How to deal with bosses

Overview

In this guide i’ll talk about how to deal with bosses in all the ways i know and/or use. It includes both basic and advanced strategies with a lot of tips for both of them, making this guide suitable for every player. This guide does not exploit bugs.

Introduction

Hi everyone!
As you probably understood from the title and description of the guide, i will explain how to deal with giants and bosses.
This does not exclusively include ways to kill them, it’s more of a guide on how to handle them in general.

Each section will be dedicated to a different method and i will explain what it is and how it works.
Many of them are beginner friendly, being really safe and easy to use while others are more effective but more suited for experienced players. It’s up to you to decide which one is or isn’t worth using!
You will see both classic and unusual strategies here, full of tips that may prove useful even for veteran players.
I am sure you will find at least one strategy that fits you perfectly!

At the end of every strategy i will put a skill score and a preparation score: the skill score tells you how much skill and cold blood you need to use the strategy while the preparation score tells you how many materials and preparation you need to use it (training time is not included in this score).
For all parameters the scale goes from 1 to 3: 1 is not much, 2 is average and 3 is higher than usual.

Disclaimers:

• The skill score was NOT created with the idea of mocking people who use strategies that have a low score. The idea behind it was to give an idea of how much beginner-friendly said strategy is. The lower the score, the more beginner-friendly the strategy is.
• For the purpose of the guide i will be considering losing sanity as a negative thing even if being insane provides a ton of positive benefits.
• While there are three bosses that are immune to fire (Dragonfly, Quacken and Sealnado) i will only focus on Dragonfly when talking about fire-involving methods. The reason behind this is that it’s the most dangerous of the three.
• While most of these strategies are good and work fine in Don’t starve together, this guide was written for the single player version of the game: keep this in mind if you want to try them in multiplayer since bosses have more health, do more damage and have some new abilities.

The guide is really long, so i will be as much straight forward as i can (while not forgetting some jokes, this is not a textbook!).
TL;DR will be included too at the end of each section.

Now, let’s start!

General suggestions

To open the guide, i will write here a couple things that, while not exclusively required, can help make your day better and increase the chances of a successful fight and/or decrease the possibility of nasty side effects.

There’s no way to know with exact precision when your next boss fight will happen, and chances are that you will get attacked in the worst possible moment: this is the reason why i always bring with me some supplies to avoid getting stuck in what experts call “a very bad situation”.

Now, let’s see what an “emergency kit” contains and how it can look like:

• Amor: always have some armor in your inventory, not necessarly for a boss fight but for normal fights too. Having some protection available is always welcome and it’s a good idea to make sure that the one you bring with you is in good condition.
• Time buyers: in this category i put sleep darts, panflutes, ice staves, fire darts, fire staves and a torch (more information about these iems is found in the rest of the guide). Having at least one of them on you all the time can prove crucial since they allow you to avoid getting attacked for a while, giving you enough time to better organize.
• Healing items: Healing salves are ok, Honey poultices are even better. If you, like me, spend a lot of time low on health, having some of these items on you can provide the quick and easy healing that can make the difference between success and horrid death.
• Bush hat: if you equip it on your head and hide in it, the boss will not attack you (unless you were already being targeted, in which case it will have no effect). This can save your life if you get attacked in a bad moment (such as during nighttime) and need to wait for it to pass.

It’s not really needed to bring with you all this stuff together but the more you have, the better it is.
Since an emergency kit occupies some space in your inventory, it’s the time to make a shoutout to our unspoken hero: Chester!
Not only it looks cute, but it will follow you everywhere with all the items that you put inside it, making it a perfect kit holder! It has 9 inventory slots but can be upgraded into a 12 slots chester by putting a nightmare fuel in each slot during a full moon, or can still have 9 but work as an icebox by using blue gems instead.

If you are wondering, here’s my usual Chester setup: i use a shadow chester that contains: logs, nitre, torch, fire staff, ice staff, nightmare fuel, 3 tallbird eggs, umbrella, thermal stone and sewing kit. Together with this, i always have armor in my backpack and a panflute on me together with a football helmet on my head.
I know that it’s even more stuff than what i can possibly need, but i prefer to stay extra safe.

This one is most important if you don’t want your base wrecked by a giant (I’m looking at you, Dragonfly!) while you fight it. It basically consists in a small zone near your base where you go to fight bosses to avoid seeing everything you built getting wrecked in seconds.
I usually build it like this:

• Location: i usually choose one that is near my base, but not too much. I put it around 20 seconds of walking from home and, to increase the distance as much as possible, i connect the two using a road (you can craft them so it’s fully customizable).
• Storage: since some bosses (Bearger, Dragonfly and Deerclops) destroy structures, i drop on the ground a piggyback or a krampus sack: thoose two items contain a lot of stuff and can’t be destroyed. A backpack is ok too but Dragonfly will set it on fire, destroying it.
• Supplies: inside the storage you should put some basic items needed to help you fight: some backup armor (the more and stronger, the better), some backup weapons, (optional) healing items and food (tallbird eggs are best, since they don’t spoil), and some logs, nitre and grass: these last 3 items bring me to the next point, which is:
• Light and temperature: you can’t build a firepit nor an endothermic firepit since bosses can destroy them! This is why i keep supplies to build campfires and endothermic fires to survive fights during nighttime, summer and winter.
• Ground: This is optional, but i like to create a big square made of road turf to help me with kiting (explained later).
• Surroundings: This one is optional too, but i prefer to clear out everything that is near this spot to give me the possibility to move freely without having a pesky tree blocking me. Also, having trees in front of bosses makes it harder for you to click them if you fight using the mouse.

