| Type | A copy of you |
|---|---|
| HP | 75 |
| Attack | 9 |
| Defense | 4 |
| Range | Your weapon's |
| Speed | Yours |
| AP | Yours |
| Size | 1 × 1 |
| Phase 2 | ≤ 50% HP |
| Dimension | The End |
The Shadow
End City biome boss, a dark copy of you that fights with everything you carried in.
The End City does not send a monster. It sends you. The Shadow wears your skin a few shades darker, your armour and your weapons, and takes its turn the way you take yours: your AP and your Speed, spent one action at a time. In a party there is one Shadow for every player. A single shulker fights beside it.
How it fights
- Your weapons. It can draw any weapon in your inventory, not only the one in your hand, and uses whichever does the most from where it is standing. Each keeps its reach and its AP cost: a spear hits from two tiles away, a bow from across the arena if it has a clear line, and a 1 AP sword swings more often in a turn than a 2 AP axe.
- What your weapons do. A weapon does in its hands what it does in yours. It is the same weapon running the same ability, aimed back at you. A chakram leaves its hand, ricochets between you, your allies and your pets, and flies home. A weapon that sweeps catches everyone standing beside you, one that knocks back throws you across the arena, one that drains life heals the Shadow, and a legendary's special ability goes off at the same odds it does for you.
- Your enchantments. The weapon it holds is a copy of yours, enchantments and all. Sharpness and Serrated make you bleed, Fire Aspect sets you alight, Knockback throws you and anyone lined up behind you, Sweeping Edge carries the swing into everyone around you, and Flame and Punch work on its arrows. Enchantments that only add damage, like Power, change nothing: how hard it hits is set elsewhere.
- Your food and potions. It eats your food when it is badly hurt, drinks your Strength, Swiftness, Resistance and Regeneration potions on the way in, and throws your harmful splash potions at you. Once per kind of item.
- Your throwables. Snowballs, eggs, bricks, fire charges, wind charges and TNT come back at you, up to three of each. A snowball or a wind charge knocks you back, a fire charge sets you alight, and TNT lands on everyone standing beside you. If you are too far away to walk to, it throws your ender pearl and appears next to you.
- Your pottery sherds. It casts them at you, once each, at the sherd's own AP cost and reach. Immolation burns, Death Mark withers, Tectonic Charge throws you back, Riptide Hook drags you in and Soul Drain heals it. It heals and strengthens itself with Mending Light, Bountiful Harvest, Stone Aegis and War Cry, crosses the arena with Phase Step, and calls up vexes with Seeker Vexes. A sherd that costs more AP than it has stays in its pack, the same as it would in yours.
- Your pets. On its first turn it calls up a shadow of every pet you brought into the fight.
A few things are softened. Nothing it does stuns you: a weapon or a sherd that would stun slows you instead. Nothing executes you, so Death Mark only withers. A weapon that shatters armour leaves you Vulnerable for three turns, not for the rest of the fight. Guardian Spirit, Petsplosion and Hex Trap have no mirror image and it cannot use them.
How hard it hits
Not as hard as you do. Your weapons are built to cut down bosses with several times your health, so the Shadow's damage comes from the boss it stands in for instead. Every AP it spends is worth the same share of that boss's attack: a 1 AP weapon lands a small hit, a 2 AP weapon about twice that, and nothing lands for more than the boss's whole attack. Sherds and throwables work the same way from their own AP cost. Whatever a weapon adds on top, a ricochet, a sweep or bonus damage, is worked out from that hit the way it would be from yours.
The number is what lands. The flat damage your armour takes off every hit is not taken off the Shadow's, because it hits many times a turn for small amounts and would otherwise do nothing at all. Your armour still turns its hits aside outright, and small hits are the easiest to turn aside.
That is also why leaving your gear behind does not help. A Shadow with nothing but its fists hits exactly as hard as one holding your best sword. It only has to walk up to you first.
Phase 2
Triggers at ≤ 50% HP. The Shadow gets one more AP every turn.
In a party
Every player gets a Shadow of their own, with their skin, their kit and their pets. Each has a little less health than a lone Shadow would: 85% with two players, 70% with three, and 60% with four or more. They do not hunt their own originals. Like any enemy, each one goes for whoever is closest.
Strategy
You know this kit better than anyone, so play against it. Look at what you are carrying before you walk in: a bow in your pack is a bow in its hands, a golden carrot is a heal waiting to happen, and every sherd you brought is one it gets to cast first. Its reach is your reach, so if you fight with a sword it has to come to you, and Slowness costs it the same movement it would cost you. Kill the shadow pets early or they will tie up your own. It eats only when it is badly hurt and only once per kind of food, so when you see it eat, press the attack.