I'm Walking on Sunshine: The Sunstalker Showdown (Patreon)

The Sunstalker's quarry fight is easily one of the five best showdowns in the entire game at the moment; sitting alongside the Dragon King, Butcher, Tyrant and Dung Beetle Knight as an example of what peak showdown design can be. It's also very unique among the stable of showdowns because the Sunstalker puts immense time pressure onto the survivors; forcing them to fight in a timely fashion and ensuring that the showdown is both fast and also very dangerous. Survivors are asked to deal with the Sunstalker quickly otherwise its natural mechanics will overwhelm their defenses and leave them all incinerated.

The Sunstalker Showdown is somewhat unique in that it has no random terrain at any time; this makes it the perfect showdown to go for right after you have undertaken farming with the Dung Beetle Knight showdown (because that event tends to put Vermin Obsession on all your departing survivors, which is an automatic death sentence if they encounter a vermin patch terrain tile on the showdown). The showdown layout is as follows.

While that looks like a lot of open space; what you'll find is that the Sunstalker is so aggressive and quick that it'll be right up in the faces of the survivors almost immediately. You see it has the second highest movement out of all the monsters in the game (behind The Hand) with the capability to move 16 spaces. That means even if it's in the corner of the board it can reach the following squares.

What that means in practical terms is, if the Sunstalker chooses you as its target; it's certainly going to be able to move and reach you in most circumstances. So you are going to have to live without dash cancels for this fight; instead one will need to work out either traditional AI control methods or internalise how the Sunstalker likes to prioritise its targets.

Oh look, it's shaped like a tower!

The other major feature of the Sunstalker is its Solar Track. You can read about this in detail on page 2 of the Sunstalker Expansion book, but the gist of it is the Sundial card indicates what spaces are in darkness and as the Sunstalker plays AI cards it will put them onto the track; strengthening some attacks as per the Solar Energy trait (in essence wherever you see a Sun symbol the number to be read is the number of face down cards on the Solar Track). When it reaches the Solar Flare moment then the energies reach a peak and any survivors in the light will be very badly hurt.

This is all part of the ebb and flow of the showdown; which has survivors darting into and out of the light depending on how full the Solar Track is. When it erupts; if you are not in the safety of a dark spot then you'll take damage and lose any flammable gear (Phoenix Armor is flammable by the way).  The exact safe places will vary depending on the position of the survivors and the Sun Dial's rotation, but to demonstrate here is another image:

So the Sundial is orientated with casting the shadows on the right of any obstacles and survivors. Note that the Sunstalker and its minion Shades never cast shadows, only the obstacles (all of which are destructable) and the survivors do. So during a Solar Flare as pictured above, the only safe places are the ones in darkness, which are marked with a yellow X. This means that despite being next to a pillar Survivor 1 will still be hit. Survivor 2 is right in the open and is also going to be hit; they'd get hit even if they were in the Sunstalker's Blind Spot. Survivors 3 and 4 are safe because they are in darkness and if a survivor stood in their shadow (Such as Spot 5) then they would also be safe. This can become important later on because the Sunstalker does like to crush pillars if survivors are not wise about their positioning and a crushed pillar can provide no respite from the solar flare.

For the rest of this we shall want to take a look at the Sunstalker's Reactive and Active Behaviors; because in between the heartbeats of the solar pulses is where the rest of the Sunstalker's exceptional nonsense will occur.

Reactive Behaviours

I think there are few monsters in this game who are as delightfully frustrating and mysterious to attack than the Sunstalker. I have spent a long time trying to pin down the exact flavor of how the monster reacts; and while the thematic reasoning is clear, the mechanical ones are a tad unfocused and as such a bit unpredictable. There are themes and trends which you can follow; but something about the entire thing makes the creature feel skittish in a way that not even the Screaming Antelope can manage.

Before we dive in I'd like to highlight one design faux paus that the Sunstalker and Dragon King are both involved in. They each have a hit location type called 'Engulf in Light' but they both work in almost entirely different manners and this has often caused confusion for players who fight both in the same campaign. Most of the time there is little to zero repetition between the hit locations on a monster; so to have this happen between two separate monsters that tend to get hunted around the same time in a campaign is quite a large problem. Here take a look:

Yeah, there's a number of similar features between these two, and sections of them are mechanically identical, ish. But there are some weird corner case situations that crop up in differences. I won't go into them in detail here because the two hit locations, despite the naming similarity, are separate entities.

