Rataka, the Pillager Leader
Boss · Chapter 1: The Cult Leader
Rataka leads the pillagers in the Woodlands and fights in front of his own house. He is the slowest of the chapter 1 bosses at 3.3 move speed and the hardest-hitting at 17 attack, so the fight is about reading his casts rather than outrunning him.
Almost everything he does is earth and gravity magic cast from range. The longer a cast circle sits on the ground, the worse the follow-up, so interrupting his rhythm with pressure is worth more here than against any other early boss.
Stones drop from above onto marked spots. The markers give you the dodge; the spread tightens as his HP falls.
A ring of stone projectiles expands outward from him, forcing you to weave through the gaps.
He fires gravity balls that burst into scatter shots. Some casts detonate in the backfield too, so the space behind you is not automatically safe.
He plants seeds that grow into totems. Left alone they turn the arena into a crossfire; break them as they sprout.
A dense projectile pattern he falls back on at range. Walk it calmly instead of rolling early; the lanes are wider than they look.
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 Rataka for the first time adds these to the item pool: