Brutal Dracula

[Wiz3rd]

I need to vent. I've been going at Brutal Dracula for like over 300 attempts by now, and I've gotten to the point where I can reliably pass the first 2 phases every time without fail.

The third phase, however... Yeah no.

It's just such a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fight, I don't even know what to say. Every other bossfight in the game you can play methodically against, you can memorize attack patterns, use different strats, then Brutal Dracula just ♥♥♥♥♥ on the whole idea.

It's not fun, it's frustrating as hell, and I'm thinking of giving up completely.

Brutal mode has been stellar so far, but the final phase of Dracula just soured everything for me.

Am I missing something or is it really just a bullet hell spamfest where you mash your counters and pray to god you don't get hit for 600 dmg by a randomly spawned sword?

[doublejesus]

I watched a video of no hit brutal dracula last night he swaps to double shield, abuses the cdr and veil cdr and yeah also plays like a demon.

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by doublejesus:

I watched a video of no hit brutal dracula last night he swaps to double shield, abuses the cdr and veil cdr and yeah also plays like a demon.

i have now seen the double counter/shield/ranged weapon meta too many times. the fact so many players use it tells you something is off with boss design in generel later on. meleeing some of them is just not very viable at all.

and who came up with gorecrusher walking the forest for DAYS? he literally wasted my bloodmoon timer on never beeing inside his lair twice now. thats just bs design. he is way too large for these narrow forest paths to be fought at. plus need the silly cloak nonstop aswell to even see some of his moves on top. it doubles the fight difficulty when other enemies interfere even if you outgear them. this boss wasnt designed for helpers to join in aside his own spawned ones. none of the other lategame bosses leave thier lair. for a reason.

the difficulty of lategame bosses is also wildly inconsistent.

i first tryed styx. same blood level as crusher. he is on a whole different level difficulty wise compared. there is just no balance at all with the V bloods. some are stupid easy some are grossly overtuned.

maybe its because he was a shard boss in the early access. which was moved to solarus in 1.0 for some reason. i found solarus easier than gorecrusher.

[Lothroth]

Not having played Brutal, I think it may just need some tweaking. They probably designed the game for Normal difficulty, and Brutal is obviously a great mode to have but the game was just released with it. I'd wait for an update and let them know your opinions on it.

[Wiz3rd]

Originally posted by Lothroth:

Not having played Brutal, I think it may just need some tweaking. They probably designed the game for Normal difficulty, and Brutal is obviously a great mode to have but the game was just released with it. I'd wait for an update and let them know your opinions on it.

Well, that's exactly what I'm doing right now.

Up to this point, Brutal has been... Brutal. But also fair. One mistake can cost you the fight, but that's okay.

But the 3rd phase of Dracula is just not fun or fair at all. And you don't even get a 3rd phase on Normal.

[LeeroyGGWP]

easy Brutal Dracula

[crzyfsh123]

Nice to see people complaining about too hard.

[Wiz3rd]

Originally posted by crzyfsh123:

Nice to see people complaining about too hard.

"Complaining about too hard" is one thing - I just want this fight to feel fair. Currently it doesn't.

[Kosskakos]

im kill Dracula,ahahaha

[Nailyth]

Just did brutal dracula with Lightning curtain (wall projectiles) blood rite and veil of frost + legendary slashers. I agree that P3 is a bit of a bullethell but with the right setup i found it very cool and challenging to get trough, good luck for your next tries :)

[theworld]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i have now seen the double counter/shield/ranged weapon meta too many times. the fact so many players use it tells you something is off with boss design in generel later on. meleeing some of them is just not very viable at all.

and who came up with gorecrusher walking the forest for DAYS? he literally wasted my bloodmoon timer on never beeing inside his lair twice now. thats just bs design. he is way too large for these narrow forest paths to be fought at.

2 counter meta is strong on Brutal, but so is melee.

Gorecrusher is trivial to melee. I don't think he even has any new moves, I did him first try at 86 in the middle of the forest, The key is that when he does the melee ground slam the safest place is actually to dash into where his fist lands.

I think he's even weaker now, similar to how Solarus got much weaker in Gloomrot update when he no longer had the shard.

