Beating The Conductor as Coda | Crypt of the NecroDancer
54The Conductor is by far the hardest boss to fight in Crypt of the NecroDancer, only intended to be fought with Nocturna who is an insanely strong character... and beating her with Coda instead, the hardest character.
I originally wanted to make a detailed explanation video on how I theory-crafted, practiced, and executed my overall strategy on making this fight possible on Coda, but for 9 months I've lacked the motivation to. I didn't want to sit on this video anymore so I finally decided to just put out the raw clear footage for the world to see, and at least provide a text explanation on the strategy.
Custom OST I was using from Steam Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2850264284
Check out my artist friend that made the thumbnail for this video: https://x.com/naternot5000?s=21
Strategy Explanation
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Phase 2 of Conductor's fight has always been a major problem for Coda given how incredibly fast paced the fight is on top of enemies being summoned constantly. The entirety of phase 1 is managing enemy spawns to slowly fill the enemy cap to make the second phase only have 2 hostile enemies at maximum, which makes it far easier to manage all the attacks The Conductor will be throwing out.
I cap out the enemy limit by first destroying the top left instrument specifically, as all the instruments, when destroyed, summon a specific miniboss if the enemy cap hasn't been reached yet. The Ogre is the easiest one to manage compared to the Nightmare, Red Dragon, and Mummy that spawn for the other instruments. After getting rid of all the enemies, I let Clones pile up to reach the enemy cap as they don't directly pursue me. I also get rid of anything else that spawns to make room for more Clones until there are 13 of them, then destroy the top right instrument as it'll get in the way of an upcoming strategy.
Destroying the 2nd instrument will free up an enemy slot as the instruments do technically count towards the limit and so enemies generally from zone 3 will start spawning instead of ones found from zone 2, which is where the Clones came from. One of the enemies that can be summoned now is a Green Skeleton Rider which I can make headless to have it permanently stay in one spot, as the Clones can get in my way. Every time a Green Skeleton Rider gets summoned, I make it headless in a specific spot and then get rid of a Clone to free up another slot for another Rider. I rinse and repeat this until all 14 slots have been filled up with headless Green Skeletons and all the Clones have been replaced. The specific area I make the skeletons headless is to make the 2nd phase of the boss fight doable as there are many spots where The Conductor could eliminate a skeleton through collateral damage, which would in turn free up enemy slots which makes Phase 2 exponentially harder for every headless skeleton lost.
After all the skeletons are in place, I destroy the bottom left instrument and start setting up for a huge strategy that massively improves my chance of survival in the 2nd phase. Destroying the instrument will free up yet another enemy slot and now enemies from zone 4 start getting summoned instead, and I just need a single Blademaster as they can parry my attack. I do a specific setup with both my own and the Blademaster's movements, and then book it for the final instrument. If I do it correctly, I can perfectly line up the Blademaster to meet me halfway at the 4th battery from the left, the most dangerous one.
In Phase 2, all the batteries that get summoned do NOT count towards the enemy cap but all of them are associated with a certain attack, the most dangerous of which is the 4th one from the left. If the Conductor uses this battery during her attacks she'll summon a miniboss, which would be very problematic and usually result in my death. The setup I had with the Blademaster lets me destroy it as soon as possible as I can repeatedly attack it to drain the battery. Once the 4th battery is gone, I play out Phase 2 very slowly as only 2 enemies can be present at once with the headless skeletons occupying a vast majority of the other enemy slots.
Draining all the other 4 batteries to finish off The Conductor I do as slowly and carefully as possible, since the previous setup for filling the enemy slots takes a long while to do and isn't fun. I just let the summoned enemies make their way towards me and kill them on the wire if it was safe to do so, slowly whittling down each of the batteries until The Conductor is finally dead.
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Serious Scully currently has 314,007 views spread across 37 videos for Crypt of the NecroDancer. About 5 hours worth of Crypt of the NecroDancer videos were uploaded to his channel, roughly 24.47% of the content that Serious Scully has uploaded to YouTube.