Designer

## Unknown

Mysterious antagonist!

An antagonist of CrossCode, referred to as the *Blue Avatar*, the **Designer** is an avatar that has a history with Lea who he tries to kidnap for unknown purposes.

## Appearance

The Designer is a tall avatar with light blue skin and long, tangled black hair. On his head, wears a partial helmet consisting of a gold band with a stylized sun above his forehead, reminiscent of a ceremonial headdress, and connected to a chin guard. He also has a black visor covering his eyes, resembling the ones worn by the Gods of Shape. He wears a shirt of segmented gray, blue and gold armor and matching gloves and shoes, along with baggy orange pants. An orange sash with pixelated ends floats around his waist, unsupported. Early concept art shows him wearing a long white and gold necklace with a circular gold and blue pendant, but this is not seen in-game.

## Personality

The Designer is shown to act superior and condescending to everyone, and completely ignores the desires and opinions of others in favor of pursuing his own goals, whatever they might be. He views avatars as being superior to humans, exemplified by him greatly underestimating Jet and dismissively referring to him as a "mortal". He speaks in a rather odd, stilted manner and comes off as rather out of touch, but has proven himself to be the most powerful character seen to date.

## Relationships

The Designer knows Lea prior to her amnesia. Initially, he intends to remove her from the game for being outside the Playground, but upon recognizing her, he changes tactics, first pitting her against the Huge Hostile Crab to prove her identity, and then attempting to kidnap her. This strongly hints that their previous relationship was antagonistic, although his treatment of her does not stand out exceptionally from his overall treatment of others.

Captain Jet's strong senses of order and duty strongly clash with the Designer's condescending attitude and dismissive views of non-avatars. Although the avatar initially dismisses Jet as boring and not worthy of his attention, Jet is later able to hold him off with the Solar Fist and destroy his avatar, greatly infuriating him.

The Blue Avatar usually refers to himself in plural, suggesting that he may not only be part of some sort of group or organisation, but also may not be the only one of his kind. It is also likely that he is using the "Royal 'We'" pronoun, to denote his high status above others.

## History

The Designer is controlled by Gautham. Although he is an avatar, he does not fit any of the CrossWorlds classes. He demonstrates powers, specifically flight and summoning bosses, that would most likely be game-breaking in the hands of players. Sergey is unable to find any link between him and CrossWorlds.

The developers have accidentally revealed on-stream that he is an Ancient.

## Role in CrossCode

The Designer senses Lea's presence on the M.S. Solar and seeks her out, intending to remove her for being outside the Playground. However, he recognizes her, and summons a Huge Hostile Crab for her to fight in order to prove her identity. Satisfied that she is who he thought she was, he attempts to kidnap her, but is shot by Captain Jet's rocket launcher, damaging him. He continues to fight Jet while summoning Advanced Attack Robots to apprehend Lea, but she is successful at leaving the ship, at which point Jet destroys him with an IMF Neutralizer.

He is the creator of the final dungeon and is the final boss of the game.

## Drops

None

The first duel against the Designer takes place after Lea is forcibly teleported out of the First Scholars raid, into an unofficial part of Bergen Trail.

### Combat

At first, the Designer does not attack, but he will teleport to dodge all of Lea's attacks. After dodging a number of times, he will start attacking and Lea will be able to damage the boss.

The Designer surrounds himself with colored orbs of which he can throw at Lea to perform elemental attacks: heat-, cold-, shock-, or wave-based. He can also charge at her, dealing neutral damage on contact. As the fight progresses, he will charge up to three times in succession and use additional attacks that lack element properties.

Every time Lea depletes a sixteenth of his total HP, the Designer smashes the ground three times, twice beneath her and a third time to destroy part of the arena. His behavior then changes.

He generates a heat/cold shield that reduces damage taken to zero from attacks that are not cold-/heat-based. When the Designer is hit into a break state, this shield is disabled.

At 11/16 HP, Sergey will open an exit point for Lea to escape. However, the Designer quickly notices this and blocks Lea right before she can get away. He then proceeds to endlessly charge at her until he lands one last hit. He inevitably captures Lea, sending her to the Vermillion Wasteland.

## Drops

None

The second duel against the Designer takes place at the top of Vermillion Tower.

"I only ever wanted to create. That was the one thing I loved. The one thing that kept me going. I even moved to this stupid moon. But he caged us and my designs were used for things I don't even want to think about anymore. It all seems too... distant.

