Huge Hostile Crab

The Huge Hostile Crab is a mechanical boss unofficially incorporated into CrossWorlds. It is summoned on the M.S. Solar by the Blue Avatar, and is the first true boss of the game.

Appearance
The Huge Hostile Crab is a large robotic crab. Its body is cylindrical and made of blue-gray metal, with extensive red plating along the edges. It has six segmented legs, with red plating along the upper segment, and two claws. Its left claw is small and red and greatly resembles an organic crab claw, while its much larger right claw is plain metal and obviously articulated. All legs and claws are attached to its body with large sockets.

At the front of its body, the Huge Hostile Crab has two large eyes, which are normally black, but may display a red icon based on the crab's current activities. On top of its back is a large orange shipping crate, from which it derives its name. While stunned, the crate unfolds into a ramp painted with an orange arrow, revealing a blue crystal hidden inside it.

The Huge Hostile Crab is very similar in appearance to its stronger counterpart, the Blue Cargo Crab, but has a different coloration.

Combat
The battle against the Huge Hostile Crab takes place in three stages, separated by HP Breaks. Although the difficulty of the battle increases in each subsequent stage, the fight style changes very little. During standard combat, the Huge Hostile Crab alternates through a series of attacks, and is invulnerable to damage. Eventually, it will stun itself, which reveals its weak point.

The crab has three standard attacks that it can use. The first is a shockwave created by hitting the ground with its claw, which follows the player. At later stages of the battle, it will do this multiple times in a row. The second attack is releasing a large swarm of bubbles that spread across the whole arena. At later stages, the bubbles are more numerous and home in on Lea more strongly. The third attack is a simple jump towards Lea, dealing high damage if it lands on top of her. The attacks used are largely dependent on your position relative to the crab, so depending on your play style, it is entirely possible to complete the battle without seeing one of them.

After using the three attacks for a while, the crab launches a special attack that always precedes being stunned. This consists of three consecutive jumps, much quicker than the standard jump attack, with the last one being very high. On landing from the last jump, the crate on the crab's back opens, revealing its weak point, the hidden crystal. After being stunned for a short period of time, the crab creates an explosion around the crystal, which damages the player and knocks them off its back. It will then return to alternating between the three main attacks.

Strategies
Damaging the Huge Hostile Crab while it isn't stunned is not possible, due to its extreme damage reduction. You should avoid its attacks until it stuns itself, and hit its weak point then. The shockwave and jumping attacks can be dodged by Dashing, while Guarding is effective against the bubble attack. When hitting the weak point, watch for blue sparks signalling that the explosion attack is imminent, but remember that hitting an HP Break will disrupt the attack. For a more detailed strategy, see Tactical Strategies.

Trivia

 * The Huge Hostile Crab first appeared in the original demo and has been in all subsequent updates.
 * The obvious arrow that points at the boss's weak spot was necessary to implement so the player could understand how to defeat it.