How the DK Puzzle Actually Works in Mario + Rabbids
The Donkey Kong puzzle encounter in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle shows up on Planet Delfino, in the area you reach after crossing the vine platform section. Donkey Kong isn't just a boss you unload damage on. He has a mechanic that most players walk into blind, and it will cost you two or three attempts before it clicks. Donkey Kong has a barrel-throwing attack pattern combined with a shield phase. When his arms cross and he starts glowing yellow, he's about to summon barrels from the edges of the arena. Those barrels spawn on the tiles surrounding your team and move toward whoever is closest. The puzzle isn't about DPS. It's about positioning and using the environment to redirect the barrels back at him. Here is what I found works, based on running this encounter roughly a dozen times across different team builds:
Put your longest-range unit, preferably someone like Mario or Peach, on the tile farthest from DK's spawn point. DK targets the nearest visible unit first, so if your tank is hugging him, he ignores the barrels and charges directly. That leads to a bad outcome quickly. Instead, keep the tanks at mid-range and let the ranged units sit behind them on opposite sides of the map. The key move is using the barrels themselves. When DK summons them, wait one turn before moving. The barrels travel in straight lines along the grid until they hit a wall or a character. If you position a unit so a barrel bounces off a wall and lands on DK's tile, he takes damage and loses a charge of his shield. Do this three times and he enters a stunned state where you can pour on damage for about five turns before he recovers. I ran into a specific issue on my third run where the barrel paths kept intersecting and destroying each other before reaching DK. I had my characters positioned symmetrically, which meant Barrel 1 and Barrel 2 collided in the middle of the arena. The fix was asymmetrical placement. I moved Luigi one tile to the left instead of mirroring Peach's position on the right, and the barrels took different lanes. That single tile shift changed the entire trajectory map.
Another thing people miss is that spinning or dash skills don't help against the barrels. Ranged attack buffs do, but only when DK is stunned. During the barrel phase, stacking attack power is wasted. Instead, stack movement buffs on your units so you can reposition between barrel waves. One turn of movement lets you escape barrel overlap zones before the next wave spawns. Equipment matters less here than positioning. A Defense Up IV on the tank helps, but a Movement Up III on the ranged unit and a Speed Up on whoever is responsible for kite positioning will save you more hits over the full fight. I used to load tanks with full defense gear and still struggle. Swapping that gear to mobility focused setups cut my clear time significantly. The main bottleneck in this encounter is patience during the barrel phase. Players tend to move immediately when a barrel appears, which often puts them in the barrel's path. Wait the full turn, watch where the barrels go, then move out of the way. It adds maybe ten seconds per wave, but it prevents the deaths that force a reload.
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If you are stuck and have tried the positioning approach without success, check whether you have the right weapon range. Some characters have a base range of 2 and cannot hit DK from the back tiles without a range boost. Giving them a Range +1 weapon or ability before the fight removes that variable entirely. There is no single correct formation because the barrel spawn positions vary slightly between runs. But the principle stays the same: keep distance, let the barrels do the work, and only engage when DK is stunned. Anything else is just burning resources.
