Crossbones is one of the major recurring villains you’ll face in Marvel’s Midnight Suns. This mercenary focuses on your weakest characters, and he’s got nifty defensive capabilities, too. Here’s our Marvel’s Midnight Suns Crossbones boss guide to help you defeat this particular opponent.

Note: For more information, check out our Marvel’s Midnight Suns guides and features hub. Likewise, please be reminded that this guide contains minor spoilers.

 

Marvel’s Midnight Suns boss guide – How to beat Crossbones

Similar to other major foes, the Crossbones boss in Marvel’s Midnight Suns does show up several times throughout the course of the campaign. His first appearance is during the Some Assembly Required mission. In some story missions, you need to deplete his HP bar a couple of times just to finish the encounter. However, if he appears as reinforcements in general/side missions, then you only need to KO him once. Here are the abilities you need to watch out for:

  • Mercenary’s Instinct – Will always target the character with the lowest HP in your squad; tends to aim with his sniper rifle before shooting the next turn.
  • Timed Grenades – Will lob a grenade with an AoE effect; explodes after a set number of actions/cards played (does not count movement).
  • Hydra Shield – The next attack made against Crossbones, including AoE and knockbacks, will cause him to pop a shield that’s got a lot of block value. Once block is reduced to zero, he’ll lose this ability.

The idea behind the Crossbones boss fight in Marvel’s Midnight Suns is to time your actions properly. Since he’ll pop his Hydra Shield on the first hit done against him each turn, then it’s imperative that you only do measly damage to trigger it, or even a minion knockback. Use your high-damage abilities only after the shield is broken to ensure that you’re depleting his HP in one go.

As for his Timed Grenades, you can either use cards that will cause your character to reposition or environmental actions, assuming you don’t want to spend limited movement points. As an aside, knockback/pull effects can also cause Crossbones to be moved into his grenade’s AoE field, and he’ll end up taking damage instead. How’s that for self-inflicted ownage?

Marvel’s Midnight Suns is available via Steam.