Dragonfly

"That's one fly dragon!"

- Wilson

The Dragonfly is a giant from the Reign of Giants DLC. It appears in Summer and is attracted by Birchnuts. One of its abilities is to spit lava, which it will spit on various objects while it is in its calm state in order to produce Ash, which it eats. Once the Dragonfly has consumed 20 ashes it will fall asleep. If attacked or if the player stays too close for too long, it enters an "enraged mode", where it will light everything in its path on fire. During rain, this mode doesn't last as long, and if frozen, the Dragonfly will immediately return to its calm state.

Attack Pattern
In close range, the Dragonfly will do a large area of effect attack after squeaking. If the player wants to hit it without getting hit, there is a 2-hit space between its attacks. After being left alone for a while, the Dragonfly will calm down and revert to its green form. When attacked in the green form, it can chain the swipe and fire ring attacks together in a short span. Attacking with any ranged attack seems to provoke it into using its area attack, making it easier to get away. However, its swipe attack is very hard to dodge due to its movement.

Strategy
The dragonfly will stay neutral to you as long as you don't attack it. Once you do, it will move at most characters' base movement speed, making escaping almost impossible. When it gets in range of the player while enraged, it does a swipe attack while moving towards you (making it very hard to dodge, if at all). After attacking the Dragonfly, or allowing it to attack, it slams on the ground three times, creating three successive rings of fire. This attack usually sets the player and other items on fire, causing large amounts of damage. It's recommended to defeat the Dragonfly as soon as possible, so using a Tentacle Spike or Dark Sword is recommended over a Spear. Along with this, it's recommended that the player has two sets of 100% Football Helmets and Log Suits to take some of the damage burden off, as the three hit fire ring attack can deal enough damage to instantly kill some player characters. Once you start attacking the Dragonfly in a certain rhythm (allowing at most two strikes from the player), you can cause it to only attack using the fire slam, allowing for the attacks to be dodged more easily. Due to the Dragonfly's fiery nature, it is wise to fight it while holding a very cold Thermal Stone to avoid overheating.

One of the easiest ways to deal with any boss in Don't Starve is a Sleep Dart/Pan Flute and Old Bell/14 Gunpowder combination. Not only does the 14 Gunpowder instantly bring the Dragonfly down, but since it is immune to fire damage, it will not destroy its loot.

28 Blow Darts can make short work of the Dragonfly. Using either a Blow Dart attack or Ice Staff will coax it into stomping giving you time to get away after swinging at it with melee weapons.

The Old Bell can be used twice to weaken it, leaving it with 750 health points. Treeguards or any type of monster with large amounts of health seem to be able to fight the Dragonfly and deal noticeable damage.

Refrain from luring it to areas with Beefalo or Pigs, as tempting as it may be, as it will simply kill them all in 1-2 attacks.

If you start in Spring or even Summer and don´t have to resources for the aforementioned strategies, try to bring it to a swamp by either going to a swamp when you hear its growl or by luring it there. Use the hostile tentacles and/or the Merm there. Ideally, you want to put down some ash close to tentacles, this will make him come there. Every time it kills any hostile monster, it will be reset to a calm state. Rinse and repeat the process until it simply drops dead.

Below is the number of hits it takes with each weapon to kill the Dragonfly when playing with characters with a default damage modifier. The Weather Pain is not included due to the random nature of its projectile.

Trivia

 * It is attracted by Birchnuts but, instead of eating it, it will spit lava at it. This is possibly a reference to how flies spit out their digestive juices onto their food before sucking them up.
 * The name Dragonfly is a portmanteau of the words "dragon" and "fly" and even a tongue-in-cheek portmanteau of the words "dragon" and "dragonfly".

Gallery
Драконья Муха