How To Get The Giant Bug Brain In Core Keeper

After disappearing beneath the earth in Core Keeper, you find yourself at The Core and have to survive the dangerous depths. The only way to get to the surface is to find a way back and to do that, you’ll have to take down the creatures holding pieces of crucial tech.

Intended to be the third mid-game boss fight, Ra-Akar the Sand Titan holds another piece of the puzzle behind the lost civilization that created The Core and your way home. This massive scarab won’t go down without a fight though, and you’ll need to be thoroughly prepared if you want to face it.

What To Bring To Ra-Akar’s Fight

Ra-Akar is a tough fight, not only due to their damage but also the Bomb Scarabs they’ll be summoning during the fight that chase you down and do massive damage upon death that hits through armor.

First, no matter what class or damage type you’re using, you’ll want to have plenty of Greater Healing Potions to help offset the Bomb Scarab damage primarily, at least 20 to be safe, which can be crafted a Laboratory Table with three Poison Slimes and five Heart Berries.

Buffing potions, like the Guardian’s Potion, which gives a percent reduction in damage from Bosses, and even Meadow Milk for an increase to your armor, can help offset all the damage.

Any type of Pet will also help you out with a bit of damage and keep the Bomb Scarabs off you, but due to their speed, any pets with ranged damage, like the Fanhare, will do better overall as they can better keep up with the scarabs.

You also need to have some food with you to keep your Food up and give you extra health regeneration, and any dishes made from a combination of mid-game crops and fish, like Carrock, Pinegrapple, Bloat Oat, Pewpaya, and Feather Fish from the Sunken Sea, will provide you with at least 40 to 50 Food, and useful buffs. A few specific dishes with value include:

Recommendations For Melee Damage Characters

For a Warrior or someone who prefers melee combat, you’ll want to have at least Octarine-tier armor, but Galaxite Armor will be better if you already have access to it for a tanky set, or you could use the Caveling Assassin set if you prefer more damage while still having a bit of armor.

Some great weapon choices include:

• Galaxite Sword
• Anchor Axe
• Tentacle Whip
• Prehistoric Crystal Spear
• Rune Song

You can get Galaxite Bars early by killing Caveling Assassins and breaking any breakables for armor and weapons from the Desert of Beginnings and then dismantling them at a Repair Station to get Galaxite Bars.

You’ll also want accessories and off-hands that provide bonus armor and health, like the Bone Ring, Turtle Shell, and the Nomad Necklace, though you can also do well with ones that provide more damage or life-stealing, like the Clot Ring, especially if you use a Shield to block damage.

Recommendations For Ranged Damage Characters

For a Ranger or someone who prefers ranged combat, the Caveling Assassin set will be your best bet due to its dodge chance and ranged damage bonus, or you can mix-and-match pieces of that set with the Tassel Set, which also provides some great ranged damage bonuses, and drops from breakable Desert Flowers of all sizes.

Some great weapon choices for the battle include:

• Galaxite Chakram
• Throwing Knife
• Galaxite Bow
• Bubble Gun
• Bomb Scarab Mortar

Accessories that give bonus armor help mitigate damage on any class that doesn’t naturally have armor stats on its equipment if you don’t mind doing less damage.

As far as accessories, ones that provide a boost to your Critical Hit Rate, Dodge Chance, Range Attack Speed, or Physical Range Damage are the best to wear, and a few of these include the Mold Vein Necklace, Octarine Shield, Gold Crystal Ring, or Ivy’s Ring ​​​​​if you’ve defeated Ivy the Poisonous Mass.

Recommendations For Magic Damage Characters

For a Mage or someone who prefers spell-based combat, the best set at this point in the game is the Sorcerer’s Armor, dropped by Caveling Scholars in any Forlorn Metropolis in the Sunken Sea. It provides great magic damage and barrier, but if you also want to do some ranged damage, you can also use the two Scholar’s Armor pieces with it, which drop from the same enemies.

Some great weapon choices include:

• Scholar’s Staff
• Zealot’s Scimitar
• Sun Caller
• Sticky Staff

The Rift Lens is one of the best accessories if you use Magic Damage, and its teleport function is fantastic for dodging attacks as an Off-Hand.

The Jewelry Workbench and Proficient Jewelry Workbench craft several accessories that help out every class, but especially Mages or Summoners.

For rings and necklaces, you have plenty of options for both damage or more magic barrier: the Gold Crystal Necklace, Bubble Pearl Necklace, or the Glow Tulip Ring.

