Ghorm the Devourer is a giant larva that serves as one of Core Keeper’s three primary bosses. He stands as a true test of the player’s understanding of the survival gameplay loop and their ability to build upon its mechanics.
Tracking Ghorm: Going the distance
Ghorm is forever running clockwise laps in a wide circle around the map, with its core at the circle’s radius. As players travel further from the core, they will eventually come across the wide racetrack of stirred dirt and orange slime that he has carved from hours upon hours of nonstop racing.
Ghorm will continue on this track, whether or not the player tries to interfere, until he is killed. His constant movement at high speed, when paired with his tendency to regenerate lost health when out of the player’s range, poses the greatest difficulty to his slaying.
Preparation: The inside track
Upon finding Ghorm’s track, players should organize their battlefield. Excavating the clay and sand walls lining the inside of his tunnel is a must, as anyone caught in his direct path — player and monster alike — will suffer overwhelming damage while they get mercilessly run over. Additionally, favoring his path’s inside track will allow players to get the angle on the go-fast-turn-righting bug, helping to keep pace as Ghorm races by.
No matter the method a player follows to conduct the fight against Ghorm, bringing a means of speeding oneself up would make the race much more manageable. Players who have fully adopted the game’s farming system are likely to have cultivated enough Bomb Peppers and Glow Tulips to cook Spicy Tulip Salad, which considerably boosts movement speed.
Execution: A two-way photo finish
Two major methods allow players to fatally trip Ghorm up. While their effectiveness and difficulty may vary, their viability is entirely dependent on the player’s resources, with cost-effectiveness likely playing a role in the player’s decision-making between them.
Method one: A pit stop and some elbow grease
Those lacking tact in their approach to fighting Ghorm can still manage a traditional fight with him. Provided that they have carved themselves a lengthy-enough inside track and wait to hear Ghorm’s incoming rumble before eating their Spicy Tulip Salad, the manual fight becomes much more manageable by using one particular unlock — the Slime Sword.
After previously slaying Glurch the Abominous Mass, players will have unlocked the ability to craft the Slime Sword at the core, requiring eight Tin Bars, eight Copper Bars, and 15 Slime. While the damage on this sword is moderate, narrowly outperforming that of the Tin Sword, the Slime Sword features a passive effect that greatly slows down targets on hit.
The speed boost of the Spicy Tulip Salad and the passive effect of the Slime Sword, in tandem, turn the fight against Ghorm into a battle of strafing and slashing — that is, until Ghorm reaches half-health, entering his second phase.
Ghorm will stop running laps, instead focusing his attention on the player, charging through them to deal damage, and destroying any walls or structures he encounters along the way. As the destruction caused by this phase can be chaotic, it’s best to engage in Ghorm’s boss fight as far away from camp as possible to mitigate important damage.
Method two: Spike Trap spike strip
Spike Traps can be manufactured by players at the cost of one tin bar each, provided that the player has constructed a Tin Workbench. Given that Ghorm can manage a full lap of his track in nearly five minutes, players have around that time to lay out an array of sixty Spike Traps across his raceway.
As Ghorm is powerful enough to destroy any blocks or objects in his path, these Spike Traps will all be destroyed in the process. However, all sixty Spike Traps will deal enough collective damage to instantly kill Ghorm from full health, skipping his calamitous second phase.
As the loss of sixty Tin Bars can be tough for early-game have-nots to swallow, this method is best reserved for the more established players that can tank resource sinks of this magnitude.