### Combat

The Designer wields four elemental orbs that orbit around him. At the start of each phase, he sacrifices one of them to generate a shield that reduces damage and can be broken by hitting it with the opposite element. He rests and flashes red after attacking a few times, becoming easier to break until he recovers. He picks a different shield after resting and not being broken, or after being broken and recovering.

**Phase 1**

* Floats slightly upwards before dashing towards the player twice.
* Two orb throws. Spins in place and throws two elemental orbs, one after another.
	+ Heat is thrown directly and comes back to the Designer while still dealing damage.
	+ Cold is thrown into the air and summons one big icicle on its landing site that also spawns three streams of icicles in a Y pattern around itself.
	+ Shock is thrown directly and stops midway through. It throws itself again in the player’s direction before teleporting back.
	+ Wave is thrown into the air and simply deals damage in a small area after hitting the ground.
* Attacks twice before resting.

**Phase 2**

* Begins this phase and each new one by teleporting and smashing the floor thrice, two times over the player and once on the closest edge of the arena. He can use this attack again if the phase lasts long enough.
* Teleports to the top-center of the arena and summons two lines of metal orbs in a cone shape with gaps between them. Then, he slides one of them first and the other one quickly after, depending on which one of the two he summoned first.
* He can use three or two attacks before resting.

**Phase 3**

* The screen goes dark with only the player and Designer surrounded by light. He then proceeds to direct a small light that stops midway, then goes towards the player. If they are caught, they are thrown into the air and beaten up.
* During his orb sweep, one of his lines will have two breakable metal orbs where the gap should be. Attacking them with anything will break them.

**Phases 4 to 7**

From this point onwards he begins each phase without his elemental orbs. Instead, he surrounds himself with a powerful elemental shield that repels and deals damage to the player if they get too close. While the shield is active, he only uses one attack and one special attack. Hitting his shield enough with Balls of the opposite element will break him once without breaking the shield, causing the Designer to shoot out an Element Shield to the center of the arena and use his special attack once. He rests after attacking twice or after using his special attack, and his shield is actually broken by attacking him with Melee while having the Element Shield active, after which he resumes his normal attack pattern. The shields aren’t used in any particular order.

* Cold: The Designer smashes the ground twice, summoning single streams of icicles in the player’s direction. It summons one huge ice spike over itself and two icicle streams instead of one for his special attack.
* Shock: Dashes into the player twice. His super attack is a double dash that is used three times, with a single final dash before resting.
* Heat: Teleports close to the player does a Fire Whirl, twice. Super attack is a single huge Fire Whirl.
* Wave: Teleports, then fires two Fae Rounds, twice. Super attack is a really fast stream of Wave projectiles.
* His normal attacks change slightly. He attacks thrice before resting and he can throw one elemental orb before teleporting and dashing three times. If he throws the Heat orb during this attack, it won’t deal damage on its way back because it will teleport instead.

**Phase 8**

* Flies into the air and makes massive explosive beams of light fall down from the sky. They are telegraphed by white lights on the floor that follow the player. Gets tired instantly after this attack.

After losing half of his total health, he teleports the player to The Ultimate Experience and transforms into The Creator.

### Strategy

* When he swaps his shield, the orb that he recovered might overlap another one, so it will look like he only has two orbs.
* His Cold orb has the biggest area of effect out of the four elemental orbs. You can counter it by luring it into a corner.
* You can rush the Element Shield he drops to avoid his special attacks entirely.

## Trivia

* The name Egyptian Mr. Freeze was given by a streamer and is not official, but the developers thought it was so funny, that they just took it over as a nickname.
* In the game's files, his In-Game portrait is named designer.png. This, in conjunction with his status as an ancient and his game-breaking powers, could hint to him being the/a designer of Crossworlds.
* It's technically impossible to beat the designer at the last part of his first fight.
	+ However, his face changes gradually the more you dodge his attacks (interesting ones are 16: laughing ⇾ 20: bored ⇾ 24: confused ⇾ 26: shouting). There are no more changes after dodging 27 times and the boss will endlessly charge at you.
	+ Killing the boss thought hacking will trigger the `designerKillLol` event which just make him whisper "WHAT."
* He is the only boss in the base game who takes into account if Lea has the Sergey Hax on in NG+
	+ in the first fight, while one shot does take out all of his health and causes him to exclaim "WHAT", he survives and will proceed into the endless charge attack
	+ Meanwhile, in the second fight, he buffs his HP such that it's just as hard as it would be without the hax on.

## Gallery

* In-game portrait
* Sprite
* Damaged avatar

1. ↑ Map `bergen-trail/excluded-1`, event `FinalDashTalk`