Kiting

This is one of the most popular way of killing most bosses and mobs.
Its concept is really simple: since the bosses usually have a long attack period (which means that their attacks are really slow) you have the possibility of hitting them between each hit.
This is accomplished by getting close enough to them to trigger their attack: as soon as you see the attack animation you dodge it by moving away, then you get close to them and hit as many times as possible and then run away to dodge the next attack. Then you repeat the process until the boss drops dead.

If it’s still unclear on how the mechanism works, you basically fight as Don’t starve pigs do, but since you are a player you can do it more effectively.

Kiting can be improved in two ways: one is training and the other is speed boosts.

Understanding training is really easy: by fighting enemies over and over again you learn how to get better with this strategy and will sooner or later be able to fight any mob without taking damage at all. Just make sure to wear good armor in the learning process (logsuit + football helmet at the very least) and you can experiment as much as you like!
If you feel not sure about what to do, you can start hitting the boss only once per cycle and gradually increase the number of hits.

The second way to improve kiting is using speedboosts: since you have to dodge attacks, being faster will positively benefit you by giving you more time to do it and thus grants a bigger margin of error.
To get faster you have many ways:

• Roads: To use roads you simply need to find or build one; the straighter it is, the easier it is to use.
  After finding one, turn the camera in such a way that the road is on your favorite dodging axis (I prefer dodging to the left, so i turn the camera to have my road horizzontally) and then proceed to kit as you would usually do.
• Walking cane: If you are quick enough you can equip your walking cane as soon as you stop hitting the enemy with your weapon and equip back the weapon as soon as you hit it again, combining together the benefit of hitting hard and walking fast. This is best done by attacking with the mouse and swapping items using the keyboard or (my favorite) attacking with the keyboard and swapping items using the mouse.
• Coffee: This applies only to Shipwrecked DLC users and it’s pretty straight forward: coffee makes you become extremely faster so drinking it before or during a fight will give you a nice boost that will prove really useful. You can also use the tropical bouillabaise from the same DLC for a lesser effect
• Other items: There are items such as magiluminescense, the sleek hat from the shipwrecked DLC and more that give you speed boosts, but they are not really popular.
• Character specific: Mighty wolfgang and overloaded WX-78 are faster than usual making kiting easier. Wimpy Wolfgang and Wilbur are slower making it harder.
• Listening to any Sonic the Hedgeogh soundtrack will make you extremely fast!

Pros:

• Kiting is really cost efficient: you only need a weapon and you can kite (almost) anything, anytime.
• Kiting requires little to no preparation: as long as you have a weapon, you can go for the fight.
• You can exit a fight completely undamaged making any armor optional (but highly recomended).

Cons:

• Kiting requires some skill to be effectively used and you may need to train quite a bit before pulling it off consistently.
• If you kite a boss the fight is gonna last much longer, meaning that you will suffer a greater sanity hit as a result.

You should kite whenever you don’t have the possibility to use other methods to fight a boss or if you don’t want to waste time and resources to apply other tactics. If you have low health and are unprepared but want to fight anyway kiting is the best idea.

You should NOT kite if you get panicked easily and/or risk to mess the whole thing up, getting more damage than you would with different methods.
You should also not kite dragonfly because her swipe attack is almost impossible to dodge unless you trap her with boulders.

There are a ton of video guides about kiting and it’s quite hard to explain it using text only. I suggest you watch some of them if you want to learn more.

Do not use items that slow you down unless you have high speed boosts or kiting will become that much harder.

Dragonfly trapping can be seen in this video:

If you have the Shipwrecked DLC, you can poison the boss using a poisoned spear or poisoned dart to make it slower, making kiting easier.

You hit the boss some times, dodge its attack and repeat the process.
Easy to learn, hard to master.
Has the best potential cost/benefit ratio.

Skill score: 3/3
Preparation score: 1/3

Tanking

Tanking is another popular way of dealing with bosses.
It consists in wearing as much armor as possible and doing the exact opposite of kiting: instead of dodging the attacks, you get hit by them and never, ever stop attacking until the enemy is dead.

Tanking relies heavily on your equipment, so improving that will be the only thing needed.
Wear two pieces of armor at any time. You are getting hit a lot, and for a lot of damage. There is no armor that gives you absolute protection, so always wear something in both slots.

Chest slot:

• Log suit: One of the best overall armors! It protects a lot, has decent durability and is really cheap to make. Paired with a football helmet will make you able to tank almost any single boss in the game.
• Marble suit: This heavy duty suit is perfect for tanking since it protects a lot and has high durability. Marble is a bit rare so it’s up to you if using this or not.
• Dark armor: The best rival to marble suit, and for a good reason! It’s relatively easy to make and absorbs a lot of damage. It’s durability, however, is not nearly that good and it will destroy your sanity.
• Thulecite suit: Undoubtly the best IMO. It soaks in almost as much damage as marble suit/dark armor and has a massive durability. Its only drawback is that it is really hard (or impossible in vanilla DS) to renew it.
• Snurtle armor: This one is a bit different. If you want to use this, you will need to pay attention to the boss and hide inside the shell right before getting attacked and restart attacking as soon as its attack lands. This is the only armor that does not require an helmet since it provides 100% damage resistance when used correctly, but i would still recomend wearing one for safety.
• Other armors: If you have the Shipwrecked DLC, cactus armor is really good to use instead of a logsuit since they have the same stats but this armor also damages enemies. Obsidian armor i wouldn’t recomend since it sets enemies on fire, possibly ruining your loot. Scalemail or obsidian armor are a must-go if you want to tank the dragonfly (obsidian armor will not burn this boss’ drops). If you are considering the idea of using a grass suit to tank and your goal isn’t to see your HP meter reach 0, i have bad news for you.

