Microcore

Microcore is a reward boss that can be found lying dormant in shortcuts, and can generate on any floor. The room Microcore is found in is littered with messy architecture, breakable blocks and the debris of other machines. Once found, one does not have to fight Microcore, and can leave without consequence, and can return later in the floor whenever they like. Microcore is unique in that its attacks scale in difficulty the later in the run you find them, and according to a number of other factors.

Microcore can only be fought once per run.

Attack Patterns
When Microcore is activated, a timer will start at the top of the arena, and the player can shoot Microcore not to decrease the timer, but to increase another meter in order to gain more rewards at the end of the fight, to a certain maximum, at which point the player can stop shooting. When the player is hit, this meter is lowered by a significant amount. Each time the player fights Microcore, they will have to endure 4 attacks of equal length, chosen randomly from a larger pool of attacks. Each time you fight Microcore, all 4 attacks are guaranteed to be unique from each other.

The difficulty of Microcore's attacks are determined by a value that is dependent on a number of factors, those factors being: The difficulty Microcore is fought in, the floor Microcore is encountered at, and which number attack in the battle a pattern is placed in. On normal mode, strength starts at 1 in Excavation, and in hard mode, at 3. Each subsequent floor raises the strength of all attacks in the fight by 1. Each subsequent attack in the battle with Microcore raises the difficulty of the attacks by 1, to a max of +3 on the fourth attack.

Note that in Nowhere, the strength value starts at 8 instead of the likely assumed value of 7, since there is a floor between Unknown and Nowhere where the conduit to Power Eternal would normally be.

As the player activates Microcore, they will clear the room of terrain, and the background will shift to one where multiple grids overlap and move at different rates, which change direction and speed as Microcore moves. Microcore travels to the top of the arena, after a short moment, begins attacking.

Other than the base strength increase, there are no changes to the Microcore's attacks in hard mode. Microcore is unaffected by looping. Microcore does not deal contact damage.

Loot
The red meter above the attack timer represents how much loot you will recieve at the end of the fight, and is divided into 8 sections when maxed out. You can raise this meter by dealing damage to Microcore. You may only deal damage to Microcore when they are attacking (beginning when their eye is 100% open), meaning during their intro and destruction sequences, they are invulnerable. This meter does not tick down over time, meaning if you max it out, you may stop shooting. However, this meter does tick down by a significant amount when you are hit during the fight.

Each division of the meter represents another item that you will receive at the end of the fight. The higher your meter, the more likely you are to receive higher quality items, like higher tier health/ammo/bomb/scrap drops, damage ups, cartridges, weapons/antiques, maps, shields, and keyword stones.