Spider boss how

[Tackles]

I've gotta vent. I need input.

So this boss:
1) Is faster than anything I can put together, guaranteeing I am within melee range 100% of the time, unless dodge is up.
2) Lays webs to further slow me, which are huge and never despawn.
3) Is physically huge, blocking my attempts to dodge.
4) Has a clone 50% of the time to further block movement.
5) Lays eggs which block movement further, in addition to the giant building-sized boss and the webs
6) The eggs spawn MULTIPLE enemies, all of which are the same speed as the boss, meaning faster than me
7) Has a three-hit left-right-left combo, which overlaps in the middle, giving no save zone in which dodging is guaranteed, has virtually zero wind-up, and cannot be walked away from, given how fast the boss is.
8) The left-right-left combo is impossible to track which is next, if you're orbiting the boss and its orientation changes.

Compared to the Kangaroo guy who:
1) Does nothing for 75% of the fight.
2) Has a simple 3-hit combo that is easily dodged.
3) Does minor poison on hit.

I'm sorry, this is balanced, HOW exactly? I can't run away - its too fast. I can't slugfest, because the DPS it puts out is far too high. I can't dodge the attack pattern because of the giant sprite size, ten mobs its spawns, its clone add, the webs all over the floor (which never go away) and the spastic movement of the boss that is impossible to predict.

This is on difficulty 20. This isn't even considering the fact that this boss can spawn with ANOTHER boss, if I get unlucky.

I've tried social (I get mobbed due to speed), alpha damage (not enough defense), speed (even when fast, I get sprite-blocked), fleeing (not fast enough). What is the deal with this boss?

If anyone has useful input for how to reliably beat this thing on difficulty 20, please let me know what I'm missing. Because this boss doesn't seem reliably beatable with any strategy. If you beat it on sub-20, I'm happy for you, but saying it's easy on an easy difficulty is missing the point.

[Tackles]

Oh sorry, I forgot to add - after it kills you, the death screen gives you the helpful hint of "Try dodging the boss's attacks."

I almost put my fist through my monitor.

[Annabelle Siles]

That "tip" the game gives for Clawdia is legit an eye-opening act of trolling. Whoever thought that up must have written it with a ♥♥♥♥-eating grin of pure mischief. Clawdia snowballs so hard so fast, the lack of boss variety really does exacerbate threat-level Clawdia poses compared to poor Krabaroo.

You are apparently further in the game than I am, so you already know that you need to destroy those eggsacs ASAP which will require a good strong weapon, like, max horns or something. If I don't think I have the tools to kill Clawdia efficiently, I just don't even bother. I just focus on surviving, if I can.

This isn't a great solution, but you can try saving an oasis or hot-spring, avoid letting the Bramble destroy it. The insta-heal can buy you some time if you run out of burrows. If the Clawdia(s) egg-up faster than you can deal with them, I really think you hafta go into zombie-survivor mode and just survive however you can.

Projectile tongue seems to rock Clawdia's world though :o have you tried that yet? Maybe some of the new evolutions were specifically to make Clawdia easier to handle. But yeah she's a true monster, I get screwed over by her a lot.

[Evilinferno]

since you already know her attack pattern it should be pretty easy even in pressure 20
get a good, atleast blue rarity+, attack and hopefully upgrade it.
ignore the eggs and minions and avoid being in the web, use dash if needed somehow.
approach her by moving counter-clockwise around her to avoid her first attack with her right claw and immediately move around her clockwise to avoid the follow up left claw attack.

and that's basically all you need, i've been doing pressure 20 with mainly minimalist lately so you don't even need any dash/dodge evo to steamroll her like that.

important note: if you get too many +size evolutions without getting any -size to compensate then clawdia will just murder you hopelessly unless you kill her before she kills you.
hollow bones is a more safe evolution than +size evolutions when going against clawdia :^)
so avoid +size evolution, genuinely do not pick them if you want to live

[b00marrows]

Weirdly enough I don't know if I have had much of an issue with Clawdia.
She hits kind of hard but doesn't seem to attack that frequently.
Sadly neither the eggs nor baby's seem to ever pay out with anything, which is the biggest insult.

Best move is to clear the eggs/babys keeping the field clear for as much freedom as you can muster. Ranged attacks work well and trying to rotate the fight around the arena away from webs also helps.

[Tackles]

Originally posted by Annabelle Siles:

You are apparently further in the game than I am, so you already know that you need to destroy those eggsacs ASAP which will require a good strong weapon, like, max horns or something. If I don't think I have the tools to kill Clawdia efficiently, I just don't even bother. I just focus on surviving, if I can.

This isn't a great solution, but you can try saving an oasis or hot-spring, avoid letting the Bramble destroy it. The insta-heal can buy you some time if you run out of burrows. If the Clawdia(s) egg-up faster than you can deal with them, I really think you hafta go into zombie-survivor mode and just survive however you can.

That's a good idea to use an oasis or hot spring during the fight to regenerate. I'll add that to my bag of tricks! In terms of weaponry, I've gone in with legendary horns AND elephant snout, with 2-3 levels each, and I get steamrolled. It's not my DPS output as much as it is the fact that I'm too slow to dodge, there are webs everywhere that never leave, and I'm physically blocked by gigantic sprites everywhere.

What do you mean by "letting the bramble destroy it"? I'm not familiar with what that means.

After thinking this problem through a bit, I thought that maybe Wings or Fin may allow for high-efficiency water movement, and perhaps I could take the fight to the water where she's slow and I'm not. But that's a guess... never tried it yet.

[Tackles]

Originally posted by Evilinferno:

since you already know her attack pattern it should be pretty easy even in pressure 20
get a good, atleast blue rarity+, attack and hopefully upgrade it.
ignore the eggs and minions and avoid being in the web, use dash if needed somehow.
approach her by moving counter-clockwise around her to avoid her first attack with her right claw and immediately move around her clockwise to avoid the follow up left claw attack.

and that's basically all you need, i've been doing pressure 20 with mainly minimalist lately so you don't even need any dash/dodge evo to steamroll her like that.

important note: if you get too many +size evolutions without getting any -size to compensate then clawdia will just murder you hopelessly unless you kill her before she kills you.
hollow bones is a more safe evolution than +size evolutions when going against clawdia :^)
so avoid +size evolution, genuinely do not pick them if you want to live

Counterclockwise is a valuable suggestion, thank you. I never realized that her first attack was always the same. There was too much else going on, and my brain never grabbed onto that fact.

I usually spam +Size, so perhaps that's part of my problem too. When I go -Size, I can't ever hit anything, because my hitboxes become too small. But I'll try your suggestion in my next run. Thank you! If you say you can reliably beat her on Pressure 20, then at least there may be hope.

[Tackles]

Originally posted by b00marrows:

Weirdly enough I don't know if I have had much of an issue with Clawdia.
She hits kind of hard but doesn't seem to attack that frequently.
Sadly neither the eggs nor baby's seem to ever pay out with anything, which is the biggest insult.

Best move is to clear the eggs/babys keeping the field clear for as much freedom as you can muster. Ranged attacks work well and trying to rotate the fight around the arena away from webs also helps.

Are you on Pressure 20? Because at that level, she's a woodchipper.

[b00marrows]

Originally posted by Tackles:

Are you on Pressure 20? Because at that level, she's a woodchipper.

No, but considering the honestly hefty buffs units get on each difficulty I can see all bosses getting ridiculous as it goes on.

But i imagine the stratergy stays...
1. Keep the field clear of eggs and babys.
(I feel they should give a minor reward on kill, i get that its exploitable but MAN the complete lack of incentive to cull them is rough)

2. Try to "rotate" the fight away from the webs.
(i feel the webs need a duration decrease or a "health bar" that depletes as its "used" to limit their duration.)

Getting cooldowns OR a better dash like scuttle helps too.

Honestly she's the closest boss in aggression to the final boss. Both just run at you swinging kind of ruining a lot of strategy due to both of their speed, damage and spam.
A stark contrast to the most of the other bosses more strategic/learning sides.

[Tackles]

Well it's the webs and giant sprites that prevent movement to webbed-only flooring. I'm starting to think that I may need to either fight her exclusively on water with upgrades like Fin or Wings, or just get megabonk-levels of alpha damage to just kill her before she can snowball.

I found Scuttle to be mostly garbage. It's a slow cycle at 3.5 seconds, doesn't go very far, and when you upgrade Legs to Arthropod, it only goes left or right. I was actually thinking Leap may be better. Sprint is hot garbage on her, I've found. Shell won't cycle fast enough... who knows.

[Tackles]

Okay I just confirmed - Getting Fin or Wings & fighting Clawdia in the water is supremely easy.

[b00marrows]

Maybe the new trails would do some good? slowing and or poisoning her as she intensely chases you seems key....
Tho I still haven't had any of them.

[Tackles]

That's probably doable with the ocean strategy, since you need slithering or whatever the snake movement type is to get the pedal gland trails. I'll try it!

[Skyrocitor]

Pedal glands don't slow her down that much (or anyone else for that matter) but making them poisonous can help with crowd control. If anything the environment bonus you get helps and in all cases I've seen so far, no movement tech beats Slide for sheer distance AND how often you can use it.

Additionally, if you can stack Agility a few times I've found that alternating the basic attack with whatever you've picked up can do surprising amounts of damage quickly and since it allows you to use move tech more often you can stay ahead of things. Usually.

However I've also only just made it to pressure 16 so I have even less experience with double Claudia, but what I have seen makes me dread her much the same.

[Tackles]

Originally posted by Skyrocitor:

and in all cases I've seen so far, no movement tech beats Slide for sheer distance AND how often you can use it.

Slide is certainly one of the best move abilities. But have you compared it to the Bouncy specialization for Leap? The one where you can double jump? It seems pretty good, because it lets you jump OVER terrain and bosses. It's pretty handy when you're fighting the last boss. I'm not arguing that Slide isn't amazing, I'm just wondering what you thought of double leap?

[Skyrocitor]

I very rarely pick bouncy because usually if I've gone for leap I'm probably using the fox fur for it's chance to spawn extra food on snow, which is far more useful on the whole. And while that does technically work for both jumps, you still have to be on the snow and is only a chance each time. The few times I've tried double jump it hasn't really helped because if you jump once over something that is charging you, you've already given yourself plenty of space. I much prefer heavy for crowd control if I manage to specialize leap, which isn't often. Also bouncy used to be a little buggy with cooldowns and the second jump, but that was before the last update so it's possible that part got fixed. Lately I've been trying to focus on seeing how slide compares to the version that activates trails, but I've been having trouble getting that combo to drop.

I guess long story short, bouncy is okay, but its asking for a lot of drops to line up properly before it has an advantage, whereas level 1 slide is a pretty huge boost on it's own and the only prerequisite is slithery.