Hive Queen
What it is
A swarm-themed encounter built around a single shielded queen body guarded by four respawning drone anchors. The queen takes no damage while any anchor lives. Killing the fourth anchor opens a damage window, but on the next anchor-respawn tick the dead anchors re-hatch (after a short telegraph) and the shield comes back up. The fight loops “clear anchors, push damage in the open window, brace for the re-hatch” while the queen seeds extra drones from spawn telegraphs and a constant venom radial pressures the player. Fast melee adds drop in opposite the player at a fixed cadence to interrupt anchor-clearing.
The encounter is tagged for the mini-boss pool. It also runs as the final boss when randomly drawn from the boss pool — the same authored roster scales up via the mini ×4 or boss ×8 stat multiplier.
Identity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Theme | Bee-pirate hive (queen plus drone swarm) |
| Biome cues | Hive-yellow primary, venom-green accents, white-wax warnings, purple-shadow cool tones, royal-jelly hot highlights |
| Pool kind | mini (eligible for both mini-boss and final boss slots) |
| Composition | 1 sharing body (the queen) plus 4 external respawning anchor drones |
| Bar anchor | the queen body |
| Roster body AI | patrol_random |
| Affixes on body | shielded_respawn (4 anchors of type stinger drone, 12 s respawn cadence) |
| Abilities | Drone Hatch Telegraph, Drone Wisp Pulse |
Arena
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Shape | circle |
| Radius | 400 world units |
| Terrain pattern | pillar ring (interior pillars provide cover from queen line of sight) |
| Arena closing duration | 8 seconds |
Body composition and HP
| Body | Count | HP per body | Share pool | Targetable | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Queen (orca-class hive body) | 1 | 7000 | yes | yes, only while no anchor is alive | bar anchor; shielded_respawn affix gates damage |
| Stinger drone anchors | 4 | external (not part of shared pool) | no | yes | clearing all 4 opens a damage window; dead anchors re-hatch on the next 12 s tick |
Total bar pool: 7000 HP, carried entirely by the queen body. Anchor HP is tracked separately and is not represented on the boss bar.
Phases and damage gates
| Rule | Trigger | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Shielded gate | At least one stinger anchor alive | Queen body takes 0 damage; player must clear all 4 anchors to expose the boss |
| Damage window | All 4 anchors dead | Queen bar drains normally until the next anchor respawn tick |
| Anchor respawn | Every 12 seconds | Any dead anchors hatch back in; hatch is telegraphed for 1.5 seconds before the drone appears |
The fight has no HP-threshold phase transitions and no scripted body swap. The loop is anchor-clear into a brief damage window into a re-hatch that closes the window again, repeating until the queen’s bar empties.
Abilities
Drone Hatch Telegraph
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Pattern | spawn_telegraph |
| Cooldown | 8.0 seconds |
| Telegraph duration | 1500 ms |
| Spawn circle count | 3 |
| Spawn positions | ring around the queen |
| Drone type hatched | stinger drone (same type as anchors) |
| Telegraph tint | venom-green |
Every 8 seconds the queen paints 3 ring-positioned summon circles around herself. After the 1500 ms telegraph, a stinger drone hatches at each circle with a white-wax flash and sparkle-fall cue. These hatched drones add to the swarm but are not anchors — clearing them does not affect the shielded gate.
Drone Wisp Pulse
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Pattern | radial_burst |
| Cooldown | 4.0 seconds |
| Telegraph duration | 600 ms |
| Bullet count | 8 |
| Bullet speed | 100 world units / s |
| Bullet damage | 10 |
| Bullet radius | 5 world units |
| Bullet color | venom-green |
A slow, gentle 8-bullet venom-green radial that drifts outward from the queen as if individual drone wisps were peeling off. Low-speed bullets, evenly spaced — the player has wide gaps to slip between them. The pulse runs continuously on its 4 s cadence in parallel with the 8 s hatch cycle.
Spawn profile
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Profile id | beacon_clearers |
| Wave trigger | recurring every 15 s starting at t=10 s |
| Add type | charger (common, fast melee) |
| Count per wave | 2 |
| Spawn position | opposite the player |
The beacon_clearers profile is the “anchor-interrupter” profile in the library. Fast melee adds drop in behind the player every 15 seconds with the explicit job of interrupting anchor-clearing — the player cannot stand on an anchor and burn it down without breaking off to handle the chargers.
