Haz, the Mind-Eater Root
Boss · Chapter 4: Fragment
Haz is not one enemy but three: root heads at 1,428 HP each, tied to a buried core that dies with them. Killing the roots is the whole fight; the core itself carries a single hit point and cannot be reached directly.
Each root cycles between closed and open. Closed, it is armored scenery; open-eyed, it takes damage and attacks harder. As roots die, the surviving patterns shift their counts, so the fight's rhythm keeps changing as it shortens. Standing on top of a root gets you a point-blank punish shot, so the fight polices melee greed explicitly.
A root opens its eye to attack and becomes vulnerable at the same time. Damage windows and danger windows are the same windows.
Bullet lines rake across the arena from each active root, and the line counts change as roots are destroyed, so a pattern you memorized early stops matching late.
Targeted bursts on your position, with their own count shift once destruction sets in.
Secondary roots surface to fire lasers across the arena.
Tentacle projectiles fill the space between line patterns so the arena never fully empties.
The core summons help while the roots keep you busy. Clear the adds before committing to an open eye.
Hugging a root past its comfort radius triggers a fast retaliation shot. Melee builds fight in pulses here, not face-hugs.
The roots have a hard-mode pattern switch in their fight logic, on top of the shared boss modifiers. In hard mode every boss also draws from the pool of 10 modifiers listed on the bosses page, from flat HP and defense gains to elemental resists and ignoring your defense or evasion.
Defeating Haz for the first time adds these to the item pool: