Maps How to force players to fight bosses?

SnailsAttack

Dungeon Spirit
I am working on a custom map as of right now, and I am not sure how I can force players to fight bosses before they are allowed to progress. There are only 2 ways I know of so far.
  • Honor system
I could trust the players to progress only after defeating a boss.

  • Block placement?
I could make it so that the players can only progress by placing blocks (ores) dropped by the bosses, although this certainly isn't preferable as only 3 bosses drop ores.

So can anyone help me here?
 
If you are using various mods you could feasibly make the boss drop an item that is used to craft the next boss item, and make the boss item re-usable so the boss would only have to be killed once to move on. Aside from that it is almost always the honor system.
 
For Skeletron you can make an underground tunnel out of (non-player made) dungeon bricks that you have to cross.
 
A few bosses can be rigged to spawn with wiring. If the player is in the Corruption or Crimson, you can set the number of altars/hearts smashed to 2, so that when the next one is destroyed it will spawn either the Brain of Cthulhu or Eater of Worlds. Then you can wire a player sensor/lever to an explosive next to a Shadow Orb or Crimson Heart to start the boss fight. This might also work with Plantera in the jungle. Additionally, you can rig a dart trap to break a Larva, summoning the Queen Bee.

Another possibility is to require the player to cross a gap using the dash from the Shield of Cthulhu if the world is on Expert mode (and they are not allowed to break blocks).

If the rules for your map say the player can only break certain types of blocks, you can set up meteorite/obsidian etc. obstacles that must be mined using a pickaxe crafted from Demonite/Crimtane dropped by a boss (but this still relies heavily on the honor system).

Besides Skeletron, I think all other bosses rely on the honor system.
 
In Down the Well you were forced to fight WoF because it drops a hammer; in one of the rooms there is a hole in a wall which should be hammered in order to let projectile hit a button on the other side.

Another (very convoluted) approach I see is to use Corrupted Seeds. Player creates grass, this allows trees to grow, and the wood could be used to craft a Workbench, where player can craft Large Gems or other stuff.

Also, you can use Dryad. She sells Purification Powder, which is essential for progression if player has no explosives.

It could be useful even if player isn't allowed to break blocks, since Purification Powder is able to shatter Shadow Orbs and Crimson Hearts by itself. This summons another boss and drops some good loot.

How to force player to fight hardmode bosses? Plantera and Golem are obvious (Temple Key and chance to drop Picksaw). Mechanical bosses in Expert mode drop parts of Mechanical Cart; judging by it's speed I feel like this could be an only solution for some timing puzzle.
 
The only thing I can think of is allowing the player to create certain items from ore drops/hallow bars.
Like, if the player has no ranged weapon up to this point you could instruct the player to create a bow out of EoC's ore, so you can use this bow to hit a switch across some chasm.

But for the bosses that don't drop anything useful... Yeah, dunno.

Edit: Well, it seems most bosses are covered at least, judging from everyone's posts. :)

Edit 2: Imagine how awesome it'd be if Re-Digit added switches/activators that could be set to a specific boss and would enable themselves when said boss is defeated. Now that would lead to some awesome adventure maps.
 
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Like, if the player has no ranged weapon up to this point you could instruct the player to create a bow out of EoC's ore, so you can use this bow to hit a switch across some chasm.

I realized that this works with Queen Bee! She drops Bee Gun or The Bee's Knees (ranged weapon), Bee Keeper (releases homing bees after hit), Honey Comb (releases homing bees when damaged), Beenade (throwable, releases bees). If bees can activate switches, then you could just setup a room with a Slime Statue, a lot of buttons on walls and a door that opens if more than 75% buttons are hit more-or-less at the same time. Unfortunately, she sometimes drops Honeyd Googles which could give too much mobility.

Speaking of mobility... Biome Mimics could be considered to be mini-bosses as well. They could be manually summoned and often drop Grappling Hooks, so if you need some challenge in your map, you could just use them.

EDIT: I came up with more-or-less universal mechanism: healing potions. Imagine a passage of meteorite bricks X blocks long. If player walks through it, he will die after Y seconds, but if he drinks a healing potion in the middle, he will survive for another Z seconds. Because of Potion Sickness, one Bottled Honey is strictly better than any number of lesser healing potions in terms of maximum allowed movement.

