Walking, driving, building, and deliveries make up the bulk of Death Stranding 2: On The Beach's runtime. The vast majority of combat encounters can bওe avoided too, if you prefer to be less than non-lethal, but non-confrontational at all. But there are some scenarios where, unfortunately, violence 🔥is the only answer.

These scenarios encompass Death Stranding 2's boss fights, with the second one you encounter being the Mech Octopus after a surprise return of Higgs. Right from the dead, somehow! The Mecha⛦ Octopu🐓s is quite unlike any other enemy you have fought so far, so you'll have to rely on skills other than brute force this time around.

When Do You Encounter The Mecha Octopus Boss Fight?

The Mecha Octopus is fought in Australia, right before you arrive to the West Fort Knot (F1) Distribution Center. You will be informed before you arrive that there is something going on there, you're just not sure what. You have to pick up the Main Order for this event to begin. The Main Order in question is Number 12: Investigate The Unsual Tar Currents Near F1.

This Main Order is picked up at The Musician's shelter. Seeing as this is way up in the mountains, it can be a bit inconvenient to leave it for later. It is a long journey to West Fort Knot (F1) from here though, and there is no cargo that needs delivering. So if you prefer, you can pick up this order now, and just head to West Fort Knot (F1) when you are ready, rath💞er than returning to the Musician's shelter to pick it up later.

However, the boss fight will begin as soon as you enter the tar-covered area of West Fort Knot (F1), and there are no other areas nearby for fabrication. As such, make su🌺re you've crafted everything you need before coming here, and try not to bring any excess cargo you don't need, or don't want damaged.

If you want however, you could build a Postbox outside to store your items in if there's too many you don't want to lose.

Recommended Gear To Bring

The Mecha Octopus is a new type of enemy, one you most likely won't have encountered yet at all. It is a mech enemy, which would probably make all those anti-mech stats on weapons finally make sense. Being a mech enemy, Blood Grenades and the like are functionally useless here, not🅷 even working as a pseudo-꧅smokescreen like it can be used on humans.

As such, you'll want to bring an MP Assault Rifle and MP Shotgun. These will deal great damage, seeing as tranqꦐuilizer rounds an♐d rubber bullets are fairly ineffectual. The Grenade Pistol can also be useful if you have it unlocked, though with how precise you need to be with some of your attacks here, it can sometimes not be worth the hassle.

You should have gotten an MP Shotgun after completing the last Main Order for the Musician.

As with other boss encounters, it is incredibly helpful to bring along all the Blood Bags you can carry since they don't weigh much, and as such, will keep Sam light and agile. In your dedicated Grenade Pouch, bring along all MP Grenades. They don't deal a massive amount of damage, but they're still better to have over Blood Grenades in this insta𝕴nce.

A final weapon that can be helpful here is the Custom Electric Rod. While its melee capabilities will be of no use in this fight, its thrown ones will be. It deals very high damage in general, but this goes doubly so for mechs. While it might still be hard to get a precise shot on the Mecha🧸 Octopus' weakpoints, any weapon should still deal incredibly high damage.

The Maser Handgun also has good anti-mech damage, though its relatively short-range and slow charge time make it unsuitable in this particular battle.

Anything else you have, make sure to store it away in advan♏ce so it doesn't get damaged, and so Sam rem꧒ains nimble.

How To Defeat The Mecha Octopus

Moveset

The Mecha Octopus is a dangerous enemy, one that can slide across the battlefield with ease but also tower over you at a 𓂃moment's notice and make the camera the real boss battle. Positioꦰning is what will help you succeed here, especially with how easily Mecha Octopus moves around with its attacks.

• Triple Tentacle Slam - Mecha Octopus will lift three tentacles into the air and then slam them down after a few seconds. This can be done with the left and right tentacles.
• Body Slam - This can occur in two ways. When Mecha Octopus is standing up with its tentacles, it will perform a grand slam. While already down on its tentacles, it can perform another slam with the large section by the back of its body. It typically does both in a row.
• Triple Tentacle Stomp - When Sam is directly to the left or right of Mecha Octopus, it will rear up its tentacles and perform a quick stomp.
• Wide Tentacle Swipe - While Sam is at a distance, Mecha Octopus will reel back a single tentacle before unleashing it in a wide arc in front of itself.
• Lunge - Mecha Octopus will quickly dive in Sam's direction with some of its tentacles pointed towards you.
• Backward Swipes - While Sam is directly behind Mecha Octopus, it may start walking backwards, continually swiping with each of its tentacles for a series of attacks over a long period.
• Charged Corkscrew - Mecha Octopus' most powerful attack, it will quickly slide away from Sam before charging up, diving in your direction, and then quickly following up with a corkscrew attack where it twists its tentacles into a spear formation.

Mecha Octopus is a much more active battle than the Giant BT boss before this. While you don't have to worry about the debris quite as much, they also move around much more, making it somewhat hard to keep your weapon trained on a specific weakpoint. Just keep on the move, and focus on spec🅘ific parts of its body at a time.

Sadly, while it may be obvious once you have destroyed certain weakpoints, it will never lose access to any of its moves. As such, Mecha Octo🌱pus is always as deadly right by the end a🌳s they are when the fight first begins.

Strengths And Weaknesses

Being a mech enemy, the typical strategies won't work quite the same as they have thus far. While Mecha Octopus will still take damage from most means, certain tools, such as Blood and EX Grenades, lose their effectiveness. This means you must rely almost exclusively on MP weapons, such as the Assault Rifle and Shotgun.

There is a Lightweight (LW) version of the Shotgun. This has more limited functions and is much less powerful than the regular MP version. Avoid this one at all costs if you want to deal high damage.

However, the most obvious weakpoints on Mecha Octopus should be literally glaring. On the joints of each tentacle, there will be a glowing orange spot that can be destroyed for massive damage. There is another glowing weakpoint in its eye, two more on the underside of its back, and a final one in the joint connecting the back to the hea♓d. This final one is much harder to hit.

You can damage Mecha Octopus by hitting it anywhere, but it will take a negligible amount of health unless you aim for the weakpoints. The MP Assault Rifle is great for when Mecha Octopus is at a distance, though you'll want to rely on the MP Shotgun for the most part otherwise. The boss tends to stay down low for most of the fight, making it easy to get up close and ཧblast the weakpoints on its tentacles.

Once the tentacle weakpoints are destroyed, you can swap back to an MP Assault Rifle to take out the eye and the two weakpoints on its back. You should easi🅺ly have it defeated by the time every weakpoint is destroyed.