Basic guide to Deathblossom Bosses. Some of the boss fights are difficult if you weren’t paying close attention to the mechanics. This is a few tips that should see you through them, with some practice and luck.
Cotton 1
Cotton’s last line before her battle tells us how to beat her, telling the goons to not shoot her in the back of the head. However, I read this too quickly, and assumed she wanted to kill us herself, and not have us shot in the back of the head.
One of the features of the game you might not have noticed if you killed the gun-wielding undead fast enough is that friendly fire is on. This friendly fire is the only thing that can damage Cotton in this fight. To do this, simply walk up to one of the gun-wielding undead to the left right or top of the arena with Cotton behind you, and then dodge the bullets so that they hit her. After 3 times, Cotton will fall.
Bitterbrush
Strictly speaking, you never have a direct battle with Bitterbrush. You simply have a level where the gimmick is that he’s trying to snipe you. All you have to do is make sure you’re never in his sight line for too long. Simply dash behind some cover, or if you’re feeling especially brave, other enemies.
Cotton 2
You’re not going to get Cotton killed with tricks this time. Do as she tells you, and run.
I find that killing all the melee undead to be rather unnecessary, as if you’re running at the speed you’re supposed to, most of them won’t catch up, and you can dash by quite a few that are in front as well. You just need to shoot the gun-wielding undead, as they can still kill you dead.
Something to note is that one of the stages has some cigaretts you could miss if you were focused on escaping and didn’t want to risk the run for some collectables, as it’s in a building with two gun-wielding undead.
After going through enough stages, you’ll reach an area full of explosives, and the switch for them. Simply activate it, and Cotton will be blown to smithereens.
Stonecrop
Stonecrop is a difficult battle, as even knowing all these tricks, it’s likely to take quite a few tries. Like most projectiles, when she fires, it’s hard to react in time to her projectiles. What’s worse is that her projectiles will course correct if they miss without hitting anything, and are explosive. It’s nigh-impossible to reliably dodge them.
So you block them when you can. If you stand firmly behind some covering, the projectile will simply blow them up. I say firmly, because they are explosive, and if you get too close you’ll be blown up with them. More importantly, throughout the stage there are ammo boxes boxed in covering, requiring you to blow some of them up to reach them. I would avoid standing too close to the boxes though, as artillery is still raining, and will blow up some cover you desperately want if you stand too close to it.
The clockwise path seems to be the intended one, as counter-clockwise has a long stretch to anything. However, you’re not going to reach cover in time by walking. Instead, you’ll want to dash while shooting Stonecrop, as that will recharge your dash.
To beat Stonecrop, she needs to be damaged a bunch of times, whether from your bullets, artillary, or her own shots if she’s standing too close. This is going to take quite a few ammo boxes.
There are three alcoves where you can get ammo besides the boxed covering. To the left and top left, there are alcoves blocked off by a line of covering that contain an ammo box. It’s hard to get Stonecrop to destroy them for you, as you can’t hide behind covering for these, requiring you to dodge at just the right moment, a tall feat. Instead, you’ll need to rely on artillery to do it for you, which is not particularly easy, as if artillary is already dropping, it’ll be some time before the next one does, which is when you need to be near the covering you want blown up. Naturally, this is hard to deal with when Stonecrop is also aiming for you. The top right alcove simple has a shotgun skeleton with an ammo box you can grab.
rick073 says:
Re: Stonecrop: I think you're intended to bounce her cannonballs back at her, using the infinite bullet time you have in that fight, since her cannonballs will always bounce back *towards you* if they don't hit a wall or a destructable.
Just roughly time her reload and hit bullet time when you feel like she's going for another shot. Dodge it one way, and immediately turn back to pass back through the trail of the cannonball. It'll bounce towards you, and you'll just be able to dodge it if you keep going. IE Dodge left as the cannonball comes towards you, then immediately head right once it's past you, and keep going right until the cannonball bounce is past you again.
Yarrow
Yarrow is the final boss, and he has a few stages to his battle. First, there’ll be warnings when vines pop out of the sides to kill you. Then, he’ll transition to sending two vines from right to left with a gap between them that are also moving up and down. Finally, death will tell you to save your bullets for his weak points, after which he’ll send an undodgable vine from right to left and grow three flowers you need to shoot to make the vine disappear.
Throughout all of this, he’ll usually be chasing you, so you need to keep moving left. There will occasionally be pauses, but I believe this is dependent on how much damage he has taken, so you can skip them if you shoot most of your ammo at his mouth when you get it. You can stop shooting the mouth around the time Death warns you to save your bullets.
In the second section and onwards, there will be blooms that can pop up or burrow into the ground which can block your bullets and even movement when popped up. You can stop them from doing this by shooting them, regardless of their state. It’s helpful for escaping the vines.
My main advice is to be patient and not get too greedy. You have more than enough ammo boxes in this stage, you shouldn’t take risks to get them or to get slightly farther away from the mouth. Simply surviving will usually see you get further. During the second stage, you want to avoid getting ammo boxes near the top or bottom of the screen, as vines can quickly sneak up on you from there.
Finally, near the end of the stage where there’s no where left to run, do not go to the top left before the screen stops moving. You might get stuck behind some vines, where you’ll be unable to shoot the weakpoints and thus die, like so:
