Mother fight in Corpse is knockin me around

[Virgil]

Hi, I've tried to fight this evil wildabeast several times now and she just makes me in her poop at this point. I have a rough outline on how to fight her from a few previous attempts, but she just destroys me all the same. I haven't had any particularly great luck with items when I reach her, but I'm trying to assure myself that people have conquered this game with no items before and I just need to improve.

Do you guys have any particular pieces of advice that really helped you out in this fight, or particular characters/item synergy/etc that worked well for you? Right now I'm running with Isaac and hoping to finally unlock my first tainted character. I only started doing alt path stuff a relatively short time ago after knocking out a bunch of other content I felt would help prepare me for it.

Thanks people and hope you're having a good day.

[TamanduaGirl]

Well I'm one of the trash players here but I'm over 70% of unlocks now so I've beat her a good bit. It depends on which form of her you get. Regular is not so bad you can kinda get used to her tear and movement patterns after a bit. You definitely want to come with some speed so you can dodge her charges. Those are easy to dodge long as your not too slow.

Now her rarer form where she bats a flesh ball around and summons a bunch of zombie isaacs, well, she pummels me with that unless I am lucky with some pog items to help me kill her fast and mitigate some of the damage.

[Virgil]

Originally posted by TamanduaGirl:

Well I'm one of the trash players here but I'm over 70% of unlocks now so I've beat her a good bit. It depends on which form of her you get. Regular is not so bad you can kinda get used to her tear and movement patterns after a bit. You definitely want to come with some speed so you can dodge her charges. Those are easy to dodge long as your not too slow.

Now her rarer form where she bats a flesh ball around and summons a bunch of zombie isaacs, well, she pummels me with that unless I am lucky with some pog items to help me kill her fast and mitigate some of the damage.

I appreciate the feedback. 70% doesn't sound too bad... if you're a trash player, I don't even wanna know what that makes me, heh. I've only run into her normal variant so far, and was actually doing fairly decently I thought until that damn charge attack just started knocking me all over the room. I did notice little debris specks near where she would charge from after a time, but the window to dodge is pretty tight and sometimes my reflexes are a little slow if I've been smoking with hobbits or something.

I haven't lasted long enough in the fight for her to summon adds, that sounds terrifying. I managed to kill Delirium once after about three or four attempts and figured Mother would be relatively easier than that, but so far she's actually put up a tougher fight for me.

[TamanduaGirl]

Originally posted by Virgil:

I appreciate the feedback. 70% doesn't sound too bad... if you're a trash player, I don't even wanna know what that makes me, heh. I've only run into her normal variant so far, and was actually doing fairly decently I thought until that damn charge attack just started knocking me all over the room. I did notice little debris specks near where she would charge from after a time, but the window to dodge is pretty tight and sometimes my reflexes are a little slow if I've been smoking with hobbits or something.

I haven't lasted long enough in the fight for her to summon adds, that sounds terrifying. I managed to kill Delirium once after about three or four attempts and figured Mother would be relatively easier than that, but so far she's actually put up a tougher fight for me.

A lot of players post here that they got all marks in 600-700 hours and I'm just shy of 1300 hours as of writing this. But I suppose I'm at least average to get this far. The percentage of players to get some of the marks/achievements I've gotten is small. Does help ward off the "get good" type comments by admitting I'm though.

I'm in the minority but I actually really enjoy delirium. If I make it that far I'm most likely going to be powerful enough to survive, and beating all the other bosses on the level before him just adds to the win odds. An exception being either form of lost, since they can't get health, without some cheese items like gnawed leaf and some passive damage items the odds are bad for me.

[Virgil]

Originally posted by TamanduaGirl:

A lot of players post here that they got all marks in 600-700 hours and I'm just shy of 1300 hours as of writing this. But I suppose I'm at least average to get this far. The percentage of players to get some of the marks/achievements I've gotten is small. Does help ward off the "get good" type comments by admitting I'm :dip: though.

I'm in the minority but I actually really enjoy delirium. If I make it that far I'm most likely going to be powerful enough to survive, and beating all the other bosses on the level before him just adds to the win odds. An exception being either form of lost, since they can't get health, without some cheese items like gnawed leaf and some passive damage items the odds are bad for me.

I thought it was a really cool and intense fight thematically, but I can definitely see where the criticism comes from and won't be disappointed if that planned Delirium rework significantly changes the fight. I thought the Void itself was awesome, even though plenty of people have accused it of being a lazy rehash of previous levels.

I definitely don't go out of my way to fight Delirium unless I know I have a pretty top notch build going on. It sucked enough just having to kill Hush three times to open up the alt path. These bosses are scary.

[RedSage]

Originally posted by Virgil:

and was actually doing fairly decently I thought until that damn charge attack just started knocking me all over the room. I did notice little debris specks near where she would charge from after a time, but the window to dodge is pretty tight and sometimes my reflexes are a little slow if I've been smoking with hobbits or something.

There's actually a way to punish Mother when she does that. If you place a bomb, she'll be temporarily stuck on it until it explodes. This both buys some time to move if you're slow as well as deals a full bomb's worth of damage to her.

Also, if would help to know what part of the fight you're struggling most with. First (when she's embedded in the wall) or second phase (after she leaves the wall)? Any particular attacks that give you trouble?

Originally posted by TamanduaGirl:

Now her rarer form where she bats a flesh ball around and summons a bunch of zombie isaacs, well, she pummels me with that unless I am lucky with some pog items to help me kill her fast and mitigate some of the damage.

While I'm not sure about the ball, I am fairly positive that the zombie wave is a dps check. It only ever really happens on low dps runs as it always seems to be something that happens after enough time in the fight has elapsed.

