Mothraya - Cossack 1 boss fight

Mothraya (usually nicknamed Moth) is the first boss you encounter in the Castle Stages

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It's battle takes place on a two-layer pipe bridge. Mothraya can move left and right on the upper screen, attacking every 2 seconds with energy shots. It's main move is a spike-tipped "proboscis" with two attacks—one sudden dip to the floor and another where it slams down after a brief pause, breaking part of the bridge, which is usually a pretty favorable pattern in speedruns making it easier to get shots in despite the lag.

The weakness is Ring Boomerang which combined with the one pixel hitbox of Mothraya makes the fight significantly harder than it looks to do properly

Strategy

The plan is to keep a rhythm with the up and down movement while also baiting Mothraya's shots to go downwards as we jump upwards.

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In order to get the shots in, we need Mothraya to go down as Mega Man goes up, that way when Mega Man reach top height, you should be aligned correctly to shot the Ring Boomerang properly.

To do so, we need to walk until we reach this point from which afterwards you want to do a full jump and release the shot as you reach max height

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You can use those 2 lines as a cue, here we want to jump before the first line.

Afterwards, Moth will go up as you are falling back down, so then you want to wait a bit that Moth goes back down and do the same thing. Watch Fight example to have a good understanding of the timing needed.

You can speed up this fight by a few frames by jumping a bit earlier in between the small left pipe and the first line

You may encounter various problems when trying to do this fight fast:

Fight example

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It's worth noting that the wings of the boss doesnt have an hitbox so you can go into them. Only the square is.

If you miss a shot don't go out of your rhythm, if you try shooting right away you will miss. Wait that Moth goes back down again just as if you didnt missed the shot


Revision #9
Created 8 December 2023 20:44:53 by Aurel509
Updated 10 May 2025 18:00:29 by Aurel509