Xiatau First Confrontation - What did I do wrong?

[R4dioS1lence]

Got back after leaving on week 50. Pick a mission to kill 3 Apex (2 I knew from before, Scorpion was new) and scan something, since it was the mission preventing me to pick the new ones at the end (had already completed the Voyager: Recovery one that has the surprise polar bear boss near the end of one segment, that I did on Hardcore and almost lost a lvl 50+ prospector on it).

Mission goes as usual. Get Hunting Rifle to make my life easier, at least now Electronics ain't physical pain anymore, just mild annoyance from the whole unlocking tree for HR (but it's worth anyway).

Go to Worm. Fight goes differently. Harder to evade projectiles if I don't stop shooting. Almost died. Good fight, now the rust came off.

Get enough ammo to last the full durability of the HR twice. Repair it to top shape. Go see what the Scorpion is about on the internet. People say "the weakpoint is in the head" (a scorpion head? you mean the small face you can barely see?), others say "it's in the back". Wiki is useless (as they are becoming, thanks Fandom, good job).

There is no weak point or feature of note on the thing. Head, eye, mouth, middle of back... nothing. Just endure it and keep shooting. It goes underground. Hitting the tail during the attacks is possible, but tricky. Decide to not do it a lot and wait for it to come back. Then, it comes back and it uses Harden. Shots deal about a quarter or less. Ok, but the belly seems white still. One shot connects on it, full damage. Neat.

Battle goes on, until it goes underground again and calls its children. It keeps calling them, it keeps killing them with its attacks, but it refuses to come back. Shoot the tail. Tail is untangible to bullets.

What?

I'm going crazy. Try again.

Doesn't register a hit.

NICE.

Mellee attack works. This will be fun.

Battle extended enough that poison pill ran out, had to pop another. Keep at it. Thing comes out of the ground. Immediately, without any wind up or warning, it teaches me it now has a rushing attack at full speed that takes more than half my health and that it can use it from point blank.

Full panic mode. Eat enough meat to weight two of me now. Now I can survive this BS if it happens again. Battle went long enough Hunting Rifle breaks. Game decides that despite wheather forecast saying showing the lowest risk of bad wheater I need to go through a heatwave. In the middle of a boss fight. That is taking forever. Exposure slows me down so much I get hit by another close range bulldoze. Almost dead. Now I'm a meatbun, a really well filled one. Decide to go mellee. Trading hits like that won't last me the last 20% health the boss still has. Leave.

Since I lost too many resources to a crash deleting all overflow bags from my base upon coming back (I was lazy and didn't upgrade from wood to stone or cement, paid the price, nearly everything destroyed, full of overflow bags, game crashed as I was storing stuff, lost 20 Titanium, god knows how much gold, copper and iron, coudl've made a power source), I didn't want to bother trying again.

Extract with 27 exotics I had on me (didn't put on the drop pod), and... didn't get the exotics on my rewards, DESPITE HAVING THEM ON ME. I remember that working. SERIOUSLY.
Oh, and now Workshop items REQUIRE CURRENCY TO FIX. NEAT. The ONE mechanic to make your life easier now COSTS YOU. Full set of armor costs more to repair than most easy & quick missions. NEAT.

What did I do wrong? Not knowing beforehand that I should've spammed hedgehogs all over the arena? Asked nicely for Xiatau to give me a bit of space before bulldozing me so I had at least a sliver of a chance to escape? Not carrying two Hunting Rifles, because no boss before was so tanky? Not finding the magical weak spot that I'm sure someone is going to point out now where it is? Not having crouched before shooting during the battle because this magically deals Stealth Attack damage multipler, which I only noticed by accident nearly the end of the battle and didn't exploit enough?

Why was this boss made to be like this? Alpha Wolf was nice. Dangerous, calls friends and retreats, smart boss to fight. Worm was nice. Sturdy, with ranged attacks that are hard to dodge, with dangerous attacks that are well telegraphed, and a weak spot that is easy to notice but hard to hit, since you can only shoot when it opens its mouth, usually to attack, forcing you to decide on trading blow or evading and not exploting the weak point enough.

Xiatau feels like a direct opposite of what was nice about the others. Long invulnerability moments? Check. No telepgraphing on an attack that can leave you nearly dead? Check. Forcing you to use base-defense mechanics and DoT? Check.

