True ending boss fight is ridiculously over-tuned *spoilers inside*

[Neki]

The true ending boss is ridiculous, I think it's way too over-tuned. They have massive amounts of health along with basically punishing every mechanic you'd want to do in the game. You can't move until you've killed a certain add, another add does barrage down a line and another add just infinitely scales 2 attack on 2 counter and the last add just scales off every card that is destroyed. Not being able to move is probably the biggest offender since the whole game-play loop revolves around shuffling on the field to absorb and shift damage and the true boss just completely negates that until you've burned through a 50+ health add.

Getting the true boss fight is also RNG because you need both vase items and the best way to do that is through shops. You can get it through card rewards but it's almost insulting to waste a card reward to get a vase piece because ifit's offered you have to take it if you want to get the true ending fight. Getting to the heart fight in Slay the Spire is deterministic compared to here and because there is so many encounters in Slay the Spire, you aren't punished compared to wasting gold or a card reward. (edit: found out vase pieces are always in glowing areas on the map so that's better but still sucks losing a whole card reward.)

So far the closet I've gotten to actually killing it is stacking snowman cards so you can lock down 3 of them and then needing to have massive damage to kill one lane bu it's still awful to do.

I have problems with the final boss with against your old team but at least that fight doesn't throw out all the mechanics you've been building up to for the sake of difficulty.

I'd like to see how play-testers or the devs actually beat the true boss consistently because I'm honestly clueless how anyone could think this was anywhere near balanced.

[Ronin-XIII]

One of the devs admitted to only being able to beat the game twice I think. Not a good sign of balance.

[N0iR]

I beat them first attempt (didn't know then where even coming up), with a 2 poison to all enemies (4 with crowned lumin vase), double attack (blaze-tea), 3 (4) countdown.
Accelerated process by using countdown reduction wands.
Enemy team fell quickly, with 8 poison after first cycle, 13 after second..
For survival I buffered against attacks with consume +9 health berry juice and an occational frost/clunker.

they are very tough, but clearly beatable.

@ronin-XIII - that 'Dev' specified very clearly for clairity that they were part of the publishing team, hence not a Developer per say.

[The Fool]

I beat them second attempt with an OP tinker deck. Ink to turn off the guy that stops you from moving, some turn control with snow, and a whole bunch of the +damage taken debuff did the trick.

They’re definitely hard and you need ways to crowd control them with snow, and ink is as overpowered as ever. I’ll be curious to see how I can beat it with non-tinkers - I imagine that careful use of summons to fake repositioning will be the key in my next run.

[Ronin-XIII]

Oh my bad. I honestly didn't know they said that. Thought they were a dev.

[kanikani]

This game has a 3 Winstreak achievement.
There is still hope if the Frost Guardian remains after the first clear, but so far this achievement seems almost impossible ... at least to me.

[The Fool]

Originally posted by The Fool:

I’ll be curious to see how I can beat it with non-tinkers - I imagine that careful use of summons to fake repositioning will be the key in my next run.

I just beat them as the first clan. My leader didn't really do anything; the important parts were:

-The guy that applies snow to all enemies every 4 turns, but with the -1 turn count charm, plus lumen jar to make it 2 snow, plus the frenzy tea that slowed him down by 1 turn but added frenzy.
-2 kerbonkers (which attack whenever snow is applied to an enemy), which each also had an "apply snow on hit" charm thanks to duplication (they didn't trigger each other though; no infinite loop shenanigans), and one of which had an 8 nut charm as well.
-3 Snow application spells (one of which had noomin so it didn't take a turn to cast) and the +2 speed spell.

Crowns on the snow application guy, both kerbonkers, and the lumen jar.

Basically I snow-locked the entire enemy group. The only one that ever got a turn was the bottom one with the barrage, once, but the only person he hit was the kerbonker with the 8 nut charm - I did get a little lucky drawiing the +2 speed spell in my opening hand but I was prepared to take the couple of hits that would've headed my way if I hadn't. Between all the snow I was throwing around with my characters and the spells focused on the two that could only ever have 1 snow applied, I almost completely locked them out and pummeled them to death with my kerbonkers.

Funny thing is, the run started as a poison/healing run - my leader had "apply 3 poison when hit" and 10 hp, and I did take the berry guy that heals everyone in his row when he kills and the berry guy that gets +2 damage on being healed. But I had taken some snow stuff as well, which seems to be a pretty good addition to any deck, and ended up pivoting when I just kept getting better and better snow options.

[Moucorne]

I also beat it on first try using a busted build with Mini Mika getting 4 frenzy per scrap, with urn+charm (he attacked 30 times on the last turn). To be honest though it's supposed to be a super hard boss only busted decks can beat, kind of like the heart in Slay the Spire where most basic cookie cutter decks that get through a run reliably aren't enough to beat it.

