Eons ago.. The titular Sauvojen Tuntija (or "Squidward "as dubbed by the community) was easily killed with just a pair of tablets and a bit of time.
This cheese exploited Squidward's pathfinding. Once you were covered in tablets he was unable to see you, as a result he'd get stuck and shoot himself to death.
The devs have decided that enough was enough, and in epilogue 2 they fixed this by making him dig a large hole around himself whenever he gets stuck.
if you are curious how it was done, here's a video by furyforged

There is still a way to abuse his pathfinding and get him "stuck" and kill him easily. However unlike Squidcheese, in this method the player is more involved, requiring to actually shoot him as well as having more risk involved, making it less "cheese-y" than Squidcheese.

For this method, you only really need two things:

1) Any spell that can travel fairly far and deals decent damage
If we're just looking at the starter spells, energy sphere is the best for this. Spark bolt and bouncing burst can also be used, however they deal way less damage meaning it would take you a while to kill the boss. Spitter bolt its pretty much impossible, if you start with it, you will need to look for wands with better spells in the mines (or other biomes if you plan on doing this later).

2) Berserkium
You always have a chance to spawn with it, however if you don't you can sometimes find it in the mines.
If you can't find it in there, try looking for a bottle of whiskey and then taking a visit to the collapsed mines, to the left of the normal mines and killing a frog, dousing frog meat with whiskey would create berserkium.
If neither whiskey nor berserkium show up in the mines, you could try going over the tree with some tablet possession or surfing, getting pahä silma on the way to dig to to the ancient lab in order to find a pool of it there.
You don't need much berserkium for ,maybe around 60% of a flask if not less.

1) When arriving to the orb room, make sure you don't destroy the bridge. While not necessary, the bridge makes him take a bit of a detour to the middle of chasm as he rises before coming to you, giving you a bit more time to dodge his initial attacks.

2) Stand on the "pedestal" where the orb is and pour some of berserkium into the right indent. The area above the pedestal where you would stand is also the first trigger area you need to visit in order to spawn Squidward.
make sure you leave around 10% in the flask , you will need it for later.



3) Make sure you're not coated in berserkium and go summon the boss! Stand on his second trigger area which is located to the left of the left water basin.


4) After he's summoned, make sure you're roughly above the basin. Once he does his orb attack drink the remaining berserkium and quickly run towards the pool you made and hide, wait for him to get "stuck" in midair and use his anti stuck mechanic just to make sure you have enough cover and you did it correctly.



Congrats, you completed the setup! what now?

Now that you're in hiding, you may notice that Squidward doesn't try getting to you, nor does he try to shoot his orb attack anymore.
All he does is summoning a wand that shoots 4 times, with a little time in-between attack to poke your head and shoot.
the spells they fire can be divided into two categories:

Unsafe spells
The three magic missile variants ( normal, large and giant ).
Whenever he fires these its not safe to come out until it fires the fourth one, then you have a small window in which you can poke your head and shoot before retreating to your anger pool



Safe Spells
Those include the firebolt variants ( normal, large and giant ) and bouncing burst.
Because they are affected by gravity, they wont be able to reach you, giving you more time to come out and do some damage



Keep in mind that if you shoot too quickly, he may summon more wands that will shoot your projectile or even a copy of his projectiles. If that happens you may want to retreat and wait for it to end so you wont lose the attack pattern and he suddenly decides to summon a wand with the silly giant magic missile spell ending you instantly.

With enough patience and perseverance, you will be able to conquer the mighty squid, and receive your shiny rewards!
Don't forget that his attack wands stay until they finish their attack, even after he's dead!

Why is this happening?

Well, to be honest I don't really know exactly, but basically it has something to do with factions. Once you're berserked Squidward loses interest in you and doesn't target nor pathfind to you anymore. From what I've seen on the Noita discord this behavior was already known long ago. a similar thing happens with patsas enemy[noita.wiki.gg] from the ancient laboratory.

Can I do this strat somewhere else?

You can definitely try, however you'll still need to stand on the pedestal (or be near it and slightly above) in order to spawn the boss after you stand in trigger point B. Also you'll need yo have your cover be made of something fairly indestructible like EDR or brickwork for it to work.

Is there any benefit of using this instead of plasma cheese or other similar spells?

A few i can think about: First, you always get credit for the kill, with plasma cheese you only get kill credit if your plasma (or other spell) somehow manages to kill him instead of his copy.
Second, its a fairly guaranteed way of dealing with squidward, with the other method you're relying on finding on a specific set of spells, which could take some time. In this method you're only relying on finding (or making) berserkium which should be fairly easy to get early on.

How long does it take?

That heavily depends on your spell of choice, it can take anywhere from 5 to maybe 20 minutes if not more.
It took me 17 minutes with spark bolt, and dynamite. Even though it takes longer than other methods, having a chance to get a good tier 6 wand or good spells early on without too much risk is nice. Choose your spell wisely!

Hopefully this guide will be useful for you in your next planned Squidward encounter!
If you have any questions/feedback feel free to comment
Thanks to EsheLynn for the help!