NPCs & Enemies How to Make Moon Lord a Better Boss

Dreadnautilus5000🌳

Dreadnautilus5000🌳

Plantera
Despite having incredible buildup, pretty nice visuals and visual style, and impressive size, the Moon Lord isn't a good boss to actually fight. The ideas and basic structure of the fight aren't bad, so the fight doesn't need to be completely changed, but the attacks need work to make them fair and fit well together. I thought that because Moon Lord is being resprited and reanimated in 1.4.5, it would also be a good opportunity to make him a good fight.

So what exactly is wrong with Moon Lord? First of all, the Phantasmal Eyes. These are the tiny flying eyes that home in on you and explode. Because of how many of them are created and their homing capabilities, it is not feasible to dodge them in open space while staying close. They force you to run away and exploit the fact that after a bit they fall down and can't reach you. I thought of two ways they could be reworked to be fair and fun to dodge (although they may not be feasible for an update like this):
  • Phantasmal Eyes shouldn't deal damage while they are flying around in all directions. They would deal damage again once they fly at the player. In this simpler rework, they'd deactivate their homing and being affected by gravity soon after they start flying at the player. They would then continue flying in a straight line until they time out and explode.
  • At first, Phantasmal Eyes don't deal damage nor explode on contact. Shortly after they are all spawned, they will all fly up and teleport to randomly spaced out positions above the player (offscreen), raining down in straight lines, without homing. After teleporting they will deal contact damage again. I figured that to make running away not completely cheese this attack, their angle of descent gets flatter based on the player's horizontal speed at the time of their teleport. If the player is still they will go straight down, if they are moving away it will be more diagonal, so that if they continue moving in that direction they will get hit way more of the time than if they change their horizontal speed. Note that the Phantasmal Eyes should move quite slowly and will never adjust their direction, so it will be different from a bunch of predictive lasers coming down from the top of the screen.
  • Phantasmal Eyes never deal damage. The only damage they deal is their explosion. With this rework, they'd fly up and teleport like in the first rework, but this time they are aiming for random positions on the screen (these positions should be ahead of the player if they are moving). When they reach these positions, they'd explode, dealing damage if the player runs into them. To not make this attack completely unfair, harmless hollow circles will form around the points where the Phantasmal Eyes will explode (I don't know if the hitboxes are actually circles but if they can't be for whatever reason, the circles could be big enough to touch the points of the square hitbox), which disappear right after the explosion. In Expert Mode and above, they can fly directly to their explosion points instead of flying up and then down.
If these are too complicated to be in this update, hopefully reading that gave ideas of something easier to do. Generally replace the homing with something we can avoid with less movement.

Phantasmal Spheres are way better than the Eyes, but they're not perfect. It's kinda hard to tell where they're going, which is important for an attack that consists of several large evenly spaced projectiles being launched at the player, which could require fitting in between the gaps. It would be great if they showed their trajectory, maybe with some kind of afterimage effect, up until or right before they are launched, so you can try to stay in between the gaps sooner. And also because dodging in between is being emphasized more, in Expert and above they should have a higher maximum launch angle, maybe 40° or 45°.

The other attacks in the first phase are fine. Phantasmal Bolts are very fair, and the Phantasmal Deathray isn't hard to expect if you know the attack pattern and is perfectly dodgeable if you're decently close. However the second phase needs work.

A major problem with the second phase is that all three True Eyes of Cthulhu have separate attack patterns, without any sync, so it becomes very chaotic, not in a good way. A simple way to prevent this to have all the True Eyes always emerge from their sockets in a pre-set way, and I think the first phase eyes should continue attacking until all three of them are dead. In order to make the fight more interesting, all they will emerge in a set sequence, making their attack patterns offset somewhat, which results in them performing the same attacks one after the other. Additionally, the True Eyes shouldn't deal contact damage because of how erratically they move and they don't have any non-projectile attacks. Also the sockets have no need to deal contact damage.

