Digbot Swarm
What it is
An industrial-themed boss encounter built as a single shared health bar split across one hundred individual drone bodies. There is no positional boss to focus on — the entire arena fills with workers, and every drone destroyed drains the same pool. One drone is designated as the foreman: it anchors the health bar, owns the boss’s sole offensive ability, and is the only body that runs a full death cinematic. The other ninety-nine are silent bodies that only contribute hit points and visual mass. Pool tier is mini-boss, so when this encounter rolls on a boss-tier level the per-body HP and damage are doubled by the encounter runtime.
Identity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Display name | DIGBOT SWARM |
| Pool tier | mini |
| Primary color | bronze (#aa7733) |
| Secondary color | electric blue (#3388ff) |
| Warning color | amber (#ffaa00) |
| Cool / shadow color | steel (#666666) |
| Hot / overcharge color | overcharge blue (#88ccff) |
| Bar color | bronze |
The bar carries the foreman’s name. Drone bodies use the same bronze outline tint as the bar, reading as one mass rather than ninety-nine independent enemies.
Arena
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Shape | circle |
| Radius | 450 |
| Closing duration (seconds) | 8 |
| Terrain pattern | open |
The arena is open ground — no terrain features to break sightlines or block movement. Persistent ambience layers (skipped under low-performance mode) include drifting bronze gear-fragment dust motes and scrolling electric-blue floor stripes.
Arena ambience parameters
| Layer | Parameter | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Dust motes | density | 0.5 |
| Dust motes | drift | 0.04 |
| Floor glow stripes | period | 200 |
| Floor glow stripes | scroll rate (Hz) | 0.4 |
| Floor glow stripes | alpha | 0.15 |
Body composition
The encounter spawns exactly one hundred bodies. All share the same enemy sprite identity and the same AI behavior — they disperse outward to fill the arena. Every body shares the boss’s health pool, so each death subtracts its hit points from the bar.
| Role | Count | Position | Is bar anchor | HP per body | Share pool | AI | Abilities |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foreman | 1 | center | yes | 60 | yes | disperse to fill | radial burst |
| Drone body | 99 | ring around foreman | no | 60 | yes | disperse to fill | none |
| Pool stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Total bodies | 100 |
| HP per body | 60 |
| Total bar HP pool | 6000 |
| Contribution per body | 1% |
Every drone is targetable. Affixes are empty on both roles — the encounter relies entirely on body count, the foreman’s burst, and the shared pool.
Phases
The encounter has no scripted phase transitions, no HP-threshold triggers, and no respawn-based phase shifts. Pressure builds purely as a function of how many drones remain alive and where they have dispersed to in the arena. The foreman runs its single ability on a fixed cooldown for the entire fight, until it dies.
Abilities
The foreman is the only body that fires. The ninety-nine drone bodies have no offensive abilities — they exist to absorb damage and occupy space.
Foreman radial burst
A telegraphed radial volley fired from the foreman’s position. Sixteen bronze projectiles launch outward in evenly-spaced directions after a telegraph window.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Pattern | radial burst |
| Projectile count | 16 |
| Projectile speed | 180 |
| Projectile damage | 15 |
| Projectile radius | 6 |
| Projectile color | bronze (#aa7733) |
| Telegraph (ms) | 1600 |
| Cooldown (seconds) | 6.0 |
The ability is registered locally on module init — its tuning lives with the boss rather than in the global ability table — but it follows the standard radial-burst pattern.
Spawn profile
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Profile id | none |
There is no pressure-add profile. The encounter spawns no additional enemies on a timer, no recurring waves, no phase-triggered adds. The hundred-body shared roster is the entire fight.
Persistent VFX layers
Three categories of persistent visual run during the encounter:
Per-drone core pulse
Every drone carries a single additive blue core pulse layer — a tight, point-of-light additive dot that pulses at a fixed frequency. To stay within the per-body operations budget, only every fourth drone renders the pulse under normal performance mode, giving roughly twenty-five visible pulse points across the arena. The foreman always pulses regardless of sampling. Under low-performance mode, only the foreman pulses; the rest of the swarm reads through its sprite outlines alone.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Color | electric blue (#3388ff) |
| Frequency (Hz) | 2.0 |
| Alpha | 0.4 |
| Radius | 4 |
| Sampling factor (normal perf) | every 4th body |
| Sampling (low perf) | foreman only |
Foreman leader markers
The foreman is wrapped in three additional layers so the player can pick it out of the crowd.
| Layer | Color | Parameter | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aura | amber | radius | 45 |
| Aura | amber | pulse rate (Hz) | 0.6 |
| Aura | amber | alpha | 0.6 |
| Orbital ring | amber | radius | 55 |
| Orbital ring | amber | rotate rate (Hz) | 0.5 |
| Orbital ring | amber | dash count | 6 |
| Orbital ring | amber | alpha | 0.5 |
| Under shadow | steel | radius | 50 |
| Under shadow | steel | alpha | 0.4 |
Body death effects
Drone deaths must scale to roughly thirty per second under sustained fire, so each non-foreman death is restricted to a minimal effect budget. The foreman’s death is a full three-stage explosion.
Drone body death
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Bronze gear-chunk particles | 3 |
| Gear-chunk duration (seconds) | 0.4 |
| Energy spark count | 1 |
| Energy spark color | electric blue |
| Energy spark duration (seconds) | 0.3 |
| Shockwave | none |
| Screen tint | none |
No per-body shockwave, no per-body screen tint — the coalescer aggregates death feedback into the bar instead.
