I was able to beat him 3 or 4 days ago, after the rock pile thing wasn’t part of the fight anymore.

Overwhelming force: strength build, vulnerability , and the card that gives you strength when you lose health on your turn, combined with multiple cards that triggered damage, and a power that dealt 1 hp damage at the beginning of my turn.

Accept that you will lose a few cards and build redundancies.

I’ll look up my build later.

I felt the same when I first fought the new version but overall I find it a much more interesting fight than before.

I tend to build small decks so the exhaustion phase is the one that gets me, but you'll usually have some cards you don't really need in your deck. Use that phase to set up your powers and scrap any basic strikes or defends you don't need, with less junk you'll draw your better cards more often in other turns. Don't be afraid to take a hit in this phase if you need to, it's the last fight so as long as you survive you're good. Cards that affect the next turn (eg Blur to carry over block) help if you can prepare the turn before.

The second phase just stops card draw so it's never really a big deal for me, even if you built a draw deck at this point you should have a strong enough deck to play a turn without draws.

The final phase is pretty interesting imo, to me it seems it mostly just screws you if you've built around 1 cost cards. If you play a heavy hitter that's probably all you're doing that turn anyway, and if you're playing a 0 cost deck it doesn't really affect you. Just remember to play your 0 costs last that turn, they still drain your energy!

I think basically everyone’s first experience mirrors yours - it feels impossible, like you’ll never be able to beat that piece of shit.

But now you know the mechanics and with more experience it will be just like any other boss (albeit it actually makes you think more about what you play on a particular turn)

Card creation

Are they moving back to build-gating boss design? Because one thing I loved about the early access was that it felt more like you could play different strategies legitimately without being punished for being “wrong”.

You know what they say: When the Doornaker slams a door in your face, the Windowbreaker leaves a window open.