I don't understand why the last boss is so difficult

[Sweetz]

From a game design perspective I mean.

I don't claim to be a skilled gamer (I'm "old" and my reflexes suck), but I'm at the point where I've been through every biome multiple times and know their monsters, I can easily beat any of the 3 sub-bosses, and I can consistently make it to the Hand of the King unless I screw around with curses or get really sloppy/adventurous. However, after many tries, I still don't think I've gotten HotK even down to 75% health. It's gotten to the point where I'm starting to get tired/bored of playing through the whole game again, seeing roughly the same content, just to get another fruitless attempt at the boss.

The difficulty of HotK is so far above and beyond the difficulty progression up to the point and I just don't understand why. As I understand it, there's stuff you unlock after being the HotK and obviously higher difficulties, so the game seems to have a reason to play after beating HotK for people that want a greater challenge. Given that, I don't understand why you'd make a boss that, for an average skill player, would make them play through the game to the point they're sick of it.

Making a final boss that a lot people can't beat is a good way to really sour opinions on a game that was otherwise immensely enjoyed up to that point. I'd love to know if the developers had some kind of target goal in mind for how much of the player base would beat HotK. Currently it sits at 7%.

To be honest, I'm probably going to resort to save scumming, because I really don't want to play through the game a ton more times just to try beating HotK again.

[rpmaia]

Because it's the last boss. Really, there's no other way to say it. It's a royal SOB, and I got so enraged of loosing so many times to that dual-lance-wielding bastard that my stomach had physical cramps every time I lost to him.

That said.

He has a damage cap, meaning that no matter how high the damage of your weapon may be, you'll never take more from him then 5% of his health with every hit. What you need his weapons that fire consecutively, meaning turrets and Tactics builds.

He can be frozen, meaning Ice Bow will be your best friend, specially because that weapon has damage reduction. If you can get a 30% damage reduction from Ice Bow and 20% DR from necklace, right there damage will be halved.

And I'm not the best player out there as well. As you said, age tend to get us slower reflexes, but all his attacks are quite coreographed. His most powerful attack, a super slam that covers all the arena, even sees him hovering for quite some time before striking.

Really, go for it! You'll be dancing in the streets when you finally beat him down.

[bobhome2]

I don't want to sound like a jerk, but the developers do expect some level of skill.

I personally found the Castle to be incredibly difficult for a good while (I got the game in December, and think I beat it in April), and then the Hand took me down several pegs, too. After I beat him, and figured out what worked for me, he became quite a bit easier. On my current save (started after release), he's beaten me 3 times, and I've beaten him twice. I'm sure there are many out there now who have absolutely no trouble at all.

The game's made to be run through quite quickly, too, so getting back to the Hand should start to become really ... well, normal. Finding a good combination of weapons and skills that work for you is the main goal. Then, becoming familiar with his moveset will seal the deal.

It's kind of like Dark Souls: you get to a new area, and get beaten down as you learn the layout. Then the boss beats you down as you learn its moves. The only difference is that you start (kind of) fresh on death. If that's too much for you, well, it may be time to take a bit of a break. If you eventually stick with it, the Hand will get easier, seriously.

[lpnlizard27]

The difficulty spike in the castle and then the HotK is kinda harsh.

But keep in mind every single one of these bosses can be done untouched, and its not exactly down to just skill, all of the bosses have baitable loop of moves they will do. Its best to figure out these patterns and how to trigger them.

personally ive noticed this pattern

3 attacks with the lance
grenade bomblets
1-2 charges in either direction.
*Repeats
*next phase

all of these are easily dodged esspecially when you know the pattern.

[deadpanfaceman]

It really depends on how you play and also remembering that other you rarely fight bosses where there are stage hazards. Running through with a status effect build in which your popping off bleed, poison, and fire and area of effect freeze all while keeping your distance make things way different compared to a close combat build. If you tac that with bear traps, it becomes a different game and he becomes a completely different boss. Honestly, I beat him on my 30th playthrough and it was mostly because of a build, similar to the one I laid out. The biggest thing is it was a speed run, the items I got killing the bosses before the time limit for the next gate to close really helped me seal the deal.

