Possibly one of the hardest modes in this game: The Colossus. This is a game mode of 50 waves of enemies one after the other. That would be brutal, but luckily you have me to help you out. This mode is surmountable as long as you know what you are doing. There are many different strategies to take on this mode, but, after much experimentation and killing/dying, I believe I have found the strategies that consistently work mostly nicely. I’m not saying I win Colossus every time I try to, and I'm also not saying adapting this strategy will instantly make you a beast slaying monster. What I am is you'll probably die less and get closer to or just overall win more often. It’s still not easy. It’s in fact something that demands little to no mistake, and that is the true tough part of everything.

I’m going to assume you have some grasp of the basic mechanics of the game, so I won’t go over things such as how to item hop and swing your sword here. I will, however, go over the different useful items, ways of fighting, how to set up your arena, and boss strategies. To be clear, when I say boss strategies, I’m going to cover individual boss strategies and combination boss strategies. Oh, you know how to deal with brobash? That’s nice, but do you know how to deal with him and a giant worm at the same time? Oh, no? Cool. I’ll cover that. You’re welcome. You don’t know how to fight the final bosses? No one does, it’s okay. I’ll help you with it anyway.

It would probably be best to start with arena set up. I’ll start by breaking down how the colossus works a little bit. The breakable blocks in the arena will spawn enemies. That means every single breakable block that isn’t covered with a climber makes one enemy. Break those blocks or cover them and no enemy spawns. The exception to this is the bottom floor of the arena, which will spawn enemies regardless of what you do or where you are.

This is really best shown with a video and images, so refer to the video below for setting up your arena. It’s okay if you don’t get everything done before enemies start spawning. The goal of the set-up is to minimize the amount of spawning enemies and make boss fights easier for yourself. Some of these are really optional, but when you get down to it, the less enemies you have to deal with, the less death you could encounter, so I would recommend this. Regardless, the most annoying things of the arena are the side enemies that spawn in that you really have to go out of your way to kill every time, so definitely do break those to save the hassle every other wave. Break the two blocks that jut out on the end in the middle area, as they really act as a barrier to accessing the middle area. Most importantly, break the bottom of the blocks on the ground floor. Not the top part of them, just the bottom. This is the single most important part of the set up. These blocks are the set up for dealing with bosses and having the hunters/beebles be not a huge hassle. It also just makes clearing out enemies that much easier and faster. I'll refer to the blocks you didn't break throughout this guide as Boss blocks, and they will used and abused. Overall, I’d recommend breaking all the recommended blocks because you’re really not going to do anything else with the corrodes you spawn with. Might as well put them to good use.


So you’ve got your arena set up? That’s great! There’s more. One thing I recommend doing when you get the chance is breaking up that middle section. Yeah, all of it. You could leave one block on the end for one enemy to spawn in and use them to be the last enemy you kill before jumping into the boss wave. I recommend doing that if speed isn’t your game. Breaking up those blocks will speed things up considerably and make it so that you don’t have to deal with as many enemies. Remember, the less enemies you deal with, the less encounters with potential death you have. Very important that. Also, less worms. Yeah, the little worms only spawn in blocks and are always behind torches even though it doesn't look like they are; you won’t have to deal with them anymore, which is great in my opinion.

That about wraps up arena set up. This element can’t be overlooked. Do it!

Next it would be important to just give a general overview as to how colossus goes. Very general. You start, you pick up the two spawn swords, go up the elevator, start setting up your arena and grabbing the swords along the way, and then stand on top of one of the blocks on the bottom to stop an enemy from spawning, and then jump down, clear out the bottom floor. Take the elevator up, more block breaking/arena setting up, grabbing the last of your swords, kill the top enemies the only time you have to and then drop down to middle area, clear out enemies, do the last of the arena set up and killing, and then drop down to first floor and get ready for the boss wave. This is where Colossus really begins, and how you start every boss wave is important and will be the same every time. You’re going to hang from the bottom of one of the blocks on the bottom and slash at where the boss spawns in. You want to be near the end (not on the end because of mother hounds) and slashing as they start to spawn. Every strategy goes from there, and I recommend speed in taking care of things, as if you can take care of one boss quickly, you will only actually have to deal with one, unless you’re unlucky enough to get multiple boss spawns, which is sadly common. Once you take care of one boss, you move on to take care of the next one. I’m simplifying this immensely because this will all be discussed in boss strategies. I just want to give a brief overview of how things go.

