Are you supposed to beat the Hive Mother like that?

[Loreilei]

I was trying to solo the Hive Mother, but didn't manage to beat her in regular combat.

I found another way, which devs may want to fix but it may ruin the fun for other players to read it, so I'm putting the post as spoiler.


As I said, I was trying to solo the Hive Mother, but after downing her to half health, she just spawn too many adds and it was not manageable.

While exploring crafting options, I saw the dynamite and its ~400dmg, for a low amount of resources tbh.

As the Hive Mother doesn't aggro unless attacked, it was easy to craft 60 dynamites, place them around the Mother and trigger them for an insta-kill. I probably wasted some dynamites in the process too, as I didn't especially optimized their placement.

I also had the Carapace Set equipped (+15% explosion damage), so it probably also helped with this strategy.

It literally end up in a one shot of the Hive Mother, and I figured that perhaps devs want to fix it. Or perhaps not, as I don't know if the Hive Mother is doable solo otherwise.

The easiest way I see to prevent fix is to make the Hive Mother aggro if the player is in an area of 4 blocks around the Hive Mother, so the player cant place the dynamites, or perhaps a lower range to still allow some dynamites.

Perhaps this strategy is already well-know, in which case feel free to close the discussion.

[VulpesFulguralis]

That method is new to me. That said hive mother specifically NEEDS to be cheesed solo to beat it. Normal method is dig a circle around the arena put a few spikes inside to to help and shoot at a range hive mother can't even hit you while the adds stay trapped on the other side of the ditch. Has to be around most/all of the arena though cause the adds can break the walls.

[Spoonalot]

That's a clever way to deal with a boss I had not considered before, but to be perfectly honest all I remember about killing the Hive mother was just circling her with a crunchy pepper wrap while going Unga-Bunga with an Axe and drinking Health potions to ignore the acid damage while circling and largely ignoring the adds.
I don't know how most go about fighting the bosses 'normally' but the best advice I can give any newer players is that carrying 20+ of the default health potion and cooked Food buffs are the single biggest contributing factor to early game boss deaths.
Also fun fact: the hoe's in the game can pick up slime/acid.

[Skrem]

I just beat the hive mother on Hard. I beat it with strength/skill and movement speed. My graveyard is very full of my tomestones. I just focused on keeping the adds down as fast as possible early, because the longer the fight goes the harder it is to keep up with the adds.
Just pop some damage potions and stoneskin potions, run lots with good movement speed and focus on the corners of the hive mother cause the acid doesn't settle there sometimes when she shoots it. Besides that, just practice. Of course, I could have wisened up and used spike traps but I'm apparently a glutton for punishment.

[TheClosetSkeleton]

Bested the bugger in single combat, but yes this is an available methods. Another methods involves covering the spawners with obsidian (very recent bug), digging trenches and simply tanking the damage to luring cavelings in the area to distract the grubs.

HM isn't particularly difficult, and the combat of this game is slightly busted so there are no wrong way as long as it gets the job done

[Big Mad Wolf]

Crafting such an amount of dynamit is not that little of effort, I would be to lazy for it :D

[Hammer Of Evil]

oh this isn't a spoiler, but it's good you found a way that suits you.

there are several other methods that are also useful.