the better.

 

Finally got him once I figured out his patterns, first two phases are easy and the last phase I was expecting so I would just run to the top and wait for him to stop, then haul it down to the bottom, only had to shield from the laser once and I got to the bottom where I just crazy swiped the monsters and hit him for the last hurrah....overall he IS a very easy boss, the only thing that makes him so frustrating is the lack of a checkpoint. All it needs is a checkpoint at the bed before him and he's good to go.

 

Nah, I found this boss quite easy. A 2 handed sword and double jump takes a lot of the edge off of this fight. I actually found the blind spot pretty cool to discover.

This does make me wonder perhaps the parry or another defensive option needs to be expanded to other weapons, to make them worth using against bosses and their heavy attacks.

 

Please vote here guys: http://community.playstarbound.com/...ntressted-in-finding-out-the-consensus.89814/

 

Killed thee boss without dying in my No death playthrough, With 2 shields.

2 Shields = Loads of armor break. And it's not fun.


I barely survived the boss, and i killed it with a Kamehame ha cannon to the eye, And then....BOOM! Mission success!

 

Not too easy, not too hard. Just right, but maybe for new players it's slightly hard for a first boss encounter.

 

[quote="mumakurau, post: 2409987, member: 41169" *snip* [/quote]

Yes a checkpoint is really needed.

The boss is different for everyone, some people will get it first time regardless of the said difficulty. Others may need to attempt dozens of times. It really just depends on the person who is playing at the time. Whilst i beat the boss quite quickly, the rest of the level took me probably too long to traverse and i died to the miner "zombies" with swords a couple times. I personally found the platforms to be the weakness of the level, i didnt have any tech but timed jumps and falldowns are what made it easy enough to beat Erchius.

I never said i didnt think the boss wasn't hard in fact i emphasized that i believed it was in fact still in need of some change. It all comes down to player intuition and luck, for most.

I can guarantee you there are players out there who beat the level first time no hassle, and some who still fail to pass it. Again, this is not because some player's "skill" is less than of another or higher, just how they see what is around them and their use of controls.

You agree the boss is too hard, you agree it needs a checkpoint and some alteration to mechanics yes?

I do too, even though i beat it i still think its hard. Why? Because it is, i dont need to tell you what you already know. Just because i personally beat the boss second time with a time i think says a lot about how unbalanced this boss is, does not mean it is easy. I just got lucky, and found a good strategy. Hell, the developers could have made it purposely easy to beat using said strategy, maybe it was overlooked or even a bug. Regardless,

The boss needs change.

(the quote broke, my bad)

 

Also it sucks because whenever I die from it (always) I crash after I get to my space ship.

 

This issue is something that made me finally remember my password and log back in to here. Now, again, this wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't like a whole stretch of like... 30 minutes your first time through, maybe after speedrun it to like 10? Just working your way through the naked pink things and the few skeleton guys with hammers or whatever those are. Robots? The strategy just ends up being get a gun of some kind and fire away at a distance. It helps that rocket launchers spawn in some of the crates. Still, going from "mostly harmless" type planets which are pretty easy of course to something that seems more like you'd encounter at the end of a "Level 2" (saying that the whole part before this was pretty much entirely "Level 1") is a bit of a difficulty spike. That and you have to rely on realizing, oh, there's these switches that are kinda blending into the background a little. You don't really get any indication of the switches powering the laser at the bottom beforehand. Not asking for a pop-up that says HEY HIT THESE SWITCHES, but maybe more of a training thing, like you encounter some crystal barrier and a laser's just pointed at it, you hit the switch, barrier's gone, now you know that lasers work against the crystal stuff.

Long story short, if the lead-up's going to be that long, either set up a sort of checkpoint thing or shorten the dungeon by about 20%-ish. Like maybe there's a transport system that they re-activate after you rescue enough miners but it only goes one way since they don't want anything coming back up. That and "learning" at some point beforehand which tells you that switches mean lasers mean blowing up crystals.

Also, yes, there is a random crash that happens after you encounter the boss.

 

Figuring out the stuff with the buttons is easy enough, no problem there.
The real problem is, you have nearly no margin for error and a boss fight shouldn't rely on trial&error.

A player should have a chance to learn the strategy in the fight. Maybe if the first phase was without significant resistance so the player can look around and figure out what to do before shit really hits the fan.


Players should also be allowed to retreat or at least take cover somewhere if they realize that the boss is to strong for them. Simply let the boss regenerate in that case.

Also, why the hell is the dungeon reset when we die? Regular gameplay in starbound doesn't work like that.
If you die, you respawn but you keep your progrees and get a chance to retrieve your loot. Thats how the game regularily works. So why change that all of a sudden? Makes no sense to me.



Oh and I almost forgot - the non-dogeable damage in phase three is not really a good idea either.

 

I really like the level design going up to the boss - unexpected dangers in an inhospitable place is a classic - but like most people have said, a checkpoint before the boss would do the trick, particularly for the more fumble-fingered among us (such as myself)