Foreman death (1.2-second three-stage explosion)
| Stage | Time (ms) | Element | Parameter | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 | Shockwave stack | start radius | 18 |
| 1 | 0 | Shockwave stack | end radius | 140 |
| 1 | 0 | Shockwave stack | lifetime (seconds) | 0.6 |
| 1 | 0 | Screen tint pulse | color | amber |
| 1 | 0 | Screen tint pulse | intensity | 0.3 |
| 1 | 0 | Screen tint pulse | duration (seconds) | 0.5 |
| 2 | 400 | Spark burst | count | 16 |
| 2 | 400 | Spark burst | color | amber |
| 2 | 400 | Spark burst | spread (degrees) | 360 |
| 2 | 400 | Spark burst | duration (seconds) | 0.7 |
| 3 | 800 | Shard burst | count | 12 |
| 3 | 800 | Shard burst | spread (degrees) | 360 |
| 3 | 800 | Shard burst | duration (seconds) | 0.8 |
The foreman can die at any time during the fight — it is not gated to last. When it dies mid-encounter, the radial-burst ability stops firing and the bar still holds whatever pool remains across the surviving drones, but no scripted hand-off happens.
Encounter-end cinematic
When the final drone falls and the bar empties, a 2.4-second visual timeline plays before the reward sequence begins. Pool drain and body cleanup are handled by the damage pipeline; this hook is visual only.
| Beat | Time (ms) | Element | Parameter | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Decompile | 0 | Staggered burst events | total events | 30 |
| Decompile | 0 | Staggered burst events | stagger window (ms) | 1000 |
| Decompile | 0 | Staggered burst events | particles per event | 6 |
| Decompile | 0 | Staggered burst events | duration (seconds) | 0.5 |
| Decompile | 0 | Staggered burst events | color | bronze |
| Stripe flash | 0 | Screen tint pulse | color | electric blue |
| Stripe flash | 0 | Screen tint pulse | intensity | 0.15 |
| Stripe flash | 0 | Screen tint pulse | duration (seconds) | 1.4 |
| Amber pulse | 400 | Screen tint pulse | color | amber |
| Amber pulse | 400 | Screen tint pulse | intensity | 0.35 |
| Amber pulse | 400 | Screen tint pulse | duration (seconds) | 0.5 |
| Arena cascade | 800 | Shockwave band | start radius | 30 |
| Arena cascade | 800 | Shockwave band | end radius | arena radius |
| Arena cascade | 800 | Shockwave band | color | electric blue |
| Arena cascade | 800 | Shockwave band | duration (seconds) | 1.0 |
| Camera pull-back | 1200 | Camera zoom pulse | factor | 0.94 |
| Camera pull-back | 1200 | Camera zoom pulse | duration (seconds) | 0.7 |
| Shard arc | 1600 | Shard burst | count | 12 |
| Shard arc | 1600 | Shard burst | spread (degrees) | 360 |
| Shard arc | 1600 | Shard burst | duration (seconds) | 1.0 |
| Vignette close | 2000 | Edge vignette | color | amber |
| Vignette close | 2000 | Edge vignette | intensity | 0.25 |
| Vignette close | 2000 | Edge vignette | duration (seconds) | 0.8 |
Rewards
A hundred-body kill earns a heavy payout — double the standard pick count from the boss reward chamber, plus a flat experience and currency drop.
| Reward | Value |
|---|---|
| Experience | 1000 |
| Currency | 100 |
| Extra reward picks | 2 |
| Reward cascade composition | default (5-prop ring: 2 Scrap, 1 Mineral, 1 Comet, 1 Magnetar) |
Scaling
This encounter does not declare a per-boss scaling override, so the global default scaling table applies. The level value driving these multipliers is the current run level minus one (level 1 = no scaling, raw values).
| Stat dimension | Per-level growth | Cap type | Cap value | Cap steepness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HP | 2.00 | uncapped | — | — |
| Damage | 2.15 | uncapped | — | — |
| Turret fire rate | 1.25 | soft cap | 3.0 | 0.30 |
| Move speed | 1.10 | soft cap | 2.0 | 0.25 |
| Limb sweep speed | 1.15 | soft cap | 2.5 | 0.20 |
| Spawner frequency | 1.20 | soft cap | 3.0 | 0.25 |
| Projectile speed | 1.12 | hard cap | 2.0 | — |
| Effect radius | 1.10 | soft cap | 2.5 | 0.20 |
| Enrage timer | 0.88 | soft cap | 0.25 | 0.30 |
Base enrage timer at level 1 is 120 seconds, shared with every other boss. When the encounter runs on a boss-tier level instead of a mini-boss level, the runtime additionally doubles per-body HP and per-body damage on the entire roster on top of the level scaling above.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE flags
- The shared-bar / one-hundred-body-pool pattern is unique to this encounter so far. If a second swarm boss ships, the “shared health pool across N bodies with a designated bar anchor” mechanic should extract to the bosses overview page.
- Per-body performance budget (operations per body per frame, particle counts at thirty deaths per second) is currently described inline. If a second high-body-count boss ships, this should extract to a shared “perf budget for swarm encounters” concept page.
- Foreman three-stage death cinematic (shockwave stack, then spark burst, then shard burst at fixed offsets) is a reusable pattern — if a second boss adopts the same staged-explosion shape, extract to a death-cinematic concept page.
- Encounter-end cinematic timeline (decompile, stripe flash, amber pulse, arena cascade, camera pull-back, shard arc, vignette close) is per-boss bespoke and should stay on the per-entity page.
- Global default boss scaling table is repeated on every per-boss page; the per-level growth numbers, cap types, and cap parameters belong on a single bosses-scaling roll-up page, with per-entity pages linking to it.