So, if you have no potions at all (besides Water Bottles), then there's no way to proceed other than to kill BoC/EoC/EoW. If you have only Lesser Healing Potions, then there's no way to proceed without beating Queen Bee. Greater Healing Potions: WoF; Super Healing Potions: any HM boss, including Mimics.

This is very hard to implement (player needs to fight without potions; if player drinks potion by accident then she is screwed; you need to get rid of pots and other "illegal" alchemy sources; Crystal Hearts make calculations harder; you cannot force player to defeat more than one boss from single tier that way), but it should be doable.

Also, there's an insane roundabout way using the same mechanic: kill Eye, obtain Seeds, plant them in dirt, buy Powder from Dryad, purify grass, plant Daybloom Seeds in it. Use Daybloom to create Regeneration Potion: now you are able to survive this long burning coridor.
(EDIT 2: another useful potions containing Daybloom are Featherfall, Heartreach and Ironskin)
 
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Well, if the player is allowed to remove certain block types, you could seal a passage with obsidian in order to require a Nightmare/Deathbringer pickaxe, and by extension, the defeat of EoW or BoC. Though you could subvert that with a Reaver Shark if there were a valid ocean in the map... so that would partially be honor system.

For WoF, you could place a Demon or Crimson altar on top of blocks the player is allowed to dig up, or actuate them. You can't actuate or displace blocks that an altar is on top of, so you would need to break the altar to get past.

As in the EoW example, you could seal a passage with Chlorophyte blocks to force the defeat of the mech bosses for progression. If you don't need them to fight all three, you could give out a soul of the other one(s) in a chest, so the Pickaxe Axe can still be crafted. You would need to set those bosses as having been defeated in TEdit if you wanted them to fight Plantera.

Plantera is obvious, with Temple Key. Alternatively, you could set a teleporter with natural Lihzahrd Brick Wall behind it at the destination, which couldn't be used until Plantera was dead.

You could require Skeletron by making a small dungeon area to pass through.

Of course, all of these require an honor system to some point, since you could just go in with a DCU and break everything, but with a clear ruleset, you could require certain boss fights without explicitly requiring them to be defeated in the rules.
 
Well, if the player is allowed to remove certain block types, you could seal a passage with obsidian in order to require a Nightmare/Deathbringer pickaxe, and by extension, the defeat of EoW or BoC. Though you could subvert that with a Reaver Shark if there were a valid ocean in the map... so that would partially be honor system.

For WoF, you could place a Demon or Crimson altar on top of blocks the player is allowed to dig up, or actuate them. You can't actuate or displace blocks that an altar is on top of, so you would need to break the altar to get past.

As in the EoW example, you could seal a passage with Chlorophyte blocks to force the defeat of the mech bosses for progression. If you don't need them to fight all three, you could give out a soul of the other one(s) in a chest, so the Pickaxe Axe can still be crafted. You would need to set those bosses as having been defeated in TEdit if you wanted them to fight Plantera.

Plantera is obvious, with Temple Key. Alternatively, you could set a teleporter with natural Lihzahrd Brick Wall behind it at the destination, which couldn't be used until Plantera was dead.

You could require Skeletron by making a small dungeon area to pass through.

Of course, all of these require an honor system to some point, since you could just go in with a DCU and break everything, but with a clear ruleset, you could require certain boss fights without explicitly requiring them to be defeated in the rules.
I have a mac so T-Edit isn't exactly a thing, but I like your solutions. I could definitely use some of these. :)
 
The honor system works most of the time in all honesty. Anybody that plays adventure maps knows you play by the rules of the map: no breaking/placing things, no crafting, follow what the signs say, etc etc. If you are not going to follow the rules than what is the point of doing the map?

I will freely admit I always keep my pickaxe, regardless of the rules, but that is because I've played too many adventure maps where something is just flat out broken (or in one map if you hit a switch too quickly you'd break the mechanism) and you have to cheat your way around it. Or very badly designed parkour might have me use it too. I do not mind difficulty, I play Dark Souls, but when you die in the exact same spot 50+ times because somebody wanted pixel perfect jumps I have no problem saying screw it and cheat.
 
for the lunatic cultist you can make the guys that spawn him drop into lava or killed by traps triggered by the player when they are ether there with the cultists or near enough to trigger him to spawn. hard to say how to force a fight with the towers though making a route that takes them to the spawn places might not be hard and they get to fight the moon lord for free, but getting them to fight him again if they lose is goes to the honor system
 
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