Introduction
As I’m sure you’re aware, Bosses are the most brutal enemies in Rush Royale or any game.
Unlike any other enemy, they can affect your board in specific ways.
One of the best ways to improve in Rush is knowing how to set yourself up before a boss spawns, as a boss can get rid of the hard work you have put into your board.
The amount that boss abilities will affect your ability to win a game dramatically depends on the deck you are playing.
For example, Puppeteer decreases your unit levels and moves your units on the board.
If you are playing a deck that uses support units to buff other units on the board, Puppeteer will affect you significantly because it changes the position of units on the board.
A deck that doesn’t rely on where units are placed on the board is not greatly affected by Puppeteer (besides losing levels).
The general difficulty order of these bosses from weakest to strongest is as follows:
Below 4000 trophies
- Tamer
- Gorgon
- Warlock
- Bedlam
- Puppeteer
- Tribunal
Above 4000 trophies
- Tamer
- Gorgon
- Puppeteer
- Bedlam
- Warlock/Tribunal
This is a very rough benchmark for the order of difficulty across all bosses and varies on two things:
- How easily you can clear waves & bosses earlier in the game.
- The deck that you are playing.
I will explain all the Bosses, the types of decks they affect, and how you should set yourself up to beat them.
Note for Bombardier
Bombardier is a special unit to use against bosses as it is the only unit that can stun a boss, delaying the use of its abilities (Besides Tribunal).
This gives your units plenty more time to damage bosses before they cast their abilities.
Again, you cannot delay Tribunal’s ability.
Boss Health Formula
The HP (Health Points) of a boss is the sum of all monster (mobile object/monster) HP that are alive in your lane, plus a base amount of HP depending on which wave you have just completed in PvP mode.
The boss HP in Co-Op is always the same every time you play it.
Equation
Boss HP = (50,000 * wave number) + (12,000 * wave number – 1) + sum of mob hp
Eg) If I’m currently on wave 4 and the sum of all monster’s HP left on the board is 89,000, then the boss HP will be: (50,000 * 4) + (12,000 * 3) + 89,000 = 325,000 HP
Warlock will heal for 20% of this amount which will be 65,000 HP.
How To Beat Tamer Boss
Tamer is by far the easiest boss in the game. It does not affect your deck, so you do not have to think about how to set your board up before the boss spawns.
I can become troublesome much later in the game (6th boss onwards), but if you play below 7000 trophies, you will likely never get this far.
Ability
Tamer will stop every few seconds and cast an ability that spawns monsters behind it.
This will consist of 2 normal monsters (green) and 1 fast monster (yellow).
Useful Information
No deck is particularly weak or strong against Tamer.
Tamer is the only boss you can completely lose a game to while you have all of your lives available because it spawns monsters.
If you are struggling to kill the boss, it is near the end of the lane, and a fast monster is approaching behind it, the fast monster can fly straight past the boss, hit your base, and Tamer will also hit your base resulting in a loss.
If any monsters pass Tamer in the lane and you are using units like Inquisitor or Crystalmancer, your ramp-up damage will reset. You will appear to be dealing very little damage compared to a few seconds ago before you can ramp up damage on Tamer again.
Strategy
- Use a unit that can slow enemies such as Cold Mage or Frost so that you have time to deal enough damage to defeat Tamer, then deal with the monsters that it has spawned behind it.
- Reaper and Hex can execute the tiny monsters regardless of their HP, so you can just focus your damage on Tamer.
- Simply make sure you deal as much damage as possible, and you should be fine.
How To Beat Gorgon Boss
Gorgon is the second-easiest boss in the game.
It only affects your board temporarily while the boss is active.
Ability
Every 2 seconds, Gorgon will cast a spell disabling 2 random units, preventing them from attacking.
When both your boss and the opponent’s boss are defeated, it will enable all disabled units again, so if you kill your boss first, you must wait for your opponent to defeat their boss before you can comfortably merge.
Useful Information
If Gorgon targets a support unit that does not attack such as Banner or Hex, it will still provide support to units next to it, so nothing happens to your performance when these units are targeted.
Strategy
1. Spawn as many units on your board as possible before Gorgon arrives. Just make sure that spawning units will not affect activated units such as Inquisitor or Blade Dancer beforehand – Therefore, Gorgon will have more units to target while it is alive, and it will be less likely to target your highest damaging units on the board currently.
How To Beat Puppeteer Boss
Abilities
1. Firstly Puppeteer will shift all of your units on the board by 1 space in any direction. If any units are touching one of the edges, they will shift to the opposite edge of the board.
2. Puppeteer will decrease the level of all your units by 1.
Useful Information
Puppeteer will decrease the level of your units roughly 3 seconds after shifting your units on the board.
This unit can be a nightmare for decks that rely on support units being adjacent to damage units, or for Blade Dancer/Gargoyle decks.
If you play one of these decks, I advise that you try and defeat Puppeteer as soon as possible to avoid it messing up your deck.
– How much mana do you lose through Puppeteer’s 2nd Ability
All units level 5: 3500 mana
All units level 4: 2000 mana
All units level 3: 1000 mana
All units level 2: 500 mana
All units level 1: 0 mana
Strategy
You need to decide to do one of two things before Puppeteer arrives.
