Dorudugan with vanilla NPCs?

[Livegood118]

Hi all,

 

Started my second playthrough of Deadfire recently now that all of the expansions are out. Playing on POTD, balance has been great - the game really takes everything the original did and makes it 100% better.

 

After beating Belranga after a good amount of trial and error, I've run up against a complete brick wall against Dorudugan.

 

My party composition is as follows:

 

- PC (Troubadour/Shieldbearer)

- Pallegina (Fighter/Paladin)

- Eder (Fighter/Rogue)

- Aloth (Pure Wizard)

- Ydwin (Cipher/Rogue)

 

Up until he hits half health, the strategy of plinking away with ranged weapons while the skeletons from the skeleton chant take the heat seems to work really well. I keep resources refreshed with ancestor's memory and all is good.

 

However, once he starts using magnetic overdrive things start to completely fall apart and I'm struggling to see a way I can do this with my current party composition. I'm using Essence Interrupter, the raw damage pistol, blunt ranged weapons, the helmet and belt that make you immune to push and pull and various other bits of good gear. Once he starts using magnetic overdrive I get into a downward spiral - the most I've got him to is about 35%/40% health - and getting him from 50% to 35% takes me about as long as it did to take him from 100% to 50%.

 

I've tried to avoid magnetic overdrive by using the two push/pull immune items on PC/Pallegina, Smoke Veil on Eder/Ydwin and Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure with Aloth but it's very unreliable. Once a character gets sucked in there's a chance they'll get bodyblocked by skeletons but if they get engaged a lot of the time it means curtains for them.

 

I really don't want to have to start using different NPCs - I'd like to use the characters I've used the whole game to take him down.

 

Any thoughts you guys have would be welcome. 

 

Something I haven't tried is using the Cipher's AoE spell that gives concentration to maybe avoid the Prone on getting sucked in?  I noticed that Concelhaut's crushing doom didn't work on Belranga when she had concentration up. If I got enough burn AR on the three characters that didn't have push/pull immune, and they didn't get knocked down, maybe I could suck up the disengagement attack?

Edited March 23, 2019 by Livegood118

[Livegood118]

Maybe a strategy based on ancestors memory and lay on hands?

[Kaylon]

You can use the Grog pet to become immune to disengagement.

[Livegood118]

You can use the Grog pet to become immune to disengagement.

 

 

Downed him - didn't end up using Grog because I'd know I'd 100% lose characters to his fireballs.

 

For posterity's sake and future Googlers, a number of things helped out. The key thing is that the knockdown effect of Magnetic Overdrive can be nullified by giving characters concentration. 

 

I gave my herald PC and Ydwin the push/pull immune effect items (Horn of the Aurochs, Captain's Belt) which meant magnetic overdrive did jack to them. Using the level 5 cipher power that gives resolute, I made sure everyone else that could be pulled had concentration. For the three characters that didn't have push/pull immunity, a combination of various skills/items such as Deleterious Alacrity (Nimble), Nomad's Brigandine (Immune to disengagement attacks!), Smoke Veil (untargetable), Arkemyr's Brilliant Departure (untargetable) and Escape meant that I could either avoid getting pulled in or completely nullify disengagement attacks. Where possible, I tried to line my characters up behind Chanter skeletons to bodyblock as well for extra safety (if I remember correctly I was able to avoid the AoE fire from magnetic overdrive by doing this as well). 

 

After that it was a simple case of beating him down as I had for the first half of the fight, although you have to be very careful after 50% health for nasty ability combinations. One time he dropped fireballs immediately after using magnetic overdrive - could have been curtains if I didn't get lucky with where they went.

 

In the end I think I enjoyed Dorudugan. The early frustration was in not having a consistent strategy and having to do the whole bloody thing again after getting him to half health. Once you have a good strategy I found it quite fun/intense dodging the fireballs, volcano attacks, etc ... A lot of the fight is in positioning your characters properly. Zealous speed aura definitely helped with that and saved my ass a few times.

 

Also - the 1st level missiles spell is great for keeping Hel Hyraf's fury up on him. 9 autohits means you get a good extra 20-25 seconds. Just spam that 20-30 times with brilliant and you shouldn't have any trouble keeping Hel Hyrafs on for the whole fight. 

Edited March 24, 2019 by Livegood118

[thelee]

for what it's worth, since I discovered that hunter's claw is extremely broken you can just teach maia Hunter's Claw and then the upgrade that boosts defenses, and just patiently build up 100+ stacks and go take out dorudugan with virtual immunity to all its attacks and pretty much 100% crit rate.