Skycrawler

The Skycrawler is a boss that spawns in the overworld.

## Spawning

The Skycrawler does spawn naturally, signalled by a unique music track if close to it. It is possible to outrun a Skycrawler, if you go deep enough into a cave. There can only be one naturally spawned Skycrawler at a time in the world, as to help with lag.

## Appearance

In its first stage, the Skycrawler looks like a shelled beast with a palette of whites and grays, with its face resembling a shulker and legs like a frog's. However, in the second stage the palette turns to dark grays and blacks, and it grows red spikes on its shell. Its shulker face would get red eyes, and its shell looks more cracked.

## Fighting

To fight a Skycrawler, it is important to keep in mind that in the first stage, unless you can find a way to tower up safely, you need a bow to hit the monster. In the second sub-stage of the final stage, then melee (an axe) is required to break the shell and expose the creature's malleable body (in the final stage, the Skycrawler grows too heavy to jump on clouds, and falls to earth.)

### Stage 1.1

Assuming you decide to fight the Skycrawler, this is the first of four sections designed to walk people through the battle. When you first find the Skycrawler, it will always be a sunny day with the typical amount of clouds in the sky. It will be jumping from cloud to cloud. Once the player is within view range, however, the Skycrawler will immediately strike them with lightning, or at least attempt to. At this point, the battle begins. As the Skycrawler jumps from cloud to cloud, a storm of lightning will constantly be released from said cloud until the Skycrawler moves on. Once on a cloud, the beast can move it left, right, and further whichever direction the other clouds are moving. However, if the Skycrawler rams the cloud into three other clouds (forming a bigger cloud) it can move the cloud wherever it wants. However, this cloud can be broken up into smaller clouds again with a shot of a bow. It will retain the constant lightning storm ability from the clouds that the Skycrawler jumps on. The other main ability the beast has is to shoot tons of yellow fire charges which explode and summon lightning on impact. Creepers will be drawn into the area the fight is happening in, and will be struck by lightning (without taking damage) to become charged creepers.

### Stage 1.2

After having a quarter of its health whittled away at, the Skycrawler will summon a thunderstorm. Effectively masking its location while having a plethora of new attacks, some may think this is where the battle peaks. Now being able to spawn creepers itself, the thunderstorm will spawn the creepers and charge them to defeat the player. In this sub-stage, the Skycrawler will "charge" across the clouds, creating a wave of lightning. To make this section possible, the Skycrawler will stop for long periods of time in between attacks. Its rarest attack in this stage is to cause a ripple of lightning. The lightning will occur in large clusters around the stationary Skycrawler, but the further the ripple is, the patchier the clusters are. It is hard to avoid these attacks. The beast will also constantly throw 'lightning charges' (the yellow fire charges) at the player. One of its other attacks is to detach a single cloud from the storm, move lower, and barrage the player with lightning charges. After having another quarter of its health removed, it moves on to its second (and final) stage.

### Stage 2.1

In the first part of the final stage, the Skycrawler is seen hanging to a cloud. Its texture changes to the second texture (See appearance section), and it falls. Its first attack is when it lands, causing a large ripple in the land which hits the player and knocks them back a large amount of blocks. This attack cannot be repeated. Once on the ground, the Skycrawler can cause a large ring of fire to occur around it, dealing no direct damage, just fire damage. Then, it can summon Lava Rain from the (still around) thunderstorm that does fire damage on a much larger scale and burns any flammable blocks (it is recommended not to fight this near a wooden house). After falling, the Skycrawler releases even more lightning charges. During this stage, the shulker-head on the beast also shoots what look like red, faster shulker projectiles which just boost the player into the air, causing fall damage on return to the ground. (Hm, fire attacks? Shulker resemblances? Spawns in the Overworld? Hm, sounds like a hybrid...) The Skycrawler can still charge and summon lightning like before, but on a shorter scale. After it gets on its final quarter of health, though, the shell covers the creature and the final stage begins...

## Stage 2.2

In the final leg of the battle, lightning will constantly be summoned as the Skycrawler runs around blindly, smashing into things and causing knockback to entities near the impact, and breaking most tile entities (redstone dust, rails, crops, etc.). It would occasionally lift its shell to shoot the red shulker projectiles at the player. The only way to begin the ACTUAL second sub-stage of stage two is to smash the Skycrawler's shell. To do this, the player has to get a critical hit with an axe on a Skycrawler... from 15+ blocks up. Three times. On the final time, the beast pauses, and the shell breaks as if it were a block. Then, the Skycrawler's back (resembling a brain) is exposed. Knowing death is imminent and its defense is low, the Skycrawler will use any attacks possible to defeat the player. It will shoot lightning charges, charge, summon lightning, get charged creepers, ANYTHING that it can do, it will do. All the while, the player will be killing it. Finally, once it's killed, the drops can be reached.

### Drops

The Skycrawler drops 4 - 8 Skyscales, Golden apples, Notch apples, a Shell Piece and a Skycrawler Head. It also drops a lot of XP.