Head slot:

• Football helmet: The best choice in my opinion. It’s really cheap to make and absorbs a lot of damage, making it pretty good in any phase of the game. It does not even break too often if used properly (see below)
• Shelmet: This is another good choice since it offers higher damage resistance and lasts more than a football helmet. It’s slightly harder to get but it’s really useful anyways. I usually don’t use it but it’s a valid alternative.
• Thulecite crown: This is pure tank material. It absorbs the same damage as a shelmet but lasts a lot more and provides you with a forcefield that nullifies all damage taken for some seconds after getting hit (33% chance and a 9 seconds cooldown). It’s drawbacks are two: it’s hard to renew and the forcefield destroys your sanity.

Weapon:

• Spear: Unless you don’t really have anything better, i would recomend using something else. It’s not too bad on its own and will do in a pinch, but there’s much better available.
• Ham bat: this is my favorite one to use: It has unlimited durability so you can hit the boss as many times as you want without any consequence. It also does way more damage than a spear does, making fights shorter and making you lose less health. This item is ideal if you play Wendy, Wes or modded characters that don’t do much damage.
• Dark sword: This is the best weapon to tank with. It does massive damage and thus makes fights extremely short, all this while being not too hard to craft. It drains sanity but the fights last way less so you’ll end up losing less than you would normally do. There’s only one weapon better than this, and it is:
• The Cutlass Supreme! If you have the shipwrecked DLC installed you have access to the best tanking weapon in the game! This sword does the same damage as a dark sword but lasts more (150 uses instead of 100) and does not drain any sanity: it is powerful and has no drawbacks!
• Thulecite club: This is our honorable mention since it does quite a bit of damage and the shadow tentacles it spawns help take down an enemy quicker. I think this weapon is better for kiting though, so in my opinion you are better off with a cutlass/dark sword.
• Morning star: This one is another honorable mention and it comes from the Reign of Giants DLC. It is slightly weaker than an ham bat, but is worth mentioning since it’s got some unique abilities: It emits light, making nighttime fights easier and its durability lowers with time and not uses, so you can strike as much as you want. Most importantly, if the target is wet (you are fighting during or after rain) this weapon does impressive damage, even more than a dark sword! It’s a very situational weapon, but it’s ideal for fights during spring and, sometimes, autumn.

Pros:

• It does not involve too much skill and is easily accessible to everyone.
• Fights last less than kiting, preventing you from losing too much sanity and allowing you to have more time to do other things.
• Not too hard to set up everything needed to tank.

Cons:

• Requires more materials and preparation than kiting.
• Some characters struggle with tanking.
• You can’t tank if you didn’t set up the situation properly.

You should tank if your character is suited for tanking (Wigfrid and Wolfgang do a lot of damage, and both of them and an upgraded WX-78 have a lot of maximum HP) or if you have done all the necessary preparations in terms of equipment.

You should NOT tank if your character is not suited for tanking (Wendy and Wes do not do much damage and both Wes, Maxwell and Walani have lower HP than usual)(you can tank with them too as long as you are prepared enough), if you did not prepare all your weapons and armors or if you are sitting at low HP.

Do not tank a Dragonfly if you don’t have scalemail or obsidian armor equipped. If you don’t, you will die really quickly because of fire damage unless you are Willow.

To tank a Deerclops in Reign of Giants, make sure you are standing really close to a campfire (not a fire pit) that is fully fueled to avoid getting frozen. With “really close” i mean “as close as the hitbox allows you to”.

The last piece of armor you equip will be the one that takes the highest damage. Make sure to equip the most valuable armor pieces first!

Always have some extra pieces of armor of the same kind you are wearing in the inventory. When the ones you are wearing break, the game will equip them immediately leaving you with no weakness window.

It’s not mandatory, but having some healing items in your inventory is reccomended. The best healing items are vegetable foods since they have a very short animation, but meat items can be employed aswell.
Good food items, either for ease of access or high restored hp, include: Dragonpie, Pierogi, fishsticks, trail mix, butterfly wings, blue mushrooms, jerky and glommer goop.

If you have the Shipwrecked DLC installed, poisoning a boss using a poison spear or dart will drastically decrease its DPS. Taking will be even easier!

Wear the best armor and weapon you have and attack the enemy head on, stopping only when it is dead.
Make sure to have extra armor for when yours break.
Costs a bit, but it’s easy to pull off.

Skill score: 1/3
Preparation score: 2/3

Gunpowder!

The gunpowder strategy is quite easy and effective to pull off and is best suited for the midgame since it requires eggs.
It consists in putting a boss to sleep, placing a pile of gunpowder next to it, lighting the powder and watching the boss die.

To create a gunpowder you’ll need:

1 charcoal
1 rotten egg
1 nitre
And an alchemy engine to prototype

To create a rotten egg you need to feed a bird in a birdcage some meat: it will produce a fresh egg that will need to spoil (it takes 10 days). Do not cook the egg or you will get some rot, not a rotten egg.
Nitre is obtained from breaking boulders, falls from the ceiling during earthquakes or, in the Reign of Giants DLC, can be obtained from digging up moleworm burrows (highly recomended!).
Charcoal is obtained from chopping down a burnt tree.

To pull off the strategy you need:

• Gunpowder (exact quantity will be told later)
• A torch or a fire staff to light the gunpowder. In vanilla they are the same, so use a torch since it’s less expensive. In Reign of Giants the staff is ranged, so it makes sense to use it.
• A panflute, some sleep darts, an ice staff or any other way to make a boss stand still. This is not 100% necessary but i suggest using it (see notes).

