Bonemass is a terribly designed boss.

[Wheelchair]

Hear me out here. Bonemass is an awfully designed boss. Fighting him isn't fun, and it's a massive splotch on an otherwise brilliant game. Basically, Bonemass has too much health and too much damaging potential. Here's how I think Bonemass could be turned into an actually decent boss.

1. Give him an actual designated boss arena, kind of like the Elder has. One of the biggest problems with Bonemass is that you have to fight him in the middle of a swamp, swarmed by blobs, draugr, skeletons, leeches and wraiths. Having to fight off all of these tough enemies as well as the boss is an incredibly frustrating and unrewarding experience. The solution? Give him a large boss arena that separates Bonemass from the rest of the swamp. This way, you only need to fight the boss - not everything else.

2. Lower his health. Bonemass has an insane amount of health. The amount of grinding needed to even put a dent into his McDuckass healthbar is frankly asinine. Bonemass has too much health for a mid-game boss, and it needs to be drastically reduced. Bonemass already keeps the player away from him with multiple mobs and AOE attacks, so having a fat healthbar on top of that is just excessive.

3. Make stamina management easier. During the Bonemass fight, stamina regen is basically a joke. It takes so long to kill him, that you no longer have your rested buff halfway through the fight. Also, since it's raining and you have to wade through water in the swamp, you're constantly wet, worsening stamina regen even more.

4. Remove the healing mechanic. Seriously, what were you even thinking. This is ridiculous.

Pls fix.

[madokkusu]

Originally posted by Weaver:

Beat to death with mace, fight should be under 3 minutes unless you're doing something terribly wrong regardless of player count. Don't stand in poison clouds, block/parry his melee, and always finish your combos (the last hit in a full combo does double damage). He regens, so if you go take a breather to heal, he will as well. Stay on him.

i tried this, it wasnt just him that was the problem, it was everything else he spawned, i spent more time fighting those than him.
i had to run and got to a point where he wouldnt come closer so i took him down with 130-ish frost arrows and i could fight the blobs etc easily enough without being overwhelmed.
thank ♥♥♥♥ he's done now though.

[Serious Secare]

the tree boss is harder

[madokkusu]

Originally posted by Serious Secare:

the tree boss is harder

no chance, he was the easier than the stag

[LuckyN13]

Bonemass is a sponge but he aint hard to beat.

walk backwards away from him, wait for him to swing at you, go in and whack him 3-4 times with a mace.
Repeat until he throws an armpit blob.
Run towards armpit blob and murder the slimes and skeles.
If he pukes, move away, wait 5 seconds, continue.
Rinse and repeat about 2-3 dozen times.

It helps to level up the area with a hoe and clear out the mobs.

[steveman0]

Originally posted by Drosta:

Originally posted by steveman0:

Interesting. So it might just be a scaling issue with 2 player's in particular. I think the mob/boss health and damage scale with number of players linearly, but perhaps the distribution of damage taken and dealt allows more players enough additional flexibility to make it much easier.

Did it with 2 the other day and it took about 3 minutes. The boss isn't the issue. :)

Then I suspect a bug. For you to do it almost six times faster when at best we could have gotten ~20% more damage if we further upgraded our iron maces suggests a major discrepancy.

Originally posted by Weaver:

Beat to death with mace, fight should be under 3 minutes unless you're doing something terribly wrong regardless of player count. Don't stand in poison clouds, block/parry his melee, and always finish your combos (the last hit in a full combo does double damage). He regens, so if you go take a breather to heal, he will as well. Stay on him.

Check, check, and check. Didn't even observe notable regen. Kiting him out of poison clouds did add time, but we generally needed that to get stamina and health regen at various points anyway. No way that we could have gotten under 10 minutes even with maxing our gear. His health pool was just way too large to come close to that.

[Voronja]

Originally posted by steveman0:

Originally posted by Drosta:

Did it with 2 the other day and it took about 3 minutes. The boss isn't the issue. :)

Then I suspect a bug. For you to do it almost six times faster when at best we could have gotten ~20% more damage if we further upgraded our iron maces suggests a major discrepancy.

