This fight was nearly finished at the time it was given to me, but it was given to me because it was on the chopping block. Basically the request was to see if I could take over the fight and save it from getting deleted, as people simply weren’t enjoying it at the time. Ultimately my changes were pretty simple: Focus on the fun, clean up some clarity issues, and reduce annoyances.

Focus on the fun:

• I made him start Koolaid-man’ing through walls, and throwing his hammer at you through walls. These were surprising first-time experiences (featured in a lot of funny clips), and made the arena change shape as the battle went on
• He had a “spin to win” move with his hammer, I made it track less well and exhaust him, so once you got out of the way you had some good opportunities to lay into him and watch him spin
• I made his ass a weakspot (I mean look at that thing)

Reduce annoyances:

• He was using fungal zombies as adds, which were a very tanky and complex enemy, and they trickled in from the ceiling throughout the fight.
  • I adjusted them to come from pots in his room, so their spawning was more predictable (you or him destroying the pots)
  • I made his various attacks 1-shot them, so you could bait them into his attacks
  • In line with “focus on the fun,” we made custom fx for the zombies to really explode in goo when he hit them
• Reduced tracking on a lot of his moves while making them deadlier, so they could be more of a “WHOA I almost just got smushed” that’s actually somewhat easy to avoid, instead of a constant iframe check

These changes worked well, and he became a quick favorite for a lot of the “It’s just a fun boss” type lists, and was used to show off the game in the run-up to release.

Later on, in the Swamps of Corsus DLC, we returned to this boss to give it an alternate kill, wherein we gave it a secret fight. I had players get in a pot, a soft reference to Dark Souls 1’s “get in a bird’s nest” (and they later had “get in a coffin” in Elden Ring, though that was after Remnant), and then players could fight him. It was mostly the same fight, except he had a new very-telegraphed special move that you had to iframe, and he switched his hammer with an axe that he would throw more often, as he had multiple in the room.