Infected Broodmother

* Infected Fang (1-7)
* Infected Venom (1-6)

**Rare Drop**

* Infected Chunk (0-17)
* Infected Fang (0-3)
* Infected Broodmother Trinket (0-1)
* Infected Venom (0-3)

## Stats

* **3-Hit-Combo Bite**: 80
* **5-Hit-Combo Bite**: 90
* **Charged Pounce**: 145
* **Dodge**: 50
* **Jump Attack**: 130
* **Side Lunge**: 120
* **Scream**: 39
* **Fungal Bomb Rain**: 80
* **Strange Spore Egg**: 175
* **Gnat Explosion**: 85
* **Spore Shot**: 80

## Inflicts

The **Infected Broodmother** is an extraordinarily strong variant of the Hedge Broodmother boss and by far the hardest boss encounter in the game. She is found in the spider cave in the Haze, located in a trench under the stepping stone near the garden lamp in the area. This area will only open after sealing the Haze Canister with a Gum Nugget, otherwise it will be blocked by webbing. The boss is summoned with the Moldy Hoagie summoning item. The Moldy Hoagie recipe is unlocked via the Moldy Note, which can be found in the Mysterious Lab, just past the entrance on a table to the right. When the fight starts, the entrance to the arena is filled with web, blocking the exit.

## Infected Water

The water seen in the center of the arena is unique in that it supplies buffs to the Infected Broodmother and both debuffs and buffs to the player. When the Infected Broodmother is inside the water in its arena, different Status Effects such as Life Steal that will be applied to her, meaning she will heal health equal to the amount of damage she deals, she will also get immunity to -Attack Speed and a 15% critical hit chance. These buff will reapply every 2 seconds if she is still in the water.

If the player slurps the Infected Water, they will also receive unique buffs differing from Nasty Water. They will receive a 50% decrease to exhaustion recovery and a 15% critical hit chance, but also take 100% more damage (double damage), have 25 points of the block gauge removed, and the normal Sick effects from Nasty Water. These effects last for a minute. Players cannot scoop this water in a Canteen for later, as they'll simply get normal Nasty Water instead.

## Boss Fight

### Phase 1

The Infected Broodmothers fight starts as soon as she wakes up from her rest on the ceiling and climbs down to attack the player. In this first phase, all her attacks are duplicates of the Hedge Broodmother's attacks but her movement speed is mildly faster. These attacks include the basic bite, the 3-hit-combo bite, the power bite (which inflict heavy Venom), and the dodge ability. Phase 2 starts once she reaches zero health.

After this phase she loses the ability to use her basic bite, 3-hit-combo bite, and charged bite.

It should also be noted that the Infected Broodmother is entirely immune to explosive damage, and will heal for a percentage of any explosive damage she would otherwise take. This percentage starts at 30% in Phase 1, with the percentage increases in each further phase of the fight.

### Phase 2

After losing all of her health, she will revive herself and start Phase 2, gaining multiple buffs. The first buff is further increasing her healing from explosive damage by another 30%, for a total of 60% of damage from explosives converted into healing. Her stun threshold also increases by 500 points, her health by 1000 points, and her damage resist going down by 10%. Finally, the break time between her attacks is reduced by 1.5 seconds, decreasing the time in-between moves and thus making her more aggressive.

She will also gain more unique attacks in this phase. The first is the basic jump attack the normal Hedge Broodmother has. This will inflict Exhaustion Recovery when hit for 20 seconds, increasing the players exhaustion timer. Her second attack is a side lunge, in which she will dodge to either side of the player and then quickly go in for a bite. The third is a scream that will cause fungal bombs to fall across the arena. The scream will also inflict -Attack for 30 seconds and -Increased Healing for the entire fight if not perfect blocked. The bombs that rain will explode after a short time in a unsynchronized fashion, or will explode if the player is in range. These bombs explosions also heal the Infected Broodmother if she is near them as well as giving the player -Damage Resist for the entire fight. The healing penalty is only -2% healing from healing sources, but it stacks for every bomb the player is hit by. The fourth is an explosive egg-shaped Strange Spore that she will lay on the ground in a similar fashion to a Orb Weaver. This egg sac will explode after 8 seconds, but can also be destroyed by the player. It will also heal the Infected Broodmother if she is near its detonation and will apply -Damage Resist for the entire rest of the fight. Her final attack is a modification to the dodge attack, in which it will leave a dust cloud in the area after dodging. This cloud gives -Movement Speed for 1 second as long as they are in the cloud and -Increased Healing for 20 seconds. She will also commonly follow up this attack with either a side lunge through the dust cloud or a pounce over the cloud to catch the player off guard. Her dodge will also instantly stagger the player if they preform a non-perfect block on it. Phase 3 starts once she reaches zero health.

### Phase 3

After losing all of her health, she will revive herself for the final time and start Phase 3, again gaining multiple buffs. The first buff is further increasing her healing from explosive damage by another 60%, totaling 120% of damage from explosives converted into healing. Her stun threshold also increases by another 500 points, her health by 3000 points, and her damage resist oddly going down by 10% again. The break time between her attacks is again reduced by 1.5 seconds, decreasing the time in-between moves and thus making her more aggressive. She also gains 2 new buffs, gaining a 50% increase to attack speed on all her attacks and a 25% increase to all damage inflicted by her.