Rewards
| Reward type | Value |
|---|---|
| XP on kill | 900 |
| Currency on kill | 90 |
| Extra level-up reward picks granted | 1 |
| Cascade ring composition | 3 × scrap pile, 1 × mineral vein, 1 × magnetar pulse |
The cascade ring is a custom 5-prop ring (overriding the default 2 scrap + 1 mineral + 1 comet + 1 magnetar). The composition leans into the swarm fantasy: the hive collapses into rubble (scrap-heavy loot), with a magnetar pulse sweeping the field to pull the scattered drone-debris and pickups toward the player. Mineral vein rounds out the workhorse currency drop.
Scaling
Hive Queen is a mini-pool boss. The authored stats above are the level-1 baseline. The encounter is scaled at spawn by the boss tier multiplier and the run-depth ramp:
| Slot | Tier HP multiplier | Tier damage multiplier | Reward chamber cascade rings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mini-boss appearance | 4.0 | 4.0 | 1 |
| Final boss appearance | 8.0 | 8.0 | 2 |
Depth ramp on top of the tier multiplier is 1.0 + 0.5 × (currentLevel - 1) / (totalLevels - 1), applied to both HP and damage.
| Slot | Depth multiplier | Combined HP | Combined damage per wisp bullet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal mode L3 (mini) | 1.50 | ×6.00 (42000 bar pool) | ×6.00 (60) |
| Challenge mode L3 (mini) | 1.22 | ×4.89 | ×4.89 |
| Challenge mode L6 (mini) | 1.56 | ×6.22 | ×6.22 |
| Challenge mode L9 (mini) | 1.89 | ×7.56 | ×7.56 |
| Final-boss draw, last level of run | 1.50 | ×12.00 (84000 bar pool) | ×12.00 (120) |
In addition, every boss inherits the default per-level scaling curve (hp ×2.0/level uncapped, damage ×2.15/level uncapped, plus soft/hard caps on fire rate, move speed, projectile speed, sweep speed, spawner frequency, effect radius, and enrage timer) starting from the player’s currentLevel at encounter spawn.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE flags
- The mini ×4 / final ×8 tier multipliers and the depth ramp formula are duplicated from
mini-bosses.mdand the other per-entity pages. Acceptable per the wiki “tables can duplicate” rule — kept here so the per-entity page is readable standalone. - The default boss scaling curve (per-level multipliers, cap behavior, base enrage timer) lives in
data/boss-scaling.tsand is shared by every boss. Currently not documented on a canonical scaling page; same EXTRACT note as the Killer Croc page — recommend abosses/scaling.mdextraction or a section inbosses.mdonce all per-entity pages exist. - The
shielded_respawnaffix is the load-bearing mechanic for this fight (anchor count, anchor type, respawn cadence, hatch telegraph, damage-gate behavior) and is shared in concept withshielded(Killer Croc) but adds the respawn cadence. Belongs onaffixes.md; this page should link out rather than re-describe. - The
spawn_telegraphandradial_burstability patterns are not yet documented. Flag for a “boss abilities catalog” page once one exists. The spawn_telegraph pattern in particular is reused outside the abilities system (the affix-driven hatch reuses the same 1.5 s telegraph window) and should be a single canonical definition. - The
beacon_clearersspawn profile is currently used only by Hive Queen. Already mentioned onbosses.mdandmini-bosses.md; no extraction needed. - The 6-layer persistent VFX kit (dust motes / under-shadow / purple core pulse / golden aura / hex shimmer / royal-jelly core pulse) plus the continuous yellow spark trail and the 2.6 s bee-silhouette death cinematic are visual-only and described in the source. Omitted from this page per “facts only” scope, but flag for a dedicated
bosses/vfx-kits.mdif a visual-direction catalog is ever broken out. - The level-1 baseline figures (7000 HP, 10 damage per wisp bullet, 900 XP, 90 currency) are duplicated from the data file — same reason as Killer Croc: per-entity pages must be standalone-readable.