The Phantasmal Eyes attack should work the same as whatever they end up doing in the first phase, with more of a delay after to leave time before the Deathray attack, which all three True Eyes should rotate in the same direction to prevent you from being stuck in between with nowhere to go. The Phantasmal Sphere attack is where it would differ from the first phase attacks. Once the True Eyes reach the end of their dash and release the Phantasmal Spheres, they'd instead release them in the six different hexagonal directions, with one aimed directly at the player. If this becomes too much with three True Eyes, maybe the speed of the Spheres could be reduced. This also might take some work with how differently the Spheres would move, but it would be way better than three True Eyes of Cthulhu launching a massive clump of Spheres in your direction.

So there you have it, what I'd like to be changed/reworked about the fight. Also, as a measure against kiting, the minimum distance from the player Moon Lord has to be before teleporting should be reduced from 150 tiles to 100, and the tongue should be reworked. It should now be out all the time, and pull the player if they get more than 80 tiles from the mouth. I've summarized what changes I'm suggesting in the spoiler below.

If anyone else has any other ideas, feel free to share them.

Bold changes - At minimum we should have this
Italic changes - Ideally we'd have this


First Phase
  • Minimum teleport distance reduced from 150 tiles to 100 tiles
  • Tongue is attached to the player at all times.
    • Spawns leech clots at the same frequency as before the rework, with the tongue being out all the time taken into account
    • Pulls the player towards the mouth if they are farther than 80 tiles from the mouth, until they are within 80 tiles
  • Phantasmal Eye attack 1:
    • Eyes won't deal damage until they start homing in on the player
    • After targeting the player, they will disable their homing and no longer be affected by gravity, until they expire and explode
  • Phantasmal Eye attack 2:
    • Eyes will now rapidly fly upwards out of the screen and disappear. They deal no damage while doing this
    • After a short delay, the eyes will fall in a straight line from above the top of the screen to the bottom, now with damage on contact
    • Angle of descent modified based on the player's horizontal speed
  • Phantasmal Eye attack 3:
    • Eye will no longer deal damage
    • Eyes will now rapidly fly upwards out of the screen and disappear
    • After a short delay, the eyes will fall straight down from the top of the screen at random points and explode. dealing damage
    • While the eyes are descending, a circle will form around the place they will explode at, showing the size of the explosion. The circles disappear after the explosion occurs
  • Phantasmal Sphere attack:
    • Until they are launched, they will show their trajectory with an afterimage effect

Second Phase
  • The eyes will remain in their sockets, continuing to attack as if they are in the first phase, until all three eyes are dead, at which point they will leave their sockets in the same sequence every time, desyncing their attack pattern by a little bit
  • True Eyes of Cthulhu will no longer deal contact damage
  • Removed empty eye socket contact damage
  • Phantasmal Sphere attack:
    • After surrounding itself with the six spheres, the True Eye will charge towards the player as normal, but instead release the spheres in six directions instead of all towards the player
  • Phantasmal Eye attack:
    • Eyes will behave identically to how they do in the first phase, though maybe with less Eyes spawned
  • Phantasmal Deathray attack:
    • All TEoC will move their deathrays in the same direction, be it clockwise or counterclockwise

Expert Mode
  • Maximum angle the Phantasmal Spheres can be launched at in the first phase increased from 30° to 45°
  • Phantasmal Eyes in both the first and second phase will fly directly to their explosion point instead of flying up first, reducing the time before they explode
 
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I like the eyes having their own attack pattern, it makes it feel more as if despite the desynchronization, they're working together to overthrow the threat of the player.
 
I think another thing could be done to counteract kiting in phase 2. The true eyes should overall move faster (or have a teleport separate from moon lord's), as currently they can lag behind moon lord which trivializes the phase as moon lord won't teleport to make them catch up, and the lasers get outranged. With an actual attack pattern for the true eyes, this would be a pretty fair change.
 
I changed the True Eye of Cthulhu spawning changes, so that now I'm suggesting they come out of their sockets in sequence, making their attack patterns offset by a bit. This should be better than having them perfectly synced which removes the need for three separate TEoC's.
 
Maybe we could mitigate kiting by having the Moon Lord's Tongue start to pull the player back in if they get 100 blocks away. It was always weird to me that the tongue could latch onto you but had no physical presence, just stole HP.
 
