Help for Unstable flesh and difficult spikes in general

[dockrama89]

I love/hate this game, it's unfair to the point that it's bad game design but there are so many things that I love. I have played difficult games, I have played Dark Souls, I have played Rayman Origins (yes, it's hard, harder than Dark Souls to be honest), I love hard games. But for God's sake, the Unstable Flesh makes me cry. So... What should I do?
I am talking about the Orange quest, the second one, I have been playing this game for a couple of months more or less, bought it already with corpses and heart attacks (leave both on), almost 50 hours, so I know a few things, but I just can't seem to win this, I lost so many characters. Last run today I got 5 crits out of 7 hits from the boss. My characters were almost at full health at the beginning, at turn 4: two were dead, one at death's door, one almost at death's door. Any not crit hit by the enemy "hard-hitter" heads dealt 12+ damage, I can't heal that much damage fast and kill the flesh at the same time, my characters never dodged and the flesh sometimes did! Characters were almost all lvl 4, fully upgraded (for 3 or 4) every run.
I love what this game could be, I love what the developers are doing, but this is too much based on luck and it's bad game design I think, it's not hard, you're just meant to always lose... I know many people complain about the difficulty, but maybe it was easier, so all the people who say "It's meant to be difficult" never restarted the game to see how it is NOW. By the way, the green quests were doable, even easy honestly, the green bosses too, now I'm stuck with unstable flesh and the cannon (easiest boss at green, now even that's a problem) and I barely killed the Swine, losing 3 people. Am I doing something terribly wrong? Any suggestions? Or am I meant to not finish the game? Is that what the developers want?
At least when you succeeded in Dark Souls it was because you were being smart and patient, if you succeed here it's because you're lucky, so you're not relieved after that, you were not a good player, dice favoured you, where's the fun in that?
Kindly help me if that's possible, if there is an exploit (bad game design in this case honestly); if you just think this is how the game should be, than I'm sorry but I think it was badly conceived.

[Daemonjax]

You don't have to kill bosses you find too hard. Ignore those missions, or mod the game to make it easier.

I agree it's a different kind of difficulty than the Dark Souls games. It's different than X-Com (original), too. It's more reliant on RNG than X-Com (original) -- I just finished an Iron Man Genius playthrough so I say that with confidence.

It's like the grind of Diablo 2 combined with the disposable heroes of X-Com (original) with... not sure... maybe... the tactics of the early NES Final Fantasy games?

[dockrama89]

How can you finish the game if you don't kill the bosses? Killing them is the point of the game, is it not? I know it's an early access, but this problem will remain even later and the objective will still be "Kill the bosses"...
"Don't do it or tweak it" is not an answer... Is there a way to kill these bosses, have I only had bad luck every time I tried or should I just go f**k myself because you either love to die without ANY chance or winning or you don't play? The orange quests are doable, still a big spike since green ones (in the cove it's even more spiky), but doable.

[Lu]

Beat this boss at level 3 and 5 recently. Very easy to do. In fact i'm fairly confident I could beat this boss dozens of times in a row without ever losing a character.

Just focus fire on the fleshy part of the body that does the healing, ideally with bleed attacks. Stunning the head is also a good idea as this inflicts the most damage to your party.

The cannon is even easier once you know to bring at least two heroes that can hit the back row. Just keep killing the guy who lights the fuse first and the cannon will never fire. Bringing a Man-At-Arms is also a great idea as you can use his riposte to take care of the other bandits without actually wasting turns on them every round. Once that's set and you've killed the the fuse lighter, the rest of your heroes are free to grind the cannon down.

[Daemonjax]

Originally posted by dockrama89:

How can you finish the game if you don't kill the bosses? Killing them is the point of the game, is it not?

You can't finish the game, it's not done yet. ;)

The bosses don't lock you out of content, that's why I say they're skippable.

If you like hard boss battles, then keep at it. They are beatable.

Without a choosable difficulty level, at least some people will find the game too hard or too easy. The devs will do their best to balance stuff, of course, but balance will be in flux until maybe 6 months after release.

[dockrama89]

Thanks Marma, maybe I'll try again, when I'll be more calm :-P
For the cannon I only tried once, missed the guy with the fuse, got BOOMed at first time, got the hell out of there... Man-at-Arms wasn't targeted... So, maybe just unlucky, but still I think in a well done game you should be able to recover, at least slightly... BOOM brought everyone at death's door, one got killed by bleeding, three survived to fight another day...
Oh I forgot to say, I tried to stun the hardhitting head, missed it, twice... :'(

@Daemonjax I know I know, it just sucks a lot to leave them be :-P I meant to go as far as I could and start again when the game would be full released!

[Blockhead]

I would argue that the Flesh boss is probably the hardest out of all the bosses - it's only real weakness (the heart organ) doesn't always appear and slugging away at the other body parts takes a long time. Marks, Stuns and Debuffs also disappear when a body organ changes, so only use them if you're going first. Bleed/Blight however, do remain, and since the entire boss is considered a single creature this makes the Plague Doctor's Plague Grenades incredibly useful. It's certainly the boss that's given me the most trouble out of all of them.

Having high HP/Protection characters in the front 2 ranks is a must, since Maws of Life deals massive damage and bleed. Unless you have absolute faith in your hero's ability to dodge. Bleed resist charms are also incredibly useful for the frontliners.