Now that we covered the ingredients, let’s see how to use them!
First of all, you need to put the boss to sleep or freeze it. From now on, you need to be quick.
Then you need to place the gunpowder as close to the boss as possible and make sure to put it close to his hitbox. You can drop the whole stack, there’s no need to place it down one by one.
Now light the gunpowder, and run! The boss will suffer terrible damage and light on fire. Wait until he is extinguished and give him a couple hits with any weapon to finish him off.

Each gunpowder does 200 damage. If the boss dies because of gunpowder all of its loot will be burned (dragonfly is immune to this) so i will tell you how much powder to use to bring it to extremely low health without actually killing it. If you add one more, the boss will die.

Treeguard: 6/9/12 (depending on size)
Spider queen: 6
Deerclops: 9
Ancient guardian: 12
Bearger (Reign of Giants DLC): 14
Dragonfly (Reign of Giants DLC): 14 (this will kill her and drop all loot anyways)
Moose/Goose (Reign of Giants DLC): 14
Sealnado (Shipwrecked DLC): 14 (its loot should be fireproof so 15 should be safe and will kill it too. Use 14 if you want to be safe regardless)
Quacken (Shipwrecked DLC): Immune
Tiger Shark (Shipwrecked DLC): 12
Palm Treeguard (Shipwrecked DLC): 3

Pros:

• It is extremely safe.
• You lose almost no sanity.

Cons:

• It’s a bit costly since finding that much nitre is not exactly a walk in the park.
• If you miss the gunpowder blast you waste a ton of materials and become super angry.

Use this strategy if you, for any reason, don’t feel confortable with fighting a boss and you don’t want to take any risk.

Getting the boss asleep/frozen is not necessary if you have really good timing: you can just light the powder and make it walk right on it when it blows up.

A good use for gunpowder is to lower an enemy’s HP before fighting it in other ways (like kiting or tanking)

Sealnado (Shipwrecked DLC) is immune to sleeping and freezing effects, so practice a bit if you want to use gunpowder against it.

Craft some gunpowder
Immobilize the boss or achieve the superpower of perfect timing
Light the ashes!

Skill score: 1/3
Preparation score: 2/3

Old bell

The old bell strategy is Reign of Giants exlcusive and makes use of the old bell item: this item summons a giant foot that stomps the ground where the bell is used for a whopping 1000 damage.
To ensure that the foot hits, we will need to make sure that the boss is not moving since the stomp takes many seconds to hit.

Getting an old bell is pretty easy: you need to find and mine a glommer statue in order to get the old bell blueprint. Once you have done this you need to go to the statue again every time there is a full moon to grab the glommer flower that spawns there, and then kill the glommer. When you kill it is not important, as long as you do it before the next full moon.

The glommer will drop its wings that, combined with the flower, will allow you to create the old bell.
The bell has 3 uses and does a total of 3000 damage: a single bell can kill every boss in the game.

First of all you need an old bell and a way to keep the boss still. There are many ways and i am going to list all of them.

• Freeze it. A frozen boss can’t move. (see notes)
• Trap it somehow (walls are ok). If he can’t move, he can’t dodge.
• Tank the boss (and the foot). Wear full armor (we are talking marble suit/night armor and one football helmet per stomp) and make sure you have a lot of HP: this will hurt a lot. Use a 100% condition football helmet or you will take disastrous damage, and be alerted: your helmet will be destroyed no matter what. Make sure you equip the helmet last to preserve your armor (see the tanking section for more details).
• Place something on the ground that the boss eats (4 or 5 non stacked items). It will lose a lot of time and does not stop eating to dodge.

After you decided how to keep the boss still, bring him into the desired position and then ring the bell. Do it 3 times and you are done!

Pros:

• It’s really safe unless you tank the foot.
• It’s easy to pull off.
• you get all the loot.
• you don’t lose much sanity.

Cons:

• You can only craft a bell every full moon.
• The boss can dodge the foot if you don’t execute it properly.
• It wrecks your base if you use the bell close to it.

Use it when you are not confortable in fighting a boss for whatever reason. It’s really similar to the gunpowder strategy IMO, so you can use it in a similar situation.

You can’t put a boss to sleep, they will automatically wake up before getting stomped. There’s no way to turn this around unless you use a panflute for around 4 times per stomp.

Dragonfly thaws really quickly, so you can’t freeze her. I usually keep her busy feeding her 4 or 5 ashes.

Ancient guardian is immune to the old bell since you can’t summon bigfoot underground. If you try to do it, an earthquake will happen and nothing else.

You can use the bell to lower a boss’ HP before fighting it in other ways.

Craft the old bell
Make sure the mob is standing still
Stomp it!

Skill score: 1/3
Preparation score: 2/3

Tooth trap field

This strategy consists in laying down a lot of tooth traps before the boss arrives, lure it on the traps, and then starting to run around them until he dies.
This is a tactic rarely used, but really effective.
It’s best suited for the mid to late game.

To create a tooth trap you will need:

1 Log
1 Rope
1 Hound tooth

And an alchemy engine to prototype.
Each trap does 60 damage and has 10 uses
You will need a lot of them (see below)

First of all create a lot of tooth traps and arm them. You will need at least 50 to fully kill any boss but you can use less if you only want to weaken them or you can use more to make the process easier and faster. I suggest having around 80 or more.

As soon as the boss shows up, lure him to your field of traps and start running around, making sure he hits as many as possible. Once he has gone over the field, go around him and lure him in it again. It’s not practical to re-arm the traps while the boss is still there, so you will need to lure it to traps that have not sprung yet. It will not take long before it dies.
Wear some armor just in case he hits you somehow and you are set!

Pros:

• It’s safe and kills the boss quickly.
• Small sanity loss from the fight.
• You can use the same trap to kill hounds too.
• The materials needed to create the traps are easy to get.

Cons:

• It costs a lot to create and upkeep.
• Setting it up is really boring.

Use it if you are not confident in your fighting skills and/or you have a trap already set for hound attacks.

Dragonfly is immune to tooth traps since it flies, so you will need to use another method to take her down.

Single target attack bosses such as treeguard, spider queen and moose/goose can be killed using a decent number of bee mines instead of tooth traps.

Create a huge field of tooth traps, lure the boss there and kill it using the traps.
You can kill hounds too like this.
Safe, but costs a lot.

Skill score: 2/3
Preparation score: 3/3

Houndious shootious

The houndious shootious is a structure that you can create that works as a turret, shooting at all the enemies that come close to it. You can lure bosses to this turret and letting it shoot the boss to death while you stay safe or you can help it doing the dirty work.

To make a Houndious Shootious you will need:
1 Deerclops eyeball
1 Guardian Horn
5 Thulecite

And it needs to be crafted at a repaired ancient pseudoscience station.

As you can see from the crafting recipe, it’s super expensive and therefore is a late game item and requires a lot of time before you can use this strategy.

It’s actually really simple: you craft it and keep it in your inventory as an item. Then you go wherever you want and place it down like you would do with a wall or a spider sack. The turret will now shoot at every mob that you are attacking or that wants to attack you. It has no cost to upkeep and requires no mainenance of any sort.
It has 1000 max HP and regenerates 12 per second so make sure it does not take too much damage in too little time.

You can create up to 3 Houndious Shootiouses per world unless you complete the wooden thing, in which case the number becomes pretty much unlimited. The reason behind this is that there are only 3 caves per world, which means 3 ruins per world, which means only 3 ancient guardians, AKA only 3 guardian horns. There’s no way to get around this without mods or cheating.

If you have even only one, however, fighting a boss becomes a walk in the park. 3 of them can annihilate anything without problems. Just spread them out a bit so that AoE attacks will not hit them all at the same time.

Pros:

• It obliterates anything, especially if you have more than one
• It requires no maintenance or help of any sort
• Can easily deal with any danger, including hound attacks

Cons:

• Crafting it is difficult

As soon as you can craft a Houndious Shootious is the best idea to do it and use it. It has no controindications.

It drains a bit of sanity when you are close to it (6.66 per minute).

It has one of the best cost to benefit ratios of the whole game.

It’s a good idea to spread them out a bit so that AoE attacks do not hit all turrets at once.

Get to late game
Craft a turret
Obliterate anything

Skill score: 1/3
Preparation score: 1/3 (it’s hard to get but once you do you never need to prepare again)

Use another boss!

First of all, with “another boss” i mean (usually) a treeguard. If one spawned in your world you can pacify it by planting pinecones close to it: this way he starts sleeping and, when it wakes up, it will no longer try to attack you as long as you do not attack it or try to chop trees close to it.

If you have a pacified treeguard available, if you have more even better!
Just lure the giant/boss you want to kill to them and make them aggro eachother (running around and putting the treeguards between you and the boss should be enough).
A single treeguard will almost never kill anything by itself, but will weaken the boss considerably leaving it vulnerable to you. A pack of treeguard may do a lot of damage depending on the boss we are talking about: they will annihilate Moose/Goose but do almost nothing to the Dragonfly.
As a rule of thumb, a boss with AoE attack (Deerclops, Dragonfly and Bearger) will be more resistant to this strategy.

Pros:

• You will get both the boss loot and the treeguard loot.
• You get rid of two nuisiances at once.
• It’s relatively safe.

Cons:

• Treeguards will usually not finish the work, which means that you will still need to fight yourself.
• Will not work on all bosses.

You should use this method if you have some treeguards laying around and want to kill them without risking too much.

You should not use this method against a dragonfly if you want to get the living logs that the treeguards drop.

If you have a treeguard you can make it fight the boss
The boss will not die but will be weakened
Some bosses are not weakened much (usually AoE attackers)

Skill score: 2/3
Preparation score: 2/3

Tentacle field

This strategy consists in making a boss chase you all the way to a swamp, where the tentacles live. Once the swamp is reached, you make the tentacles and the boss fight eachother, which usually ends up in a lot of dead tentacles and a weakened boss.

It’s fairly simple: take note of where the tentacles in a swamp are (you can use signs, any landmark like cutgrass or twigs, mods that add icons for them or just keep in mind their approximate position).
As soon as the boss spawns, let it chase you and run to the nearest swamp making sure that he walks on tentacles and/or attacks them. The tentacles will strike him and they will start to fight.
The boss may not die (depends on the number of tentacles you have) so you may still need to finish it off in some other ways, but it will help clear your swamp granting you two birds with a stone!
This is particularly awesome if you have the tentacle trap setpiece, where a huge ammount of reeds is in a small area infested with tentacles: by luring bosses there you can clear it (more than one boss will be required for this since there are so many tentacles).
Wearing armor is not strictly necessary but, as always, i would recomend doing so.

Pros:

• It’s relatively safe
• You don’t lose much sanity
• You get boss and tentacle drops
• You clear out your swamp

Cons:

• It can take a lot of time
• The boss won’t die unless you bring it to a lot of tentacles
• It isn’t a renewable strategy (if you are not wickerbottom)

You should use this strategy if you don’t want to directly fight a boss, have a swamp that you want to clear and some time to spare.