+1, never really liked how the ML fight felt more like a "flee and hope you outdamage the boss" situation. ML is literally as big as or bigger than your screen (i've got a 1920x1080 monitor) so it's difficult to see incoming attacks.

in addition, maybe there could be an indicator before the sweeping lasers?
 
The main problem with a Moon lord is that it's hard boss that easy to defeat: you can move to the side at high speed to avoid all attacks, except beams, which you can tank with Beetle armor. In other cases if you try to fight "fairly" you will not succeed in most cases.
Logical solution is to increase it's speed and remove beam attack.
 
If there's one thing I want changed about ML, it's the damn phantasmal spheres. Even at this stage of the game, they deal way too much damage even if you have like 100 defense (which is pretty beefy already). Aside from that, both the spheres and their clumps are a bit too big in my opinion. Couple all of that with their hypersonic speeds and you get the single most annoying thing in the ML fight.
Aside from that, I think the syncing of the TEoC's was also a bad idea when they added it, since previously they were all random so you knew which attacks were likely a hard-hitter and which ones you could scrub off. Now, the syncing means you get a bunch of the same attack at the same time, and this means that when it's the phantasmal spheres' turn you are absolutely going to be shredded while other times it's just a minor annoyance.
Still, the death laser should be kept as-is: it deals a ton of damage but that's offset by being very well visible and being easy to dodge if you have good mobility or just a RoD.
But yeah, either way, your ideas are good, don't get me wrong.
 
King Jameth III🌳 said:
The eyes have some glowy particles before the lasers fire...
Click to expand...
The problem is if you're far away from the Moon Lord's eye, you won't see the particles. My suggestion would be to have a thin beam particle effect appear pointed at the player just before the beam starts. I would also advocate for changing how the beam operates; instead of a single beam that sweeps across the screen, I'd say he fires three beams, one after the other, each one based on the player's location and movement. That way you can't dodge them by moving in the same direction every time, and it also makes the fight more dynamic and gives the boss a chance to catch up with you if you've been kiting it.
 
Stolaire said:
The main problem with a Moon lord is that it's hard boss that easy to defeat: you can move to the side at high speed to avoid all attacks, except beams, which you can tank with Beetle armor. In other cases if you try to fight "fairly" you will not succeed in most cases.
Logical solution is to increase it's speed and remove beam attack.
Click to expand...
Big Sammich said:
The problem is if you're far away from the Moon Lord's eye, you won't see the particles. My suggestion would be to have a thin beam particle effect appear pointed at the player just before the beam starts. I would also advocate for changing how the beam operates; instead of a single beam that sweeps across the screen, I'd say he fires three beams, one after the other, each one based on the player's location and movement. That way you can't dodge them by moving in the same direction every time, and it also makes the fight more dynamic and gives the boss a chance to catch up with you if you've been kiting it.
Click to expand...
In Moon Lord's current state, the beam attack is the only attack that completely stops you from running away as fast as possible. You have to stay close otherwise it moves too fast for you to dodge, and it always extends itself to beyond you so you'll pretty much always get hit if you're moving in one direction. Also not only are there particles, but the head eye always fires phantasmal bolts before charging up the beam, so you can know when it's happening no matter where you are.
zenithspeed said:
If there's one thing I want changed about ML, it's the damn phantasmal spheres. Even at this stage of the game, they deal way too much damage even if you have like 100 defense (which is pretty beefy already). Aside from that, both the spheres and their clumps are a bit too big in my opinion. Couple all of that with their hypersonic speeds and you get the single most annoying thing in the ML fight.
Aside from that, I think the syncing of the TEoC's was also a bad idea when they added it, since previously they were all random so you knew which attacks were likely a hard-hitter and which ones you could scrub off. Now, the syncing means you get a bunch of the same attack at the same time, and this means that when it's the phantasmal spheres' turn you are absolutely going to be shredded while other times it's just a minor annoyance.
Click to expand...
That's why I think the spheres should go outward in six directions instead of staying in the formation. When all three eyes do that at the same time or at about the same time, you have to dodge a mountain of spheres.
 
As multiple people have mentioned this to me (some outside of TCF) that the tongue should pull players towards the mouth as another form of antikite, I've added that to the main post.

Totally not also bumping the thread now that Red is being more active again, not at all
 
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