Overview
Ever wanted to get a Chunky Hammer before your first naturally spawning boss? (Works Surprisingly Often)
Yes, this is real. (Intro)
Fighting bosses on Day 0 may seem like a god awful idea, and trust me, I thought so too. But, they’re actually surprisingly easy after you learn their moveset, and how to work around them. Add on to that the abundance of naturally spawning summoning statues, and you’ve got a recipe for some very VERY early Chunky Hammers/Gronk Swords.
Preparing
This is literally doable with a rock, and damage-less, just going to take some time to learn how to evade the move-sets, and get used to it. Congratulations! You are now playing a souls-like. But, to ease the growing pains, there are a few things you can do before hunting down a boss statue.
1. Find the Free Chests/Structures and chop a few trees. This can easily be done while searching for a boss statue at the same time. If you don’t see any boss statues, huts, or free chests in your seed when you get in, it might be faster to just start over again, and hope for a better seed.
2. Chop some trees, get some weapons. If you don’t feel confident going in against a boss guns-a-blazin’ without any weapons, a wooden pickaxe will serve you much better than a rock, especially for Big Chunky.
3. Just do it! (Unless it’s a Guardian) Chunky is by far easier than Gronk, and actually drops more gold, and more valuable stuff in my experience, so, Big Chunky is the preferred target for this strategy. Activate the boss Statue, and get focused. After update 3, the Guardian Boss has been added. I would highly advise waiting until mid/late game for now, until we find a consistent strat (if one exists). I guess I should also mention Bob here as well. Bob, is the final boss, and requires you to kill every single guardian and get quite a few resources. This being so, you will not be able to get Bob on Day 0. I may end up eating my words here, but this is what I believe for now.
4. Profit. The game becomes so easy after dropping a few bosses on day 0. You can even do some battle pillars if you want, but they tend to be less profitable, and therefore, more of a waste of precious time before those chest prices go up.
Move-sets.
It’s probably better to just experience these on your own, as you’ll learn them pretty fast, not much to them as they have very few moves to begin with. For the purposes of telling you how to avoid these attacks, I will assume you have absolutely 0 Upgrades, are fighting with a Rock, and have full Hunger.
Big Chunky:
As mentioned Earlier, this is the easier of the two bosses currently in the game, by a pretty significant margin. It only has a few things to look out for, and a little bit of baiting.
1. Trample Damage:
I’ll address this one first, Big Chunky has a few hitboxes on it’s feet while it is walking around, these will damage you, and do some damage, but it is pretty minimal, so you shouldn’t worry too much about this unless you are < 20 health or so. You can avoid this by just staying away from the feet while they’re in the air, and only hitting them when they’re grounded.
2. Jump:
This is by far the most common move Big Chunky will use while you are in close combat with it. It has a long wind up, telegraphed by Big Chunky bending it’s knees, it’s very obvious, and gives you plenty of time to maybe sneak in 1 more hit and then bail. It will then leap into the air and crash down, sending 3 rocks in your direction. There are quite a few things to look out for, and this is Big Chunky’s most dangerous move by far. Firstly, before it jumps, get a good distance between it and you. It has a hitbox on the way up, and more importantly, on the way down. The landing hitbox is absolutely massive around itself, and if you aren’t in the air, there’s an even larger hitbox with your name on it, though it doesn’t do that much damage. The main thing to look out for after Chunky lands, is the rocks. These will do a significant amount of damage, and will 1-shot you on Gamer Difficulty. Despite how large they look, they can actually be avoided with a well timed jump even without any upgrades. This is also how I advise you dodge them unless you’ve managed to somehow make a huge distance between the two of you. Once you are clear of the rocks, it is safe to re-engage.
3. Slam:
All of Big Chunky’s moveset is highly telegraphed, so it should be easy to tell when he’s doing this instead of a jump. Chunky will raise it’s hand high in the air, and then slam it down onto the ground, sending a rock towards you when it lands. This is a pretty safe move if you know what to do. It has no hitboxes near Big Chunky, so if you close the distance, and just start hitting it’s leg, there’s not much it can do to stop you from getting free hits. The one thing to look out for is the rock that gets sent towards you after the hand slams down. But this too can be easily avoided by just switching between the two legs you are hitting when you see the hand collide with the ground. This should cause it to miss you by a very safe margin.
4. Sweep:
This is the best move for you, that Big Chunky can throw out. It extends it’s arm to the side, before making a wide sweep in front of it. This move, can also be easily addressed by standing under Chunky and hitting it. There’s really nothing dangerous about this move unless you’re in front of Chunky when it’s sweeping.
As a final note for Big Chunky, it’s worth noting that I believe you may be able to bait the two melee attacks by being in front of it while it’s deciding what attack to do next. I have no hard evidence that this helps, but it certainly seems that when I’m behind or under it, 90% of the time, it will do the Jump, which is the worst move for you that it can preform.
Gronk:
I mean, I honestly wouldn’t bother until you have a Chunky Hammer, but if you really can’t find a Chunky Statue, or just want to test your skill, here’s what I have for dealing with this bugger.
