Getting past Badger Boss?

[Kyle Katarn]

I feel like this boss is totally overtuned, compared to pretty much everything else in the game. The only way to even stand a chance is if you either have massive cleave damage or enough burst to kill the adds in a single turn.
Is there anything I am missing? I came close twice, but each time he had 3 adds at that point that I had no chance of blocking.

[Fingusa of the East]

Hey there, I have recently defeated this boss by having an item that put Weakness on weapons in a row, had lots of shivs and that one weapon that does small damage but to every enemy.

I also had a couple items constantly giving me armor, boots, helmets and such.

Eventually all of my weapons had so much Weakness on them that I outscaled the boss.

It was my first time facing the boss.

[CarThief]

Do not pass go.
Or in other words, you don't unless your build is AMAZING.

But yeah, a high-damage build works, or something that can do lots of group damage every turn, or keep him down with Weakness and spare damage while culling the extra enemies first (with enough damage that he doesn't outscale you with exessive Rage/scaling).

Can't think of much else specifically. He litterally is the most OP POS trash boss in the game (for floor 6 atleast, haven't seen what hell awaits in floor 9 just yet).
Like seriously? He has more ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ damage per turn (if you count adds) then any other boss, and also has the most godamn HP of any boss as well! What the ♥♥♥♥ where they thinking!? (To quote the AVGN, and also a honest reaction to this POS.)

---

If you've unlocked the Swamp place with Tote in it, you can also go there and hopefully that keeps that POS out of the boss rotation (or atleast makes it more likely then "50/50" (which honestly is more like 90% of the time instead of the Blademaster).

There's atleast 3 new bosses in that area, all weaker then the badger ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ (EVEN IF THEY ALL TEAMED UP AGAINST IT - JESUS ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CHRIST). Works wonders to complete annoying quest runs.

[ulzgoroth]

Absolutely nuked it with my feather shiv run, IIRC - got the coral and duped the feather shiv every single fight so I had more than a dozen each dealing close to 20 damage before using my AP...

But that's a pretty wild build you shouldn't be able to count on.

Maybe if you could get a dodge build going? You'd still need to remove the adds, but part of what makes it hard is each one hitting for so much damage. I haven't seen the tools for this, though.

[Zuruas]

he used to be worse lol

what I do is just not go into the caves if I am not ready for the badger boss and go swamp instead. I think I only ever go caves if I have some kind of big damage or spike combo going on, stuff like poison or mana just takes too long there even if it works.

its a boring solution but the enemies and bosses there have more counterplay options in the swamp, just overall the more fun path.

[LHGreen]

I mean, he's not really that hard, and it's not hard to get a build going that can kill him.

[AokiYakumo]

Badger Boss's biggest strength is Rage-Stacking. You basically want to kill this *ssh*le before like turn 6 or else they absolutely kink sh*t all over the place.

Defensively, your best option is a good offense. Getting 4 Energy before Badger Boss is a must: you need every AP you can get to make sure you can kill the adds in 2 turns, otherwise you just get overwhelmed. Past that there's two options that I've found work:

- Burn stacking: Get a 2x Halberd, add Burn to it via a forge, stick a Fire Gem next to it. Should be 16 Burn per turn on top of the 4-5 per swing AoE, allowing you to deal considerable damage to both the boss and any adds. Best if you stick it next to the breastplate that's +2 Block/+1 Damage, and a Pearl or Emerald to get its base damage to 8 per swing

- Rage-Stacking. A high damaging weapon with multiple forge slots can hold one or even two (if you're lucky with item drops) +1 Rage upgrades. Fox Rapier comes to mind here. You can get the weapon up to the point where it should be able to dish out 30 damage per use by turn 3, and at that point you can kill monsters quick enough that the enemy's rage stacking doesn't matter that much.

You also can get a lot of benefit from having Haste on shields/structures to Turtle, while having ways of stacking Spikes.

But really it comes down to being a DPS check. If you can't kill regular Badgers in 2 turns you're not beating this boss.

[660bryan]

I used to think Badger Boss is the hardest...
...until I made it to The Frozen Dephts' Boss. Which is Badger Boss on Steroids for me.

Bosses in this game will usually punish you very easily when trying to stall, as they will gradually start doing more damage until you can't block anything. So if you got no way to increase your weapon damage or drop enemy damage/block, you're usually screwed.

[AokiYakumo]

Originally posted by 660bryan:

I used to think Badger Boss is the hardest...
...until I made it to The Frozen Dephts' Boss. Which is Badger Boss on Steroids for me.

Bosses in this game will usually punish you very easily when trying to stall, as they will gradually start doing more damage until you can't block anything. So if you got no way to increase your weapon damage or drop enemy damage/block, you're usually screwed.

It's not even the Frozen Heart boss that's the issue, it's the d.amn Enlightened Cultists that show up before the boss that ape your sh*t.

[Hailspork]

IIRC, there's a consumable that can cleanse his stacks of rage. Pretty easy to find, and you have 3 floors of advance notice.