Originally posted by Weaver:

Beat to death with mace, fight should be under 3 minutes unless you're doing something terribly wrong regardless of player count. Don't stand in poison clouds, block/parry his melee, and always finish your combos (the last hit in a full combo does double damage). He regens, so if you go take a breather to heal, he will as well. Stay on him.

Check, check, and check. Didn't even observe notable regen. Kiting him out of poison clouds did add time, but we generally needed that to get stamina and health regen at various points anyway. No way that we could have gotten under 10 minutes even with maxing our gear. His health pool was just way too large.

We? How many players? More players, bigger health pool.

[Jakeo10]

Originally posted by CapnHook:

Bonemass is easily the best designed boss in the whole game. But the whole game needs to improve on boss difficulty, rather than just buffing their HP and weapon resistance

Yep, buffing HP and weapon resistance is bad development approach.

More sophisticated AI, interesting attack patterns (dynamic) and overall enjoyable boss battles is what we need.

Less HP, more balanced yet fun challenges.

[Astariol]

Bonemass is the only boss I almost died to. I think all the encounters should be tuned to about his difficulty.

But, that doesn't mean his encounter is perfect. I think it's a bit too simplistic and more a gear check than a matter of skill.

[steveman0]

Originally posted by Voronja:

Originally posted by steveman0:

Then I suspect a bug. For you to do it almost six times faster when at best we could have gotten ~20% more damage if we further upgraded our iron maces suggests a major discrepancy.


Check, check, and check. Didn't even observe notable regen. Kiting him out of poison clouds did add time, but we generally needed that to get stamina and health regen at various points anyway. No way that we could have gotten under 10 minutes even with maxing our gear. His health pool was just way too large.

We? How many players? More players, bigger health pool.

Two, just my wife and I so even the 40% health scaling per player shouldn't make a bit of difference compared to another pair. For a six times faster kill it'd take a dozen or more players before the health scaling would be so overwhelmed by the extra damage each player adds to the fight.

[Trip]

Think about it this way, with 2 people only you are doing about 50% of your total DPS in most cases since one of you will be blocking attacks or moving around to avoid while the other attacks.

So if each do 100 DPS you won't be doing 200 DPS but only 100 DPS in most cases.

With four people you will be doing 75% of your total DPS in most cases. So again assuming each does 100 DPS you will be doing 300 DPS, or triple the amount of damage a duo would do.

How that stacks up to the bosses increase in health per player I have no clue, and of course take those numbers with a grain of salt.

[HoundDog]

Very easy boss. Can kill him with just some anti-poison mead and an iron mace. When he swings at you, just dodge that then run in, you're guaranteed 6 hits before he swings at you again. Then just run away briefly when he does his other crap.

[Amotax]

Ive done Bonemass solo with Iron mace + ironsledge in a tier 3 Iron set. I have raised the ground with hoe around his skull altar to keep away from leeches also not to be slowed by water. Sausage + Carrot soup + Turnip Stew along with rested buff turned that fight into a walk in the park, it was even easier than I expected. Every attack is telegraphed. His punch can be blocked/parried. When he release the poison just do 180 on your heel and get out of the zone. His minions are 1- 2 hit max with Iron maces.

[steveman0]

Originally posted by Trip:

Think about it this way, with 2 people only you are doing about 50% of your total DPS in most cases since one of you will be blocking attacks or moving around to avoid while the other attacks.

So if each do 100 DPS you won't be doing 200 DPS but only 100 DPS in most cases.

With four people you will be doing 75% of your total DPS in most cases. So again assuming each does 100 DPS you will be doing 300 DPS, or triple the amount of damage a duo would do.

How that stacks up to the bosses increase in health per player I have no clue, and of course take those numbers with a grain of salt.

Yes, that's certainly something I've kept in mind for my math. It's 40% more health per player, so more player's does lead to an advantage. The problem is there are solo and 2-person kills reported in times between 3 minutes and >15 minutes which suggests a problem.

[Jecto]

i actually liked the challenge we had to build up around the area after that plus Poison resist and the iron armor maxed it wasnt that bad.

[steveman0]

Originally posted by jecto34214:

i actually liked the challenge we had to build up around the area after that plus Poison resist and the iron armor maxed it wasnt that bad.

I don't think anyone is really that concerned with the skill required, just the fact that it was very boring and dragged on longer than it should have to remain fun given various factors that go into the design of the fight.