1. Melee Combo:
Gronk will raise one sword above their head before slashing down multiple times in quick succession, and leave themself open after the combo is finished. This is the most common in melee combat with Gronk, and actually, the easiest to avoid if you see it coming. The key is to start running behind Gronk as soon as you see the one sword raised above their head. If you recognize it early enough, Gronk will be open for the whole combo and the pause after as you get in some free hits. If you’re late on seeing this combo, back up and to either side of gronk while sprinting and pray, then you can circle around to Gronk’s back for just 1 or 2 hits before you have to be on guard again.
2. Sword Beams:
Gronk will raise both hands up and gather blue energy with a very indicative sound effect (trust me, you’ll know). Gronk will then proceed to slam both swords down and 5 beams of blue light will shoot out, originating from the swords and aimed towards you. GTFO when you hear that sound. The beams can be jumped pretty easily, but there is a nasty hitbox in front of Gronk that doesn’t care if you’re in the air or not, and if you get hit by it, it’s pretty much game over. After jumping the blue beams, Gronk will be open for a few hits before they start the next move.
3. Sword Throw:
By far the worst. If you see those swords getting drawn back, bail as fast as you can, and preferably behind something. If you’re lucky enough to have an obstacle like a tree to hide behind, you’re safe, but do mind, that if you aren’t far enough away from the tree, the hitbox will extend through it and hit you before disappearing. If you aren’t so lucky, sprint circles to their right (your left) and get as much space between you as you can. And then you pray. This move is the only reason I regard Gronk as much harder than Big Chunky as I have only found a few inconsistent methods of avoiding this massive damage. If anybody knows a better way to dodge this with 0 upgrades, please let me know. UPDATE: You can actually dodge Gronk’s Sword throw by just running up to their face. the hitbox starts a little past them, so if you actually just run up to Gronk, the swords won’t hit you.
Guardian:
Don’t even try it, at least until a cool strategy is found.
Claw:
The Guardian will reel back and claw twice. The best way to avoid this, is to back up, and maybe circle around for some free hits.
Slam:
The guardian will jump very high into the air and slam down, after landing, a large sphere will telegraph a crystal spike follow-up attack that does a lot of damage. Both the landing and the crystal spike will deal a huge amount of damage, so running away, and then out of the sphere is the best option when it does this move. The guardian will actually predict your movement when placing the sphere, so I’ve found the best way to deal with this move is to run straight back from the guardian as it jumps up in the air, and then after it lands, run back up and into it’s face. This will make the guardian place the crystal a safe distance away and behind you.
Laser:
The Guardian will reel back for a windup, and then unleash a bright laser, dealing loads of damage. I currently have not tested this move enough to find a good way to avoid it, so my only advice for now is to get behind something or move very quickly in circles around it. The real problem with this move is the tracking. It will track you through the multiverse if it so pleases. After some admittedly rudimentary testing, I have determined that the only way to avoid this attack reliable is to have a tree to hide behind. This is by far the worst attack it can throw out, and the main reason I’d advise to just leave this until mid/late game content.
Wall Strats!
Walls are cool now! They’re in, they’re hip, and they’re begging to invalidate any projectile you see coming towards your face, and distract literally anything you can’t be bothered to deal with! I’ll share some notable uses for wall strats that will make you’re life much easier if you happen to be carrying a few.
Big Chunky’s Rocks:
This strategy requires a bit more preparation, but you can trivialize this attack with walls. If you back away from chunky and place a wall interposing you two, you can invalidate any damage from this attack. There are some things to watch out for here though, and it’s going to require a deeper understanding of this move. Of the three rocks being sent out by the landing, you really mostly only have to worry about the one being sent straight towards you. Now, it may just seem as simple as “put wall between squishy human body and big rock”, and while that isn’t exactly incorrect, there are a few nuances. When any of the 3 rocks contact anything, and I mean anything, it will stop being a smallish rock that can be jumped, and transform into an absolutely menacing hitbox which happens to be 3-4x the size of the original rock (For no real good reason). This hitbox doesn’t care about any walls, it doesn’t care if you’re jumping, it doesn’t care if you’re about to get 1-shot by the absolutely BS damage that it is capable of outputting. This hitbox is what makes the original strategy for jumping inconsistent if you aren’t watching your back, because you can jump the rock, and then it might hit a tree behind you and steal more than half of your health. If you put a wall between you and Chunky while running away during the wind-up, the rock will collide with this wall, triggering this hitbox, but it is much more manageable. When using this, you need to get CLEAR of that wall, because it’s about to be host to that aforementioned nasty hitbox. After the rock collides though, you’re completely safe to reengage because it has absolutely no lingering effects.
Guardian Laser:
This one’s a lot more simple, and by far the best way to deal with their laser attack. Just drop it down while you can see the wind-up, and you’re completely safe for the attack.
Good Luck! Thanks for reading!
There you have it. This strategy is still under development by me, and I will update this with more ways to avoid the bosses’ attacks or weird quirks that I find that could be unpredictable. If you would leave a rating or favorite this guide, I’d really appreciate it! Thanks for reading, and happy hunting!