Misery's Meditation

Interrupt her Meditating and go sparring with one of the most Powerful Witches of all time!!!
This Mod allows you to keep fighting Misery over and over again. Grab which weapons you prefer and show us your best time!
Feel free to showcase your time in a comment!!!! Best Time by Christmas (December 25th, 2026) will earn themselves a "(your username)'s Stat Clock Theme" musical piece composed by me in OrgMaker!

Want to chat about Cave Story? Join my Discord: https://discord.gg/a7fx5XPghR

Spoiler: Credits:

Credits: elipsis (eli), KiwifruitDev, Ben Hoyt, Clownacy, Sam & K, The Moddin' Dragon, Mint, periwinkle,
Kyle Satwon, CHEERIOQU3ST, autumn, Enlight, Knuckles, & CKDEV
And Credits to shammah who made the "lessons in meditation" Video, & Syphen who Voiced Misery in that Video...
Their work inspired me
to make this mod!!!
- https://youtu.be/gg_3WjIpf-s?si=QIwvNcK7SuZp6d1g

Spoiler: Download:

Download: https://doukutsuclub.knack.com/database#index/mod-details/6a914ab2bd1ebc86944b3e55 / mega.nz (All Platforms)

Spoiler: Screenshot/Preview:

Screenshot/Preview:

 

Misery is an interesting boss to choose for a speed challenge given the way the fight works. She only takes a certain amount of damage before she teleports away, and where she goes is pretty random, so it's hard (for someone like me, at least) to actually strategise anything. I tried just using the nemesis at first and went from 36s to 26s in a few tries, then tried the super missile launcher and could only shave it down to 20.6s. I don't think that's a great score but I have no frame of reference, so let's wait for other people to post their scores.
Note: I played the freeware ver1.0.
Good job on the mod! I like the little flourishes with dialogue, like the dog's reaction and such.
The signpost is a little slow to read, though, maybe you should add one of those commands that displays the text instantly.

Oh, and welcome to the Forums! Thanks for coming here! We hope you enjoy your stay! and that you never leave

 

Thank you for your advice and warm welcome!!!
A 20.6 is not bad actually!! And you can take a Screenshot on the main menu to showcase your time.
I won't be judging the Different Versions people play so don't worry about that. If you prefer Freeware, than I recommend the 1.1 release which contains ModLoader for Wide Screen, and etc.
I'll try to find a instant text command for Freeware, (and drs? I think that already has a skip like CS+).

I'm glad to be here at the forums and trust me... I will be here forever lol I love Cave Story!

 

spamming super missiles and getting lucky with her teleport positions got me this far... 18.8 s

 

spamming super missiles and getting lucky with her teleport positions got me this far... 18.8 s

Nice work!!! I posted your time in #longsplays at the Cave Story Discord Server.
Let's see if your record stands...

 

THANK you for the mod Doctor. I am pretty much in agreement with with Baka said. The dialogue is pretty cute, and although it can be wacky with Misery's variance in the boss fight I find that I get some kind of sick pleasure when it comes to rolling the dice like that... My only recommendation would be to optimize the weapon/item setup process, like by making it more visually apparent what each thing is (instead of just using a signpost with a bunch of text) and making the text faster to skip through.

I did try for some time to beat Baka's record, and I finally managed to feel comfortable with the weapons and flow and got it down to a pretty decent time. I started with mostly the Spur, but I realized that carefully switching between both that and the Super Missile Launcher yielded the best results. I am curious to see how much further it can be trimmed, and I'm sure where she decides to teleport to will make a big difference.

Just FYI, I was on the DoukutsuRS version, and with 60fps (which I think would make a pretty big difference compared to 50fps??).

 

...I realized that carefully switching between [Spur] and the Super Missile Launcher yielded the best results.