If you're playing crossbow kiting 24x7 then you're relying on a crutch. I did crossbow the very first playthrough because I too found it absurd at how impossible melee seemed vs bosses, but after I've seen a couple of videos of melee Styx I gave it a try and won't ever go back to crossbow.

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by theworld:

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i have now seen the double counter/shield/ranged weapon meta too many times. the fact so many players use it tells you something is off with boss design in generel later on. meleeing some of them is just not very viable at all.

and who came up with gorecrusher walking the forest for DAYS? he literally wasted my bloodmoon timer on never beeing inside his lair twice now. thats just bs design. he is way too large for these narrow forest paths to be fought at.

2 counter meta is strong on Brutal, but so is melee.

Gorecrusher is trivial to melee. I don't think he even has any new moves, I did him first try at 86 in the middle of the forest, The key is that when he does the melee ground slam the safest place is actually to dash into where his fist lands.

I think he's even weaker now, similar to how Solarus got much weaker in Gloomrot update when he no longer had the shard.

If you're playing crossbow kiting 24x7 then you're relying on a crutch. I did crossbow the very first playthrough because I too found it absurd at how impossible melee seemed vs bosses, but after I've seen a couple of videos of melee Styx I gave it a try and won't ever go back to crossbow.

styx is easy to melee because styx is actually a well designed lategame boss fight. he never felt unfair at any point. i dont like useing ranged weapons (aside for the baron seriously ♥♥♥♥ those barrels i just pistoled them which made the fight utterly trivial) but eh. i guess any boss is eassy if you spend 100s of hours on this game. but the game doesnt have the content for doing that for me personally. when all i can do is try the same boss over and over it gets dull really fast. and i never liked boses that rely on reaction time and perfectly avoiding combos without useing the veil as you need it to dodge otherwise unavoidable move X from boss Y

but some bosses just feel like bs or require a very specific way to play to stand a chance.

i am not sure i will bother even beating dracula currently. progression seems to have ended anyway. only got adam and the count left. and i was never able to beat adam in early access he was just too hard for me. maybe its possible now since you can slightly outgear him unlike before but i doubt ill even try at him if its still the same fight as before.

i found it pretty lame that the 3 big raid bosses from before got turned into regular v blood bosses now. i wish they keep them as high end raid fights and instead added 3 new bosses instead.

[theworld]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

styx is easy to melee because styx is actually a well designed lategame boss fight. he never felt unfair at any point.

I'm not sure you've provided arguments why either Adam or Gorecrusher aren't.

I think your big problem is that you probably aren't using I-frames from Slashers Q or Greatsword/Pistols E. These act as another counter, but unlike counters these can also avoid most AoE if timed properly.

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by theworld:

Originally posted by Nerevar:

styx is easy to melee because styx is actually a well designed lategame boss fight. he never felt unfair at any point.

I'm not sure you've provided arguments why either Adam or Gorecrusher aren't.

I think your big problem is that you probably aren't using I-frames from Slashers Q or Greatsword/Pistols E. These act as another counter, but unlike counters these can also avoid most AoE if timed properly.

sword e also has i frames. so i am fully aware of these my dude. the problem is that 1 mistake with them can just end you. you pretty summed it up in your last part : timeing. aka perfect reaction time. not every player has that reaction time.

you dont need that for the first 2/3rds of the game mostly. you can make mistakes and still get away with a victory. but the lategame bosses just hit too hard. a mistake is a possible death shortly afterwards due to combo effects or crowd control due to getting hit.

majority of players simply wont have the skill for no hitting bosses let alone useing iframes perfectly.

gorecrusher for example is still very fair until he summons the bullet hell and then summons the spirit clone on top. at that point you have to keep track of 2 bosses comeing at you in tandem and if thier attacks go out of sync it becomes very very difficult to avoid beeing hit and once you do get hit the fight quickly spirals out of your control.

inside his lair i can manage that clone halfway well but on the outside in the middle of the forest the fight just envolves into pure chaos when any kind of extra enemy joins the battle as the fight was never designed for during early access.