[Neki]

I managed to beat it with a ridiculously overpowered poison build. You either have to kill the frost jailer before the Frost Lancer attacks in the top row or you need to be able to control him and the frost crusher since those are the scariest threats.

Still way too hard for the average player though lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noo0rqbVB-g&ab_channel=spyder2x

[OK Boomer]

Not to necro this, but while the true boss ripped me a new one with a pretty good mini mika build, a slapback monch deck blew through it. Sure the guy who ramps on card destruction got souped, but with monch triggering nearly as quickly as I could feed him with throw away summons and the dregg buffering my leader, it didn't take too much to wipe the field.

As far as balancing, I really don't feel that the true boss is much of a step up from any of the other boss battles. Is the jailer's ability annoying? Yeah, 100%, and true it wasn't added with much grace, but the whole game has a focus on repositioning and heavy wiff-punishing; the true final boss simply makes you consider the opening positioning with the same care as you would proc-order or card choice. The same goes for the lumin lamp; it's a very powerful tool but only if you can get both parts, so you're trading off utility now, for some later.

I guess in the end, it comes to the way you see and play the game. While it's marketed as a card battler, the limits on one card per turn and focus on adaptive utility makes it feel more like a TBS, and I've found much more success when playing it as such. Hopefully you've found a bit of a groove and are achieving more victories, or if not then at least you found a rocking soundtrack!

[Endy]

I beat it first try with a +2 ink on every enemy card (consumed). I frenzy charmed it and doubled the effect with the jar (crowned) and crowned it so i owned it from the start of the fight.

8 ink on all 6 of them and some snow besides that during the fight was enough to controll em'.

But yeah i felt pretty well prepared and it was a close fight!

[7Soul]

I somehow beat it on my first try, without losing any companion XD On the first turn I thought "how the hell am I going to beat this" but a lot of snow and a clutch barrage shield with the -2 attack charm made it possible

I've seen people getting 10-win streaks so I gotta believe there's more skill involved than most comments here give credit

[bigm17]

While there are some builds that have a tougher time with the true ending boss, I've beaten it with every type of build, so its just a matter of knowing how to approach it with your build.. There are a few keys to winning the fight:

- Lock down Crusher - this guy will spiral out of control and destroy your team in a few rounds if you don't snow or ink him asap. Crowned snowcake or ink will do the trick, or constantly having a chump blocker will work until you can snow him.
- Kill or lock down Junker - it may not seem it, but this guy will also get out of control. If you don't have a barrage unit or high dmg items, just snow him when you can or even better, just use a Frostbite Shard and he becomes a minor annoyance.
- Kill off Jailer - this is where you want to focus your attacks so that you can move around to avoid the aimless and barrage attacks when they come up.

If you do the above, you should have a good shot at winning the fight. Your main line should generally be on the Jailer floor (leader in back, dmg dealer in middle, tank in front), with a throwaway unit or clunker or summon on the Crusher floor.

If you can't beat the Jailer in time before the Lancer attacks, you need to make sure your leader and main dmg dealer can survive the aimless hit. I usually won't take a leader that has less than 8 HP for this single reason. This is where a lumin vased pinkberry juice usually comes into play if you are under 8 HP, or Frostbell or Frostbloom to reduce the dmg. Always have ways to add HP or heal or Frost an enemy to be able to survive the hits. And since its the last fight, don't worry about units dying off to protect your leader. Change your crowns around as needed and use the lumin vase to either amp up dmg or amp up your hp. The fight may seem ridiculous at first, but its not at all impossible.

[Aluminum]

After 90~ hours of experience, the final battle is beatable about 40% of the time which is somewhat in line with the Heart from Slay the Spire.

That said, there definitely is a huge difficulty spike that can make the fight seem impossible the first few times you encounter it, and the fight is structured in a way that only some strategies can win, while other strategies that works fine for everything before that point will just fall apart.

Neither of those two things are great IMO, but "ridiculous" is a bit of an overstatement.

[Talist]

Personally, I feel like the true final boss is fine, *except* for the Frost Jailer. It is quite annoying that it shuts down the most important and fun mechanic of the entire game, so you need a pretty explosive team or you just die.

[Omnipresent Oatmeal]

Originally posted by Talist:

Personally, I feel like the true final boss is fine, *except* for the Frost Jailer. It is quite annoying that it shuts down the most important and fun mechanic of the entire game, so you need a pretty explosive team or you just die.

The worst part is that some builds can outright ignore Frost Jailer, while it unfairly penalizes any deck that cares at all about positioning based on attack order.
Spamming summons like Fallow can force move your cards around, so long as you have one spot open at all times for the force move to work.

Everything else about true final boss is good.
Frost Jailer's current implementation being almost specifically made to screw certain decks that can pass every other encounter with no issue, however, is not as good.