Mothula

Mothula
Location	Skull Woods
Arrghus	Blind

Tiny Moth Dik

Elements of the fight

Mothula has 4 main AI routines:

The first 2 routines are used for the start of the fight. From there on, the routines alternate between flapping and shooting.

Spike blocks are spawned with a routine that's outside of Mothula's main AI.

Check vulnerability for a value greater than 0
Mothula recovers from recoil early, but there is a 1/128 frame rule chance for that early recovery to be delayed.
Mothula's invulnerability lasts 32 frames. When taking a hit, she will switch to flap around mode and the beam countdown will be set to 64 frames. Taking a hit does not change Mothula's movement cycle

Check the beam timer. If it's time to shoot, set the main do stuff timer to 63 and jump to the shoot routine
Flap wings
Increase or decrease altitude, as determined
There is a repeated cycle of movements with a period of 8:
For 7 movements: move in random direction for between 31 and 95 frames

For the 8th movement, move towards Link

For any movement, if Mothula hits a wall, the movement timer immediately ends

Wait around for the movement timer (which should be 63 frames from flapping around)
Shoot
Set the AI routine back to flapping and choose a random number between 64 and 95 for the new beam timer.

Spikes attempt to spawn from a random position every 64 frames. Spawns will fail if there is no spike tile on the chosen point or if there are too many sprites.

The conveyors move in random directions. There is no way to manipulate the direction or for how long it will move before it switches to a new one.

Josh's Mothula Tutorial is excellent. You should watch it.

You can start the fight by hitting Mothula twice every time. This can be done by either dashing into the block on top of the screen right as she's getting vulnerable, or by doing a prolonged Pokedash.
Since Link lands in the same place every time, and the conveyors can only go in one of four different directions, it's possible to find visual and movement cues to get the double hit no matter what. This takes a lot of practice.
You can hit her into a block tile to damage her.
As long as the conveyors aren't going downwards, you can usually get off a Pokedash when she's camping near the spikes at the top. This is a fairly advanced strategy to go for and requires a lot of practice.
When Mothula is in the middle on the left or right side, try to get below her and slash her upwards. If you slash her from a diagonal in this situation, she might bounce into the spikes, but being below her in the middle should work.
The best way to deal with the moving spikes is to practice the double hit, and pokedash.. The faster you kill her, the less of a problem they will be.
There is a lot of pattern recognition to this fight. You will have to do the fight hundreds of times in practice to get a feel for what works and what doesn't work. Good luck!

Individual Mothula Pattern Tutorials by Xelna