Two bosses in need of a rework

I really believe The Witch Queen and The Barrow King need a rework. These fights are entirely to easy. Almost no point in going there to fight them besides the one item they drop that you need. I would love to see these two bosses a bit more challenging. The drops can be a little better on them considering they have no chests around them. Just my two cents.

4 Likes

Those 2 halve always been easy especially witch queen unless when the game first came out on Playstation. @Elijah777

1 Like

I think they should remain easier. I always look forward to the challenge when I am still under 60. It is like the (Abyssal horror?) boss. A nice challenge in lower levels.

Abyssal Remnant (if you’re talking about The Dregs)


Now back to the original bosses:

• Barrow King is just a joke. This dude is in a late game area, the Mounds of the Dead, and he does no damage. He also has very little HP, so he dies really fast if you have any decent weapon.

• Witch Queen… The Witch Queen herself is as challenging as any other human carrying a 1H-Axe, you shouldn’t be getting hit at all no matter how much damage she does, so she doesn’t need to change.
→ However, the statues and lasers are just wasted potential (like most of the game?), because everything is too slow…


Conclusion:

• The Barrow King could use a complete overhaul with a new moveset instead of again being an oversized human 1H-Sword that doesn’t take knockback, and considering his location he should be threatening! (Maybe as much as Tyros the Kinscourge)

• The Witch Queen doesn’t need to change, although it would be appreciated if she got something special, but the phases leading to her should be improved.
Statues should have a more varied moveset, and should be slightly faster.
Lasers need to trigger much faster to be of any use (you can even make them super fast but only knockdown without any damage)
And those phases would thus be faster paced, but also need to last longer.

4 Likes

From a lore perspective, the Barrow King should be pretty powerful, probably even more so than the Kinscourge. It needed an elaborate trap and a whole squad of people to kill him, iirc including Tyros himself when he was still alive. Even undead, the Priest King should still be powerful, if not even more powerful than alive.

The Witch Queen isn’t necessarily powerful in a physical way. She was a leader, a priestess, probably a sorcerer, but not necessarily a good fighter. The statues feel enough to represent her skills.
Physically though, she’s still Razma, who seems to have a knack for fighting. As she’s able fight Sandbeasts with Conan, she should be more capable than most humans.
Personally, I’d just increase her HP. That way, she’d still be doable at low levels, but that’d explain how she can defeat a Sandbeast. Maybe active Razma’s fighting skills are dormant while she’s possessed, but he toughness should still be there.

Another thing is the lack of meaningful loot in both dungeons. You get the artifacts, yes, but something else might be fine, similar to how Tyros gives a heart which allows to craft a semi-decent sword.
Razma, being possessed by the Witch Queen, could drop Dagon, Lemurian, wizardry or alchemy related loot, e. g. Scales of Dagon, sorcery bags, Lemurian weapons/armor or Lemurian health potions.

Good loot for the Barrow King/Priest King is more difficult. It’s a bit questionable why he even is where he is. I assume the humans locked him in the tomb, expecting him to rise again. Why did they leave a sword with him? One wonders.
But if they left him a weapon, maybe the tomb may contain other useful stuff, maybe also stuff left from the Lemurian age or their northern outpost.
My suggestion: Add some slain humans at the door and some Silent Legion armor pieces and hardened steel weapons to the boss loot.
That could tell us that the slain Priest King arose before all humans could leave the tomb. Some were locked in by their comrades, cursed to be slain by him or starve to death. He killed them, took one of their weapons (which he can use) and the armor (which he cannot use) and since then has failed to open the door.

Also, put Telith’s ghost back in. Just wanted to say that.

5 Likes

I believe that they didn’t have time to balance them with the new player damage system.
About Abyssal i could kill it even before sorcery lvl 10 with stone daggers in 4 rounds only. Now even with something better you need more rounds so it’s good enough for new players to have the 1st feeling of dungeon.
Witch Queen is a lore visit but holds a really strong secret of the game advance, thats why this fight should remain easy, but not so easy as it is right now. It’s the lemurian armor recipe. If you get this recipe, then loot either the Lemurian camp, either the sunken city you’ll get really fast a full epic set from this armor. Now if before you take the road for the jungle, stop in the unnamed city and kill three green hatchlings you’ll get enough leather (use pick to harvest) to repair these armor pieces fully. So you do understand how important this is for a pvp new character in a new server. In totally one hour the player has gear competitive to face other opponents if necessary.
About the barrow king…

This :point_up_2:.
About 2 years ago (or maybe more) @TeleTesselator will show me a video of speed running.
I saw in this video how easy this boss fell and i told him that tgis wasn’t right. It didn’t seemed right because this boss was really good when i started this game. Actually the very first time i faced him i died. When i return back my thrall had killed him but it was with really low hp left. I didn’t understand when they made him so easy, but like i said in the beginning, it’s more than 2 years that they humiliate this boss. However after so many years it’s the first complain i read. So be it, it was about time.

I noticed this during ODO’s early development. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or if it’s just a consequence of semi-automated bulk datatable edits, but most of the bosses in this game currently do almost no damage. The Warmaker’s Champion has to be the worst example of this, he tickles even if you’re wearing terrible or no gear. When I was overhauling these bosses I had to up their damage multipliers by 5x or more just to make them feel like a credible threat to the player.

The game could really benefit from a developer evaluating each boss’s damage and HP by hand (with playtesting) and making adjustments until they feel right because currently it’s pretty far off, especially since dodging the attacks has gotten easier over time due to stamina and roll changes. It’s the same for a lot of other bosses: Kinscourge, the Well of Skelos bosses, all the bosses in the Sunken City - none of them are dangerous at all.

The loot’s another issue entirely I guess. I have my own solution to that in my mod, but it’s one that I can’t see Funcom doing as it strays too far from their stated game design vision.

I would give this all of my daily ‘likes’ if I could. Gathering all of the artifacts to remove the bracelet is not something that a level 10 player should be setting out to do. It is something which should, ideally, be for a level 60 player who is ready to complete the game. And as such, the level of challenge presented by these two bosses should be reflected accordingly. The Barrow King especially, also The Witch Queen also, are not a proportionate level 60 challenge.

1 Like

I’ve said this on a couple occasions, and I’ll say it again now. I think these story bosses that only consist of a single room and fight should be expanded into actual dungeons.

They don’t have to be huge, even Dregs-sized would be a major improvement.

6 Likes

This is a valid point, but I remember being very excited when I found those items, as a young player. We need to keep a fair number of low-mid tier bosses in the game. I know the run up to 60 is pretty fast, especially for veterans of the game, but the strongest bonds we form with a game, come from our first time playing it.

I’m sure most of the player base has multiple years invested in CE and with the map being so limited in size, it makes it a struggle to provide more end game content for the majority of players. We just have to keep enough early game content and the sense of achievement gained from defeating lower level bosses.

Possible solution:

Give all the lower level dungeons a variable difficulty, which scales based on the party entering. That keeps content for the new player and increases content for the veteran player.

1 Like

I don’t know about the Witch Queen being so easy. On our server, she has 900k HP. We fought her for 15 minutes and she still had 93% of her hp. It is true that she doesn’t do much damage, but, 900k hp is a bit much, I think.

That would be a problem with your server, she should have 2250.

However, you can still kill her with 900k in well under 15 minutes after you discover the secret of disease.

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.