So, Dorudugan, how do you defeat him?

[Boeroer]

Maybe, but it also grows!  

[thelee]

7 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Maybe, but it also grows!  

does the space it take up also grow? might be extremely relevant in how effective the dragon is at body-blocking (e.g. against dorudugan's vacuum effect)

[Boeroer]

3 minutes ago, thelee said:

does the space it take up also grow?

It does! 

[Constentin Lévine]

Do you think the scourge from Rymrgand's Incarnate grows too? As a beast of winter copy..

[Kaylon]

15 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

All Dorudugan fire based attacks can be avoided, including Magnetic Overdrive with the right equipment. That's why I'm specifically asking about Cleave because it's not avoidable if one goes melee.

Yes, you can't avoid cleave. But cleave is manageable if you don't have too many stacks and heal fast enough in order to avoid one hit kills. High resolve and the Ring of the Solitary Wanderer are mandatory to reduce its duration. Monks can also use Clarity of Agony. 

PS. Cleave does the best of slash/burn damage, but even if you make it switch to burn, the damage won't be absorbed by Rekvu's cloak. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Kaylon

[Boeroer]

On 11/12/2022 at 12:12 AM, Constentin Lévine said:

Do you think the scourge from Rymrgand's Incarnate grows too? As a beast of winter copy..

I haven't tried this but as long as the summon is of the type "Beast" it will work. Aspect of Galawain works, Dragons work... basically the game just scales up the 3d-model of the beast (as it also does with armor, headgear, capes and weapons for different character sizes for example). So there's little reason for the Scourge not to grow if it's a beast.

[kronozord]

On 11/9/2022 at 9:35 AM, saborea7 said:

Hello from Germany everyone,

playing this in 2022 on a PS5, so kinda late  But wanted to share my thoughts, also as a big THANK YOU to the people who previously posted in this thread. Your suggestions were incredibily helpful (especially the ones from brogenk and thelee).

Before I start: I'm and old fart end of 40 and I have played RPGs since Super Nintendo/Famicom. Dorudugan was by far the longest battle I ever fought in 30 years of playing Video Games. And I play on Normal difficulty, not Path of the Damned (NO idea how people are able to kill Duragan on this difficulty setting, really!!). Anyway, with my approach on normal difficulty it took me 2.5h to kill him. Yes, TWO and a HALF hours.

Note: I didn't want to kill Dorudugan with adding up Resonances as described previously in this thread. This feels like too much cheating to me. Playing this tactic would keep Duragan at (almost) full health until you reach 800-1000 resonances (or whatever it takes), then one touch and he drops dead. The reason why I don't like this: In this scenario Duragan would never trigger the Magnetic Overdrive (that pulls all your party members towards him and adds another layer of difficulty to the fight). This ability only triggers when he's falling below 50% health only, which would never happen if you just add up resonances. Just feels weird to me to fight a mega boss, keep him at full health all the time and then suddenly BOOM and he's dead.

So, I wanted to "really" kill him and take down his HP one by one. Here's what worked for me:

• Stay safe in the distance: Generally speaking, this was the first fight I encountered in the game where it was absolutely pointless to have any character of my party attack the boss in melee combat. Dorudugan would CRUSH them with a few strikes, no matter what gear, potions, effects etc. I got all my characters at level 20, most equipment crafted to legendary, wearing a lot of unique items (i completed almost the whole game) but still none of this won't help a bit.
• Summoning is key: Instead, this is about summoning whatever it takes, send it to Dorudugan to keep the boss surrounded and engaged and stay away in a safe distance. Thats really what it is all about I would say.
• My party: Rogue, 2 Monks, 2 Troubadours. Since I neither used monks nor chanters in my party until this point I decided (had to) start from scratch, go to the next tavern and purchase 4 adventurers (which are available only with max. Level 19 then). Btw full credit to brogenk's adivce on this thread here - much appreciated! Two of them I turned into Troubadours (GREAT tip by thelee on this thread!), two into Monks. And yes this took a lot of time too. Level them up to 19 with proper skills needed for this fight, then put on the right gear (which I needed to remove from my other party members) etc. So easily a few hours just preparing for this fight!
• 2 Troubadours: These are essential. They have brisk reciting skill and can summon quickly if you choose the right skill path. The only skill that really mattered to me: The Level 9 dragon summoning. Two of these dragons put next to each other are your lifesaver here: They have enough HP to stand Dorudugans attacks for a while. The last for like 30 seconds and I kept on summoning them every 20 seconds atleast, so they're always fresh and powerful. Once Magnetic Overdrive is being triggered, it doesn't really matter anymore. 2 of my characters were immune of being pulled (a Troubadour and my Rogue). The other 3 were pulled in, but I positioned them so the dragons would always stand between them and the boss.  When being pulled they would simply bounce off my two dragons, stand up, run away again. So Dorudugan wouldnt inflict ANY damage to them, but only hit the two dragons. I gave one of them Eccea's Arcane Blaster so between summoning the Level 9 dragon this character would shoot at Dorudugan and do some additional damage.
• 2 Monks: As described on this thread, The Dichotomous Soul skill is key. In the first half of the fight I did put my monks in the upper left and upper right corner of the map. And both of them on HIDE, without attacking Dorudugan directly. Instead I would keep them hidden throughout the fight and summon Dichotomous Souls and send these to Dorudugan. So overall 2*2=4 Souls plus 2 dragons to keep the boss busy, ALL of the time. This is the worst part though: It's just SO boring to do this for two and a half hours, boy! But it helped. Once the health of Dorudugan drops below 50% it's time to reposition the monks though, since when being pulled towards the boss they become visible to him.
• Items with immunity to push and pull: For the second half of this fight two items are crucial to make your life easier once Dorudugan starts using Magnetic Overdrive. Afaik there are two items only in the game which grant immunity of being pulled (or pushed): Horns of the Aurochs (helm) and the Upright Captains belt. My main character is a rogue, weapon equipped "Veilpiercer bow" (upgraded to mystic quality, I killed Sigilmaster Auranic before). He's wearing the "cap of the laughing stock" helm to make Dorudugan easier to hit. He's also wearing the Horns of the Aurochs so Dorudugan can't pull him and general gear that makes this character move quickly on the battle field.  The only purpose of this character throughout the fight: stay out of reach, shoot the boss, run away of any grenades when Dorudugan drops these and do this over and over and over again. Once you fail to stay out of the range of a grenade, the damage inflicted is heavy and even made my character drop dead. But there's this special ring of resurrection which only has 3 charges and will ressurect your character at full power. It can be purchased (or looted) from Captain Thaenic's ship with his deck of many things. I didnt pay attention once and auto-resurrected my Rogue using this ring. This way very helpful because my Rogue would be alone, standing in the North of the map, attacking Dorudugan with his bow. Resurrecting the Rogue with a scroll or charm through another character of the party would have messed up my settings with the other 4 party members staying at the very bottom of the map throughout the second half of the fight.
• Summary: Long story short, the way I managed to kill Dorudugan after an endless epic battle is having my Rogue shooting arrows at him from the north, while 2 monks summon four Dichotomous souls and two Troubadours summon two dragons in total.  The only risk were the grenades, which made it necessary to rearrange the positions on the map. In my fight I had Duragan pretty much at the bottom of the map though, and he barely dropped grenades at the bottom 4 characters but majority of them around him and to the north where my Rogue was standing. This was crucial, I have no idea how you would survive the fight when Dorudugan would really spread his grenades smartly and cover the whole southern area too.

Sorry for lengthy talking here but I felt it was time to say THANKS to everyone who contributed to this thread and also user solipsa who posted a great guide for the PC version on Gamefaqs back in 2019. Someone wrote that he didnt feel any joy when he finally beat Dorudugan. I have mixed feelings: Yes this is a HORRIBLE and boring fight, I really can't remember any fight in any game coming close to the length of this battle. I had some difficulties beating Lengrath and the two dragons in Pillars of Eternity 1, but this is a different level. Anyway once I beat Dorudugan and see him drop dead made me feel proud  

Cheers from Munich,

Chris

PS: The Playing PoE2 (PS4 version) on PS5 at 1.8 speed multiple times crashed the game, especially when Dorudugan threw all of these grenades. Just too much going on I guess. Thus I played at 1.0 speed hoping the game would not crash (which added another layer of madness to this fight). Certainly will remember this battle for the rest of my life haha

Only 2.5 hours?!

My last attempt on veteran took me 3 hours to take him to "near death" just for him start to spamming his attacks and kill my party.

I just dont have the time or the patience to waste in a single fight.

This boss is a new definition of boredom, not even final fantasy mega bosses were this boring.

Edited June 17, 2023 by kronozord

[Kaylon]

1 hour ago, kronozord said:

Only 2.5 hours?!

My last attempt on veteran took me 3 hours to take him to "near death" just for him start to spamming his attacks and kill my party.

I just dont have the time or the patience to waste in a single fight.

This boss is a new definition of boredom, not even final fantasy mega bosses were this boring.

If you use summons (chanter and monk can have infinite summons) to keep him away from your party and attack him from range using Essence Interrupter and scepters he goes down pretty fast.

[kronozord]

I've tried that but it doesn't do enough damage and the robot keeps heeling himself. Tried dodging the fireballs but eventually he throws some on it self.

I have given up and went with cheese, Scordeo's Edge Blade Cascade + Salvation of Time + Brilliant Inspiration + Bleeding Cut modal combo.

I'm done with this Optimus Swine!

Edited June 18, 2023 by kronozord
typos