Firkraag was hard, but he wasn't cheating.

[mrmonocle]

I mean I could always place my squishy squad at a distance, postion, do something and understand why i fail. But this adra dragon... facepalmish design.

[Simaska]

dude... One breath.. 200+ corrode dmg and theres only one left stanfing... wtf?

[mrmonocle]

3 left for me... barely. I'm not against high damage, I can't accept that there's no way to position casters out of the dragon's aoe range.

[CaptainMace]

I remember a tonne of people said otherwise when bg2 got released.

[Simaska]

So did anyone beat that adra dragon?

plz share..

[Logos]

I'll lay out my strategy. It doesn't work, yet, but I got her to one bubble once in three hours of combined attempts. I'm sick of it now but maybe one of you can refine it further. This is on normal.

 

My party consists of a PC cipher, Eder, Grieving Mother, Durance, Aloth, and Kana. The ciphers have blunderbuses, Aloth has a bow, Kana and Durance have arquebuses. Eder has sword and shield and 10 of the level 4 endurance potions, and the skill that allows him to instantly revive when knocked out (I think it's called second wind). They're all level 12, and they all have the best gear the game has to offer. I've done everything else (all other quests (except for a bugged out one), warden bounties, etc.), as far as I can tell.

 

To start the battle, I move Eder up the left side and my party along the bottom. Trigger the battle by moving Eder further up. Draw aggro with Eder by attacking, heal the acid breath with a potion. Move party over to the right along the bottom, kill the xaurip priests. Move party up along the right, kill the first Agaran, then kill the second. All the while Eder tries to maintain aggro on the dragon and heals himself with potions. Sometimes he'll get charmed, you have to be extra careful then, but it usually doesn't last long.

 

After all the ads are dead, use the built-up cipher juice to cast disintegrate on the dragon. Disintegrate is raw damage, so it cuts through DR. You can also use your ciphers to try to stun it, but that fails about 50% of the time. The rest of the party unloads on the dragon. Freezing spells seem to work well with Aloth. Use Durance to raise downed allies who got hit with the breath when Eder lost aggro when you were walking around.

 

Then die, die, and die again. I hate how completely unreliable maintaining aggro is. I think one way to improve this plan is to hire a second fighter with second wind and use two tanks on the adra dragon, but even then maintaining aggro would be massively unreliable. I'd replace Kana, or maybe Grieving Mother, but in the latter case there would probably be too little dps.

Edited March 29, 2015 by Logos

[Logos]

It worked.

 

 

I placed a poisonous gas trap in the 'bottle-neck', and the rest went as planned.

[Cktulica]

how do I get past the door to reach this thing

[Logos]

Talk to the ghosts.

[Cktulica]

they won't talk. do I need something? because there's a container I can't open(think it's a bug)

[Logos]

No, you don't need anything, but only some of the ghosts have dialog (on level 13, I assume that's the door you mean). If you mean level 14, then it's a bug. That door should open after killing Od Nua's shade.

[Cktulica]

level 13. 

which ghost? they all ignore me every time I talk to them

[Cktulica]

nope, one is fixing a machine and ignores me

another turns to face me but doesn't talk

a group of them stand a vigil but don't talk

the last one in the round room mutters things but doesn't talk

(it's in this room that I can't open the round container in the center)

[Simaska]

Ok. My composition is

1) fighter with super high deflection

2) eden also deflection is super high

3) durance

4) mother

5) aloth

6) horathias (druid)

And i still cant defeat the dragon...

i tried even on eazy. I crush anyone in normal without a problem but this... this is just cruel...

[Sosseres]

nope, one is fixing a machine and ignores me

another turns to face me but doesn't talk

a group of them stand a vigil but don't talk

the last one in the round room mutters things but doesn't talk

(it's in this room that I can't open the round container in the center)

 

You need to progress in the main storyline. As part of stopping the machine that re-animates corpses you learn the language you need here. I also got stuck at that point.

[Cktulica]

THANK YOU now I can finally move on. 