You should not use this strategy if you don’t have time, if you want to keep your tentacles or if you don’t feel like you can avoid tentacles and make the boss fight them without failing.

Unless you are Wickerbottom (that can use the “on tentacle” book that makes some tentacles spawn) you can’t make tentacles respawn, making this method the only non renewable one in this list.

Lure a boss to a swamp.
Make the boss fight the tentacles.
Get two birds with a stone!

Skill score: 2/3
Preparation score: 1/3

Welcome to the DS Army!

The army strategy consists in ammassing a huge number of followers and unleashing them against your desired boss. They may not kill it (depending on which boss we are talking about) but they will in most cases weaken it a lot.

Let’s talk about every soldier one at a time, from the weakest to the strongest.

• Beefalos: Beefalos are big, tanky and dish out tons of damage™, and you may be surprised to see that i consider them to be worse than bees. The reason behind this is that their downsides are many, and pretty big too: the most important ones are that they get wrecked by AoE, leaving you vulnerable to 3 giants out of 4 (especially Dragonfly!) and the fact that, if a whole horde accidentally dies, they won’t respawn anymore. They have a lot of potential in smaller skirmishes like with hounds, but are overall unreliable against many bosses.
• Bees: Bees are situational soldiers, but it doesn’t mean they are weak. The main reason to use bees is the fact that it’s extremely easy to ammass a lot of them quickly: because of this reason and the fact that they kite enemies, they are best used to fight single targeted bosses such as treeguard and moose/goose but will get wrecked by any AoE boss (leaving a ton of useful loot behind!). The best method to quickly create a bee army is to set some bee mines and make the boss activate them.
• Frogs: Ammassing frogs is tricky and can only be done in spring, which is why they rank so low on the list: to get a frog army you need to wait for a frog rain during spring and have as many frogs as possible spawn in a location that you can access easily but that isn’t too close to your base to prevent getting swarmed. A pack of frog’s only weakness is AoE attacks, making them vulnerable to bosses like dragonfly, but if the boss in question doesn’t have a way to deal damage in an area frogs can and will tear it into shred in no time at all while suffering minimal loss. They’re highly recommended to fight moose/goose since both frog rains and moose/goose spawn happen during spring.
• Pigs: They are easy to find and you can ammass pig houses over and over again in the early game without too many problems. They hit hard and require some meat to be befriended which is not usually a problem. Their drops when they die are not bad either and their kiting mechanic makes them last long. They will however die relatively fast from AoE attackers like bearger and will be obliterated by the dragonfly.
• Bunnymen: They are harder to find and you better not have meat on you when you get close to them, but they bring to the fight another strong power: besides having all the advantages of pigs, they flee from the fight if are low on health, regenerate a bit and then get back in to fight! Unless they die suddenly, it will be really hard for them to fall in battle! They also respawn in one day instead of 3 like pigmen do, which means that you can recruit more, faster. Their drops are also arguably better than pigmen, too!
• Rock lobsters: My personal favorite. You can recruit them using only flint or gold nuggets (which you usually have a ton of), they hit HARD and almost never die. A single lobster is much stronger than a big treeguard, having less health but doing much more damage and being able to retreat into defense position to regenerate HP and tank damage. They are the only ones that can put up some fight against the dragonfly but they will usually end up losing; together with that, they are also the only ones that can defeat bosses that have an AoE attack. Besides Dragonfly, they will make short work out of any other boss.

Pros:

• It’s safe since you are not directly fighting.
• You get a lot of loot from your followers when they inevitably die.
• It’s fun to watch.

Cons:

• Some bosses will not die.
• Leaves you vulnerable to Dragonfly.
• Building houses and recruiting the followers can get expensive in large numbers.

You should use this strategy if you don’t want the battle with the boss to last as much as it would usually do or if you want to reduce sanity loss from the bossfight.

You should not use this strategy if the boss is a Dragonfly or if you don’t want your followers to die.

AoE attacking boss will wreck this strategy unless you use rock lobsters, so it’s advised to use something else if you are facing one (Dragonfly in particular).

Moose/Goose is particularly vulnerable to this strategy with a big enough army since its attack is single targeted.

If the boss destroys structures, make sure that it does not get close to your pig/rabbit houses.

If you have some bee boxes you can use them to kill moose/goose since bees are aggressive in spring, she is a single target attacker and does not break structures.

Create a huge army of pigmen/bunnymen/rock lobsters/frogs.
Make the army attack the boss.
Either it dies or is weakened a lot.

Skill score: 1/3
Preparation score: 2/3

Ranger style

To become a ranger, you will need long ranged weapons, and with “long ranged weapons” i mean that you need to craft blow darts. Lots of them.
Then you just rapidfire at the enemy from a safe position (which means far away from him).

To make a blow dart you will need:

1 Hound tooth
2 Reeds
1 Snowbird feather

And a science machine to prototype it.

Feathers can be easily farmed in winter by killing a lot of birds. You can easily get 200 feathers per winter if you farm birds the whole time.

Reeds can be gotten in the marsh biome.

Hound teeth are dropped from hounds/vargs making this recipe a bit expensive in big numbers.

It is quite easy: get the darts in your inventory and equip them when you see the giant. Then start rapidfiring at it until it dies.
Each dart does 100 damage so you will need between 15 and 30 to fully kill a boss (depending on its health).
To lower the cost of the strategy without having to put yourself in danger, you can combine it with other strategies that lower the boss’ HP but don’t fully kill it (like the army strategy or using another boss).