She gains three new attacks, the first being the spore shot attack form the Infected Wolf Spider in which she will shoot an explosive spore at the player that will explode based on the proximity to the player. If it misses the player, it will linger where it lands until set off. These fungal spores inflict -Damage Resist and -Healing Received, which while giving smaller negative effects that stack and last until the end of the fight. Her other attack is a modification to the fungal bomb scream, in which in addition to her using the move more commonly, she will also spawn 3-5 Infected Gnats in the upper parts of the arena. These gnats can act as normal Infected Gnats and disarm the player, as well as violently exploding after a short period of time. Her final move is a modification to her side lunge, in which it is much longer, faster, and more deadly, with her actually jumping to said side. Many of her attacks also receive negative effects attached to them. The side lunges can inflict a weak Venom when hit, dealing damage overtime. Her final modification is that her 5-hit combo gains 3 new variants, with there being "slow", "medium", and "fast" variants. The slow is almost identical to her phase 2 5-hit combo, with it getting faster for medium and near impossible to completely perfect block in a fast variation. She can use anyone of these variations at random.

Once her health reaches zero, she will stay dead and can be looted.

## Advanced Loot Table

This is a more advanced covering of the loot-table of Infected Broodmother. Each item has an independent chance and count, in which the chance is the chance it can drop and the count is the amount of items that have that chance. If a count larger than 2 is in one section, then each item has an independent chance from one another (EX: Instead of getting say 1-2 of a resource, you can get 1 with a 70% chance and another with an additional 70% chance). In terms of Stealing, it can take one item from every section of the loot table, so even if a item count is say 5, the player will only steal one from that section.

Creature Loot Tables also tend to have large amounts of 1% items, which is intended to make stealing more rare items harder, as the player is more likely to steal the large amounts of 1% items than a singular 50% item.

## Strategy

The Infected Broodmother is by far the hardest boss encounter in the game, being much harder than the Mantis, Director Schmector, or the Wasp Queen. Huge preparation is necessary to beat the boss.

* Some good weapons include heavily upgraded and fast Fresh weapons such as the Widow Dagger, Rusty Spear, or Toenail Scimitar. The latter two come with Infection, which lowers her attack speed, and the scimitar has the added advantage of benefiting from Blademaster, which lowers her damage output.
	+ The Mint Mace is another decent option, but its slow, lumbering speed makes harder to use.
* Avoid any Explosive type weapons such as the Bomb Arrows, Bratburst, Splatburst, or Truffle Tussle.
	+ These attacks will heal the boss and deal no damage as a result.
* Stunning build weapons such as the Prod Smacker, Pinch Whacker, and Sour Battle-axe are mostly useless due to her almost impossible to reach stun value in phase 2 and 3.
* Heavy armor like the Roly Poly Armor is recommended due to her heavy damage.
	+ Sleek Ladybug Armor is another decent option to counteract her -Increased Health debuffs.
	+ Bulky Koi Scale Armor is another choice of armor to use. While not as defensive, if players are comfortable with the parry timing, then the Infected Broodmother will almost always have the Dazzling Riposte status effect, reducing her defense by 20%. This effectively negates the damage debuff from shields.
* Bring large amounts of either Beefy Smoothies, Sticky Smoothies (for overtime regen) or Healbasas to heal through the fight. Corporate Kickback can also be used to supplement recovery, as the healing from it is barely affected by the healing debuff and it will activate a few times because of how long the fight is.
* A Fungal Charm is a great trinket to use if the player has obtained it, to reduce the explosive damage from her attacks.
* A Shield Solidifier is a good trinket to this, when coupled with a shield and Roly Poly Armor to make perfect blocking less important.
* Giddy Goop is also a trinket worth using, as it can lower her attack damage and attack speed substantially to the point where her attacks are much easier to parry.
* Spicy Safety is extraordinarily useful for counteracting the damage of her faster 5-hit combos in phase 3.
* Mantsterious Stranger and/or Mom Genes are great mutations to use to help take off the aggression of the boss for a short while and still deal heavy damage. The Infected Gnats summoned in phase 3 have a high chance to target the summons instead of the player, so at least one of these is recommended.
* The fight is all about keeping up a suitable DPS in phase 2-3 to counteract her healing, try not to play passively in the fight unless absolutely needed.
* Her scream can and should be perfect blocked or blocked with a shield to avoid a -50% damage debuff.
* Don't block the dodge attacks unless you can perfect block them, as this will instantly stun the player if not perfect blocked.
* Avoid damage from the fungal bomb rain, 5-hit combo, and spore shot as these will all inflict a permanent -Increased Health debuff that will stack until the fight ends.
* Likewise, avoiding the infected gnat explosions, spore shot, and strange spore eggs is also paramount as they will inflict a permanent -Damage Resist debuff that acts the exact same way.
* Use the small period the Infected Broodmother is dead to heal and prepare for the next phase.
* Parrying is essential to victory, even on Mild Mode. Simply tanking hits won't be enough by phase 3, as she'll debuff you to the point where your armor is completely sundered and you can no longer heal from Smoothies.
* When she uses the fungal bomb rain, being in areas close to the edges of the arena is much safer than being close to the center.

## Trivia

* The Infected Broodmother was added in celebration of the "birthday" of the Hedge Broodmother.
* The Infected Broodmother was allegedly mostly made by developer Andy Artz, who was given "complete freedom" with the boss.
* The Infected Broodmother is unique as it is the only boss who can be seen before the summon occurs, located on the ceiling.