[King Donco of Punhcistania]

its not the boss thats hard, its the small arena in which you fight him, its super small, he can turn around and attack you without having to walk to you. if the arena was the same size as the time keeper its be more fair but right now you pretty much need a tactics build and dot his a ss or parry him. that being said if you dont have dmg reduction he will smack you easily

[Illessen]

I've yet to beat him myself, but surprisingly enough, the more I unlock the more difficult runs get. I blindly unlocked weapons and what not in an attempt to get access to the better quality potions and it was a major mistake as I'm seeing myself now forced to use what I'd call sub optimal weapons and powers. Not ashamed to admit it, I love the dual crossbow matic powers, up to a certain point I found myself finding several copies of one each run and consistently making it to the final boss, now I've got so much unlocked that I'm lucky if I see even a single one in a run and consistently die in various areas because I'm not as skilled with those weapons.

I'd suggest starting a new game and pick and choose your unlocks to cater to your build, otherwise you'll be forced to use other weapons making your runs awkward and inconsistent. At least until you're comfortable or have a better grasp of the game.

[Sweetz]

Thanks for the tips everyone, but really I'm not worried about beating HotK (I have no qualms about save scumming as said), I'm just genuinely perplexed as to why the developers made him so hard.

As said, I feel like I've "mastered" the rest of the game, yet I feel very far off from beating HotK. Since people bring up Souls games, I will say that I don't think the final bosses of those games were so out of line with the rest of the game and I certainly didn't have to repeat a ton of content to get another shot at them.

I think FTL has the same problem. I've beaten FTL several times, and generally like the game, yet I feel the end boss of that game is of a difficulty that ruins it for a lot of players because it's so absurdly out of line with the rest of the game. All my friends initially loved the game, but then completely soured on it because of the flagship and I don't fault them for it. I don't understand that purpose that is served by making the end boss a significant magnitude more difficult than the rest of the game leading up to it

For people that want a lot of challenge, they have higher difficulties. What is lost by making the base level of challenge more in line with the rest of the game?

Making the end boss very hard is certainly a way to artificially extend the average player's playtime, but the problem is the entertainment value of content leading up to it only has so much longevity and making the player go through it an excessive number of times only ensures that a player will sour on the game. Always better to leave a player wanting more than wearing out your welcome.

As said, I'm curious if the developers had a goal in mind for of how much of their player base would beat the game, but personally I wouldn't be very satisfied if less than 10% of people who bought my game got to finish it. The game is, of course, still pretty new as a non-early access release, so we'll see where that number moves over time...

[Mitrovarr]

He's not that bad. Boss balance is bad, so build carefully/cheese to win.

#1 - Do the meta scroll build. Enemy scaling means single stat builds are horrible. Work toward 8-7-13 and never go past any of those stats (it will literally make you weaker). It doesn't matter what weapons you use, build toward 8-7-13. Always take whatever gives you the most HP.
#2 - Take the 'long way' by going promenade -> depths -> ossuary (more scrolls, gets you closer to ideal meta build)
#3 - Take in two traps and freeze blast.
#4 - Cheese the heck out of the final boss. Throw out the traps and chain freeze/slow him as much as you can. Use your meta build to take the damage you'll still get hit with regardless.
#5 - Win with no knowledge of how the boss works or how to fight him.

[飯綱]

If there were more of a steady ramp up it might feel less out of place, but as it stands currently the final level and final boss come across almost as if there was a large chunk of the game cut out. If someone told me that there were meant to be 3 more "zones" leading up to the castle and final boss, I'd feel like the whole thing actually started to make sense.

I think a lot of the soured opinions of the game just come down to the abrupt lack of balance, not so much just complaints that the boss is too hard or that the game shouldn't feature hard content. But when 90% of the game is using one difficulty curve, and then suddenly "oh that's right, we need a massive punishing ending," it just comes across as cheap or some sort of half-baked afterthought.

And sure, there are some solid strategies to pretty much guarantee a win, but that's not really any sort of comfort when you have a game that basically oozes the freedom of player decisions and the fun of all the options, and then quickly throws in a brick wall that completely and entirely discourages creativity in stats or weapons.