Pros:

• It is extremely safe
• You get all the loot
• Almost no sanity gets lost

Cons:

• It can get quite expensive

You should use this strategy if you have the absolute need of keeping your distance and staying safe. It’s a good idea to use darts to finish off an enemy.

You should not use this strategy if you need hound teeth for something else. I would suggest not to use only darts to kill a boss since they are a bit expensive in the early to mid game.

Your character’s damage modifier is applied to darts. Wendy, Wes and a wimpy Wolfgang will do less damage per dart and will need many more, while a Wigfrid and a mighty Wolfgang will do more damage and need less darts.

This strategy is extremely safe since you will kill a boss from a distance and it will have no ways to attack you; the tradeoff for its safety is its high cost.

It is usually not used by itself since it synergises really well with other strats that lower an enemy’s HP by a lot but do not usually kill it.

Craft a ton of blow darts.
Rapid fire the boss.
Best used to finish a boss off.

Skill score: 1/3
Preparation score: 3/3

Willow Style!

This strategy is my personal favorite (i created it myself) and is similar to the ranger strat.
It consists in creating a lot of fire darts and shooting them one by one to a boss and slowly roasting it alive. You will need an alternative method to finish it off, i usually use blow darts.
This strategy is best used in the early to mid game, where good equipment is hard to find.

To create a fire dart you will need:

1 Charcoal
2 Reeds
1 Red feather

and a science machine to prototype.

As you can see this recipe is extremely cheap and can be easily mass produced.

First of all get to a safe area where there are no flammable objects in sight and equip your fire darts.
When the boss appears, shoot a dart at it and it will catch on fire. Wait until the fire is fully extinguished and, when it is, shoot another dart and repeat the process.
The best part of this is that the boss will panic when he is aflame and you will never get attacked if you keep it ignited efficiently.

If the boss dies while it is on fire, his loot will be destoyed and the meat it drops will be cooked so make sure he does not die while on fire. To finish one off you can use anything, i like a blowdart.

Each dart does 120 damage and these are the numbers needed to leave a boss with extremely low health: add one more dart and they will die.

Treeguard: 13/19/24 (depending on size)
Spider queen: 12
Deerclops: 19
Ancient guardian: 48
Bearger (Reign of Giants DLC): 29
Dragonfly (Reign of Giants DLC): Immune
Moose/Goose (Reign of Giants DLC): 29
Sealnado (Shipwrecked DLC): Immune
Quacken (Shipwrecked DLC): 10 (It will kill it and still drop unburned drop)
Tiger shark (Shipwrecked DLC): 24
Palm Treeguard (Shipwrecked DLC): 7

Pros:

• It does not put yourself in danger
• It’s almost impossible to screw up
• Beginner friendly
• It gives you a perferse sense of satisfaction

Cons:

• It takes a lot of time to kill a boss. we are talking around an in game day, sometimes one and a half.
• Does not fully kill a boss.
• Leaves you vulnerable to dragonfly.
• Costs a lot of reeds.

You should use this strategy if you are not confortable with fighting but still want the loot and you have a lot of time. Absolutely use this if you are a pyromaniac.

You should not use this strategy if you don’t have time to spare or if you need to use reeds for something else.

Since it takes sometimes even more than an in game day to kill a boss, you should have a light source available if you want to use this.

In the Reign of Giants DLC you can use a fire staff instead of a fire dart. Its damage will be different, however.

Wendy and Wes do 117 damage per dart, Wigfrid does 123 and mighty Wolfgang does 125. Keep this in mind when calculating damage.

Using a mod that shows the boss’ HP is not mandatory but helps a lot.

Craft a lot of fire darts
Shoot them one by one until the boss gets to really low health
Finish it off using anything else

Skill score: 1/3
Preparation score: 3/3

Torch n’ scorch

This method is a bit different from the other ones because you shouldn’t use it to kill a boss. It’s a backup emergency strategy that i personally created that you can use if you got caught totally unprepared and is best used to stall a fight for a long time, for example if you got attacked during the night.

It’s really easy and cheap to do this: you only need a torch. Equip it and give a good whack to the boss and it will catch on fire. The best way to execute this is to dodge an attack, then hit the boss once and run away.
Make sure you are screaming to decrease tension. The more the tension, the stronger the scream should be.

This has a ton of advantages: the boss will panic and walk around without attacking you, will take damage (not too much from a single use), and emit light and warmth!
Be careful though, after the boss gets extinguished it will be immune to fire for some seconds (more or less 5) so you will have to dodge some attacks or run away for a bit.
Also, the boss will not start to panick right away so you should wear some armor or dodge his hit after you attack.

You can use the time it spends panicked to reorganise your inventory, craft some armor or weapons or just lose time while you wait for daytime to come.
Alternatively you can equip a weapon and start attacking it, but mind that since it is on fire you may get some unwanted damage. Also, since it’s panicking, it may walk away from you making your damage output completely random.

Pros:

• It keeps you safe.
• Easily buys a lot of time.
• You can weaken a boss a lot without damaging your weapon.
• It requires no preparation: it’s an emergency method!

Cons:

• Torch and burn damage alone is laughably low.
• If the boss dies while burning its loot will be destroyed.
• The boss may set everything on fire while walking around panicked.

You should use this strategy if you are caught totally unprepared and need to buy as much time as possible or if you want to hit the boss without risking losing too many HP.

You should not use this strategy to kill a boss (see notes).

A boss that dies while aflame will drop burned loot. Make sure it’s extinguished if you want its loot.

If you plan to weaken it using fire i suggest you use a mod that shows the boss’ HP. Alternatively you can try and develop a gut feeling of how much low on health the boss is but it will require many tries.

