[StarBreak] Ironclad Star Cathedral solo (1.14.6)

That's the last of them - every mission has been solo'd by every shell (though not necessarily by me personally).

The basics of how Star Cathedral works were explained by DarkForce    • [StarBreak] All you NEED to know: Sta...   - but this run requires more than the basics, so we did some science and figured out some cool info.

During the first 30 seconds of the fight, any damage done to the boss doesn't count at all. After that, the boss enters the first "phase" of the fight. In order to complete a phase, you need to deplete that phase's HP and run down that phase's timer, then hit the boss one last time to send it to the next phase. There are 5 phases:
Phase 1: 5000 HP, 75 seconds, up to 9 squids alive at once.
Phase 2: 15000 HP, 80 seconds, up to 15 squids.
Phase 3: 20000 HP, 85 seconds, up to 21 squids. If the platforms go below the boss, they split.
Phase 4: 25000 HP, 90 seconds, up to 27 squids. If the platforms go below the boss, they split.
Phase 5: 50000 HP, 25 seconds, up to 33 squids. Platforms assemble and lava balls drop.
We were able to measure the HP with precision, but the timers might be off by a few seconds.
Novas are more likely to occur in phases 3 and 4, and squid spawns get faster in later phases, but we can't quantify it exactly.
Knowing the exact HP and time for each phase is important - the lack of this knowledge is one of the reasons why previous attempts by thenaanbmxyo    • starbreak ic sc solo fail   and JonDaTurtle    • Ic Solo attempt SC JonDaTurtle   failed. They were hitting the boss when the damage didn't matter and not hitting it when it mattered. This is why I turned on the damage display and used a stopwatch.
If you add up the numbers, you see that the boss can be beaten in 6 minutes and 25 seconds, while doing as little as 115000 damage in total. I took about 6:50 and did about 134000 damage, which is not too far from the theoretical optimal efficiency.

If you enter phase 5 with 8 or more squids alive, no new squids will spawn until the squid count goes below 8. This didn't matter much for me because there was a huge crowd of squids present anyway, but you can see it more clearly in naan's video, and you can see Jon killing the 8th squid and causing 14 new ones to appear.

If you enter phase 5 with exactly 0 squids alive, new squids will usually appear at a much slower rate, but there's some condition to this that we don't fully understand because it's very hard to test. Of course, this knowledge is totally useless for a solo Ironclad.

Squids have a limited aggro radius. If there are no nearby players, a squid will move up and down, but not left or right. You can lure squids to the far left or far right side of the room and then stay in the opposite half of the room to remain unbothered by them, but that's difficult to do as an Ironclad.

It's possible to reach phase 5 before the platforms split or while they're splitting. This happens very rarely in a normal run, but there's a way to make it more likely. The platforms will split if you're in phase 3 or 4 and they go below the boss. There's no way to get through phase 3 and 4 in less than 175 seconds, so you need to maximize the time it takes the platforms to reach the bottom after you enter phase 3. In a normal run, you reach phase 3 while the platforms are either on the left side or about to move to the left. Instead of damaging the boss as you normally do, you can let the boss remain in phase 2 for a while, then enter phase 3 right after the platforms go below the boss for the second time. This way, the platforms need to complete an entire circle to arrive at the bottom again, which takes slightly longer than the 3/4 of a circle they usually need to do. To get an even higher chance, you can remain in phase 2 until the platforms go below the boss, and check what formation they're making. If they're making anything other than a staircase, let them do another circle and check again. If they're making a staircase, proceed to phase 3, because a staircase lasts much longer than any other formation.
If this happened during an Ironclad solo, it would be considered extremely lucky, because you'd end up with more platforms to stand on, as you can see in Dr0chka's recording    • Видео  

A squid can't die for about half a second after it appears. It can take damage, but if you get it below 0 HP, you'll need to wait out the half second and then give it another hit to kill it.

DarkForce explained how I got directly into a solo boss fight without going through the rest of the mission, but he didn't mention that while doing so, I got to see two loading screen tips. Perhaps one is for entering the mission and the other is for entering the boss fight?

Thanks to everyone who helped gather data, formulate theories, and get a solo portal: Bebop, OySs, Kind, Zed, Pantherus, Alexrns, Avenue, JonDaTurtle, Lite, Mia, thenaanbmxyo

Music: Blotted Science - Activation Synthesis Theory