[Virgil]

Originally posted by RedSage:

There's actually a way to punish Mother when she does that. If you place a bomb, she'll be temporarily stuck on it until it explodes. This both buys some time to move if you're slow as well as deals a full bomb's worth of damage to her.

Also, if would help to know what part of the fight you're struggling most with. First (when she's embedded in the wall) or second phase (after she leaves the wall)? Any particular attacks that give you trouble?

Hi - good to know about the bomb counter, I'll use that in a minute. I just got to Corpse in the run I'm doing right now and alt tabbed to respond real quick before I take the plunge. I have the sparkly bomb passive so at least some pickups will spawn when I use it - I have around 25 bombs or so right now so I'll probably be spamming them, so long as I don't get hit by them myself...

I think the attack I struggle most with is that charge she does after she becomes detached. I know in theory how to dodge it, but man is she fast. Luckily between the bombs I have and some speed passives acquired this run, I at least stand a chance of avoiding them.

I did see her "summon an army of zombies" move in action last night and though it was stressful, I didn't actually get hit during that sequence. The ball and chain thing she does seems to hit me an awful lot though, and she did summon some Terratoma looking stuff (little black ball of sickly looking crap) all over the map at one point that just seemed like a crapshoot on whether I'd take a hit or not.

I know I'll get her down eventually. I think I'm coming up on my 4th or 5th attempt right now, and practice makes perfect etc. I'm enjoying the journey even if it tests my sanity every now and again.

EDIT: Yeah, died again. I assume I was pretty close to finally destroying her; I even had the benefit of PHD, some stat ups from pills and carried a Full Health pill into the fight with 7 or so red hearts and the rest black/soul and still failed.

Not sure if there was a single attack that gave me the most trouble this time around. I got hit by the charge once and found that my bombs were very effective in slowing her down with that, but all of her other attacks more than made up for it as I got hit several times by her spinning tears crap and several more by that whole "grid attack" thing she's got going on.

I even had Lil Delirium with me to watch and laugh at my failure.

[RedSage]

Originally posted by Virgil:

I think the attack I struggle most with is that charge she does after she becomes detached. I know in theory how to dodge it, but man is she fast. Luckily between the bombs I have and some speed passives acquired this run, I at least stand a chance of avoiding them.

Something I forgot to mention in my last post is that there's an easy way to tell what side she's going to charge on. Her first charge will always be on the side of the room you're standing on. So after she jumps up (and after you hear her land/see the landing splash), move to the other side and then back after she passes as the second charge will always be over the other half of the room. Also, since she always dashes from the opposite end of the room on her second charge, don't hug either end of the room. Try to stay more towards the middle.

Originally posted by Virgil:

The ball and chain thing she does seems to hit me an awful lot though, and she did summon some Terratoma looking stuff (little black ball of sickly looking crap) all over the map at one point that just seemed like a crapshoot on whether I'd take a hit or not.

Hmm, unfortunately, I'm not quite sure which attacks you mean.

My best guess is the knife throw and the fistula that she knocks around?

Originally posted by Virgil:

I know I'll get her down eventually. I think I'm coming up on my 4th or 5th attempt right now, and practice makes perfect etc. I'm enjoying the journey even if it tests my sanity every now and again.

Hey, that's the spirit. Yeah, Mother takes a decent amount of practice to get down. Even now, after completing every mark, there's some of her attacks (mostly phase 2) that trip me up.

Originally posted by Virgil:

all of her other attacks more than made up for it as I got hit several times by her spinning tears crap and several more by that whole "grid attack" thing she's got going on.

Yeah, the spinning tears one is definitely her hardest attack to dodge. Even standing back against the wall and moving left and right to dodge them isn't a perfect solution.

As for the line attacks, you generally don't have to move too much between each wave. Once you see the first one, get in position and then microadjust for every next wave. It might take a bit to get the hang of it but it is definitely one of the fairest and easiest attacks to dodge.

[Virgil]

Originally posted by RedSage:

That's very helpful advice, thank you. The only time I got hit with the charge last time was on her first pass, so knowing that she'll always do the initial charge on your current side of the room is going to be very useful going forward. I'll make sure not to hug either wall.

The grid attack I'm normally okay with, but I got careless this last time around and tried to stupidly grab some hearts and such that had popped up from the sparkly bombs I was dropping everywhere. Turns out that "ball and chain" thing I was referring to was actually that Fistula (not Terratoma, I misspoke earlier) attack you mentioned - I'm normally honing in on Isaac to dodge like a madman and only see her attacks from the peripheral of my vision so it looked like the Fistula was a ball on the end of a chain, haha.

I was okay with most of the Fistula part as she was knocking it around, but once it splits into a dozen or so smaller forms and scatters all over the map is when I ran into trouble. I know I'll get it eventually, and maybe someday I'll even consider her "dangerous but not terrible".

[Virgil]

Unsolicited update time - I finally did it, yaay! I got pretty overpowered this run with some D6 shenanigans and ended up wiith 10 red hearts, the Book of Shadows, plenty of damage and speed and all the fixins. The Habit and V9 or whatever you get from donating to the electricity guy really helped keep the Book of Shadows active through much of the fight and even though I had a Sun Card as backup, I didn't end up needing it.

I thought I was gonna end up in some Home place or something where I get to unlock tainted people, but at least I finally got Jacob & Essau... although I hear mixed takes on them a lot. Anyway, sometimes you just gotta do the things, man, and Mother was one of those things. I'm not looking forward to having to fight her again eventually, but at least I know what to expect now.

Thanks again for the helpful advice.