Instead we want to pay attention to the two Sunstalker Specific locations and understand the differences between them.

Between the two, Engulf in Light is the 'safer' Hit Location (and the one which will trigger first, because "Light Speed" is super "First Strike") it doesn't do too much by itself – it either inflicts brain damage if you've set it up that you can't ever get put into the light (brain damage is a major concern when fighting the Sunstalker) or it puts you in the light so certain other hit location reactions hit harder.  It's also technically impervious, only it has a super version of impervious that can't ever be ignored by some future mechanic that stated 'Ignore Impervious'.

Light Bending on the other hand can be wounded if you are smart enough to use reach 2+ or ranged weapons, the monster is still wound-able during a Light Bending, but only if you are capable of that longer range attack. In addition, if you are in the light (and remember that Engulf in Light can shove you into the light before Light Bending triggers) then you will suffer Sun damage (an amount of damage equal to the number of face down cards on the solar track). This damage is exceptionally dangerous earlier on in the campaign where armour points are few per location, but it mostly weakens as time passes.

The Trap – Vomit Kaleidoscope

This trap is a somewhat unusual one in that it changes a survivor for the duration of the showdown; while we've seen this kind of alteration in other showdowns, such as the Dung Beetle Knight making a survivor stinky – VK is on a whole other level with its extreme amount of splash damage that can hit other survivors and even terrain in the corridors which are covered by the Vomit Zone.

It's also a trap that's very hard to cheese because the Sunstalker scoops up the attacking survivor regardless of their distance and plonks them right in front of the Sunstalker before hitting with between 3 and 5 damage to Sun locations and inflicting the Black Blood status on a survivor.

Another way to gain black blood - yes even the L1 can occasionally do this.

Black Blood stops bleeding tokens from being removed, so it makes fighting arts such as Unconcious Fighter very useful during the showdown. In addition to that, If you hit 6 bleeding tokens without dying (and remember that the Hunt likes to give survivors Unconscious Fighter) then you get to take part in the 'Conquer Your Shadow' special event.

This event most of the time cures at least some of your bleeding, but it can erase all your fighting arts. However 40% of the time (60% with Shadow Dancing innovated, one of the best uses for that innovation) you get to clear out all your bleeding tokens and gain the Suppressed Shadow fighting art (and 3 survival). This Secret Fighting art lets you ignore First Strike and score an automatic Critical Wound against the first wounding attempt (if you Perfect Hit) – with the downside of spawning a shade if you ever die during a showdown. Automatic wounds are amazing, Automatic Critical Wounds are even more amazing and ignoring First Strike is one of those things that combines with the other abilities in this secret fighting art to make it something that's worth farming the Sunstalker to try and unlock. Or at least try and passively gain by making sure that as many survivors as possible have Unconscious Fighter (reminder, Unconscious Fighter is a top tier fighting art for male survivors).

Now with all of the big hitters put to the side, we still have to navigate through the varied effects of the rest of the hit locations. So lets try and summarise the key points.

• Often reactions are basic actions, which is a (3/4+/2+Sun/Knockback 12) attack.
• You can gain permanent accuracy on a critical wound (Courage dependant)
• Most resource drops from the Sunstalker are not randomised. Typically you get Huge Sunteeth, Shadow Tentacle, Prismatic Gills, Sunshark Fin, Fertility Tentacle or Shadow Ink Gland (only 2 locations generate random resources)
• The Deathblow gives 3 Small Sunteeth and 1 Shark Tongue.
• You are often punished in various ways for attacking when in the light.
• Reactions will often cause brain damage for survivors in the light
• If you were foolish enough to bring Soluble gear, it can archive it (considering this can happen in the hunt also, I hope you didn't+)
• It often inflicts heavy sun based damage with knockback 12

Ultimately if you are going to attack the Sunstalker you are best doing it with a Reach 2+ weapon from darkness and aiming to hit critical wounds as much as possible. You also want to do it as fast as you can, because as we'll see the Sunstalker's active behaviours are pretty dangerous.

Active Behaviours

In addition to its regular pulsing of the solar track, the Sunstalker also undertakes a wide range of different attacks. We'll break down its preferred targets first:

• Furthest Survivor
• All survivors in darkness
• All survivors x2
• Furthest threat, in darkness x4
• Closest threat, field of view
• Furthest survivor, in darkness
• Furthest knocked down survivor

Secondary targeting is usually at Furthest survivor or furthest threat.