- Do not level up your units so the boss does not delevel them, and you do not lose much mana. – If all your units are level 1, you do not lose any mana. For this reason, I usually do not level up my units at all if the 1st boss is Puppeteer (unless you’re using Vampire).
- Level up your units as much as possible so you can defeat Puppeteer before it casts its 2nd ability (preferably it’s first). – Sometimes, you will find that you will be able to nuke the boss down before losing mana to its second ability. To know whether it’s worth taking the risk, you need to be comfortable with your deck and understand how much damage you deal at all times.
How To Beat Bedlam Boss
Ability
Bedlam flips every unit on the board, randomly replacing them with any unit in your deck (even the same unit) of the same merge rank.
Useful Information
Bedlam can be a make or break for certain decks. If you’re a deck that requires units to be in a certain position to work like Blade Dancer, or you need a set number of units on your board such as Inquisitor, this boss can be an absolute disaster.
Strategy
There are 3 ways you can approach Bedlam depending on whether you are using Summoner, Priestess, or Portal Keeper.
- Like any other boss, nuke it down quickly before the boss casts its spell.
- Portal Keeper’s shield can protect units from being flipped by Bedlam.
- If you are using Summoner, this is great for Bedlam. Bedlam can spawn more Summoners that you can merge to rank your units up even higher, leaving you with a powerful deck in the aftermath. Especially useful if Bedlam is the 1st boss. Just make sure that you can still kill the boss afterward.
- If you are using Priestess, you have a choice. You will gain mana from every Priestess’ on the board that gets flipped by Bedlam, which can leave you with tonnes of mana after the boss is defeated. You must decide whether you need to keep your setup and nuke the boss quickly, or if the extra mana from Priestess will help so you can spawn more units and level them up.
How To Beat Warlock Boss
Abilities
1. Warlock casts a spell that targets one of the units on the board. This unit will get a mark around it. After a short moment, a meteor will destroy it. This ability can be dodged if you react quickly and merge the targeted unit to another space. 2. Casts a spell that wipes out all traps in Warlock’s path and gets rid of any debuffs on the boss. – Units affected by traps: Corsair, Stasis, Trapper, Alchemist – Units affected by debuffs: Cold Mage, Frost, Chemist, Poisoner, Ivy
3. Warlock will heal itself for 20% of the health it started with. The boss can heal higher than its starting HP.
Useful Information
Warlock becomes more troublesome as the game goes on because losing higher merge rank units becomes more devastating to your overall performance.
When stunned by Bombardier, the order Warlock casts its abilities can change and become unpredictable, but the first ability will always be delayed.
On top of this, it seems more likely to target higher merge rank units from experience.
If you use Cold Mage or Frost and don’t have much single target damage, Warlock can shred through your units as it will cast more spells, destroying more units from your board.
Strategy
1. You want to avoid ranking your units too high if Warlock targets your high-rank units and you cannot merge them.
2. Spawn as many units as possible on the board to increase the chance of Warlock targeting a lower rank unit.
3. Ensure that you have high enough single target damage so you can kill the boss even if it heals itself.
4. Once you’re in the late game, just cross your fingers and pray that Warlock targets weaker units.
How To Beat Tribunal Boss
Ability
- Decreases the merge rank of HALF of the units on the board by 1. This is rounded up if you have an odd number of units on the board. – If you have 2 units, 1 unit will have its merge rank decreased by 1. – If you have 10 units, 5 units will have their merge rank decreased by 1. – If you have 13 units, 7 units will have their merge rank decreased by 1.
- Dashes forward along the lane towards your base every few seconds.
Useful Information
Tribunal can be a tricky boss, depending on your deck.
Tribunal’s first ability is the fastest-casting boss ability in the game, and it cannot be delayed even if stunned by Bombardier.
If you’re playing a deck that requires an entire board of units to perform well, such as Engineer, Cultist, or Blade Dancer, Tribunal will significantly decrease your board’s power.
Note
It is far worse to demote a rank-4 to a rank-3 than to completely lose a rank-1. This is because a rank-4 unit is worth 8 rank-1 units. So when
Strategy
1. The best and most challenging way to deal with Tribunal is to defeat the boss within 1 second before it can cast its first ability. This is very difficult to achieve but can be done by units that deal enough burst damage. – Blade Dancer decks with the use of Trainer’s ability to increase attack speed can achieve this with somewhat consistent success. – If you get lucky with a critical strike, Meteor can destroy this boss instantly (or any boss for that matter).
If Tribunal is the first boss and you have a level 5 Jay, a critical strike with Jay’s ability can instantly destroy the first boss. However, you need to make sure you have enough critical damage to nuke the boss and ensure you engage the boss with as little HP as possible.
2. Before Tribunal spawns on the field, you want as FEW units as possible on your board so that you do not lose as many units, but at the same time, you do not want to lose high-rank units as mentioned above. – Therefore, you want to clear Tribunal with as weak of a board as possible, but not too weak that you get destroyed by the wave of monsters before it. This is why you notice that many players only have a few units on the board if Tribunal is your first boss.
3. Tribunal will stall very briefly before dashing forward. This is the perfect time to use Trainer’s unique ability to spawn a dummy and stop Tribunal in its tracks before it can dash. Therefore you can deal more damage to the boss before it reaches your base.
