How to beat Mama Tick in Dead Cells’ The Bad Seed

New areas in Dead Cells means the chance to encounter reinvented enemies you need to tackle. However, it also means the introduction of new bosses. Mama Tick is a boss you face in The Bad Seed DLC for Dead Cells. You encounter her at the end of the new DLC, which you can access once you have the Dilapidated Arboretum key.

Fighting Mama Tick is not an easy task. You fight her in the Nest area of The Bad Seed DLC. The battle starts off with seeing these large, purple vines shooting out from the water with a small eye pointed at you. Rush toward the eye and start damaging it. When you do, exclamation points will start to shoot out from the ground a large, jagged arm sticks out of the water, and it belongs to Mama Tick. You want to avoid the exclamation points, while also damaging the eye as much as you can. After enough damage, the eye will go return to the water.

There’s a point where you have to dodge the arms that shoot up from the water while the eye hides, and your only warning is the exclamation points. You can dodge these, or if your timing is spot on and you have a shield, you can parry them. When you do about a quarter of damage to Mama Tick, she fully emerges from the water showing you her many eyes.

Mama Tick has two long, jagged arms in front of her when she’s off to one side of the screen. You want to attack her main body, but avoid these legs when they reach out to attack. You should see the underside of the jagged blades lighting orange before they strike, giving you time to parry or dodge. She has a basic attack that reaches out you can dodge, but also one that shoots out below you, just above the water. There’s a white stream above the water’s surface just before she sends them out. She sends out only one of her arms at first, but steadily escalates to doing two, and then three attacks. Another attack you need to watch out for is when she raises both of her arms while they glow orange and she starts shooting them down in front of her. You can’t dodge this, and instead, need to go to the opposite side of where she is to protect yourself.

Eventually, Mama Tick will return to the water and her arms return to either side of the screen to trap you. You have to dodge her arms again, using the exclamation points to indicate when you need to dodge or parry.

When you defeat Mama Tick, she explodes with plenty of loot for you to grab. When you beat her for the first time she should drop a two-handed Scythe blueprint. When you return to beat her on harder difficulties, she should drop Giant Tick outfits for you.