So, the usual understanding of the Sunstalker's AI is that it prefers to attack targets who are in darkness. This is because the Sunstalker doesn't believe in a thing called love, nor does it listen to the rhythm of your heart, but also it is because survivors in darkness are protected from its Solar Flare and are more capable of hitting the Sunstalker safely. So; one of the main tricks here is to shield your attackers from light when they attack and then moved your tanks into the shadows of the attackers after they have finished doing so. Sort of rotating around in pairs.

This can be a little tricky early on if you're going for the salt (which you should) because normally you'll seek to dash one survivor up the side of the board and have them collect the two statues one after another before rejoining the fight. This is something that one should always do because of how important salt is for crafting, but it is also always good practice to collect every single resource even if you don't have an immediate use for it.

As always; we'll now briefly look at some of the most devastating moves the Sunstalker can do, as well as inspecting any weak points attacks may provide (and just discussing the oddities).

Sunshark Bite is a real 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' experience. But it is best dealt with via a tank standing in shadow with a block already set up. If this attack is hitting someone in the light then they will usually need to block one and dodge the other. However, remember that the Sunstalker gets more speed (attack dice) the higher its level gets. So eventually you'll be relying on chance + evasion to get through this one.

It's worth noting that it doesn't move on the second attack, so you can actually dodge/block and then dash the second attack one if you are in the light. That's often the most effective way to deal with it when it's the level 3.

The Bubbles

There are a total of four bubbles, Violet, Vermillion, Verdigris and Verdant. Mechanically they all work in the same manner. They trigger a basic action, become a mood which does not sit on the Solar Track and when a Solar Flare happens they pop for various bonuses. Either +1 Speed, Monster Level Bleeding Tokens, +1 Toughness or +1 Damage.

What these moods often do is they compound the affect that the Sun Track also has and make the Sunstalker very vulnerable to dying at certain moments. This effect lessens however when you get towards the higher level Sunstalkers; these ones can pop out these moods and depending on which one it is they can be very dangerous. Unfortunately whips are not great weapons, so removing moods with them is tricky (Silk Whip + Cycloid Scale Armor is probably the best choice) because bringing along a Whisker Harp is asking to be devoured by a Shai-hulud along the way.

The other really scary attack, this beam is pretty much a satellite blast from above and it hits a really wide area on the board. There's not a lot that can be done about this one, but it is fortunately lower damage than the Shark Bite and it can be blocked.

However, most of the time, you shouldn't be in more than pairs, so this attack typically won't hit more than two survivors. If you keep survivors spread apart then you should be able to minimise the damage here.

I'd also like to put this one here, mostly because it's a fun piece of nonsense, but also because it's rare that you should get harmed by it.

Someone has fond memories of the games he played as a child.

Shades

The Sunstalker is one of only two monsters that make extensive use of minions; however in the case of the Sunstalker you typically won't see them very often when fighting the level 1 because there are few ways a Sunstalker of that age can trigger them.

Against the L2+ Sunstalkers they become more common, and they're quite beneficial for the survivors because they are additional survival gains during the fight, which pays for surging to kill them.

Most of the time however they're nothing more than a nuisance and should be eliminated as fast as possible to clean out the board and provide the survival benefits. They're not as sophisticated or dangerous as the Spiderlings for sure.

Summary

The Sunstalker is a fast, aggressive monster that seeks to keep survivors in the light where they cannot hurt them as easily as otherwise. Clever timing with moods and the Solar Track can cause the Sunstalker to die a lot faster than it would otherwise and the entire showdown is based around the waxing and waning of the power dynamic between the players and the Sunstalker itself.

One should concentrate on keeping attackers in darkness during the survivor's turn and tanks in darkness during the Sunstalker's turn. Salt should be collected as soon as possible by the most mobile survivor and the various other pillars in the showdown should be protected from the Sunstalker's bulk as much as possible.

The longer you take to play through this showdown, the harder it will become, and that – coupled with the way that the Sunstalker destroys flamable and soluble gear; means that you should always be focused on an aggressive playstyle that seeks to kill the Sunstalker through critical wounds and high strength attacks.

Praise the Sun!