That's clever! I would have thought that accounting for charging time, the Spur has much less DPS than Super Missiles... Although I'm hypothesising that throwing in a few Super Missiles initially to bring her to the brink and then using a high-damage one-shot like the max Spur would force more damage into a 'window' than she would typically take, potentially making the fight even shorter. Is that what you did?

 

That's clever! I would have thought that accounting for charging time, the Spur has much less DPS than Super Missiles... Although I'm hypothesising that throwing in a few Super Missiles initially to bring her to the brink and then using a high-damage one-shot like the max Spur would force more damage into a 'window' than she would typically take, potentially making the fight even shorter. Is that what you did?

I think the Spur ended up being useful because it allows you to make effective use of the downtime in between her teleportation frames. It will always be most useful on the very first cycle, since you can enter the battle with it pre-charged. And her teleportation sequence is slow enough to where it's basically viable to continue charging in the subsequent cycles, although I find that this becomes less useful once those 2/4 objects start orbiting her since it's way harder to get a good shot off.

There are a couple of other interesting tidbits worth sharing as well...

• You do way more damage, like I think at least 1.5x more, when hitting her from below than you do from the side with the charged spur. Like, you hit the 80 damage per cycle cap instantly with a fully charged Spur from below. It does around 50-60 from the side.
• I skimmed the Cave Story TAS to see if there were any good nuggets of info... it did clarify the 80 damage cap for me, and interestingly it does say that she will be vulnerable for one frame after her damage cap is reached. So, as you alluded to, this might allow something like a charged Spur shot to get a little more damage in before she teleports away. Although I don't think getting her to the brink of the cap and then charging the Spur is actually a good idea. It wastes too much time and she'll just teleport away eventually anyway.

Okay, but enough of that, I need to share my new time because Doctor told me that @Samantha & K got the newest record with 0'15"5. (BUT IT'S NOT IN THIS THREAD!!! SOMEBODY SHARE IN HERE SO I KNOW WHOSE ASS I NEED TO KICK NEXT!!!!!) And it was frustrating for a bit because I thought it was all going to come down to getting her to teleport next to me, getting the 80 damage cap, and then pray that she would keep spawning close to me. BUT fortunately I was able to find another way.



Okay, I saved the most interesting and relevant piece of trivia for the end, since this is what helped me get over the top. I found this out on my own -- there was a bit of trial-and-error and I'm not even 100% sure how the mechanic specifically works -- but there does appear to be a way to offload a ton of damage on her and bypass the 80 damage cap. And it seems to have to do with when she spawns the black lightning orbs. She'll only do this when she spawns far away from you, but when she does this, PELT HER WITH AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. I was able to do 150+ damage in one cycle this way, and if you're good at capitalizing on it then you can probably shave a ton of time off. I'm guessing this doesn't start counting towards her damage cap until after she finishes her animation of firing off those three orbs? Well, I think with the right luck and timing, this time can also probably be beaten now.

 

Yes next time we get a new World Record I will post it here, sorry!
Sam posted it in the CSMC Discord Server but wow nice work tp!!!
You do as of now currently have the world record. I apologize for replying late

I will for sure be working on a new update to address the sign speed but I don't know of a good alternative to show the player the item order besides signs.
Oh and Misery's Dog needs to have their textures flipped too!
I won't be giving out advice as I want everyone to build their own strategies and figure out things on their own especially since I know the best strats and methods already... (lots and lots of play testing lol).
My personal record, which still stands is a 0'11'* so I wonder if a sub-11 barrier can be broken...

 

I don't know of a good alternative to show the player the item order besides signs.

I was thinking of something along the lines of how the Nicalis versions of Cave Story do this in the Sanctuary Time Attack mode. They basically just use a recolored weapon icon as a tileset object. It's a very useful and simple visual indicator.

My personal record, which still stands is a 0'11'* so I wonder if a sub-11 barrier can be broken...

Oh my god, it makes sense that the creator is the master all along... I might want to attempt to beat that but I want to see if someone else can edge mine out first.