[Rant/Suggestion] Fighting Marlix

Fixing Marlix
Fighting Marlix isn't difficult. With the right gear, the risk is very minimal. Marlix is, however, rather irritating to fight for a few reasons. I fought one today and I can say that it wasn't, well, fun. I believe Marlix's attack mechanics need to be improved quite a bit for the fight to be fun and difficult. These are minibosses; I should feel some sense of danger when I'm fighting them.

For those who are unaware, Marlix was buffed recently. Marlix shoots faster and spawns more guardians to make the fight difficult, but the flight speed was nerfed so Marlix is easier to hit with a bow. Health was also doubled. However, I tend to dislike the first two changes.

I like the health change, from 20 HP to 40 HP. Marlix is a little bit harder to kill and now takes 20 solid hits to kill instead of 10. I agree; Marlix was a bit too easy to kill before.

Dumping mob after mob on a player is one sure way to make a fight difficult, but I don't think it was a good way to go about buffing Marlix. These guardians, unlike their zombie variants, are only mildly dangerous, and are more irritating than dangerous to the player. This is my opinion; you may like the tons of guardians.

But I believe, by far, the most annoying thing about the boss is her bow. Punch III is very overpowered considering how difficult it can be to even get to the boss. Often I end up just constantly rushing Marlix if I want a hope of getting a hit in. There are some tactics involved here, sure, but trying to fight Marlix on a mountain? Very difficult. You're constantly getting knocked back dozens of blocks (add water into the equation), and arrow after arrow keeps coming. It's very hard to gain any distance on Marlix with this bow and attack speed.

Another thing I dislike about the boss is the flight mechanics. Yeah, one of the main things that makes Marlix unique. The concept of flight I like. However, it is very annoying to see a Marlix far above your reach distance. For those who don't have a bow, or suck at using one with Marlix's sporadic movement, this can be very problematic. Basically, you have to revert to sitting there until the boss comes down and is able to be hit.

So that's what I don't like about the boss. The 'rant' part is out of the way, but I also have some ideas on how to improve the Marlix fight and how to solve the problems I see with the boss.

First of all, revert the guardian spawn rates to be less frequent. Instead, add a new combat mechanic: clones. Occasionally, Marlix will summon two identical clones of herself, which have 1 HP or despawn after a few minutes. No more than one set of clones will be active at the same time. Personally I enjoy fighting identical clones in games and I think Marlix would be no different. It'd add a lot of variety to the fight, too.

My next suggestion is to give Marlix a Punch II bow instead of a Punch III. The actual mob drop would still be Punch III, though. Punch II makes getting hit a little more forgiving and less of a "oh shit, now I have to climb back up this mountain" thing. Because that's annoying.

As for Marlix often being out of reach, I'd like to see some way of keeping the boss within 5 blocks of the ground, so pillaring a few blocks or jumping off a small ledge will allow you to hit the boss. I doubt this is easily possible, but I really wouldn't know. I don't believe the boss should ever be required to be shot. Not everyone carries a bow. Oh, and please, find some way to make the flight a little more predictable.
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Longest post I've written in a while, haha. Anyway, let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!

~Penguin

I think he has the right idea, a melee weapon will be more efficient cause the flying of it is hard to hit with a bow, i may have not fought alot of marlixes, but 1 thing i do know is that the bow was ment to be the way to kill it, but a melee weapon is definetly the way to go. Just cause of its chaotic flying 'style'.

I just killed 4 Marlixes today pretty easily except for the water one :I
Anyway, to solve your problem with the guardians, just ignore them and attack the Marlix. They will eventually despawn, but it takes a couple deaths. Then it's just you vs the Marlix.

Like what Aikar said, the best way to kill or damage the marlix is to use a bow. If on a mountain, then just shoot the arrows up. Any terrain is available to arrows being shot.

Yes, I do think the punch 3 is very annoying, but punch 2 would not be very challenging enough when it's just you vs the marlix.

I think the boss is fine But that's just my opinion as the OP is yours

You can't project the direction of a Marlix. It will move every which way. I try to aim for where I expect it to go, it starts going there, but NOOOPE... turns around and flies away.

I really like the Clone Idea, but since it seems mechanics wont change, this could perhaps be implemented into another future boss?

Unless Marlix actually goes in the same direction for more than a single second, which by the way it never does, I don't think archer skill has a single thing to do with it. Whether or not you hit it is a total matter of luck by hoping it goes one way or the other; unlike a moving target that goes left/right or a player fighting you, which you can well estimate, a bat will go as it wishes and it's luck on whether you can guess that or not.

