Act 1 final boss is BRUTAL, how do you deal with it? (spoilers)

[God Snek]

I got past, what i thought, was the "final" boss. I felt relieved... Then the game shows me the TRUE final boss, and I think all of my enthusiasm has died a bit. I get it, it's tough, its a culmination of the other 3 but jesus christ, the other three are still really difficult... Is it just, git gud, or is there something i'm missing?

[PapaGiorgio]

Difficulty in Act 1 is hard to quantify, because the game gives you an increasing array of massive power boosts as you play. So if you get to him in your first few runs, I imagine he'd be really tough, but I never had much difficulty with him (beat him three times before advancing). I always had 1, usually 2 boons, and those boons are huge. Generally you'll want the draw 2/magpie boons, because by that point your deck should have a few completely broken cards, so you just need to reliably get them into your hand.

[ZexxCrine]

you have to use his gimicks to your benefit. prospector happens on turn two and he starts with a moleman on the feild. move the mole man in-front of his other cards to prevent him from spawning them. then the angler happens use the angler to replace something terrible on his feild with a harmless squirrel. then the trapper happens. by this point you should have a lane blocked by a mole man. a handled lane and a lane blocked by a squirrel. so make sure to grab a monster with the pelt the trappe give you that will either be a boon to you or will slow his pace down.

don't sleep on the free trees in every lane boon. it sucks if you cant get the two obviously best buffs but the trees are by far the best boon after them. you get a couple turns to draw for free and you don't lose anything to the prospector.

[Jay]

I only beat it once I got 2 boons.

My main strategy for act 1 was get a good card and sacrifice a card with that skill that returns a copy to your hand when you play it (I think it's from field mice). Then I have infinite amount of them. I think once I also had a "doesn't die when sacrificed" sigil on the same card so I could just immediately put it in all 4 zones in 1 turn.

[ASDF]

Poison insta-kills the final mega card in Act 1

[Bobisnotaperson]

stinkbug

[darksol92]

I wound up beating him due to deathcards being able to be pretty ridiculous...
My death card from the second run had a 1 blood cost from a wolf cub, the 7/7 stats from the rare yeti-looking creature, and the strikes in 2 lanes from the mantis...
Of course you can just put down the stinkbug and reduce the moon's attack power to 0.

[4x4cheesecake]

Originally posted by Bobisnotap:

stinkbug

This^
Or any kind of card with the "stinky" buff. Just be sure to bring enough dmg on the board as well, especially when you got the "draw two cards" boon or you might run out of cards to draw and you're no longer save.
"Touch of death" works as well, it's an insta-kill like on any other enemy :)

[Coffee Kay]

Cheat.

As in, use the status effects that you were building throughout the game to nullify his plays.

He's been playing dirty this whole time, so it's your turn to flip the rules on him. Especially with the boons.

[Heatmiser]

Flying mantis with 2 power insta win all boses

[Tenno]

If you get the squirrel totem, you can get the undying sigil (looks like a circle) and have infinite uses for your squirrels. This makes the entire game a cakewalk, especially since you can use them to block important lanes from ground based enemies while you wait to draw a better card or more squirrels.

[miChi]

Originally posted by ASDF:

Poison insta-kills the final mega card in Act 1

yup this, I beat him first try by legit doing first candle, knife + tooth second candle, and poisoned the third candle (kinda crazy it works, but it is meant to be a brain game so being rewarded for that is cool)

[ZexxCrine]

Originally posted by mitch:

Originally posted by ASDF:

Poison insta-kills the final mega card in Act 1

yup this, I beat him first try by legit doing first candle, knife + tooth second candle, and poisoned the third candle (kinda crazy it works, but it is meant to be a brain game so being rewarded for that is cool)

you can also just put something with the stinky sigil in front of it. then the moon does nothing

[Depressed Catfish]

The moon is not a threat. You can have it attack you for 4 turns and just gain cards if you want, and it's incredibly weak to strong cards. Sure, a low health card will only do 2 to 5 damage before dying, but a strong card with good numbers deals exponentailly more. A standard bear does 20 damage before it dies, and if you augmented that at all it will do more. Stinky and poison insta win the fight, but I don't think there's a need for that. The only way the moon is going to kill you is if you were really struggling on the last two phases.

Just dps the first phase. You only need 5 damage to beat each phase, and by this point in the run you should have solid dps. Same with the second phase, just dps him down and he won't get a chance to win. Use items if you need to.

[0bsidianFire]

I had a card with instant-kill on it for the moon. And an *very* nutty Geck with the "infinite lives" sigil added to it... A few turns before I had managed to make a One-Blood cost 5 attack Deathcard. It worked... *really* well.

[ClovisMissing]

Originally posted by ASDF:

Poison insta-kills the final mega card in Act 1

This. Was bewildered by the moon's health at first but then remembered that one of my cards had poison.