Once your bosses are taken care of (and you hopefully didn’t die), you jump on top of one of the blocks on the ground floor, wait for enemies to spawn, then jump down as they spawn and clear out the ground floor. Hop on the elevator, go to third floor, put your elevator back down, jump down, check out your item, hope it’s great, buy revives as necessary, craft as necessary, drop down to the second floor, clear out, and then get ready for the boss wave. Rinse and repeat until wave 50. Yes, things won’t go exactly to plan every time, but it’s good to have a plan. You got it? This is how the whole thing will go. It doesn’t matter if you favor the left side or the right side. It’s the same. You can elevator up and down on the left or right, you can start boss waves on the left or right. Everything gets set up pretty symmetrically, so use preference there.
Things get slightly simplified if you clear out the middle blocks (either using a worm or an item breaking weapon) and you can only have to deal with one enemy on the middle section or no enemies (user preference really).

You may have noticed that my strategy suggests dropping from level to level. This is somewhat optional. If you take out all of the blocks on the top, you’d really want to send the elevator down before taking care of item and witch business, so you’d have to drop down to the next level to take care of business. This is actually really easy and consistent, just don’t mess up. Just grab the wall, drop down, and item hop with your sword to break the fall and be safe. You’ll to the same dropping down to the first floor from the second floor for boss time. You can throw straight down or to the side. I recommend going out a little for the third to second level and throwing diagonal down toward the middle, and straight down for second to first level. It might take you a bit to get used to, but item hopping is a super essential game mechanic, so you better get used to it anyway.

Here's the most important thing here to note: Your sword slash. With the c sword, you can see the hit box in front of you when you slash. What’s important to note is that this hit box stays out for a few frames. This means you can slash then move away and, if something moves into that hit box, they’ll still get hit. This is the basis of what I have chosen to name hit and run tactics. Most of the time when you’re cutting at dangerous enemies, specifically ones that can move towards you, you want to jump towards them, hold jump until you get your slash off, then start going the opposite direction. The slash will remain while you move away. It's not long, but it's long enough to be safer. This is specifically useful on the golems, dogs, rats, beebles/hunters, beetles, brobash, and kind of mother hounds. These are also the enemies that, if you’re not careful with, you’ll likely die to the most.

Be wary of how golems can knock you around. Dogs can suddenly jump towards you over your slash. Rats, beebles/hunters, and beetles can suddenly start moving towards you with no warning. Making sure that you’re moving away when these sudden actions occur can make it more likely that you’ll survive rather than die and throw your hands up in frustration.
The next important thing to note is how far you swing with the sword. This is really something that you need to get a feel for, but really try to use the range to your advantage. You really shouldn’t be right up in the face of something hitting them when you can be a whole half block further away. Distance means safety.

Probably the last important thing to note is the mechanic of swinging the sword. Yes. You hold jump, you swing sword. How long you have to hold jump depends on the sword, but unless you have the scimitar, it’s a certain amount of time. Get that timing down. Be very good at that timing. Once the hit box appears, you can let go of jump and hit it again. Make it natural that that timing is how long you hold down and then let go and then hold down again. The faster you can swing, the more hits you’re getting in, and that’s important to killing bosses quickly.

Further on the mechanic of swinging the sword, it doesn’t matter what your position is when you start holding jump, you’re going to start swinging the sword. This means you can be mid-air, and you’ll start swinging your sword from there. So if you want to hit something on the ground, you start a jump, let go of jump, then hit jump again to swing as you hit the ground. Utilizing this, you can hit wherever you want in space, as long as you can reach it. This can take some practice to get down, so get to work!

The last note on sword swinging mechanics. The game seems to remember your holding the jump button regardless of whether you have an item out. This means you can start to hold jump with a sword in your inventory, then pull out the sword and it will still swing. This is mostly useful for the Ascender, which will be detailed later.

Okay but sure, you didn’t come here to learn these basic notes that you already know. You want to know how to fight the bosses, and the whole why of me having you set up those blocks on the ground floor. You want to know how to kill brobash and a watcher, or a watcher and a worm, or a mother hound and brobash. This is the section for you.

First and foremost, start every boss wave hanging from the bottom of one of the blocks on the ground floor on the side closest to the middle. Don’t be all the way at the end of it because a mother hound spawn can possibly kill you then. From there, once enemies spawn, move closer until hitting if the spawn is brobash, and run to the other side to take care of something else if it’s a worm. If it’s a corrupted watcher, fire golem, or watcher, slash until they start attacking, then start moving away. This is how you will start every boss wave, so learn how to deal with each spawn. The corrupted watcher and fire golem you have to react quickly to. Really, if you see a corrupted watcher, just immediately move away and start the fight.

Now I’m going to go into how to fight each boss individually and then how to fight the different combinations. It’s very important to know how to kill something quickly and efficiently before dealing with more than one. I’ll note that all of these strategies are going to revolve around c sword strategies because most other strategies with other items are similar to this, and I’ll note other item strategies after the boss strategies, as it’s good to know how to use your other items and weapons well.