[Rekal]

The scorpion is definitely the hardest of the world bosses. It's the first one that actually changes attack patterns and weaknesses throughout the fight. It is definitely solo-able though. Couple things from my experience:

When it's under ground and poking it's tale up move to the center of the arena. It's technically walking around under the arena floor to flank you so it might be getting stuck on things under ground if you're too far off to one side. The ground under the center of the arena is generally pretty clear so you can avoid it getting stuck. As long as it can reach you to poke up its tail it should stay agro and pop up for a normal attack not long after.

No idea why the tail was un-hittable for you. Were you aiming at the tip or the base? When it pops up like that I always aim at the base -- thicker so less likely to miss, and the last place that disappears underground. There's no extra protection or weakness on the tail so any hit anywhere does normal damage. Since I'm always hitting it, it might be that it never resurfaced for you because you need to do enough damage to cause it to change modes again?

The charging mechanic is annoying but it's easy to avoid when it's telegraphed from range and if the thing is close you should be sprinting to the side circling it (not strafing while facing it which is too slow) to avoid getting hit by its normal attacks so you also miss the point blank charge as well. Once you get it to swing and miss you by sprinting to the side you can attach yourself to its side like a limpit and melee it dead. It turns slow enough that when you're up close to its side you can move with it and just wail on it until it runs away underground. You can't strafe from the front cause the claws are wide enough to catch you, but when you're up on its side they work in your favor.

When the damn thing hardens and makes all projectile damage deal only 25% damage either dive directly into melee or switch DOT effects like cave worm arrows. A fire arrow works pretty well too but it doesn't stack with other fire arrows while each cave worm arrow will stack with the next. Poison arrows are trash, don't bother - they do like 30 additional poison damage - might as well just fire a normal arrow.

Hedge hogs don't work in my experience. The scorpion just does too much damage in bulldozer mode that the hedge hogs do nothing appreciable before being destroyed. Not sure how the poison hedge hogs compare to cave worm arrow poison, so those might be worth a try. I just have never needed to try after getting used to the fight.

You can literally just tank and spank this thing if you wanted to put in the buildup required. You can get your physical resistance so high using composite armor plus plating, the HARK envirosuit, the solo talent, and the strength enhancement tonic that it just tickles you even on a charge.

Cooking and the Food buffs are pretty big as you can get a ~50% projectile damage set of buffs from pickle carrots and few other foods. That extra damage really tacks on fast. Or you could do melee buffs. Plus the cooked food can have higher health boosts than cooked/dried meat. Kitchen Bench and biofuel stove can cook anything I believe.

Try the health enhancement tonics next time -- they heal 100 immediately, give you a large 30% max health boost, and a huge regen bonus for 2 minutes. Plenty of time to drink one while it's underground and the extra health is a nice buffer to have.

Leave during storms. I setup a respawn shelter just off the arena when I was first learning how to solo this boss. Wasn't worth the risk to fight with the additional debuff, so I'd just run off the arena and ride out the storm in the shelter.

Do you have the creature health bar talent? It's useful to know how much progress you're making in the fight.

Long of it short, the boss is beatable. You just have to beat your head against it long enough to figure out the way that works for you. Next time build in a cave so your base doesn't evaporate! Every entrance to the desert biomes in Styx is a big tunnel without any cave worms. Great places to build - nothing is stopping you from building an elevated wood/thatch platform above the stalagmites for a nice level floor.

[КрендельФигов]

1) If I’m mistaken, I saw in one of the playthroughs how the boss’s ‘special attack’ in the form of an ‘accelerating ram’ was stopped
https://icarus.fandom.com/wiki/Wood_Wall_Fortification
He simply demolishes everything else, but this fortification seems to be gone.

2) I also saw that I was trying to keep it constantly on fire. Because he can be seen better this way.

[Suelyn]

The Scorpion boss is ridiculously OP. I defeated the other bosses without too much hassle, but this monster has massive HP and massive damage. I tried a mix of hedgehogs and the scorpion traps, could see them doing 900 damage each (had about 10 of each of them hitting it), and it hardly moved the heath bar. Was doing 300 damage shots every time I got some distance but only got it down to about half health. It moves stupidly fast (even when it's not charging). I've had 4 tries to kill this thing, went through 30 health potions the last attempt only to have it one shot kill me when I'd got it about to 1/3 health. And as the OP said, the fight lasts long enough to wear through the anti-poison pill (and all my health boosts).

INSANE!

[Sszl]

I had a similar experience. That boss is tough. I ended up putting a small base with a sleepign bag at the base of the arena, so I could run back and keep trying quickly enough it doesn't completely heal. Hunting rifle seems to be required, at least for me. And I don't think I ever figured out how to get a crit shot. Good luck.