Bull on Fire

[Karr]

has anybody beaten this? I can get past the first phase no problem and get him to "break" in second phase but he wont take damage

[ChevyNoel]

I finished it, but I brute force killed him by just waiting for him to attack, then spinning behind him and getting a small combo in until he died. I assume we were supposed to reflect attacks to his back, using the bubbles and water pillars, but maybe I was doing something incorrectly, as that was a real pain with him dissolving things, moving around, etc. At level 46 brute force, seemed a lot less frustrating.

edit: Oh, and I also started out by chilling and then breaking him, but all that seemed to do was get rid of his fire defense, which didn't do much damage to me anyway (and I eventually stopped trying to reflect bubble attacks into him), so I stopped breaking him.

[wervyn]

Took me awhle to figure out the trick to this one. In the second phase, where he doesn't take damage, the basic trick is to hit him in the back, taking advantage of the fact that he doesn't move from the center of the room and just faces you to bounce shots off of the ice pillars. First, you want to use charged shots to break him out of his ring of fire (which melts the ice discs from the bubbles). Then you want to freeze a bubble and bounce it into him. That will fully break him out of his invulnerability and return to the patterns from the first phase of the fight. Although as usual, he does get more and more aggressive with each HP break.

[BaugoYo]

Originally posted by wervyn:

Took me awhle to figure out the trick to this one. In the second phase, where he doesn't take damage, the basic trick is to hit him in the back, taking advantage of the fact that he doesn't move from the center of the room and just faces you to bounce shots off of the ice pillars. First, you want to use charged shots to break him out of his ring of fire (which melts the ice discs from the bubbles). Then you want to freeze a bubble and bounce it into him. That will fully break him out of his invulnerability and return to the patterns from the first phase of the fight. Although as usual, he does get more and more aggressive with each HP break.

thanks!!!!

[sjdswanlund]

Originally posted by wervyn:

Took me awhle to figure out the trick to this one. In the second phase, where he doesn't take damage, the basic trick is to hit him in the back, taking advantage of the fact that he doesn't move from the center of the room and just faces you to bounce shots off of the ice pillars. First, you want to use charged shots to break him out of his ring of fire (which melts the ice discs from the bubbles). Then you want to freeze a bubble and bounce it into him. That will fully break him out of his invulnerability and return to the patterns from the first phase of the fight. Although as usual, he does get more and more aggressive with each HP break.

This is the quest I'm trying to finish right now. What level were you when you beat this boss? I can only get to the second phase. To hit him in the back, are you saying you need to freeze the pillars, then shoot a charged shot to bounce back at his unguarded back?

[wervyn]

I did this roughly on-level for the area, I don't remember exactly but something around level 33-35. You're correct about bouncing shots, and it's pretty lenient about counting a hit as long as you don't hit him in the face, so don't worry about getting it to hit directly behind him if he turns sideways.

Don't forget to upgrade your equipment to keep up with your character level, there's a new menu tool to help you remember to do this now! If you're having trouble prioritize defense and heat resistance.

[GFluegel]

Originally posted by sjdswanlund:

...

This is the quest I'm trying to finish right now. What level were you when you beat this boss? I can only get to the second phase. To hit him in the back, are you saying you need to freeze the pillars, then shoot a charged shot to bounce back at his unguarded back?

You don't necessarily need to do bouncing shots to hit its back. The bull does a short pause without movement after each attack, so just dashing to the side and hitting its side/back directly also works for the normal projectiles. Bouncing is only needed for the icedisks.

The enemy also has an optional "secret" weakness that can be exploited to better reach his weakspots. I'm not gonna spoil it, though it has to do with the bubbles. ;>

You should be fine doing the quest around level 34-37. Remember to pay attention to your equipment and maybe use consumeables that could be helpful (some of those increase Heat-resistance)!

[sjdswanlund]

Originally posted by GFluegel:

Originally posted by sjdswanlund:

...

This is the quest I'm trying to finish right now. What level were you when you beat this boss? I can only get to the second phase. To hit him in the back, are you saying you need to freeze the pillars, then shoot a charged shot to bounce back at his unguarded back?

You don't necessarily need to do bouncing shots to hit its back. The bull does a short pause without movement after each attack, so just dashing to the side and hitting its side/back directly also works for the normal projectiles. Bouncing is only needed for the icedisks.

The enemy also has an optional "secret" weakness that can be exploited to better reach his weakspots. I'm not gonna spoil it, though it has to do with the bubbles. ;>

You should be fine doing the quest around level 34-37. Remember to pay attention to your equipment and maybe use consumeables that could be helpful (some of those increase Heat-resistance)!

I still don't understand this boss. I can't do any damage to him after breaking his guard during the second phase.

[GFluegel]

Originally posted by sjdswanlund:

...
I still don't understand this boss. I can't do any damage to him after breaking his guard during the second phase.