Dragonfly is immune to this method.

You can set a boss aflame in the middle of a battle too, if you need to reorganise something.

Equip a torch and hit the boss to set it on fire.
It will panic, giving you time to reorganise.
This is an emergency strategy, not a fighting one.

Safety score: 2/3
Preparation score: 1/3

Sleeping strategy

The sleeping strategy consists in bringing a boss as far as possible to your base, then put it to sleep and run away. It will stay there as long as you don’t get close to it again and, if it’s a seasonal boss, will despawn when the season ends. If it’s not a seasonal boss, you should use another method. Please note that this is not a bug, but a game mechanic.
This is the best method for beginners, if you are ok with losing the boss’ drops and feeling like Mr. Sandman.

First of all you will need some sleep darts (4 are enough, but getting some more is advised) or a panflute. You need literally nothing else.
As soon as the boss spawns let it chase you.
Wherever you bring it is fine, but it needs to be as far as possible from your base and from places that you usually visit.

Once you and the boss reached that place, put it to sleep and get out of there immediately. As long as you don’t get near that zone it will never wake up nor will it go towards you again.
If it is a seasonal boss it will despawn when the season ends, leaving no drops behind.

To create a sleep dart you will need:

2 reeds
1 stinger (from bees)
1 crow feather

And a science machine to prototype.

To create a panflute you will need:

5 reeds
1 mandrake
1 rope

And a prestihatiator to prototype.

Pros:

• It’s safe since you are not fighting it.
• You don’t lose much sanity.

Cons:

• You lose all the drops.

You should use this strategy if you absolutely don’t want to fight a boss.

You should not use this strategy if you want the items that the boss drops

Freezing a boss could work too, but i never tested it. You may need to be fast and Dragonfly thaws extremely quickly so don’t freeze her to use this method.

In the same way, making a boss aggro onto a mob and then running away may work too. It’s just a bit harder to pull off.

To put a dragonfly to sleep you can just put 20 ashes on the ground: it will eat the ashes and fall asleep shortly after.

Sealnado (Shipwrecked DLC) is immune to this strategy since it can’t be put asleep nor frozen.

You can use this strategy to buy yourself virtually unlimited time in case you need to make some more preparation for the fight.

Bring a boss somewhere you never go to.
Put it to sleep.
Go away and let it despawn.

Skill score: 1/3
Preparation score: 2/3

Spelunking

Yes, you can!
If you don’t feel like facing a boss but can do some spelunking, you can go inside a cave and spend some time in it since bosses don’t follow you inside.
This strategy is best used against seasonal bosses (deerclops, bearger, dragonfly and moose/goose) since they despawn when the season ends and do not spawn inside caves; for this reason, i’ll focus on thoose.

It’s actually quite easy: as soon as you hear that a boss is about to spawn, start running towards your closest sinkhole and as soon as you reach it, jump in it. Depending on how much time you needed, there can be two outcomes:

• The boss didn’t spawn: Congratulations! Either you are the Flash or the sinkhole was really close to your base. All you have to do now is to wait until the season you are in ends, and have fun surviving in the caves/ruins until them. If you get out from the cave after the season ends, the boss will not spawn at all leaving you relatively safe.
• The boss did spawn: This is not too much of a big deal. Just do the same as the previous step: when you come out from the cave the boss should have despawned. Be careful about one thing though: depending on your luck, what the code decides to do and some circumstances i really don’t know, it’s possible that you will find the boss waiting for you when you come out from the cave. Make sure you have a backup plan if that happens.

Pros:

• You don’t have to fight the boss.
• You get some caves/ruins material.
• You get to explore the caves/ruins if you still didn’t do it.

Cons:

• You wil lose the boss’ drops.
• Caves and ruins can prove dangerous.

You should hide in a cave if you are positive you can survive the spelunking trip and are ok with losing the boss’ drops.

You should not hide in a cave if you want the boss’ drops and/or can’t survive the time spent underground.

It’s a good idea to place your base close to a sinkhole if you plan to use this strategy. Beware though: batilisks will spawn and attack you during nighttime if you are too close.

Keep in mind that freezing, rain and overheating still apply in the caves if you are using the Reign of Giants DLC.

Sometimes giants attack really early in the season. Unless you can spend 10+ days underground, you should use another strategy if that happens.

It’s a good idea to build an organized camp underground, where the cave exit/entrance is to help you during long term underground surviving.

Since there’s no clock nor day counter in the caves, having a mod that adds those while you are in a cave will greatly help you in knowing how much time left you have to stay underground.

This works best on seasonal bosses.
As soon as you hear the boss spawning, hide in a cave.
Only get out when the season has already ended.

Skill score: 2/3
Preparation score: 2/3

Conclusions

I sure hope this guide was helpful to you, or at least that it was fun to read!

If you use some other strategies or have an idea to make one of these better let me know.
If the ones i listed have something wrong in them, tell me.
It’s always good to improve your work, and your help matters!

Don’t be shy if you have questions: everyone was a beginner once and there’s nothing wrong in having doubts, so ask anything you want!

I put many jokes in this guide and other ones may be added in the future, but since the main pupose of this guide is to be useful do not expect their number to increase too much.

This guide was written by me (nightdweller) and revised by my friend WALUIGI.
The strategies in the guide were either found on the web or created by me.
In both cases they were refined using his help and discussing together.

A special “Thank you” goes to:
Rey, a drop of golden sun, for reminding me that tentacles exist.
The Skootie-Booty Mann, for reminding me that bees exist too.
BoppyDoppy, for reminding me that frogs pack a punch.
All the readers that took some time to show me their appreciation for my work. You are the best!