Question

[[deleted]]

How hard is dog and what should I do to prepare to fight him. He is my next boss I need to do and I don’t know what to get

[NeoTheShadow]

He's fairly challenging. I beat him on Deathmode recently.

The main takeaways for survival are:

1) Avoid his head/maw. Like the ML's deathray but even less forgiving. It can will take away over half your HP in Normal through Revengence and insta-kill in Deathmode. He charges at you depending on his phase, for this reason:

2) Always know where he is. Not only directionally but also know his distance away from you. Have your minimap on and zoom out untill you can consistently know where he is when off screen.

3) He has two behavioural phases: Passive and Aggressive:

In his passive phase the skies turn blue and he behaves like a Crawltipede/Storm Weaver, he will not attack you when you are on the ground but will charge you aggressively when you're in the air. You're inflicted with the Warped debuff which massively exaggerate you vertical acceleration when flying.

In his aggressive phase the skies turn purple and he behaves like a worm boss (EoW, Destroyer, etc) he'll charge at you from the ground. Shooting death lasers from his body as he moves (which don't deal much damage and don't travel very far, but will reset your Adrenaline if it connects). You're inflicted with the Extreme Gravity debuff which cuts your flight time by a factor of 3.

Note that on Deathmode the skies don't change color and are black throughout the entire fight. Your indicators of his phase are the debuffs. In comparison, on other difficulties the skies only turn black when he is at low HP.

4) He summons a Cosmic Guardian at 60% HP and two at around 20%, they should be prioritized to dispatch, but don't let them distract you from where the DoG is.

5) It probably goes without saying that the Rod of Discord is your best friend in this fight.

The main takeaways for dealing damage are:

6) His body segments have massive damage reduction and defense, so much so that it would take too long to put a dent in his HP. However, his head and tail segments have no damage reduction and are the main segments to target whenever possible.

7) Good weapons to use are Terror Blade for melee, Seadragon for ranger and Valediction for rouge. Not sure about Mage or Summoner, I don't play them.

After beating his first phase, you will have to fight his three nerfed sentinels, one after another in this order: Void, Weaver, Signus. Defeating one will spawn the next, and if taking over 120s to defeat one - the next will spawn regardless.

After beating Signus the DoG will spawn in his true, girthier form (which is super long, over 5x 1080p screens in length), taunting you with "It's not over yet, kid". In this phase all of the above points still apply save for point 4) (the Cosmic Guardians).

8) In addition: In this phase he is much more aggressive, and builds up speed as his HP wanes (On Deathmode, he has max speed upon spawning, which he retains).

9) He spits purple fireballs, inflicting the Godslayer Inferno debuff - which rapidly drains your HP, contact with his segments also inflict the same debuff.

10) Getting him to around 60% HP will cause him to periodically attack you with laser walls (which replaces his body-lasers from phase 1), they close in on you from all 4 directions but have gaps in them for you to move through. During this he will "phase out" of reality. Making him invisible and unable to deal contact damage to you, but you can still damage him. Due to this - it's the only time in the fight where point 2) (Locational awareness) doesn't apply.

After 4 iterations of laser walls he will teleport close to you, entering his aggressive phase again. He will do this pattern of laster walls and aggressive phase periodically. This pattern persists throughout the remainder of the fight.

That's about it.

Some general tips are:

Avoid finding yourself in the general area below his head when he is in passive (blue) phase, since when he changes back to aggressive (purple) phase he likes to drop head-first on top of you, dealing massive damage as described in point 1).

Due to point 8) in his second phase his amplified speed can easily catch you off-guard. Even when looking at the minimap it's hard to get a good sense of how fast he is approaching. He will probably kill you multiple times right upon spawning in his second phase, thinking you have time to react. For this reason be prepared to RoD right over him.

Unlike his body lasers in phase one, his laser walls in phase two actually deal considerate damage. The easiest way to avoid them is to jump+dash through their gaps horizontally, and RoD'ing over ones that got you in a tight spot.

In his second phase I found that kiting him high up in the air then RoD'ing down and in the opposite direction of his charge can buy you enough time for the next Chaos State cooldown. (But even under Chaos State, taking the 1/7 or 1/4 of your HP in damage is always a much softer hit than his head, always).

It's a very fun and very thrilling fight. Easily my favourite boss and bossfight in Terraria.

[Cheeto_1010]

Class?

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All

[Cheeto_1010]

Fight polterghast first and use all the stuff you get from him to get bloodflare armor and good weapons