DESERT TITAN

Behavior

The Desert Titan, a.k.a the Sky titan, is an aggressive creature. It has small but powerful minions called the flock, that follow it and attack to protect the Desert Titan. The Desert Titan can also summon lightning strikes from the sky.

General

The Desert Titan is a large hovering creature that has its own minions, the Desert Titan Flock. The Desert Titan's primary attack is to strike the ground with the lightning bolts that it generates. The battle begins when the Titan summons its Desert Titan Flock and marks a player with its lightning bolts.

Dangers

The lightning attack starts with marking targets, targeted players or creatures will be given a Marked for Lightning status effect. After this status effect expires (4.5s), the area around the player or creature is lit up with lightning, which doesn't do damage immediately, but indicates the area will be struck by lightning within a few seconds.

The lightning attack can deal tremendous damage, enough to one-shot even heavily armored players (one lightning bolt was enough to kill a character with almost 3250 armor and 500 health (tested on Singleplayer)), but is avoidable due to the long charge-up period. If you hear a noise that sounds like a crackling fire, it means you're too close!

The flocks act as a close range guardian for the desert titan, attacking players and mounts that get too close to the desert titan, a message will appear when you are targeted by a flock, the flock can also deal heavy damage and is more than capable of killing under armored players in 1-2 strikes. As of update v287.110, Flocks will also dismount players hit.To take down the flock, shoot them with a high-tier fabricated weapon or Tek Rifle while they are flying away from you. Shooting at their sides or heads will yield no damage and if they've targeted you, it would be much easier to shoot them from behind. If flocks are killed the Desert Titan will respawn them, but while they are down this leaves the Desert Titan a bit more vulnerable.

These attacks are focused on players and creatures that manage to board the desert titan's back. You can predict this attack by keeping a careful eye on the Titan's tail, which will begin to lift when it's about to perform a Tail Slap. It will not use this attack initially but once it suffers some damage or when one of its corruption nodes is destroyed, it becomes a common attack if you are above it.

Weaknesses

The Desert Titan, other than its constant swing and tail strike, is at its weakest when attacking close by; it has several blind spots that it can't defend against without the flocks. Be mindful of the flocks and lightning it gives and this weakness can be exploited.

The loot will sometimes appear in a dropped item cache, even if your tames don't destroy the body. You only have 3 minutes before this cache expires, so clear the area and find it quickly. For this reason it's best to try and arrange your battles for the daytime.