Shroom and Gloom bosses

Early Access has two pathways and two worms that players call final bosses. Launch bugs in the kill achievements mean they undercount both fights, and the newer worm has almost nothing official written about it.

A huge pink creature with many eyes and a gaping mouth, facing a combat hand — A huge many-eyed creature with a gaping mouth, faced with a combat hand. Screenshot: Team Lazerbeam / Devolver Digital, via the Steam store page.

How far players actually get

Steam publishes the share of all players who hold each achievement. Lined up, a few of them read like a trail through a run: the first campfire, a wide card collection, a fully mapped Forgotten Path, then the two hidden achievements whose internal Steam names point at the worms.

Set up a first campfire95.7%
Picked up 100 different cards59.8%
Mapped every tunnel of The Forgotten Path22.6%
Gunk Slayer (hidden)19.4%
Gloom Slayer (hidden)42.3%

Gunk Slayer and Gloom Slayer have no public description; Steam's internal names for them are FLAG_KILL_GUNKWORM and FLAG_KILL_GLOOMWORM. Percentages are Steam’s global figures for Shroom and Gloom, read from the achievements page.

Read the last two rows with care. Gloom Slayer sits at 42.3% while Gunk Slayer, for the worm players meet in the second dungeon, sits at 19.4%. Players noticed the mismatch within a day of launch. A thread started by someone who beat the final boss without getting the achievement filled up with the same report, and one reply sums it up as the Gunkworm and first final boss achievements not tracking properly (in Steam discussion: No Achievement For Beating game?!?!). The developers confirmed it on another thread: “It’s now a known issue that achievements are sometimes not firing off as they should.” Team Lazerbeam, replying in Steam discussion: Achievements bugged? The first patch, 0.6.24, says Gloom Slayer “should work now” (in Steam announcement: Shroom Patch Notes: 0.6.24), without saying whether kills from before the update are credited.

So the bars show how many players Steam has credited, not how many have won. With kills reported going uncredited, the real share of players who beat each fight is likely higher, though nobody outside the studio can say by how much. The full list, including the hidden achievements nobody has explained yet, is on the achievements page.

The two final bosses

The Forgotten Path

Gloom Worm

Built in stages since the prototype. Its Cosmic Horror curse and its limbs were reworked across the demo patches, and what happens after you beat it is still a puzzle.

The second dungeon

Gunk Worm

Named by players, not yet by the developers. Players describe a third stage where two curses feed each other and discards turn into 15-damage hits.

The boss that “keeps evolving”

One of the loudest negative reviews is a single line in capitals: “THE SECOND BOSS IS TOO HARD IT KEEPS EVOLVING” in a Steam user review. It does not say which pathway it means.

What changes the fights

The characters are not equal here. Team Lazerbeam said their analytics showed only 2% of Janitor runs ending in a win, called that too punishing, and said card reworks to buff the Janitor were already in progress replying in Steam discussion: Love the game, hate the janitor. Characters and unlocks covers who is gated behind whom, and cards and the two decks explains the rules the boss curses bend.

Keep going

Enemies: the regular fights that wear you down before a boss.
Resting and camp: when resting helps and when it costs you.
The ending: what players report after the Gloom Worm falls.