I don't think that's hard, that's just irritating. If you sit there for long enough shooting it, you'll probably hit it a few times. But a sword is much better to use, no matter if it even gets nerfed down to doing less than 1 damage, it will always be easier than chance.

I'd rather hit it with a sword and I know I'm going to hit it than sit there for 10 minutes mindlessly aiming my bow hoping I get the luck of hitting it on its irrational flight path. Marlix is not an archer battle. And if it is, it is going to take a LONG time.

But when a single miniboss can spawn enough skeletons that are enough of a problem because each one will literally shoot you multiple times per second, it is much harder than Momentus. Marlix can easily wreck an entire set of unbreaking III diamond armor in a single fight and Momentus won't even come close.

If you even manage to make it through all the skeletons it spawns in and get a hit in, it will just punch III you several chunks away (and it is dead accurate at <25 blocks range).

The fight is super unbalanced. A sword is the only way to kill it that involves any metric of skill. No matter how skilled you are at shooting it, an irrational flight path cannot be calculated nor can it be estimated. Not to mention it also flies up and down.

The 1HP clone idea and punch II instead of III is a much better idea and might take an ounce of skill instead of luck.

You have to do a lot of tweaking to get that monstrosity that is the irrationality of a bat's flight path to be predictable in any capacity.

I just killed a Marlix yesterday morning and I only had an issue with the rate of the guardian's spawning and the sheer amount of guardians it had spawned. Marlix isn't tough like the OP said, just severely frustrating.

What is all this fuss about marlix being too hard? And now all this fuss about not being able to use a bow on it?

It's easy to kill marlix wielding nothing but my voter's toolkit, a bed, a chest, and a stack of arrows. All you need to do is place the bed down, "sleep" in it, place the chest down, put all but 1 arrow in it, and go run and shoot at marlix. I don't use any mods anymore and have shot down quite a few throughout my time in EMC, including on the day before i left, which was like 5 days ago (retired gamer).

Marlix doesn't kill you nearly as many times as momentus does. And his skeletons are easy to avoid if you're in a non-flat terrain. Any cave or tree is good enough to hide from/block guardian arrows. During day, lure skeles away from the sun into an area where they can't bother you (they'll most likely run by themselves anyway, so you just go in another direction). Making them step in water makes it easier to run away, too. And with an infinity bow and a stack of arrows stored in a chest next to your bed in case you die, killing marlix isn't hard at all. Might be time consuming if you use low-stat gear and no pots or food like i do, but bows in MineCraft aren't hard to use at all. Especially with an infinity bow. You just keep shooting until he falls. That's all. No tricks needed.

The most irritating part is the "It appears that Monster is having trouble getting to you... It resisted the attack." message when you are fighting the Marlix.
I get the message when shooting from tall grass or shooting and then hiding behind a tree. In terms of fair fight, I believe it is not fair. If Marlix can cause me damage in a particular way then in return I should be able to do the same damage to that Mob.

A lot of boss battles have an interval where the boss is periodically more vulnerable. Maybe a smarter version of Marlix would have an "evasion" behavior where he flies all wacky and goes higher but his attacks are not very accurate or powerful, then an "attack" behavior where he moves toward you, his attacks are much more damaging and accurate, but he does not so erratically.

It's not exactly hard, it's just more irritating than anything else in the entirety of minecraft. As Haro said, it destroys the armour you're wearing and predicting the flight path for bows is not even worth it when you can use a trusty sword. Unless bows get a buff when fighting marlixes, I surely won't be using one anytime soon.

I never said the fight was hard, the exact opposite in fact. The first sentence was "fighting Marlix isn't difficult."

Swords definitely aren't effective and I don't think they need to be nerfed. A Smite V sword does 2 HP of damage. They're just more effective than bows. And as Haro said, the movement is completely unpredictable. Even with the bat slowed down, Marlix is still very difficult to hit.

I wasn't referring to you specifically. Rather, the handful of recent threads and complaints i've heard.
>.> people were complaining that we didn't get enough minibosses. Now we get as many as we want and people start complaining there's too many or something about them isn't good enough =P

Yeah, since it rides on a bat, the movement is impossible to make predictable.

You really should be ranting about momentus. That fight is WAY to hard unless you have soul bound items.

You must be kidding, momentus is easy. Just get on a horse and make trips back and forth and it's so much easier.