[Yosharian]

I remember the first time I played Baldur's Gate 2.  I couldn't figure out how the kill any of the dragons for a long-ass time.  They seemed almost impossible to beat.  It took me a long time learning AD&D before I knew how to take Firkraag down.

 

I also remember trying to fight a Greater Wolfwere and being unable to overcome its regeneration, and thinking that this was the most OP non-boss creature ever!  =)

[mrmonocle]

I remember the first time I played Baldur's Gate 2.  I couldn't figure out how the kill any of the dragons for a long-ass time.  They seemed almost impossible to beat.  It took me a long time learning AD&D before I knew how to take Firkraag down.

 

I also remember trying to fight a Greater Wolfwere and being unable to overcome its regeneration, and thinking that this was the most OP non-boss creature ever!  =)

but here there is no tactics, just revival spam and cipher/wizard or any other raw dmg boom boom.

[Zwiebelchen]

Then again, there wasn't any observable pattern to firkraag's breath spell. Sometimes you got lucky and he didn't even use it once; sometimes he breathes your all your squishy mages instantly, no questions asked.

 

Not saying that this adra encounter is fair. Just saying that Firkraag wasn't particulary fair either.

... and let's not forget about the demi-lich, who was virtually unkillable if you didn't metagame the **** out of him by using spell immunity: abjuration.

Edited March 30, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[lord_wc]

I remember the first time I played Baldur's Gate 2.  I couldn't figure out how the kill any of the dragons for a long-ass time.  They seemed almost impossible to beat.  It took me a long time learning AD&D before I knew how to take Firkraag down.

 

I also remember trying to fight a Greater Wolfwere and being unable to overcome its regeneration, and thinking that this was the most OP non-boss creature ever!  =)

Firkraag was rough, but you could do it the first time. I mean if you didn't have technical shortcomings (you had a solid party with solid builds/items and you didn't start spamming fireball on him) you could do it. Later on you definitely was able to solo it.

 

Problem with this game is that AI is the same amount of bad as it was in BG. But to have the illusion of difficulty enemies have huge/overloaded stats (bear in the second area oneshotting everyone), you don't have time to prepare (only one trap active, fight starts after a convo trigger so you can't position) or you have to fight in corridors so you can't position (whole skaern or whatever it's called temple area, endless dungeon, etc).

 

Meanwhile the AI serves its purpose by blindly bumrushing the first guy they see and sticking to him until they see someone else with lower than 50% hp. I really hope they will patch the AI script or make something like David Gaider's mods were in BG, because combat right now is unfulfilling. I enjoy a challenge, I don't enjoy if I have to cheese enemies because they have 4x my stats and 5x my numbers to provide 'difficulty'.

 

Btw Greater Wolfweres were bugged in BG and every time you save/load they would get their regen again - they had some 10hp/round regen only at first or so, if you did a save/load, it was 20, if you did two it was 30, etc.

[mrmonocle]

downed it on my second playthrough on hard. This boss renders any melee char useless.

[muhvi]

I played with normal, so dragon stats should be same. The base tactic was same as told here earlier, one melee char to take the attention of the dragon, i needed 5 endurance potions. Clear out any helpers with your other chars, then place your character in circle around the dragon so only one gets the breath if it does it and then just kill it. Took few minutes. I expected much worse from forum talk.

 

It really doesn't matter do you have melee chars or not as the dragon only attacks one at the time + fear + possession. On my kill, it hacked my melee tank almost exclusively, only twice got any other character damage and those were because bad location so they got taste of the dragon's breath.

 

If you just position your party around the dragon so that your characters aren't too close to each other, it is easy. I didn't have second wind and didn't need it.

 

Forgot the party composition:
- Edar, using sword&shield - taking aggro of the dragon and drinking potions.

- Pellagiani - Two handed sword/pistol

- Sagani - Bow - didnt use dog, kept him away

- Durance - Pistol - Healing/buffing Edar

- Me - Mage - bow/wand -  not very useful in this encounter, didn't have raw damage spells

- Druid companion don't remember the name - bow -  casting raw damage druid spells on the dragon.

