A powerful enemy evolved from the incipient form of Nascent Woden. The colossal might it unleashes is able to shake the world.

Nascent Woden is the featured boss of story chapter 13, Suspense in Skytopia. It's a two phase fight that has the unique distinction of being the only Sim boss to be nerfed within 12 hours of its release. Or well, nerfed at all. It's much more manageable now, I promise.

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Attacks and Behaviour

Nascent Woden has two forms, with similar movesets between them. This includes its ability to teleport to and from the center of the map, during which time it becomes invulnerable:

...As well as just teleporting on the spot. Sure.

Bomb Threat

Throughout the fight, Woden has access to three kinds of "Eyes." Let's just call them bombs because that's more intuitive. Being hit by Woden's attacks will spawn a bomb next to you (one per attack max), but it will deploy them as part of certain attacks as well. Note that being hit by a bomb will not spawn another bomb, thankfully.

Bombs that are spawned as part of Woden's attacks will instantly detonate, while those that spawn from you getting hit will last for quite a bit of time before doing so (eyeballing the duration gives them a lifespan of just under ten seconds). At higher difficulty levels, they'll also follow you around before detonating, though they apparently don't detonate early if they get too close. Each bomb's detonation is slightly different:

Eyes of the Past (red bombs) will release a ring of projectiles on detonation that rotates as it expands outward.

Eyes of the Present (yellow (bombs) spawn three homing projectiles with decently strong tracking.

Eyes of the Future (blue bombs) just have a larger explosion radius.

Phase 1

Woden starts off the fight in its Incipient form, which has 2,064,656 HP.

Wave Burst

Woden sends out a circular shockwave which staggers on hit. Being hit by this will drain S-Energy and spawn a blue bomb. This attack extends out halfway into the second grass ring from the center, so staying further out than that will put you out of its range. Do note that Woden can use this ability even while not in the middle of the map, though I didn't find it to be a very common occurrence.

Melee Strike

Woden dashes towards you and thrusts forward with its lance, staggering on hit. If it's already relatively close to you, it can also perform a circular slash instead.

In either scenario, Woden can follow up with a second circular slash that spawns three instantly detonating blue bombs in a line at higher difficulty levels, as well as if you get hit. Being hit by either attack will also drain S-Energy. Both the first and second attack can spawn a bomb each.

Speedrunners will want to consider resetting the run if they encounter this attack, as Woden being so close can make it difficult to shoot its head weakspot.

Ray of the Present

Woden charges up a laser that fires after a delay. This can easily be sidestepped as long as you aren't ADS'd, but being hit by it will stagger, drain S-Energy, and spawn a yellow bomb. At higher difficulty levels, this attack will also spawn two yellow bombs next to Woden that instantly detonate.

Bullet Barrage

Woden fires a barrage of bullets that home in on you. You can generally sidestep this, but consider dodging just to be safe, as being hit by this attack will drain S-Energy and spawn a yellow bomb.

As an aside, I found that being hit by this attack while ADS'd had a pretty high chance of causing frame drops on impact, something that I've never consistently experienced anywhere else in the game. It's a little annoying.

Bullet Scatter

Woden spawns rings of projectiles that expand outward while rotating. Being hit by this attack will spawn a red bomb and drain S-Energy, but Woden will also automatically spawn four red bombs in the corners of the map that instantly detonate at higher difficulty levels. These have the potential to do quite a bit of damage, but you can generally get away with being hit by one or two.

Meltdown

Woden generates a a field that extends until the first grass ring. Being in this area will continuously stagger, drain S-Energy, and spawn a red bomb. Like with Bullet Scatter, four instantly detonating red bombs will also automatically spawn in the corners of the map at higher difficulty levels. Dealing with this attack is easy - just don't be in range of it.

Phase 2

Once Nascent Woden - Incipient's health is depleted, it will leave the field, with Nascent Woden - Demiurge taking its place. Upon arrival, it will send out a shockwave out to the edge of the second grass ring that knocks you back on hit.

Incipient's health bar can be pretty misleading as you get close to depleting its health, so don't let up on the damage until you see it invuln and prepare to leave.

Nascent Woden - Demiurge has 2,890,518 HP.

Supersize Me

In Demiurge form, Woden retains all the attacks it had while in Incipient form, now bigger to reflect its larger size:

The range of Wave Burst now extends to halfway through the brick circle outside of the second grass ring.