You basically need to break him twice, kinda like those Flame Golems from the Temple.
- First you need to hit him from behind/the side with Cold until his break meter (the yellow bar) fills. He will lose his flame-ring after that.
- Second you need to hit him once from behind/the side with an icedisk. You will most likely need to make it ricochet from one of the waterblocks and then direct his attention away from that direction by dashing to the other side.

Once he stops glowing red and starts moving around normally again, he is vulnerable. Now you need to make him run against a frozen Waterblock to properly attack him, just like before.

[sjdswanlund]

Originally posted by GFluegel:

Originally posted by sjdswanlund:

...
I still don't understand this boss. I can't do any damage to him after breaking his guard during the second phase.

You basically need to break him twice, kinda like those Flame Golems from the Temple.
- First you need to hit him from behind/the side with Cold until his break meter (the yellow bar) fills. He will lose his flame-ring after that.
- Second you need to hit him once from behind/the side with an icedisk. You will most likely need to make it ricochet from one of the waterblocks and then direct his attention away from that direction by dashing to the other side.

Once he stops glowing red and starts moving around normally again, he is vulnerable. Now you need to make him run against a frozen Waterblock to properly attack him, just like before.

I"ll give that a try. Thanks.

[sjdswanlund]

This is a terrible boss. The arena is zoomed in way too close, so at times you can't accurately line up the shots for the ice-disks to bounce off of and hit him in the back. And on top of that, the window to do so with how fast he manages to turn around is the type of frustrating challenge that you don't want in a game.

[Lioshi]

Originally posted by sjdswanlund:

This is a terrible boss. The arena is zoomed in way too close, so at times you can't accurately line up the shots for the ice-disks to bounce off of and hit him in the back. And on top of that, the window to do so with how fast he manages to turn around is the type of frustrating challenge that you don't want in a game.

exactly. i think the devs should change this boss a little bit. because the first phase is pretty easy but then the second one is just.. both hard and confusing. i used brute force to kill him because i had no idea what i was supposed to do with the bubbles and the water blocks.

[GFluegel]

Originally posted by Lioshi_Hinokami:

...

exactly. i think the devs should change this boss a little bit. because the first phase is pretty easy but then the second one is just.. both hard and confusing. i used brute force to kill him because i had no idea what i was supposed to do with the bubbles and the water blocks.

The boss was pretty new and did not receive a lot of testing outside of the dev-team, so can happen that the balancing is not perfect for the average playerbase and still needs some finetuning. This can be seen as part of the EarlyAccess-process.
Also for optional sidequests the difficulty tends to be a big higher at first, because at least it won't keep players stuck even if it was too hard.

In any case, some changes have already been made, to be more obvious about how to break the boss in phase two. Also, the timing will be more lenient in future versions.

Thank you for your feedback!

[sjdswanlund]

Originally posted by GFluegel:

Originally posted by Lioshi_Hinokami:

...

exactly. i think the devs should change this boss a little bit. because the first phase is pretty easy but then the second one is just.. both hard and confusing. i used brute force to kill him because i had no idea what i was supposed to do with the bubbles and the water blocks.

The boss was pretty new and did not receive a lot of testing outside of the dev-team, so can happen that the balancing is not perfect for the average playerbase and still needs some finetuning. This can be seen as part of the EarlyAccess-process.
Also for optional sidequests the difficulty tends to be a big higher at first, because at least it won't keep players stuck even if it was too hard.

In any case, some changes have already been made, to be more obvious about how to break the boss in phase two. Also, the timing will be more lenient in future versions.

Thank you for your feedback!

Thanks for listening to our feedback as well! Were changes implemented in a hotfix, or are they still to be implemented? I beat the boss so I can't tell if changes have taken place or not now. I do think the reason the second phase is so confusing is simply that upon breaking his guard, there is not a secondary bar indicating that he needs to be broken again.

[GFluegel]

Originally posted by sjdswanlund:

...

Thanks for listening to our feedback as well! Were changes implemented in a hotfix, or are they still to be implemented? I beat the boss so I can't tell if changes have taken place or not now. I do think the reason the second phase is so confusing is simply that upon breaking his guard, there is not a secondary bar indicating that he needs to be broken again.

It was basically discussed and changed after reading this thread and getting some more player-feedback, so its not public yet. It will be changed in the next update (hotfix or proper).
The second phase should be much clearer now. For example, the waterbubbles will only appear after the first break, which should be a clear hint.

[sjdswanlund]

Originally posted by GFluegel:

Originally posted by sjdswanlund:

...

Thanks for listening to our feedback as well! Were changes implemented in a hotfix, or are they still to be implemented? I beat the boss so I can't tell if changes have taken place or not now. I do think the reason the second phase is so confusing is simply that upon breaking his guard, there is not a secondary bar indicating that he needs to be broken again.

It was basically discussed and changed after reading this thread and getting some more player-feedback, so its not public yet. It will be changed in the next update (hotfix or proper).
The second phase should be much clearer now. For example, the waterbubbles will only appear after the first break, which should be a clear hint.

Yes, that would definitely make it clearer as well.