All in all, while I am still having a blast, I've already seen a huge portion of my friends pretty much just shelve the game for the time being since they all feel in one way or another that there needs to be a balance overhaul before it's worth sinking any more time into -- completely understandable sentiment, I think.

[BronzyIsland]

ive beaten him 10 times, hes beaten me 15 times. he's...hard. but i will give you the best tip youll ever get in life. ready?
crow feather. over 20 skill scrolls.
makes final boss easy peasy.
youre welcome.

[ChaosSabre]

Well here is the thing. HotK is not really hard. He is just cheaply designed. And most of it has to do with how small his fight arena is. If the arena was bigger a lot of his attacks could be much easily avoided. Once you know how to dodge his moves it's all about if he'll give you a bad pattern of attacks. So yea it's a bad boss. And that's only way they could appease people that found Time Keeper too easy ( coz it's actually a fair and well designed boss fight and besides getting bad RNG in final phase there is nothing that will screw you over there )

[256MB of SPAM]

Completely agree, OP. From a game design perspective and regardless of the fact that it's the final boss, I took issue with the balancing when initially fighting the HoTK.

Originally posted by Sweetz:

Thanks for the tips everyone, but really I'm not worried about beating HotK (I have no qualms about save scumming as said), I'm just genuinely perplexed as to why the developers made him so hard.

I save scummed until I got used to his moveset. I wasn't going to spend an hour and a half a run just to get 45 secs at him. It was absolutely ludicrous. He's unbalanced in regards to his damage output when doing a glass cannon build, which just so happens to fall in line my playstyle. Had absolutely no understanding, at the time, about the scroll scaling. Though something definitely felt out of whack.

I've no problem with him having a damage cap, though if he had a damage output cap of say 25% of the players overall health, then I think it'd feel less out of whack then it does now. As he was taking off about 40% of my health from each hit. I don't even suggest this for any other bosses/enemies, just him.

Now, once someone gets used to his patterns then this issue no longer exists, practically. But technically, and especially for new players, it's a massive disparity in comparison to the rest of the game.

I would hope the developers revisit this particular aspect and their recent comments lead me to believe this might eventually happen.

[Sweetz]

As an update, I beat HotK tonight after a lot of save scumming.

Wings of the Crow was a big help. I hadn't used that much before, but decided to give it a shot based on the tip. I did not use 2 of them and go the super cheesy route, but I found that even with just one (and Efficiency mutation of course), the effective temporary invincibility it grants (HotK AI doesn't seem to know how to handle player floating and doesn't attack while active) allowed me to sort of regain my composure between each series of attacks. I really needed those brief respites; having to be "on" for the whole fight is not within me.

Beating HotK doesn't change my opinion on the difficulty at all. Way too hard, really spoiled my otherwise glowing opinion of the game. Absolutely would have given up and uninstalled it if I couldn't save scum to retry quickly.

[esco1979]

Sorry, but I love that the last boss is hard. it's a very exciting fight, but you can actually do it with practice without getting hit (as you can see by my achievements. And trust me, I am not nearly as good as some of these guys you see on youtube).

[256MB of SPAM]

Originally posted by Sweetz:

As an update, I beat HotK tonight after a lot of save scumming.

Wings of the Crow was a big help. I hadn't used that much before, but decided to give it a shot based on the tip. I did not use 2 of them and go the super cheesy route, but I found that even with just one (and Efficiency mutation of course), the effective temporary invincibility it grants (HotK AI doesn't seem to know how to handle player floating and doesn't attack while active) allowed me to sort of regain my composure between each series of attacks. I really needed those brief respites; having to be "on" for the whole fight is not within me.

Beating HotK doesn't change my opinion on the difficulty at all. Way too hard, really spoiled my otherwise glowing opinion of the game. Absolutely would have given up and uninstalled it if I couldn't save scum to retry quickly.

Glad to hear you beat him in the end. It is a shame that such a decent game gets marred by the end boss, but these developers aren't infallible when it comes to questionable design decisions.

I'm not sure if you're aware but they have commented on reddit about the balancing and concede that they aren't happy with it, so there is hope yet. Just not in the immediate future.