Fire Golem

The whole crux of the strategy for killing this guy is knowing you can hurt him by throwing your sword at him. He punches you when you get in front of him and splatters lava everywhere. He takes a few seconds to do this though, which gives you some time to do some nasty damage to him. The quick and good strategy for this guy is to run towards him where he’s facing, trigger his punching, running jump over him and do a slash on the way, then turn around and start throwing your sword into his back as quickly as you can. You want to be close enough that your sword immediately bounces back into your hand and you can throw very fast on this. Once he is just about to finish his punching animation, move away. He can immediately go into a random lava jump that sprays lava particles everywhere, and that can and will kill you. From here you can do the same action, but you have the added option of throwing your sword down onto him, which should kill him if you did enough damage. Sometimes with this strategy if you’re too close, you’ll just throw your sword through him. Just try and get your sword back and try again. The spacing is finicky on this, but it kind of comes down to be close, but not too close. The boss blocks actually kind of mess you up here a bit with him, but just do your best to work around them.

You can also just trigger his punching, jump over him, and throw a bunch of swords down on his head. If he’s fresh, it likely won’t kill him outright, but it does almost kill him.
Watcher
Likely you might have learned this guy’s pattern in the temple already, but there might be more to take advantage of than you might think. Regardless, he’s an easy one. When he spawns in, your screen will go slightly red. He rubberbands to you and will grab at you when you get within a certain proximity of him. When you do 3 damage to him, he backs off in a direction that is exactly opposite of you. He can still be hit when he’s backing off from you, but he does move faster than you do. The basic strategy for this guy is to get in 2-3 slashes, back off for his grab, then go in again and slash. You can get 3 slashes if you’re brave by jumping into his face before he grabs, getting two slashes in the air, and then a third will come from another jump. If you’re too close to his face, he might grab you, so be careful with it. Otherwise, 2 slashes, move away, and then jump in and slash him as much as you can before he retreats. If you get him positioned well, after getting your three hits on him, he can move straight back, which can give you the chance to get in several extra hits fairly easily, possibly to the point of one cycling him. The trick to this is pulling him so that he’s about level to you when you get in your last slash, which will prompt him to move just horizontally back. This doesn’t always work, but it is extremely rewarding when it does. Skipping cycles on this guy can be crucial for getting to dealing with other bosses that are more threatening.

Corrupted Watcher

This enemy seems more dangerous than it really is. When it spawns in, the screen will go white. It rubberbands to you in a similar way to the Watcher, but it lunges and bites rather than grabs. Unlike the watcher, this one won’t retreat after taking damage. This fight goes very quickly due to the lack of retreating. It’s important to note that when he starts lunging, he will go to your position at the time when he started his lunge. It’s important to not backstep to previous positions in this time, of you will get chomped. To deal with this one, wait for him to lunge, then hit him with a few slashes and then move back as he starts to lunge again. You don’t have to move back much, maybe a block or a block and a half at most. You’ll want to start attacking again as soon as you finish your moving to maximize damage. Rinse and repeat. He should die within two to three lunges if you’re efficient.

Giant Worm

This enemy isn’t dangerous on its own, it just takes a lot of hits. 25 hits with sword damage, 50 with explosive damage. He also breaks blocks, which you can use to your advantage. You can use the worm to break those pesky middle blocks and stop enemies from spawning in the middle. Otherwise, just make sure you maneuver him to not break your boss blocks on the ground floor. You can take him up the elevator if you need to get some space on the ground floor. Otherwise, this guy will rubberband to you quickly if you’re far away and slowly when you’re close. When you deal damage to it, it’ll pull back for a little bit, then lunge forward further than it was. You can get some hits in during the pullback phase, but I wouldn’t suggest being too greedy. You can also hit it as it’s coming back from the pullback phase and it won’t pull back then. Per cycle of pullback, you can probably get in somewhere around 7-10 slashes safely, with the entire cycle considered. Around 6 for starting slashes, and then maybe 3 or so for after that. Overall, get a feel for the rhythm, and this is one of the easiest, albeit tankiest bosses.