Edited March 31, 2015 by muhvi

[Pentaxius]

Hello, 

 

I came up with a fail proof strategy that deals with the Adra dragon (on Hard difficulty) in a minute or two, too fast for the AoE breath and unstable aggro to be much of an issue. If you want to find your own way to beat him read no further! 

 

First, I realized that my usual party wasn't suitable for the challenge (after about 10 tries) - Thus, I reshaped my party and used the following set up and he went down one the first try very fast. You barely need any positioning either, just make sure the tank is making the dragon face in the opposite direction of the damage dealing team. 

 

1. High deflection tank with second breath, 130+ deflection, high prone resist and large endurance potions. 

2. 4 Ciphers (3+main character)

3. 1 Chanter (with Range weapon reload chant) 

 

The 3 ciphers Aumora were built the following way : 

 

21 might, 18 dex, 18 int, the rest in con 

• Beast slayer (applies to the adra dragon)
• Gunner
• Weapon focus Soldier
• Penetrating shot 
• Biting whip 

 

All equipped with high quality Arquebus with +25% freeze damage and Beast bane. 

 

Cipher power : All had Tactical meld (for +20 accuracy). The total accuracy of these auxiliary cipher companions against Beast was approx 80-85, easily enough to score consistent 30-60+ damage hits against the dragon. 

 

It isn't even necessary to use the spell Disintegrate with this setup, the range damage is so high. To be quite honest this setup is simply overkill and trivializes the most challenging encounter in the game. 

 

Good luck, it should be easy now. 

Edited March 31, 2015 by Pentaxius

[Toastius]

Needs: wizard with Gaze of the Adragan, priest for reliability

- Agree to release the dragon, get the amulet, take it to the dragon-hunter and then tell her what the plan is. Gets you Scale-breaker, and means the dragon is friendly until you you attack it.

- Send someone around the side of the dragon to initiate and bait the breath weapon; I used a max-level Eder, who managed to not die.

- Do everything you can to buff your wizard's accuracy quickly; I used Devotions for the Faithful. You don't want to spend too much time on this, because you've got a lot of incoming crap.

- Scale-breaker the dragon.

- Attempt to petrify it with Gaze. You get three attempts at max level, and you need one to land. Might not have time to make three attempts, though!

- If petrify lands, kill dragon. Then kill everything else. Otherwise reload and try again.

 

Petrify's effects seem to be really poorly documented; get yourself petrified to see what's really going on (I don't remember exactly what it says), but it seems to basically make things explode when you breathe on them.
 

Also works on the Sky Dragon, which is even easier with this method.

[Freudinio]

Hey there, here is how I did it (note - this was on normal and imho super cheesy).

 

Party Composition (all level 12):

 

1x Barbarian (2h Weapon) <-- My character

1x Ranger with a bear pet (I made my own, since I didn't find the ranger early)

1x Aloth (With Gaze of Adragon and Slumber)

1x Durance (Searing Seal and Warding Seal are essential for this setup)

1x Hiravias (All spells with RAW damage are key here)

1x Kana

 

So here is what I did:

 

- Talk to the dragon and agree to it's plan. Then have Durance stack all his Seals under the Adra Dragon.

- Stack out your team. I had the Bear and my Barbarian on opposite sides of the dragon, while keeping Kana, The Ranger and Hiravias at max range.

- Use the Barbarian (or Eder, if you are playing a ranged class yourself) to engage the fight, this will cause Durance traps to trigger leaving the dragon at rough 50%

- Use Aloth to keep the dragon CC'ed using Slumber and Gaze

- Use Hiravias to deal a pretty good amount of damage to the dragon with Venombloom and Plague of Insects.

- At some point your melee char and bear will die, and as such, you will need to kite with whatever character is closest to the adra dragon. Here you will want to keep movement buffs up and try to ress any deads, or you can just focus the dragon as it should be close to dead at this point.

 

Hope it helps.