Malacoda
Boss · Malebolge · band C, The Nine Circles
Where Malacoda waits
Malacoda holds the gates at depths 19,600, 19,900, 20,200, 20,500, 20,800, 21,100 and onward in Malebolge, sharing the zone's 100-depth gate rhythm with The Gilded Prior and Barbariccia the Hooked.
What Malacoda is
Malacoda is a Fiend: it swings a sword, and the body asks for the crit answer, a health pool, cheating death. As a boss it wears the type's defences at 35%, carries no status of its own, and enrages below half health: it hits harder and moves faster.
Malacoda by the numbers
The card at each gate — health, damage per swing, armour and the modifiers it rolls — straight from the game's spawn table. On the floor the boss leads with 60% of the card's health and 60% of its damage, before the road's own pressure.
What those modifiers do
CORRUPTING- a third of its damage is chaos
THICK-SKINNED- Overwhelm and armor you ignore count at half
VAMPIRIC- heals 1.5% of its maximum health with every blow it lands
OVERWHELMING- ignores 30 points of your armor
MANGLING- +35% chance to cause bleeding
DRAINING- you recover half as much: leech, regen, recoup
OF POWER- gains a Power charge on every hit it lands: +200% critical chance each, up to 3
OF DAMAGING- the pack within 4.5 tiles hits 25% harder
OF FRENZY- gains a Frenzy charge on every hit it lands: 4% more damage, +15% attack speed and +5% movement each, up to 3
RETALIATING- strikes back at once when one blow takes more than 8% of its health and you stand within 2.5 tiles
OF SHOCKING DEATH- leaves a pool of lightning where it falls
OF CHILLING DEATH- leaves a pool of frost where it falls
BURNING- +35% ignite chance; a quarter of its physical damage becomes fire
LUCKY- 15% of its blows land twice over
DEADLY- +20% critical strike chance
REGENERATING- Heals 1% of its maximum health every second
Modifiers are rolled per depth and are the same for every player. Bosses always carry at least 3 and never a pace modifier (SWIFT, BRUTE), so a boss's swing rhythm is its own; of the seals only the walls — BLOODLESS, INERT, ASHEN, ETHEREAL, DENSE — ride a boss. The full list is in Enemy modifiers.
At its first gate Malacoda leads with 4,806,843,731 health, against 6,408,445,519 for the leader one floor above, and swings every 1.25s.
What a gate floor is
A gate is a floor like any other, with the boss leading its last pack. Nothing below it opens until the floor is cleared. A lost floor costs nothing; you can fight it again. How a floor is fought is under Combat.
Fight Malacoda — play free