Mother Hound

Her bark is worse than her bite. Mostly because it pushes you away into other things or just way from her when you’re trying to cut her up. She takes 7 hits to kill, and she can go pretty quickly if you lean into her and really try to cut her up as quickly as possible. Occasionally she will jump or bark, and she usually hunches down before she does either, and it can be quick or slow. If she jumps, let her jump over you and move towards where he started. You can try to cut her hindquarters as she jumps, but don’t try too hard for it, as her hitbox is a bit bigger than it looks. If you hit her while she’s jumping, she will recoil back. Keep this in mind so you don’t move into her after cutting her up. You can also cut her through the boss blocks as she sticks into them somewhat if she’s against them. This can be quite useful for safe and easy damage, but be aware that she can possibly jump on top of them and then jump up to the elevator, which is just annoying to hit her safely on. If you can catch her on top of the block, just do a ledge jump straight up with a sword slash to knock her down. If she gets onto the elevator, you have to either wait for her to jump down or climb up to the ceiling next to it and cut her from there. She can bark you down and make you have to do the climbing again. Get her movements down and she won’t be too much of a threat.

Brobash

The great complicating factor in Colossus. He is probably responsible for most Colossus deaths. When dealing with Brobash, generally you want to deal with him and him alone. He rubberbands to you hard, and he won’t stop until you take him down. He has two phases. His first phase is 9 hits, and his second phase is 7. After the first phase, he goes face down for a few seconds, then revives and taunts. He’s invulnerable during this time, so give him some space and let it wear off before renewing your attack. He also taunts occasionally, where he stops, makes a noise, and throws his hands up in the air. This is a good time to get in 1-2 hits if you can. Hit and run tactics are the bread and butter to this fight. Jump towards him, slash, hope you hit him, and be running before he cuts you. Rinse and repeat. He jumps to match your jumping. You will likely run out of horizontal space with this fight, and you don’t want your back up against the wall with Brobash. The boss blocks will help in these situations. When you start getting close to them, wait for him to approach and jump and hit your head on the bottom of the block. As long as Brobash isn’t in the air, he’ll jump up on the block and climb up. You can use this chance to run back, wait for him to come back down, and resume the fight. You can sometimes even get a bonus hit when you do the jump if you’re lucky enough. Make sure to be careful with getting him in the air, as he does throw corrosion potions, and he can break your boss blocks. He only throws them when you are above him, so avoid going up onto the boss blocks when he’s around. It’s important to note that Brobash’s reach is a bit shorter than yours, so as long as you keep him at a distance where you can just slash him, you should be safe. I would not recommend jumping over him unless he is taunting or you have to. Sometimes he just doesn’t jump up to the boss block and let you switch out with him, so you have to hope you can get over his head on the other side. Do so with care.

Well that covers all of the individual bosses. One on one, they are all quite manageable, but that’s the problem with the Colossus: You will always have to deal with at least two of them during boss waves, possibly more. And with the exception of the worm, you can get two of the same one. This means it is possible to have to deal with two brobashes at once, which might be the worst boss combination to deal with. This section will cover the different boss combinations and the specific strategies to dealing with them starting from the starting position. Some of these situations can be a bit hairy, and remember that you can always use an elevator to go up to catch your breath. I’ll also note that I’ll only be doing pairings of 2 because that’s what you’ll more often find, and it’s a tad tough to anticipate more than that in terms of strategies. That skill comes down to knowing what would be best to do in the particular situation. I’ll also be assuming that your starting position is on the left boss block, but if you prefer right, just flip all of these.

2 Fire Golems.
You’ll get a few slashes on the fire golem closest to you, then drop to the right and wait for his punch to finish. Then, if he doesn’t move, you can run up to his face and jump up through the little gap between him and the boss block. This might take some practice, but it’s doable. If he does move, let him come towards you enough to move past the boss block, then employ normal strategies. Once one is down, go take care of the other one. If you end up not getting down one before the other creeps up on you, I’d suggest using sword drop strats on one or both (depending on where they are) where you just jump over and drop swords on heads. It’s more difficult to sit still when you have two on you.

Fire Golem on left, Mother Hound on Right
Same strategy for 2 Fire Golems, but you’ll want to stay out of the middle if you don’t get the Fire Golem down quickly.

Mother Hound on Left, Fire Golem on Right
You should get a slash or two on the Hound from the start, then just go in and try and get some more hits. If the dog jumps towards you, move to the other side of the boss block and hit from the safety that gives you. If the Hound doesn’t jump towards you or if you bop her back, just continue on the offensive. Speed is the key here. If you can’t kill the Hound before the Fire Golem comes for you, I’d suggest using a jump potion or elevator to go up and get somewhat of a refresh on your fighting ground. Find a way to safely drop down and fight whichever is closest from there.

Fire Golem on Left, Giant Worm on Right
Same Strategy as 2 fire Golems, but if you’re slow, take the elevator up and fight the worm up top, then take care of Fire Golem.

Giant Worm on Left, Fire Golem on Right
As soon as you see a Giant Worm is spawning, drop down and run over and take care of the Fire Golem on the right. In fact, anytime a Giant Worm starts spawning, that should be your reaction. Run over and take care of other thing. Otherwise, same as the above fight.

Fire Golem on Left, Watcher on Right
After your initial drop down after the spawn, get over the Fire Golem and prioritize the Watcher. If the Fire Golem approaches you during the Watcher fight, you can take time after hitting the Watcher away to get some more hits in on the Fire Golem. Continue until completion.

Watcher on Left, Fire Golem on Right
Prioritize the Watcher, you should push him back before he can even do anything to you. Run forward to confirm you have either a Fire Golem or Mother Hound, and then pull the Watcher back to the left side. You should be able to kill the Watcher before the Fire Golem bothers with you. If not, same strategy as above.

Fire Golem on Left, Corrupted Watcher on Right
This is similar to the non-corrupted version, but you want to take into account how much more aggressive the C Watcher is. Once you drop down at the start, start getting on top of the boss block, then jump up to the ball and swing over the C Watcher. Item hop with an old sword to break the fall and pull the C Watcher to about the middle of the arena. You can fight him normally from there.

Corrupted Watcher on Left, Fire Golem on Right
Believe it or not, almost all C Watcher on your side combinations go about the same. You drop down, kill the C Watcher, slowly pulling him towards the wall, and he dies, then you go take care of other threat.

Fire Golem on Left, Brobash on Right
This is very important. Kill that Fire Golem as quickly as you can. You want him dead before Brobash stops his beginning taunt and begins his chase. Make sure you’re quick and don’t be sloppy about it. Once Fire Golem is dead, Brobash as normal.

Brobash on Left, Fire Golem on Right
Slash until Brobash loses his first round. If you’re not hitting him, inch closer until you are. Once he goes down, run over and take care of the Fire Golem. You must be quick because you don’t want to deal with both at the same time.

2 Mother Hounds
You just fight the Mother Hounds as normal. You really shouldn’t even have to deal with both at the same time, but if you do, just keep the boss blocks between you and the Mother Hounds.

Mother Hound on Left, Giant Worm on Right
Fight the Mother Hound as normal, and you can make it go a little faster if you can manage to hit or maneuver the Mother Hound into the worm’s block breaking, since it counts as explosive damage, making the fight go faster. Then fight Giant Worm. If you’re slow killing Hound, take the Worm up top and kill it.

Giant Worm on Left, Mother Hound on Right
As soon as you see a Giant Worm is spawning, drop down and run over and take care of the Mother Hound on the right. You really want to kill the Hound before the Worm gets to you. If you don’t manage it, take the Worm up top and kill it.

Mother Hound on Left, Watcher on Right
Get as many hits in on the Hound as you can before Watcher gets over. Once Watcher gets there, pull him over towards the wall and take care of the Watcher. You can get some hits in on the Hound during the pullback phases of the Watcher.

Watcher on Left, Mother Hound on Right
You can pretty much treat this as an individual fight on each, and it basically goes to the above strategy if the Hound happens to jump over to you.

Mother Hound on Left, Corrupted Watcher on Right
Get as many hits in on the Hound as you can before the C Watcher gets there. When he does, start the normal C Watcher fight, pulling him to toward the wall. The Hound might mess up your spacing and push you back, but make sure you don’t move while the C Watcher is chomping down. If you start getting too close to the wall, use the ball to go over the watcher with a possible additional sword item hop and resume fighting the other way. This starts to get a bit more risky, hopefully you’ll have finished before you get to this point.

Corrupted Watcher on Left, Mother Hound on Right
This is pretty much just a normal C Watcher and Mother Hound fight.

Mother Hound on Left, Brobash on Right
Do everything you can to kill the Mother Hound before Brobash gets to you. This one is very tight, and the Hound can easily mess up your tactics. If Brobash arrives before the Hound is dead, get on top of the boss block before Brobash gets there and swing up to the platform just above ground floor. From here, I would recommend immediately running to the right and fighting Brobash as much as you can on the right side, swinging up as necessary to escape. Try to stay clear of the Hound unless you know it only needs another hit or two to die and can get those hits in.

Brobash on Left, Mother Hound on Right
Slash until Brobash loses his first round, then, as soon as he goes down, run over and try to kill off the Mother Hound. This is pretty tight and you might not quite get it. If not, go to the above tactics for the reverse order. Prioritize getting those 7 hits in on Brobash to kill him.

2 Watchers
You should be able to slash the one in front of you until he recoils. The other one should come to you in short order, and, if you’re quick enough, you can basically just go between fighting one as another recoils until they’re dead. If not, that’s no big deal. Just pull them around until the two watchers are on top of each other and fight them as normal. They should, at that point, reach at the same time. Rinse and repeat until dead.

Watcher on Left, Giant Worm on Right
Fight Watcher as normal, bonus if you can hit him into the emerging Giant worm and get some extra hits from that. Then fight Worm.

Giant Worm on Left, Watcher on Right
As soon as you see that you have a Giant Worm, start running right, and start fighting the Watcher. This fight is the same as the above.

Watcher on Left, Corrupted Watcher on Right
Slash until Watcher has gone off, then run up to the C Watcher until he starts his lunge. Fight him until the Watcher returns, then just slash at the C Watcher until the Watcher starts lunging and retreat a bit then. If you do it right, the Watcher ends up having no real impact and the C Watcher should quickly die. Then finish Watcher as normal.

Corrupted Watcher on Left, Watcher on Right
You should be able to take the C Watcher out before you even have to deal with the Watcher. If not, it’s exactly the same as the above combination.

Watcher on Left, Brobash on Right
Try to kill the Watcher as soon as you can. You probably won’t kill it before Brobash gets to you unless you get really lucky. Once that happens, start fighting Brobash. You should be able to get some hits in on Brobash even with the watcher chasing you, just be mindful of when the Watcher is grabbing at you. If Brobash starts taunting, take the opportunity to get some more hits in on the Watcher. If Brobash goes down, finish of the Watcher and fight Brobash as normal.

Brobash on Left, Watcher on Right
Slash Brobash as normal, and he should go down before the Watcher arrives. If not, back off and the rest will be the same as above, but Brobash might die first instead.

2 Corrupted Watchers
This can get a little hairy and scary to be honest. You’ll start off fighting one as normal until the next one gets there. At this point, you’ll want to get over them (use the ball with a sword hop or a jump potion to accomplish this) and fight them more towards the middle. You should be able to sync them up pretty easily and do the fight as normal.
Corrupted Watcher on Left, Giant Worm on Right
This can be treated as an individual fight on both.

Giant Worm on Left, Corrupted Watcher on Right
Drop down and meet the C Watcher in the middle. Get in a round of slashes in on him, then sword hop over him and pull him the other direction. You just don’t want to be between the Worm and the C Watcher. It should end up being an individual fight on both other than that.

Corrupted Watcher on Left, Brobash on Right
This ends up being an individual fight on both because of how fast the C Watcher goes.

Brobash on Left, Corrupted Watcher on Right
Slash Brobash as quickly as you can to get him down before the C Watcher arrives. The C Watcher should go down before Brobash resumes his struggles. If you fail in getting Brobash down to start, fall back and start fighting the C Watcher. Get out of the corner via jumps if you can and prioritize killing the C Watcher. Take him up to the platform just above the ground if you can and finish him off there, then fight Brobash as normal.

2 Brobashes
Yeah, this is probably the worst one, hands down. Cut down the one in front of you first, then wait for him to get up and fight him to the corner. I recommend getting over him however you can (or under him if he uses a jump) and go up to the block just above the ground. Pull a Brobash there and fight it as much as you can until you reach the end of the platform, then run off, item hop to not die, and start fighting whichever one gets closest to you. Hope to knock one down and keep fighting the other one. If both remain, try to get back up to the block above the ground floor and repeat the strategy until victory. This definitely takes a lot of improvising and some possible hairy situations, so mostly just hope you don’t have to deal with it.

Brobash on Left, Giant Worm on Right
Slash Brobash until he goes down, then run over and get a hit or two in on the Worm before he emerges. Pull him around the boss block to the elevator and take the Worm up to the 3rd floor to fight. Don’t worry about sending the elevator down just yet because you have Brobash to worry about. Fight the Worm individually, then send the elevator down, but do NOT go down on it. Go to the very side of the arena, which will pull Brobash to the wall. Start running towards the middle, jump off, and item hop to safety. You should be safe, but keep moving because Brobash WILL give chase. Work your way down to the ground floor with a similar strategy of pulling Brobash to one side and then running to the other and then fight Brobash as normal. This works because you can move just a bit faster than Brobash.

Giant Worm on Left, Brobash on Right
Get a few hits in on the Worm, then pull him up to the third floor. Yes, this will be the same strategy as above.

And that covers all of the possible 2 boss combinations! I’ll generally note that any more than that requires improvisation. If you ever get a boss spawn on your starting side, drop that side and start running to the other side. You don’t want to deal with more than one at a time if you can help it, and if you can take other the other one before adjusting to dealing with the other two, you’ll be better off. Also, don’t be afraid to abandon some old swords for item hopping. You can always get them back later unless Brobash pushes them into a block.

With some strategies out of the way that are specific to the C Sword, it would be good to cover other item strategies. I’m not covering every possible item, just the ones that are useful. (Sorry spike and jump berry!)