i hope they remove his patrolling at night. its stupid. he should return to the lair at night. bloodmoon is designed to help the player when he struggles with any boss to get that extra boost to get it done. but when the boss isnt at his lair the entire bloodmoon duration and instead is found in a harder place to be fought than normal it fully negates the bloodmon advantage.

thats terrible design simply given how annoying lurkers are even at high level. on most early game areas partrols are alot less annoying than in the forest. and only gorecrusher is like this.

adam is just way beyond most players skill levels i guess. and if you just lower the dfifculty.... why even bother? feels like cheating to me personally to do that. especially so close to the end of the game anyway. its not like ill miss anything by not beating the last 2 bosses. i have seen all the games pve has to offer and the pvp is just not good pvp overall as it encourages ganking way too much and the map is too narrow with certain resources beeing only found in 1-2 small areas.

i guess the game is more designed for multiplayer to begin with. so maybe ill play it wrong by doing solo but well. i enjoyed my hours with this game regardless of this.

but since dork souls happend the concept of fair but challenging has gained alot of value for me personally. and some fights in this game just dont feel fair to me. i never had this issue with either souls games or sekiro. maybe its because of the top down view i dont know. but keeping track of multiple objects on screen at once is something i always had trouble with. and some bosses just clutter the screen with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

either way. still a damn good game for the small price i paid back then. definitly one of the better indie titles out there.

[Korintheblack]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

Originally posted by doublejesus:

I watched a video of no hit brutal dracula last night he swaps to double shield, abuses the cdr and veil cdr and yeah also plays like a demon.

i have now seen the double counter/shield/ranged weapon meta too many times. the fact so many players use it tells you something is off with boss design in generel later on. meleeing some of them is just not very viable at all.

and who came up with gorecrusher walking the forest for DAYS? he literally wasted my bloodmoon timer on never beeing inside his lair twice now. thats just bs design. he is way too large for these narrow forest paths to be fought at. plus need the silly cloak nonstop aswell to even see some of his moves on top. it doubles the fight difficulty when other enemies interfere even if you outgear them. this boss wasnt designed for helpers to join in aside his own spawned ones. none of the other lategame bosses leave thier lair. for a reason.

the difficulty of lategame bosses is also wildly inconsistent.

i first tryed styx. same blood level as crusher. he is on a whole different level difficulty wise compared. there is just no balance at all with the V bloods. some are stupid easy some are grossly overtuned.

maybe its because he was a shard boss in the early access. which was moved to solarus in 1.0 for some reason. i found solarus easier than gorecrusher.

You can USE TWO COUNTERS/SHIELDS?!

And yes, I agree that melee seems to be the weaker option for fighting. All the "how to" videos I've seen employ pistols.

Styx was easy for me, as you can just spin him around the big crystal thing and tag him with whatever bonk stick you have handy until his gargoyle buddies show up, then you just ring around the rosie with them while keeping an eye on Styx.

Valencia's fight is annoying since she is agile af, has wide swing arcs, and summons that stupid iron maiden.

Gorecrusher was frustrating af for me to fight, mostly because I had to wait like 4-5 days for him to waddle back into his cave. Not to mention his dumb spirit buddies.

Solarus is giving me trouble right now, because when you get him down to almost dead, he turns on Pally bubble and heals to full while light beams zoom around the very small arena and his stupid angel is chasing you/shooting you in the ass. Then when I tried again and tried to kill his angel, bringing the angel down to half health will make it turn on a pally bubble and stun it for a second or two.

So I have no idea what I'm supposed to do for that fight.

Adam's fight just seems... Wow. Whoever designed that fight needs a kick in the frontpants. You're stuck in an electrified tic-tac-toe board with the Hulk having blades for hands is swinging at you constantly. Each swing takes up about 8/10ths of the board you're in. You're expected to attack the tesla generators but they just flip back on after about 2 seconds of being off. All the while Adam is surprisingly agile for a stitched together monstrosity and can cover the distance you create just as fast as you can.

Only fair end game fight I've seen so far has been the birb monster.

[Pinhead Larry]

Yeah brutal needs some tweaking because right now any other playstyle besides double counter/shields is nearly nonviable beyond Act 1. I want to play a caster playstyle and blast people with ranged spells, but I'm not allowed to since everything 2-3 shots you on brutal.