An Occultist with upgraded Wyrd Healing is useful, as well as his use of Debuffs for this fight (if you go first) or Abyssal Artillery which hits the two back organs, coupled with a Plague Doctor for healing Blight/Bleed and using Stun Grenades/Plague Grenades, as the boss is still vulnerable to Stun/Blight (which is interesting, as it's a Warrens boss, you'd think it'd be resistance to Blight).

A Crusader and Leper (or two of each) work extremely well as front liners, as both have decent multi-target damage attacks, the Leper has good resistances (and can self heal for more) and can give himself protection and the Crusader's Holy Lance/Battle Heal are also useful skills, as HL allows him to target backline organs (when coupled with a second Crusader this becomes extremely useful) and Battle Heal helps keep heroes off of Death's Door. Stunning Blow, since the boss is vulnerable to stunning, is also a valid choice.

As for the Cannon, I'd say it's the easiest boss - as long as you kill/stun the Matchman that spawns each round (and this is easy to do, as he always goes last and doesn't have anything special protecting him) it's just a case of damaging the Cannon when you can and picking off the other enemies when they spawn. Bleeding/Blighting the Cannon's reinforcements is super useful, as the Cannon never spawns 2 of the same enemy and you can focus on the Cannon whilst the reinforcements take damage over time.

The Swine is also fairly easy. Never, ever kill Wilbur first - killing Wilbur first sends the main boss into a frenzy that will make the entire fight so much harder. Since Wilbur goes twice at orange level, there's no point stunning him. You can, however, stun the Swine, as he only goes once. Having 2 Arbalests with Rallying Flares is also incredibly useful for this fight, as the Flares remove Marks (and therefore reduce the chunk of damage coming your way from the Swine).

[h0b0king]

All the bosses have a gimmick and once you figure out their gimmick they become far easier. The unstable flesh is very weak to DOTS as well as having a 'soft spot'. In some ways this makes fighting them multiple times repetative, but really once you know how to deal with the gimmicks they become much easier. I would also suggest that high damage bosses (Swine/Prophet) are easy to keep weak with the repeated application of debuffs.

When the game feels impossible or unfair, it usually means the player is missing something.

[Arcangelo]

Easy way to kill the Flesh:

- Bring Plague Doctor, Houndmaster, Hellion and a hero of your choice (I suggest the Occultist, he can heal and hit 2 targets at once with Abyssal Artillery)
- Upgrade all your heroes gear and skills.
- Go kill the Flesh. Use your Plague Doctor to Blight the 2 backrows and keep stacking Blight. Use your dog to hit all the 4 targets (don't forget the cookie) every turn. Use Hellion to attack the frontline with If it Bleeds and hit the heart if you have the chance, it's a soft spot. Use Occultist to heal or do damage to the backlines.
Flesh won't be able to regenerate all the Blight/Bleed damage.

[Pothocket]

Originally posted by h0b0king:

When the game feels impossible or unfair, it usually means the player is missing something.

Very true. I wish people would stop making "help" topics that basically boil down to "show me how to be lucky in this luck based game of pure luck"

[JessRivers]

All four parts of the flesh share health. This makes AOE attacks highly effective, especially when combined with bleeds and blights. I like to bring a Houndmaster and a Jester as both have multi-target bleeds. Plague Doctors are also effective for their double-blight attack and your frontliner can be any of the "tank" classes really.

In general, bosses are in the room farthest from the starting point of the dungeon. If you go straight for that room, and don't take any detours, you can camp in the room before the boss to top off your health and give yourself some powerful buffs with the right classes.

[dockrama89]

First of all I thank all the guys who shared info to help!

Second: yes i knew I had to use AoE DoT attacks, I'm not that dumb :-P My main problem was: if I put, let's say, hound and plague in the backline, I have no healer... Or do you think I should put hound in 2nd spot? Because someone said "two tanks high HP/PROT in the 1st and 2nd"... What if I try like, in order from the back, plague-occultist-hound-tank (hellion)? Problem is the big head can hit my 2nd character and there is also a part with a worm-thing or something that hit the backline... For high damage (13 or so)... Anyway I'll try with those four and a hound in 2nd spot!

Third: @Pothocket Maybe I was missing something (didn't think about stunning the big bad head, was too concentrated on AoE DoT), maybe I was A LOT unlucky as I said if you read the message, and maybe you could have just helped like the others or shut up, don't you think? I played a lot of difficult games, and I am 26 yo so many today "hardcore gamers" were drinking milk from their mothers' breasts while I was playing hard games. I was asking for help AND complaining about the game being unfair because honestly anyone can see it is at least at some degree; I think it is supposed to be that way, but still, it could improve, and since it is Early Access, which we paid in advance and out of hope and dreams, WE HAVE to complain a bit to improve it, without ruining it of course and without ruining what the developers had in mind. So, to conclude, maybe I'm complaining too much, but what about you complaining about who complains? :-D Oh and by the way, if the advice I got is "put an Occultist as a healer" (which can also heal 0-1-2-3 and make my characters bleed and that happened in that last unlucky run), than I NEED luck, don't you think? So it could be luck based and a bit unfair and I could be right.

[dockrama89]

Oh and about the big Swine, yes I learned not to kill the small one first, the first time, the hard way :-P

[Ghin]

If you actually want help, post a video of you playing so we can tell you what you're doing wrong.

Otherwise all you'll get is 'l2p scrub noob lulz' comments.

[dockrama89]

@ghin ahahah thanks :-) Never uploaded a video actually... Anyway, I'll try with all the advice I got, if I still have problems, I'll try to do that!

[Micolash Cage]

Try a vestal in 4 fourth rank and 3 Man at arms. Spam bolster. Easy win.