Dr. Universelove

Dr. Universelove is the boss found at the end of the Stronghold biome, at the Stronghold Center scene. He is a mad scientist that has been tampering with enhancing humans with mechanical parts, blurring the line between man and machine, and he controls all of it from within the Stronghold, on his iron throne.

## Attack pattern

Universelove will begin the battle with a short animation where he is invincible, where the iron throne rises from the ground as he does a maniacal laugh. After that is over, the fight officially begins. While the tower is up, Universelove is raised into the air and unreachable, even with skills that cause projectiles to drop from the sky high above. The tower will take damage instead of him, and although it has only 100 health, it will take 1 damage from any attack that hits it. This tower is immune to all debuffs. Akaisha and Hannah cannot melee attack the tower, likely because they're trying to aim at Universelove himself, who is not in their melee range. The tower's back is always its right side regardless of what direction Universelove himself is facing. The throne has rocket launchers that will shoot rockets similar to those from his Rocket Silo every few seconds.

Just in front of Universelove, there is a mech to be found, which the player can freely use to defeat the boss.

After the fight begins, turrets raise from hidden spots in each corner of the room. The turrets appear one by one as the throne's HP is lowered. The more health Universelove has lost, the more lethal the turret attacks get, releasing up to three times the projectiles when his HP is very low. This is the distribution of the turrets and their attack pattern:

* **Top left - Burst turret:** This turret will attack with either a burst of a few low-damage, fairly fast bullets in a straight line, directed at the player, or will spin around shooting projectiles, causing said bullets to spread out in eight directions.
* **Top right - Quad laser turret:** This turret will alternate between facing its cannons in all four cardinal directions or all four diagonal directions, trying to roughly face the player. To attack them, it will shoot, firing out small but fast laser projectiles that deal small amounts of damage out of each cannon.
* **Bottom left - Mortar:** This cannon will shoot a rocket into the sky every now and again. After a moment, a reticle will appear on the ground on the player's position, and after a few seconds, the rocket will fall down on that position, dealing hefty damage onto the covered area.
* **Bottom right - Rocket silo:** This cannon will fire homing rockets into the air often. These will fly slowly through the room above the player, and will begin a nosedive after some time flying, attempting to catch the player. The rockets deal moderate damage and have a medium area of effect when exploding against the ground or their target. While flying, there is a circular icon directly beneath the rocket to more intuitively show the projectile's position on a two-dimensional plane.

During the fight, IFO Bombers will float down from the sky. There can only be one bomber at any time, and that's because they have a very important role in the fight: kicking one of their bombs into the iron throne (or Universelove himself) causes it to lose 50 HP, allowing characters with fewer multi-hit moves to take it out more easily. As such, it is generally unwise to take this enemy out, although some builds might be able to handle the throne on their own. When the fight is over, any remaining Bombers disappear immediately.

Once the iron throne is destroyed, it will retract down into the ground, forcing Universelove to stay grounded for many seconds and also disabling the throne's rocket shooting, slightly lowering the amount of attacks directed at the player. While grounded, it's possible to hit the true boss. Universelove is immune to all control effects but stun, although stunning him doesn't matter since he doesn't attack. Once Universelove's HP bar is depleted, the fight will be over. However, if the player fails to take him out during his downed period, the iron throne will repair itself and rise back from the ground, forcing them to do the process all over again. During the throne's rising animation, neither Universelove nor the throne can take damage.

Although the projectiles might feel overwhelming at first, especially if you're stuck trying to take down the iron throne with Universelove at low health, most of them have rather unimpressive damage, and all the strong attacks are fairly easy to avoid. The turrets' persistance can keep one from damaging the boss much even when the iron throne is down, which can make the fight longer, but still not particularly dangerous. The fact that the IFO can be used to break down the throne so quickly generally makes it not much of a hassle.

## Real Mirage

* Universelove now has far more HP bars
* 66 and 33% health: Universelove shields himself, replaces all his turrets with mortars and calls down countless air strikes. The air strikes go in a snaking pattern throughout the screen, and their spawning pattern will get faster as he calls in wave after wave. After the third wave, Universelove becomes vulnerable again and the turrets return to normal. The time spent in this attack counts as time where the throne is broken, so most of the time, Universelove will be able to rebuild the throne immediately after the attack ends.

With this Real Mirage change, Dr. Universelove transitions from being an easy boss to becoming far more menacing. The waves of rockets not only serve as a threat to the player, but will also give Universelove time to rebuild the throne, reducing the amount of times the player can deal damage to him and elongating the fight quite a bit. This means the player will have to deal with more of Universelove's low HP phases, and the increased damage from Real Mirage will make the previously weak turrets more powerful. Without some focus on what the turrets are doing, failure is a realistic possibility.

## Trivia

* Strangely, Dr. Universelove's Boss Chest is not guaranteed to drop a weapon, and will occasionally simply drop a few coins.