Ground Strike

Aside from its Incipient attacks, Woden's Demiurge state does have a new trick up its sleeve. It marks your current location twice and spawns a blue bomb each time, as well as spawning red bombs around the edges of the map and blue bombs around Demiurge itself. After a delay, the marked location and all spawned bombs detonate.

Thunder Strike

When Woden is reduced to 65% of its health (~1,878,836 HP), it will teleport back to the center of the map. It will perform three ground-targeted attacks that stagger and drain S-Energy on hit, then deal a large burst of map-wide damage. Dodging at least one of the three initial attacks will spawn a blue safety circle that you can stay inside to be immune to the final attack. During this attack sequence, Woden gains damage reduction and is immune to CC effects.

It is not possible to dodge the final attack, as its duration lasts longer than the invulnerability period you get while dodging. As well, being hit by this attack will instantly fail the run even if you survive:

So no, you can't cheese this.

Strategy

Nascent Woden - Incipient: 2,064,656 HP

Nascent Woden - Demiurge: 2,890,518 HP

Total: 4,955,174 HP

Woden clocks in as the beefiest Sim boss to date, making it one of the longer fights by virtue of how much health you have to chew through. Before its nerf, Woden was incredibly obnoxious to fight due to constantly teleporting and invulning while also having just under an extra million HP in total. Thankfully, it's much more restrained now. Still, stay on your toes to not accidentally dump any bursts of damage into it while it's invulnerable (it's very easy to do this on Lyfe - Infinite Sight if you're not paying attention, and I have bricked many runs due to this).

Players who struggle to deal with Woden's attacks will benefit from giving it some personal space. Aside from giving you extra time to react to its attacks, being far enough away will also completely put you out of range of some of its attacks. Being outside of the second grass ring will let you completely ignore Woden's Wave Burst and Meltdown attacks while in Incipient form, but you'll have to retreat back to the tiled area past all the rings to stay out of the extended range of Wave Burst after Woden enters Demiurge form. Woden's relatively immobile nature also means that you won't have to reposition too often once you pick a spot to set up camp, but keep in mind that it can get closer to you if it really wants to.

As for the various bombs that will spawn during the fight - knowing which attacks spawn bombs will make it much easier to dodge their detonations, and the ones that spawn when you get hit will be on the field long enough for you to hopefully notice them and dodge out of their range once they begin their detonation sequence.

Fun fact: pre-nerf Woden sort of still exists, as the Woden boss in the co-op stage of Suspense of Skytopia's Defiance of Divinity game mode has its pre-nerf HP values.

Team Building

Woden's high health pool means that traditional burst-oriented DPS operatives will struggle not to run out of gas before they can secure a takedown. This gives operatives that specialize in sustained damage (or burst operatives with self-sustaining damage rotations...) a chance to shine in the otherwise burst-dominated Neural Sim meta:

• The obvious pick is Lyfe - Infinite Sight, being the operative that released with this boss. She's able to take advantage of the Kinetic weakness and can apply multiple Insight marks (two to Incipient, three to Demiurge) to further amp up her damage.
• Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud also gets extra targets to mark with her slips (two to Incipient, five to Demiurge, making her a viable alternative as well. However, Woden's attacks draining S-Energy means that Chenxing can run into skill uptime issues if she eats too many hits.
• Similarly, Katya - Blue Bolt is highly dependant on having S-Energy to maintain her DPS, and her standard skill locking her in place certainly doesn't help either.
• Siris - Ksana suffers no such S-Energy issues and can freely ram Woden as much as she wants to put out competitive times.
• Cherno - Enigma also does not mind the S-Energy drain, but that 40% Chaos resist does put a bit of a damper on things, unfortunately.

Support diversity is surprisingly strong with the notable exception of Tess not particularly finding a use here. Now that Woden is much less invuln-happy, Mauxir - Shadow Ka is a strong option, especially to bypass Woden's damage reduction during the phase 2 Thunder Strike trigger. Enya - Exuvia also earns a special mention due to her support skill letting you ignore all of the many staggers that Woden will try to inflict on you while having good synergy with the majority of the top DPS picks. Finally, Acacia - Redacted is ever the useful budget option to apply Slow (Woden's only CC vulnerability) from a distance, as getting too close is generally not recommended.