Seeds
Hope to get golden berries from these for extra resources.

Hadou orb
Use this to clear out blocks as needed.

Cake
Use this to clear blocks as needed or to quick kill a Worm that will be bothersome to deal with. Can also be used to get a free hit in on final bosses.

Invulnorb
Save these for the final boss fight for invulnerability time.

Keg
Save this for the final fight. It does 8 damage, which is almost a whole phase off of one of them. Throw it down next to the one spawing that you’re not going to take down and save some effort!

Elastograp
You can use this to not have to bother with taking the elevator up anymore and being able to get to the ground just above the ground floor quickly.

Kingshook
It’s like a C Sword, but combined with an elastograp. And it’s very cool. I’d recommend replacing your C Sword like this until you get something else.

Boots
Hold onto boots. You can use them in your inventory if you can handle the increased moving speed, but I wouldn’t really recommend it. Once you have enough to make arcane sabatons or get sabatons themselves, you don’t need more. Once you a have a vapour wand, combine it with the sabatons and enjoy some gunboots.

Gunboots
Get above enemies and unleash death. Be careful with this though, enemies can still hurt you, and you want to be wary of that. I’d mostly recommend using this for mobs, the end bosses, the Worm, and maybe Brobash as you can.

Spear
This item is specifically useful for one boss enemy: The Fire golem. Simply kite a punch, jump over, and drop this straight down on his head, and watch him die. The spear bounces repeatedly until the Golem moves or until it dies, and this happens very quickly. With this, he is very barely a problem.

Zball
This can be used in the same way as the spear, but you have to charge it up first, which makes it a little less useful. You can throw it to hit just about anything from a distance, which can be kind of nice. I mostly recommend a similar strategy to the spear and keep it in back up if you get a spear.

ZSword (???)
Yeah, that Zardo sword you got at the end of the main game. This weapon makes clearing out most of the normal mobs much safer because of the increased range. It has the same swing time as the Killatonne, which isn’t too bad, unfortunately, the increased swing time means less hits on most of the bosses except Brobash, where increased range means increased safety. Use it AFTER taking down his first round if he spawns next to you though. Very good item to get.

Brobash’s Scimitar
This can pretty much replace your normal weapon for everything except Brobash. This weapon can swing every frame, so the faster you can hit jump, the faster you slash. You can even hit Brobash with it technically safely, but I wouldn’t recommend a moving fight with this weapon against him, as it does have less range than the C Sword This means you have to get even closer, and that just isn’t good for Brobash. You can safely kill him if he spawns next to you though, so definitely take advantage of that. Just don’t be too greedy and keep your normal strategies in mind. In addition, this can be thrown on the fire golem’s head like a spear, but it doesn’t hit quite as quickly, so the fire golem is more likely to move out of the way if you do this.

Killatonne
Absolutely useless as a weapon. Use it to clear out blocks as you need and then ditch it.

Exiled Blade
Hold onto this if you get it. It’s not too great as a weapon, but it can potentially become an Ascender if you get a vapour wand at any point, which is very great. It does have some nice uses in fighting the Mother Hound and the Giant Worm, but it’s arguably not more useful than the C Sword for that. You can use it to clear blocks as you need, and I’d mostly use it for that.

Vapour Wand
On its own, it’s not terribly useful as a weapon. You want to use this to make an ascender or gunboots if you can, and that’s the only real use for it.

Boiler Wand
Mostly useless. Use it to break blocks as needed and toss it.

Ascender
This is a game changer of a weapon and you should hope to get it. Break everything if you get it. All of your strategies will change from here. First, I’m going to touch on the mechanics of the weapon. You hold jump and you do a slash. Keep holding jump, and you’ll charge up until you start doing a spinning attack all around you that will pull you up into the air. It pulling you into the air isn’t quite useful, but the constant circle of damage around you is. To counter the rising the weapon brings, you can store and pull out the weapon to drop a little bit. Since the game just cares about you holding jump and not whether or not the weapon is out for you starting to hold jump, the attack will continue. For this weapon, I’ll list out some boss strategies that aren’t inherently apparent so that you can efficiently use this weapon.

Fire Golem
Start your slash before you get to him, and be starting your charge attack as he starts his punch. Keep moving forward and you’ll store the weapon to come down and resume the attack as you’re coming down behind him. Move away, rinse, and repeat. This shouldn’t take more than 2 times if done right.

Giant Worm
Store and unstore as necessary to hit him.

Watchers
Just try and hit them as much as you can. You shouldn’t have to worry about them having the chance to grab you if you start your charge attack as they approach you.

