Mega Man X3/Blast Hornet

Blast Hornet is hiding in some warehouses and distributing the rest of the Mavericks with plenty of Head Gunner customers. Defeating him will downgrade all Head Gunner customers in the Maverick stages to Head Gunner masspros which are a fair bit less dangerous.

Weapons Factory
The first room has a couple of Notor Bangers you can take out easily. At the end of the room is an elevator that goes up, and a Head Gunner customer. If you're quick, a charge shot and a couple quick uncharged shots. If you're not quick enough it'll shoot a missile angled towards your position though you can shoot it to destroy it.

As you ride up the elevator you'll see two more Head Gunner masspros waiting for you. Carefully time a jump between the missile shots to kill one of them and stand on its platform for a short bit. Once you are above them they lob a different weapon like the Notor Bangers towards you and if you just stand on the elevator you're sure to get hit. You can take this time to kill the other one and hop back on the elevator before it gets too high, or just wait on the wall until its new weapon will not longer be able hit you to get back on. At the top of the elevator is a clear passageway with a large gap at the end.

This gap isn't a bottomless pit and is safe to fall straight down. You'll end up on a conveyor belt with a Notor Banger. Continue to head down two more gaps to lower conveyor belts, but be careful heading down from the third one. Hug the left side and you'll end up on a platform with a large energy refill next to a pit you would have fallen down if you just fell straight down. Wall jump up the opposite side to continue.

You'll have another Notor Banger that may seem hard to hit, but if you use a charge shot you'll actually hit them from the platform before them even though it fires above them. At the end of this room is a shutter to the mini-boss.

Mini-Boss: Shurikein

 * HP: 18
 * Attack: 3 damage on contact
 * Weaknesses: Acid Burst: 3 damage, 5 when charged, Cross-Charge: 3 damage, Charged Shot: 2 damage, Thunder Triad: 2 damage when charged

A robot called a Genjibo will come in and create a wireframe enemy called a Shurikein and fly away. The Shurikein has a couple of ways of attacking you. It usually starts by doing a slow spin in place, then rolling back and forth on the ground and jumping when hit by a weapon. You can either hide on the top of a wall while this attack is going on to avoid any damage, or you can time your shots so that it jumps over you, hits the wall, and reverses without ever touching you.

Its next attack is usually to start spinning in place very fast, start moving towards you on the ground, then loop around the edges of the room by climbing the floor and ceiling. You can again climb the wall and jump over it on the ground to avoid damage. You should be able to get a lot of shots on it as it comes back to its starting spot.

Another attack it has begins by it spinning on one of its points. It will then continuously jump back and forth. Once again you'll be safe hugging the top of a wall during this, but if you're fast enough you should fall off the wall, shoot at it a couple times, then climb back up the wall after avoiding it.

The best time to hit it is while it is transitioning between these attacks. A charged shot is not really worth using unless you charge it while avoiding an attack because the Shurikein doesn't have a long invulnerability timer after being hit. You can get in several uncharged shots in the time it would take to charge a shot.

Shipping and Handling
Leaving the Shurikein's room, you'll end up in an outside area with garages. You'll have to climb up the side of one and cross over them from above. As you're climbing up, watch out to your left where there will be a Helit. Avoid its missiles and try to destroy it if you want. Do destroy the Notor Banger in the center of the top of the garage. Between each garage are more Helits, and on the top of each is a Notor Banger for the 3 garages in this area. Once you make it to the end you can head into the last garage and in the back hidden behind the foreground is a large energy refill.

If you've beaten Gravity Beetle you'll be able to head straight to the shutter to the next room. If you haven't though, a Dr. Doppler aircraft will land and Carry Arms will start placing boxes of supplies on it's lowered platform. You should destroy the boxes as quickly as possible. If they place two a Meta Capsule will start appearing and firing at you to protect them. This will continue until you destroy a box after a certain amount of time has elapsed. Since the boxes have a small chance of dropping small health or weapon refills it's best to destroy as many as you can.

Once the airship flies away you can enter the shutter to the room where Bit or Byte might fight you if you're far enough into the game and haven't died in this stage.

Past the second shutter is another drop down onto more conveyor belts with more Notor Bangers. Some of these ones are oriented more towards the center of the room, so you'll likely fall past several of them. When you get to the belt with spikes behind it, hug the wall and get ready to do a dash jump. If you do nothing you'll fall directly in a pit and die.

You'll have a Head Gunner customer in front of you, destroy it quickly, then shortly after you'll see another one to kill. After this one are some stacked boxes. Shoot them to destroy them, then be careful as they start being dropped from the ceiling. Getting hit by a falling one is almost guaranteed to be death. Time your jump over carefully. There will be another Head Gunner customer, afterwards more boxes, this time there's not pit after destroying them, but being crushed by a falling one is still just as deadly. There will be one last Head Gunner customer and stack of boxes, but once you're through you'll be at the final boss shutter for the stage.

Maverick boss: Blast Hornet

 * HP: 32
 * Attack: 8 damage with stinger, 3 damage on contact, 2 damage Bomb Bees
 * Weaknesses: Gravity Well: 4 damage, 6 when charged, Cross-Charge: 3 damage, Charged Shot: 2 damage, Spinning Blade: 2 damage

Phase 1
Blast Hornet will fly down from above, show off it's very dangerous stinger, and then the battle will begin. He should start his most dangerous attack right from the start where he'll reveal his stinger, it will shine at which point he has targeted the position you are standing, and will fly in to attack with the stinger. It is extremely important you never get hit by this attack as it does massive damage and you'll be unlikely to survive his second phase.

Luckily, it is pretty easy to manipulate and avoid. Stand near the center of the stage so that he targets there. Then once you see the shine, dash out of the way. If you're running the same direction he'll be flying you should be able to get out of the way without even dashing. Then turn around and shoot him.

Once he flies back up he'll send out several Bee Bombs aimed towards you. If they latch onto you they can cause damage quickly. You should start charging a shot after hitting him from the last attack unless you have Gravity Well which should work just as well, manipulate Blast Hornet to aim the Bee Bombs towards the wall opposite him, then dash under them as they are being fired, turn around and fire the charged shot or Gravity Well shot to destroy them. It is ideal to be towards the center of the room at this point as Blast Hornet has an erratic flight pattern and is likely to hit you if you're too close.

After flying for a short bit, he'll start the stinger attack again. This cycle continues until you get him to around half health. You'll know you transitioned to phase 2 either once you notice he has been flying for longer than usual without doing the stinger attack, or once you see a red circle start moving around the screen trying to target you.

The Gravity Well weapon can hit him and his Bee Bombs from pretty much anywhere, just keep on firing it and you should be fine.

Phase 2
In this phase Blast Hornet will send a targeting reticle around the screen to target you. He'll also create Bee Bombs around him. Once the reticle has located you, he'll fire the Bee Bombs he's made around himself towards you. If they aren't destroyed, they'll latch onto you and do some damage over time. If a lot of them manage to grab onto you this can be bad. Your best choice is to not avoid the targeting reticle, but to get targeted by it as quickly as possible. That way you have only a couple bees, and possibly even none aimed at you for the cycle.

Without Gravity Well your best bet is to get into a corner against a wall, and just keep jumping and firing semi-charged shots. They won't do extra damage to Blast Hornet, but they will do more to the Bee Bombs surrounding him and destroy them faster, even before being targeted.

With Gravity Well the strategy is still the same.

Once you defeat the boss you'll get the Parasitic Bomb weapon.