Gunk Worm: surviving the third stage

Nothing official describes this fight yet. What players know comes from people who have beaten it, and one detailed breakdown on the Steam forum explains why so many runs die in its last stage.

The loop that ends runs

The damage people complain about is not the worm hitting you. It is two curse cards working together, as laid out by a player who has cleared the fight several times in Steam discussion: The Gunkworm thoughts:

1. 1You play a card.
2. 2Shivering Horror discards a random card from your hand.
3. 3If that card is Creeping Horror, it refuses to leave and you take 15 damage instead.
4. 4Creeping Horror is still in your hand, so the next card you play can hit it again.

That also turns the usual fix upside down. Drawing and generating more cards normally rescues a hand that keeps getting discarded, but here every extra card you play is another roll that can land on Creeping Horror. A deck built to churn through cards can make the stage worse, not better.

What the stage throws at you

These are one player’s figures from their own runs, not published numbers, and a patch can change any of them.

The minions are not idle either. The same post lists damage, card theft and shielding among what they do, which is why the fight feels like several checks at once rather than one big health bar.

The counters that work

Stubborn is a card keyword whose listed benefit is a cheaper card, and it changes what happens when a card would be discarded. The idea first floated in the thread was to make Creeping Horror Stubborn so its 15-damage trigger never fires, with Thick Sludge named as a card that adds Stubborn. Players have since tried it:

• One player says “Thick sludge on Creeping horror neutralises damage from discard”, and another “Thick Sludged the Creeping Horror (took no damage from it the entire fight)” (both in Steam discussion: The Gunkworm thoughts).
• You may not have to find the card yourself: “you get a Thick Sludge as soon as phase 3 starts.” (in Steam discussion: Proposed Balance Changes And My Thoughts On The Game)
• The other route is to get rid of the discarding curse. One player advises “Pick exhaust cards to exhaust the discarder”, and another lists “a frog remove card and an exhaust a card for a data” as ways to deal with the curses (both in Steam discussion: The Gunkworm thoughts). Janitor players point to an exhaust card of his that removes it (in Steam discussion: Love the game, hate the janitor).

Before you get there

Players who lean on creatures instead of gunk hit this fight differently, and the tactics that fit a pet deck are on the Activist page. What else players report about the second map is on the Facility page, including one reply’s suggestion to keep a Frog Tonic for this fight and ignore the curses.

• Arrive with health to spare. The fights before this one can go smoothly and still leave you short for a stage that can take a hundred health in a turn; resting and camp covers the trade-offs.
• Plan for minions. A deck that only scales single-target damage is racing the Inspire timer with four extra health bars in the way. Cards and the two decks explains how cards grow during a run.
• Expect the achievement to lag. Steam credits 19.4% of players with Gunk Slayer, and players have reported the kill not registering. The bosses overview explains why.

The other final boss is the Gloom Worm at the end of The Forgotten Path.