Recommendations For Summon Damage Characters

For a Summoner or someone who uses summons, you can use either the Corrupt Warden Set, dropped by any breakable Flower in Azeos’ Wilderness, or the Grim Set, which is found by breaking Charred Crates in a Molten Quarry sub-biome in the Desert of Beginnings. Both of them have similar stats, though the Grim Set is slightly better, and gives your minions plenty of damage.

The best summons for this fight include:

• Tome of Ashes
• Tome of the Dead
• Tome of Sprouts

And as secondary weapons, you could use:

• Galaxite Chakram
• Scholar’s Staff
• Sun Caller
• Galaxite Bow

The Wild Warden set is also viable and provides some armor on top of everything else, but each piece is found in a specific location, so it can take much longer to get a full set of it.

With accessories, the ones that boost your Max Minion Count or your Minion Damage are the best, as well as Minion Lifespan. The Puppet Ring is one of the best no matter what stage of the game you’re in, and you can farm it from Caveling Mummy enemies.

The Hourglass Ring works great for having long-living Minions, and the Vicious Ring and Gold Crystal Necklace or Polished Gold Crystal Necklace also work if you happen to find or craft them at a Jewelry Workbench, alongside the Shaman Ring if you don’t mind less health.

How To Find Ra-Akar’s Arena

Ra-Akar is always found in a special arena scene that’s located in the Desert of Beginnings and always has a Waypoint near the entrance of one side of the area.

Its arena is always located 600 Tiles from The Core, but this still leaves a lot of ground to explore, so the easiest way to find it is to use the Ra-Akar, the Sand Titan Scanner.

This consumable item will automatically locate the boss’ location, and it can be crafted at the Ancient Hologram Pod, which itself is crafted at Malugaz’s Statue.

When you’ve located the arena, make your way over on foot or using a Go-Kart, and then make sure you find the Waypoint before going to the arena, in case you do end up dying, so you can get to your Tombstone quickly.

How To Summon Ra-Akar

Regardless of whether you find Ra-Akar via exploring or using the Scanner, you’ll still need the special Thumper item to summon it to the arena, and it’s also crafted at an Ancient Hologram Pod, but needs more materials than the Scanner. To use it, all you need to do is set it down in Ra-Akar’s arena, and it will summon Ra-Akar after a few seconds.

How To Beat Ra-Akar

Ra-Akar has around 160,000 Health and an Enraged Mode once they reach 50 percent health like most other bosses. They have six different attacks they’ll cycle through as the battle goes on, with the most deadly being the swarm of Bomb Scarabs they summon and the player-seeking projectiles:

• Dives into the sand and burrows around, dealing damage on contact and knocking you back.
• Pauses and shoots six Ancient Projectiles that follow you and deal high damage.
• Causes exploding sand circles to appear in diagonal lines across the arena that explode and do damage.
• Causes exploding sand circles to appear either clockwise or counter-clockwise around the arena.
• Causes exploding sand circles to appear directly underneath you a few times in a row.
• Summons five to six Bomb Scarabs around that arena that will chase you down and ram you like normal ones.

The most common attack Ra-Akar will tend to use is the six tracking projectiles, and they’re also the most dangerous, as even in Galaxite armor, three or four of them hitting you can put you at half health.

Use an Off-Hand like the Rift Lens to dodge them at the last second before running in to do damage. If you don’t have an Off-Hand that gives you a dodge like the Rift Lens or the Swift Feather, you can outrun the Ancient Projectiles by constantly moving in a circle, or you can use a shield-type Off-Hand to block the attacks for reduced damage.

You can also place a few pillars scattered around the arena to hide behind, as the projectiles will break on contact with them or another wall.

Watch for the sand circles and stand in between the gaps to avoid taking damage from them while using ranged or magic weapons from afar, or if you’re doing melee, you can move through the gaps and reach Ra-Akar to do damage to them.

Ra-Akar tends to stand still, giving you plenty of opportunities to do damage, and the only time it won’t be safe to approach is when it’s doing its burrowing attack, so move back and wait at the edges of the arena for it to stop, then go back in for damage.

If the Bomb Scarabs get summoned, focus on them and make sure to take them out at range with a weapon like the Galaxite Bow or Scholar Staff, so you can avoid their explosion.

No matter your class, the Galaxite Chakram is an amazing weapon for the fight, as it will bounce off the walls of the arena, and you can almost constantly attack Ra-Akar from every angle.

At half health, Ra-Akar will get Enraged and its general speed and frequency of attacks will increase. Keep up the same strategy as before.

Once it’s dead, you’ll get a Titan Chest full of several loot items, such as the Scarab set and Galaxite Bars, the important Giant Bug Brain item, and you’ll gain Ra-Akar’s Soul, which gives your melee and ranged hits a five percent chance of spawning an Ancient Projectile, like what the boss used.