TL;DR: The Three-Move Plan
You do not out-damage Dybbuk. It backflips away from nearly every direct hit, and on the killing blow it possesses one of your cats instead of dying. The fight is solved by three moves:
- Stack damage-over-time. Bleed, poison, and burn cannot be dodged. They tick every turn no matter where Dybbuk hops.
- Corner it with bodies. Backflip needs an empty adjacent tile. Surround Dybbuk with cats, summons, and obstacles so it has nowhere to go, then unload.
- Choose your killing-blow cat. Whoever lands the fatal hit gets possessed. Pick a weak, low-movement cat for that hit so the possessed body falls in a single turn.
Get those three right and Dybbuk goes from a wall to a formality.
Why Dybbuk Is Hard
Dybbuk is the final boss of the Boneyard route in Act 1, Chapter 3. It is a 1x1 Cat and Ghost with 85 base HP (102 on Hard, 118 on Crazy, 136 on Impossible), 5 damage, and a movement range of 3. Those numbers are not the problem. The problem is Backflip.
Every time a source of damage targets Dybbuk, it backflips one tile in any direction, as long as an adjacent tile is open. Backflip has infinite charges. There is no cooldown to wait out and no resource to drain. Swing a sword, throw a bottle, fire a single-target spell, and Dybbuk is simply not there when it lands. Players who try to brute-force the HP bar watch every attack whiff and burn through their action economy for nothing.
The dodge breaks under two conditions, and both are in your control. Dybbuk cannot backflip when every adjacent tile is occupied by units, obstacles, or summons. It also cannot backflip while Immobile or Entangled. If you are still learning how those states stick and stack, our status effects guide breaks down every one that matters here.
The Damage That Ignores the Dodge
Backflip only reacts to incoming attacks. It does nothing against damage that is already inside Dybbuk or applied to the tile around it. That is your opening.
Undodgeable damage includes Bleed, Poison, Burn, Leeches, Thorns, Bleed Thorns, every other damage-over-time effect, counterattacks, indirect damage from thrown units and summoned animals, and Electric attacks on Water tiles. Bleed is the cleanest answer. Once it is on, Dybbuk bleeds whether it flips or stands still, and the stacks build by one per turn and persist for the rest of the fight. A few early bleed stacks compound into a kill while you spend your turns on positioning instead of chasing a dodging cat.
Trinkets do the heavy lifting here. Barbed Paw, Bloody Knife, and Cursed Hairball all apply stacking bleed or poison. Equip the bleed enablers before the fight and let chip damage carry the bar down.
Cornering and Crowding
The faster you remove Dybbuk's escape tiles, the faster your direct attacks start connecting too. Two approaches stack well.
Back it to a wall, then fill the rest of the tiles around it with your team. With every adjacent square taken, Backflip has no legal move and Dybbuk eats whatever you throw next.
Flood the arena with bodies. The item:hunter, item:necromancer, and item:druid all crowd the stage with summons, and indirect summon damage lands far more reliably than your cats' direct swings. The Hunter is the standout pick for this fight. Bramble Shot spreads brambles across the floor and damages Dybbuk every time it hops onto one, punishing the dodge itself. Bear Trap and web traps pin it in place, shutting Backflip off entirely. Wide-area attacks like Bramble Shot and Fire Blast also catch Dybbuk mid-backflip, since they hit the destination tile rather than a single target.
Build: 57e95092Anything that applies Immobile or Entangle ends the dodge on the spot. And because Dybbuk is Ghost-typed, Holy element abilities hit it harder than usual. A Holy attack into a cornered, bleeding Dybbuk is the cleanest combo in the fight.
The Possession Trap
This is where most first runs fall apart. Dybbuk does not die at 0 HP. On the killing blow it drops to 1 HP and possesses the cat that dealt the fatal hit. That cat turns hostile, attacks your team with its own skills, and runs a suicidal AI that throws itself at danger. You then have to down the possessed cat to exorcise Dybbuk. Only after Dybbuk leaves the body does it become killable normally, and it gets two actions per turn once it exits.
There is one wrinkle worth knowing: if a downed cat is already on the field, Dybbuk possesses that body instead of your killer. Use it. Deliberately down a weak cat first, then land the killing blow, and Dybbuk takes over the already-downed body rather than your best unit.
When you cannot pre-down a cat, control who lands the hit. A item:cleric, or any low-HP, low-movement unit, makes the perfect executioner. The possessed body inherits that cat's frailty, so you exorcise Dybbuk in a single follow-up turn. Before the kill, strip auto-attack and auto-retaliate gear from your other cats so a stray counterattack does not steal the killing blow and possess the wrong unit.
You can also skip the trap entirely. Necromancer Reap and Black Shard vaporize Dybbuk outright, and the Doomed status stops possession from ever triggering. If you have any of those, the fight collapses into a clean execution with no second phase.
Watch the Arena
The Boneyard stage fights back. RIP gravestones can spawn Spookies, 9-HP ghosts that eat your cats' mana and shut off passive abilities. Kill Spookies first, since they fall fast, and be careful about which gravestones you destroy. Dybbuk also casts Summon Wisps, spawning two Wisps that apply Burn on melee. The Wisps are weak, which makes them useful: a downed Wisp on the field is a free low-HP possession target to resolve the second phase quickly. Dybbuk's Lick drains mana from adjacent units, so keep your casters out of melee range when you can.
The Payoff
Clearing Dybbuk pays well. Its rare drops are Coffin Armor (+3 Shield, +1 Holy Shield, +1 Thorns) and Dybbuk's Rib (Charm a random enemy at the start of battle). Every cat that survives the fight also earns a class-specific passive: Hunters get Thrill of the Hunt, Necromancers get Servus Mortem, Clerics get Evil Patron, Druids get Suicide Squad, Fighters get Dual Wield, Tanks get Bouncer, Mages get Three, Thieves get First Strike, Tinkerers get Armor Specialist, Butchers get Indigestion, Psychics get Gravity Well, Monks get Unstoppable, Jesters get Super Luck or Goofball, and Collarless cats get Skill Share.
Bring a Hunter for the traps, load your team with bleed trinkets, keep one weak cat ready for the killing blow, and the final boss of the Boneyard stops being a wall. For a deeper read on which collar carries each fight, see our class tier list and best starter classes breakdown.