Killer Croc

What it is

The first entry in the boss roster. A swamp-predator encounter built around a single shielded body — the croc itself — guarded by four anchor units. The croc cannot take any damage while any anchor is alive; the fight is paced as a forced “clear the anchors, get a damage window” loop with continuous edge-pressure adds harassing the player.

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	Swamp predator (gator silhouette, venom eyes, mire shadows)
Biome cues	Swamp-green primary, bile-yellow accents, blood-red warnings, mire-brown shadow
Pool kind	mini (eligible for both mini-boss and final boss slots)
Composition	1 sharing body + 4 external anchor units
Bar anchor	the croc body
Roster body AI	kite_player
Affixes on body	shielded (4 anchors, anchor type caiman)
Abilities	Cone Slam

Arena

Field	Value
Shape	circle
Radius	350 world units
Terrain pattern	open
Arena closing duration	8 seconds

Body composition and HP

Body	Count	HP per body	Share pool	Targetable	Notes
Croc	1	6000	yes	yes (only when no anchors alive)	bar anchor; shielded affix gates damage
Caiman anchors	4	external (not part of shared pool)	no	yes	clearing all 4 opens the croc damage window

Total bar pool: 6000 HP, carried entirely by the croc 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 Caiman anchor alive	Croc body takes 0 damage; player must clear anchors to expose the boss
Damage window	All 4 anchors dead	Croc bar drains normally to 0

The fight has no HP-threshold phase transitions and no scripted body swap. The only loop is anchor-clear → damage window → fight ends when the croc bar empties.

Abilities

Cone Slam

Field	Value
Pattern	cone_slam
Cooldown	4.0 seconds
Start delay (first cast)	1.5 seconds
Telegraph duration	1400 ms
Damage per bullet	30
Bullet count	6
Cone length	240 world units
Cone half-width	55 degrees
Bullet color	bile-yellow

A telegraphed jaw-lunge cone aimed at the player. After the 1400 ms telegraph, six bile-yellow bullets fire in a 55-degree half-arc cone reaching out 240 world units. Each bullet deals 30 damage on hit.

Cone Slam is the only ability assigned to the croc; the encounter difficulty comes from the cone cadence plus the constant edge-pressure adds, not from a multi-ability rotation.

Spawn profile

Field	Value
Profile id	light_pressure
Wave trigger	recurring every 8 s starting at t=4 s
Add type	orb (common)
Count per wave	3
Spawn position	arena edge, random point

The add cadence is the lightest of all shipped profiles. Adds are background harassment — a steady but small dribble of orbs that the player can chip down between anchor pushes without dropping focus on the croc.

Rewards

Reward type	Value
XP on kill	500
Currency on kill	50
Extra level-up reward picks granted	1
Cascade ring composition	2 × comet fragment, 1 × volatile crystal, 1 × magnetar pulse, 1 × scrap pile

The cascade ring is a custom 5-prop ring (overriding the default 2 scrap + 1 mineral + 1 comet + 1 magnetar). The composition leans into ramming as a post-boss tool: comet fragments grant a speed-boost-on-ram pickup, volatile crystal adds proximity-explosion damage, and the magnetar pulse + scrap pile fill out the loop.

Scaling

Killer Croc 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
Normal mode L3 (mini)	1.50	×6.00 (36000 bar pool)	×6.00 (180 per Cone Slam bullet)
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 (72000 bar pool)	×12.00 (360 per Cone Slam bullet)

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.md. 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.ts and is shared by every boss. Currently not documented on a canonical scaling page; recommend extracting to a bosses/scaling.md or extending bosses.md once all 8 entity pages exist, and replacing the trailing scaling paragraph here with a link.
• The Cone Slam ability pattern (cone_slam) is the only consumer of that pattern in the codebase. Its bullet behavior, telegraph rendering, and damage model are not yet documented; flag for the abilities page if/when a “boss abilities catalog” is broken out.
• The light_pressure spawn profile is shared with Reactor Core. Already documented on mini-bosses.md and bosses.md; no extraction needed.
• The shielded affix mechanics (anchor gating, damage filter, anchor type wiring) are mentioned but not deep-explained here. Belongs on affixes.md if not already; this page should link out rather than re-describe.