How to Beat GOLIATH — Steel City Boss Guide

GOLIATH is the eighth level of Steel City and the last level of Battle Crush. He built the first foundry, he wrote the first conscription order, he has run the war from his tower ever since, and he is the only commander who has never been beaten.

He has the longest health bar in the game by a clear margin and the highest damage output. There is no map after him and no level after him — whatever happens in that fight is the end of the run, one way or the other.

The arena is the tower itself, which is the quietest board in the game after four maps of machinery. It is worth appreciating for a second before you start, because you will not have much attention left over once he opens up.

A long fight rewards consistency over brilliance, and GOLIATH is the longest fight there is. The players who beat him are not the ones who land one spectacular cascade — they are the ones who do not waste a single move across a very long level.

Build your board before you build your damage. The first ten or fifteen moves against GOLIATH should be spent shaping the board: clearing dead weapon types into the corners, forging at least one striped tile, and setting up a line of five. If you spend those moves firing ordinary matches you will not have the board you need when his health bar is half gone and yours is lower than you would like.

Then spend everything at once. A striped tile into a match that triggers an Overload Charge, with Fire Power running, is the single biggest hit the game allows, and it is worth more against GOLIATH than the same three things fired separately across three moves.

Everything, and this time it is not a hedge — it is the expected way to play the final level. Armor Plate first, Repair Kit when you need it, Fire Power held until you have a Charge and a striped tile lined up together.

If you have a Gold Shield, use it. If you do not, the fight is still winnable without it, but you will need to play the early board cleanly enough that you are not relying on soaking damage you could have avoided.

That is the campaign. Your stars are banked per map, so a perfect Steel City is twenty-four stars, and a perfect campaign is a hundred and twenty. Most players finish their first run well short of that, which is the point — the stars are there for the second and third pass, when you know the boards and you are playing for the tidy win rather than the win.

Survival is the other thing waiting for you. It strips the lives and the levels away and leaves you alone with your score, and after forty levels of set-piece fights it is a genuinely different game.