Gonarch's Lair: Tactical solution or just brute force and luck?

[evac156]

I've been stuck on the Gonarch's Lair for about a week now, probably attempted the battle at least 30 times, and honestly I don't know whether I've even started to damage the thing.

I'm normally a very tactical player, I prefer planning my attacks and using gear intelligently, rather than just head-on run-and-gun. But I can't find anything that works against this beast.

I have 100 health/100 HEV and a full complement of every type of ammo at the start. There are three "delivery pods" stocked with a ton of rockets and a few HEV chargers. The small floating island has a healing pool in it. There do not seem to be any areas to get above the Gonarch, or to hide from it.

On pressing the last button, I'm frozen in place, the Gonarch comes out of the river, charges me, and sends me flying (although apparently without damage on the first hit). From that point on, all I can do is run, jump, and try to fire rockets at it. Problem with that is, it runs a lot faster than I do, and running/jumping away, stopping and turning to aim gives it time to catch up. If it's close to me when the rocket hits it (does it even hit?) and explodes, I'm taking damage from the explosion. Trying to get to the rocket/charger resupply pods, or over to the healing pool, leaves me exposed as it runs me down. It has the strength of the Hulk with the speed of the Flash. Which I guess kind of makes it the Juggernaut? (Appropriate, the unstoppable force.) There's also the risk of getting knocked off into space when I try to get to the small island. And when it's close, it also starts spawning bugs; I don't know how much damage those are doing (too busy to look), but I suspect it's a lot.

One thing I did try, which I know is a hack, was to set all my tripmines and satchel charges on the riverbank where it climbs out. Figured I'd at least get in the first hit that way. No dice. It walks through the tripmines without setting them off, and since I'm frozen, I can't trigger the satchels, so those are all wasted.

So is there any "smart" way to fight this thing? Or is it just run madly, try to stay alive, hit it with rockets, and hope to survive with a couple points of health? Does the crossbow affect it? Or either of the energy guns? Any place an explosive trap can be laid for it?

Remembering from original HL (and that was a long time ago), I recall it was a short brute-force fight, and then not too long to the Nihilanth. But from what I've been reading in these forums, even after I beat this thing, there's still a long way to go. Not sure if it's going to be worth it, but I hate quitting after coming all this way.

Thanks for any constructive suggestions!

[Vassago Rain]

You have to use long jumps to outspeed it, and preferably you'll be crouch sliding to get even more mileage out of every jump. Also every weapon that deals explosive damage works against it, so all class 5 weapons, the RPG, MP5 grenades, the gluon, tau cannon...

You can trivially easily make a mega trap with all your tripmines and satchels, but it has to be placed in such a way that it triggers - or you can detonate it - when the canned 'destroying the teleporter'-animation ends, since gonarch is essentially invulnerable until you yourself is actionable again. On normal difficulty, without messing with damage values, doing this is enough on its own to almost kill the gonarch.

If you can't get the trap option down, just long jump and slide, fire rockets/gluon/charged tau at the sack repeatedly, and try to trick it to bullcharge walls, crystals, and etc, then unload on it while it's stunned. The AI isn't anywhere near as smart as it seems. If you can't beat it this way, long jump out to the healing pool, unload repeated rockets on it (the pod out there has 4x more rockets than it seems from looking at the placed ammo pickups), jump back to the mainland when the gonarch's fire gets too accurate, lap around and collect the batteries from the supply pods, then get back to the healing pool, and repeat as necessary until you win.

[evac156]

Originally posted by Vassago Rain:

You have to use long jumps to outspeed it, and preferably you'll be crouch sliding to get even more mileage out of every jump. Also every weapon that deals explosive damage works against it, so all class 5 weapons, the RPG, MP5 grenades, the gluon, tau cannon...

You can trivially easily make a mega trap with all your tripmines and satchels, but it has to be placed in such a way that it triggers - or you can detonate it - when the canned 'destroying the teleporter'-animation ends, since gonarch is essentially invulnerable until you yourself is actionable again. On normal difficulty, without messing with damage values, doing this is enough on its own to almost kill the gonarch.

If you can't get the trap option down, just long jump and slide, fire rockets/gluon/charged tau at the sack repeatedly, and try to trick it to bullcharge walls, crystals, and etc, then unload on it while it's stunned. The AI isn't anywhere near as smart as it seems. If you can't beat it this way, long jump out to the healing pool, unload repeated rockets on it (the pod out there has 4x more rockets than it seems from looking at the placed ammo pickups), jump back to the mainland when the gonarch's fire gets too accurate, lap around and collect the batteries from the supply pods, then get back to the healing pool, and repeat as necessary until you win.

Thank you for the pointers. I've finally come back to this after a long break, and I'm ready to try it again.

As I mentioned, I have tried setting up a big explosive trap, but as we both noted, where and when makes a difference. I will try setting it up somewhere else, and hopefully I will be able to bait the beast into it without tripping it myself.

I had no idea that it would stun itself by running into walls. That might be helpful, although so far, when it charges, the only thing it runs into is me, which clearly doesn't help matters!

Another commenter mentioned the gluon gun, so I'll give that a try, too. Since the game fills the area with so many rockets, I figured that was the weapon to use, but I wasn't able to do much damage with it.

Still seems like it's going to be a long brutal fight, but at least these ideas give me something new to try.

