Fernwild 1.1.12: boss balance and arrow fixes
Two bugs had been quietly helping Fern: piercing arrows could damage the same enemy every frame, and a three-arrow multishot only spent one arrow.
Fixing those made her noticeably weaker. Piercing had been doing roughly three times the intended damage against bosses, so this patch also needed a boss balance pass.
I’ve adjusted boss health around the upgrades a run can realistically have at each stage. The Rootwarden stays unchanged. The later bosses now need roughly 12 to 25 volleys in the damage checks, assuming the arrows connect. New automated tests check those estimates to catch fights becoming trivial or turning into a long grind.
A few other changes help keep boss rooms manageable:
- Entry ammo caches cover at least a quarter of the estimated arrows needed for the fight.
- Bosses now check for an emergency quiver drop during their summon cycle if you’ve run dry.
- Living minions are capped at eight.
- Later bosses are faster, boss shots reach across the room, and summons match the stage, including ranged enemies in stage four.
There are a couple of smaller fixes too. The HUD has a proper heart icon, and the panel expands to fit a third heart instead of leaving it hanging off the corner.
The boss-clear message is also more direct: “The way out is north - the top, not the right.”
The full test suite is passing, the release is committed and tagged, and the encrypted web build is ready.