Corrupted Watchers
Start your charge attack as they start to lunge. Move over them, store to come down, then unstore and Repeat. They will die quickly.

Mother Hound
Arguably the trickiest of the bunch. Try not to get underneath of her and just stay in front of her and get in as many hits as you can. If she starts to jump, stop your attack and let her jump over you. Then resume. She can go down quick, but be careful!

Brobash
You should be able to take down his first round before he starts doing anything. Keep distance between you and him and try to hit him with the edge of the charge attack. Store and unstore as necessary to stay low and hitting him. You should be able to see from this fight how wonky the hitbox is for the ascender. Just play it safe and he should die pretty quickly.

Yeah, the Ascender is great if you can master the storing and unstoring. Get used to it and hold onto it. It’s probably the best weapon you can get.

You probably noticed I haven’t touched on any strategies for these guys. I do assume that, by this point, you have something better than a C Sword to deal with them. If not, your luck sucks or you’re doing a low% run, in which case…good luck. I would not recommend fighting these guys with base weapons, but it is doable. I’ll cover a basic overview of how these bosses work, how to fight them with a C Sword, and how to fight them overall.

These bosses are kind of like a Brobash with the laser from the laser head things from Zenith, the ability to throw around lava droplets, and no sword. They even have the same amount of life as Brobash, 9, then 7 hits (two phases!). Technically, these guys indirectly kill you just with the laser and the lava droplets alone. They can’t cut you. This is important to note. That means that as long as you can move around their lava and their lasers, you’re safe. The problem is in actually doing that. Their lasers home in on you either from the ground up or from the air to just above the ground. You can see them start to shoot it with a faint outline that grows to the laser. The further away you are from them when they start this, the quicker they can change its direction. I recommend staying close to them because they almost can never adjust it to hitting you then, as it adjusts very slowly. I’ll note that if the laser starts from the air, it will not touch the ground, so stay on the ground in those scenarios. The lava isn’t entirely random. Whenever you get close to them, they start the animation for an attack. They’ll do this if you’re further away too, but they’re consistent about it when you get close to them. This animation can take a few seconds, and this is always your chance to get a hit or two in. These guys will jump around when you get above them like Brobash, throw corrodes like brobash, and taunt like Brobash. They will still do their lava swing while taunting, so be careful. They also do a kind of lava jet where they’ll slow down and start spinning their weapon. Then they’ll dash towards you, leaving lava in their wake. I just recommend jumping over this attack. You can’t do much with it.

The wave before the fight, get your inventory straight. Keep weapons you’ll need for the fight, don’t worry about the rest. Stock up on revives or, if you have plenty of them, consider stocking up on some teleport potions.

Overall, try to focus on taking one of these guys out first, regardless of your weapons. They start just like Brobash does, with a taunt. Take one down in that time and then, once they come back, I recommend waiting for the invulnerability to fade and then using four of your teleports back to back to telefrag the last phase of that one. Then you only have one to deal with, and you, at worst, lost one revive in the process. Use your last remaining teleport(s) to take down as much of the last one as you can.

The strategy from here depends on your weapons. With C Sword, it’s a lot of footsies with the lava and laser. Stay around the boss blocks for blocking the laser and go in for a hit during the time when the boss is charging up an attack. These are small windows and might not even be windows. If you get hit, use the invulnerability frames to get some free hits in before it wears off. If he taunts, try and get your free hits in as safe. Continue until one of you perishes.

With the Ascender, you can use a teleport to spin in place without moving and get a lot of hits in. Basically treat the fight like a Brobash fight otherwise.

With gunboots, this fight is cake. You can just jump over the bosses, drop some shots on them, and then scoot off, rinse, and repeat.

With Scimitar, the fight is similar to the C Sword strategy but faster.

With Z Sword, it’s safer than the C Sword because of spacing.

Outside of all of these strategies, there is also the cheese out strategy. You can pull the bosses up to the 3rd level and jump them up to the item block. They will stay on top of the item block. Then, with the ascender, just keep charge attacking until the boss is dead. Be careful of how you move back with a sword slash (consider doing the initial slash press with the sword in your inventory) and win. This can take a VERY long time as the bosses aren’t the most cooperative when it comes to going up to the 3rd floor. I consider this a last resort strategy if you don’t think you’ll win the fight with them.

And that’s everything. Enjoy your victory. Or working your way to victory. All of these strategies are hard on their own, and this is a very offensive way to approach the game mode. You can go more defensive, but I’ve found going full tilt ends up being just as safe, if not more safe, in many ways. Learn the strategies, the improvisations, and use your items well, and you will make it. Practice will get you there!

If you ever have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask in the comments or join the discord and ask on there, as there’s a healthy helpful community on there.