Core Keeper Malaguz Boss Fight Guide

In this Core Keeper Malugaz Boss Fight Guide, I'll tell you how to find and defeat Malugaz the Corrupted, a boss hidden within the depths of The Forgotten Ruins.

Where to Find Malugaz the Corrupted

You can find Malugaz the Corrupted in his throne room deep inside of The Forgotten Ruins biome as highlighted by GamingWithDaOpa on YouTube. As far as I can tell, it seems likely that you'll find Malugaz outside of the ring where Ghorm the Devourer patrols.

Unfortunately, there is no scanner for Malugaz the Corrupted. That means that you're going to have to search on foot. His arena is well-lit with ancient junk and it's fairly large; it's a circle roughly 16 blocks in diameter. Keep exploring The Forgotten Ruins on the outside of Ghorm's tunnel and you should come across him eventually.

How to Unlock Malugaz the Corrupted

Malugaz the Corrupted is not summoned by default, so you'll have to bring him to life using a Crystal Skull.

What To Do with Crystal Skull Shards in Core Keeper

Crystal Skull Shards are used to craft a Crystal Skull, an item that can summon the boss Malugaz the Corrupted in The Forgotten Ruins. Once you've collected 10 Crystal Skull Shards, put them on your Hotbar and right-click. Your character will engage in a brief magical animation before creating a Crystal Skull. You can then place the Crystal Skull on Malugaz's summoning rune, just as you can with any other boss.

How to Win the Core Keeper Malugaz Boss Fight - Best Strategy

It's time for the key part of our Core Keeper Malugaz Boss Fight Guide -- how to beat Malugaz the Corrupted. This fight can be challenging even if you're well-equipped, so be careful about running headlong into battle!

Preparing Equipment and Supplies

Malugaz does a fair amount of fire damage, and that means you'll be taking damage over time.

Cooking several Hearty Pepper Wraps (Heart Berry + Bomb Pepper) is a good idea -- they give a nice mix of health regeneration and a speed boost. Alternatively, I would recommend making Mushy Berry Pudding (Heart Berry + Mushroom) and Crunchy Tulip Salad (Glow Tulip + Carrock) and eating both; these will give you a nice mix of buffs.

You should also craft at least 10 Healing Potions to mitigate the damage over time or recover from direct hits. I fought Malugaz with over 500 health and the best armor in the Early Access version of the game, and I still took a fair amount of damage.

As for your weapons, you can fight Malugaz with either melee or ranged combat. I recommend both, so prepare your best melee and ranged weapons before you go into this fight.

Preparing the Arena

Malugaz's arena is littered with junk. I strongly recommended that you break all of the walls and destroy all of the Ancient Crates so you have as much room to move around as possible.

Strategy 1 - Melee, Then Ranged

Malugaz fights in two phases. In the first phase, he teleports around and will shoot fireballs; he'll also cause random bursts of fire to spawn within the arena. You can hit him with melee for this first phase.

In the second phase, he removes his hood to reveal his flaming skull head. His attacks shift to dashing punches that explode into a 3x3 area of fire when it lands. I recommend that you run around avoiding the flame and shooting Malaguz from afar.

Strategy 2 - Ranged

You can fight Malaguz exclusively with ranged weapons, but it might take a little longer due to the lower damage.

Strategy 3 - Melee

A pure melee strategy can work, but it will be much tougher -- especially in the second phase. You're going to have to tank a lot of damage, so you're going to want to ensure that you always have a heal-over-time buff active from food.

Strategy 4 - Explosives

There are very few problems that cannot be solved with explosives, but it's probably a bad idea to use them in this fight. Malugaz's arena is very small, and that means you run the risk of blowing yourself up.

How to Summon Malugaz Again

You can summon Malugaz again by collecting more Crystal Skull Shards, crafting another Crystal Skull, and summoning him in the usual process.

Unlike most of the other bosses, summoning Malugaz depends on you getting random drops from the enemies in The Forgotten Ruins. Once you've beaten him, it's probably best to focus on exploring the area and killing enemies as you go; eventually, you'll have a whole pile of Crystal Skull Shards and you can summon him a few times. It's certainly more productive than going back and forth and trying to farm more Crystal Skull Shards between each fight.

Core Keeper Malugaz Boss Loot

Here is the loot you can get for successfully beating Malugaz in Core Keeper. This may not be a complete list of everything that you can loot.

Ancient Chest

• Guaranteed drop.
• Has 18 item slots (6x3).

Blue Leather Tome

• Off-hand.
• +21.6% range damage.
• Part of a set with Skull Necklace and Skull Ring
  • 3 set: all nearby enemies burn for +17 damage every third sec

Ritual dagger

• Dagger
• 106-128 melee damage
• 3.3 attacks per second
• +2 glow
• +6% critical hit chance
• +13% critical hit damage
• Durability: 350/350

Battle Axe

• Axe
• 149-181 melee damage
• 1.7 attacks per second
• +17.6% melee damage
• Durability 350/350

Gold Bar

• Crafting material.

Blood Skull

• Valuable.