Edit: Ha, nope. Another dozen attempts, and there's just no way to beat, or apparently even damage this thing. Got it to run into a trap with 5 satchel charges and 6 tripmines, and blew that. Then emptied the gluon gun at it. Then fired a dozen rockets at it, but probably didn't hit it with any. It just throws rocks and spits acid and kills me with a few hits every time. Giving up on this thing. I remember how the game ended in Half-Life, I guess that's going to have to be good enough.

Just watched a walkthrough of the level... the walkthrough is apparently rigged somehow, because every single shot by the player hits, and the gonarch barely attacks. Even so, it took about 30 rocket hits plus other miscellaneous attacks just to make the thing run away....and then it comes back later in the level? Man, just unbeatable. I'll leave it parked here and revisit if I feel especially masochistic sometime.

[NoGenres]

What difficulty are you playing the game on? I'm currently playing it too for the first time.

[Koli]

Weird, I don't think it's supposed to be this hard - to the point I wonder if you're on a higher difficulty or if it's broken. Are you subscribed to any addons? Are you on "normal" difficulty, or Black Mesa difficulty?

[evac156]

Originally posted by Koli:

Weird, I don't think it's supposed to be this hard - to the point I wonder if you're on a higher difficulty or if it's broken. Are you subscribed to any addons? Are you on "normal" difficulty, or Black Mesa difficulty?

Thanks for the support, folks. Honestly, I was a little unsure about asking for help here because most forums just seem to have trolls who'd be insulting instead of helpful...but I digress.

No mods or addons of any sort, and playing on "Normal" difficulty (the lowest). I probably never would've gotten nearly this far on a harder setting...

There is an "Auto Aim" setting, which I do not have turned on. I tried it for a little while on an earlier level, and it didn't make any difference with aiming. When I was properly aimed at an enemy, the targeting crosshairs would change, but it didn't actually make the aiming any different, just the appearance. Racking my brain (going back 28 years...) I seem to recall that in original Half-Life, the "auto-aim" would actually lock onto a target, making it easier, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

One thing I didn't mention before, I'm playing on PC. Good old keyboard and mouse. Maybe it's easier for people using a game controller or something?

I know other people have beaten this thing, so it must be possible. But taking a shot at it requires both me and it to be out in the open, and if I can see it, then it can see me -- and then I'm done. It just moves way too fast to hit it when it's moving. And to use the rocket launcher, we both need to be standing still, so that's pretty much out. If I stop and try to aim at it, it's charging and trampling me. It also throws big rocks (those broken columns that are lying around) and spits acid/poison if I'm out in the open, so my choices are basically stand still and be killed, or run for cover and not be able to shoot.

Another person earlier mentioned that it will stun itself if it runs into a solid object. But I've never seen it run into anything or be stunned, so I don't know how that would work. If I've got my back to a wall, it just runs up and stomps me to pieces.

I've been trying a couple times a night, trying to see if there was any way to make progress against it, but it's impossible to tell. What I wouldn't give for an enemy health bar right now... Maybe I've actually been damaging it, but I have no way of knowing.

Again, thanks for the suggestions.

[evac156]

Well hallelujah, I finally beat the Gonarch. Probably took 80-100 tries, but I finally got lucky.

Seems like I'm the only one who's had this level of trouble with it, but just in case anyone is interested, here's how I finally beat it:

After enough attempts, I'd figured out two places that it was likely to hit a trap. In the first one, I laid down all six of my tripmines. In the other, threw down all five satchel charges. Went to the "activation" area, with the satchel charge trigger in my hand. (Saved at this point, of course.)

Activated the device that throws up the shell and summons the Gonarch out of the river. After it knocked me down, got up and ran like mad past the tripmine trap area. It was smart, didn't want to come through, but I danced around long enough to get it to come after me, it triggered the tripmines, and took at least some damage from them.

Ran past the other bottleneck area where I'd laid down the satchel charges. Thing surprised me by doubling back and coming at me from the other direction, but I still got it into the bottleneck and hit the satchels. Again, did some damage to it.

Ran and used cover, unloading on it with the Gluon Gun whenever it came in sight. Probably hit it four times this way before it ran out of charge. Hardest part of this is dodging the rock columns it throws, since those can be one-hit kills.

(Oh, did I mention, I was making a new save point after each successful hit.)

By this point, I'd taken some pretty significant damage, so I ran to the three HEV batteries, and jumped to the "healing island." Got me up to full health and near full HEV charge.

Jumped back over to the mainland. (I'd made the mistake many times of trying to stay out on the island, but I was just a sitting duck for ranged attacks that way. Kept on getting knocked off the island by thrown rocks.)

From that point, hit it with a dozen or so rockets. Run around the central rock area, wait for the thing to come in sight, hit it with a rocket, run again (create a save), rocket, rinse, repeat.

Eventually I jumped back out to the healing island, reloaded my rockets, and...it didn't show up again. Very cautiously prowled around the mainland, and found that it had left via the webbed cave exit.

So, yeah. Couple of big traps, if you can bait it in, then run, hide, shoot, reload, until eventually it gives up.

(And I know I'm going to see it again, because I've watched part of a walkthrough, but that'll wait.)

Thanks to the folks who offered suggestions.

[NoGenres]

Pardon my curiosity, but when you said that you "run from the Gonarch", do you just use the normal sprinting? Or did you use the Long Jump boosters? Because mastering that is essential to beating Gonarch and later, Nihilanth.

Anyway, I also play the game on Normal. When Gonarch appears, all I did was just use the Long Jump to maintain my distance from that thing. Only weapons I used was the rocket launcher with right click enabled.