Adra Dragon [Spoiler Warning]

[JerekKruger]

And you've got to be really conscious of making your game too hard because people will **** all over something if they think it's being unfair, even if it isn't and they're just bad at it. 

 

Don't that Dark Souls games prove that this isn't true?

 

Personally I think the dragon's in the game are in a good place. They are tough if you don't know any clever strategies to beat them, but they should be tough, they're dragons after all. In Skyrim (unmodded) the only thing that's epic about Dragons is their appearance, in Dragon Age Inquisition they are damage sponges but are otherwise not challenging (they're basically MMO tank-n-spank fights), in PoE they're truly fearsome. They're also completely optional in PoE (and in the case of the bog dragons you can even get a fairly nice improvement for dealing with them peacefully) so short of the aforementioned "everything has to be doable and easy" crowd they don't get in the way of the fun.

[Livegood118]

 

And you've got to be really conscious of making your game too hard because people will **** all over something if they think it's being unfair, even if it isn't and they're just bad at it. 

 

Don't that Dark Souls games prove that this isn't true?

 

For whatever reason, Dark Souls gets away with this when a lot of other games don't I think.

 

Also a lot of people can just summon help in Dark souls.

I did it when I got fed up fighting soul of cinder on my first play-through – the shame!

 

Edited December 13, 2016 by Livegood118

[Boeroer]

Look at Faster than Light. It's supertough but so much fun. It's one of those few games I played even more than PoE.

 

I think you only have to tell people in advance that it's going to be tough. Most people won't complain then.

[Dr <3]

Have you never tryed binding of Isaac? That is damn hard as the game "evolved"

[BrotherFerg]

I did it! And my party is all full endurance except my main tank took a little damage! I did the scale breaker quest but upon returning to the master she was hostile. So I couldn't get positioning like some videos show. Basically had Aloth spam paralysis and durance spammed maelstrom. So I cheesed but still happy.

Edited December 16, 2016 by BrotherFerg

[xelnod]

I did it! And my party is all full endurance except my main tank took a little damage! I did the scale breaker quest but upon returning to the master she was hostile. So I couldn't get positioning like some videos show. Basically had Aloth spam paralysis and durance spammed maelstrom. So I cheesed but still happy.

What spell did you use to paralyze exactly?

[Dr <3]

Scroll? Or fetid Caress, but scroll woulb bè a better choice

[thehawkyo]

Huzzah!

 

I finally beat this darn Adra Dragon and boy did that feel good!

 

Granted I came back after beating White March 1 & 2, so it was probably a bit lopsided maybe?  Adra wiped my party once after coming back, then I tried one more time.  Even at max level though, I was able to beat Adra, but I'm still banging my head against a wall trying to defeat the Alpine Dragon.  Llengrath's two dragons also totally demolish me even at max level.

 

To defeat the Adra, I followed similar tactics as described back on page 1 by @Logos.  My party consists of all characters obtained ingame + my own player (Monk).  I took Eder up the left hand side, drew aggro and sent the rest of my party to deal with the Xaurips as quickly as possible.  Then I used Aloth to get in some lucky Paralysis scroll hits, buffed up team to reduce "Terrified", and most importantly used Concealhaut himself to weaken her (and also some of Aloth's spells that cause weakening, of which Adra is not immune to).

 

Also, if you're lucky the Adra Dragon will accidentally kill its other two helpers that come over to assist.  The Adra uses its AOE wing crushing attack (100 or so damage) - I already forget what they are, they look like Delemgans, but they got annihilated with just one Wing crush with Eder still standing.

 

Eder:  Stocked Major Potions, Major Recovery

Aloth:  Paralysis Scrolls, Revive Scrolls

My Main PC:  Concealhaut's Skull, Major Potion, Major Recovery

 

Others pretty much the same:  Maneha, Durance, & Pallegina

 

 

 

[spikadelia]

So I returned to PoE after a long break and I am playing on POTD. The Adra Dragon fight took days and many hours to work out but I thought I would share the way I finally beat the encounter.

 

I completed the first conversation with the Adra Dragon and got the Scale Breaker skill, but actually forgot to use it on my successful attempt.

 

My main character is a Paladin Tank, the rest of the party consist of Eder, Kana, Aloth and Grieving Mother. Plenty of gunnery skills and Arquebuses, Pistols with Beast slaying enchants etc etc.  I've just managed to get them to level 13 and apart from the extra level benefits of extra HP etc there is one spell that makes a massive difference - Litany Against Major Afflictions.  

 

Step 1. When we return to the cave post the Dragonslayer meeting nearly all of the party are tucked into the top left hand corner.

 

Step 2. The Paladin and Durance are close together at the bottom of the steps into the main cave. When MT engages the Dragon he gets the LaMA buff (this allows him to avoid getting stunned/paralyzed/zapped) and he runs clockwise around to the top right of the cave beyond the Adragans and tucks in to be as protected as possible by the cave wall.   He drops some summons and then tries to last as long as possible (Cautious Attack, Zealous Endurance, potions etc etc) and get the Dragon to kill as many Adragan and Blights as possible. It's only a matter of time until he dies.

 

Step 3. The Xaurips attack the party on the top LH corner and we deal with them as cleanly as possible.  The Dragon and any surviving Adragans do NOT approach that LH area and stay near my fallen Paladin so you have some breathing space. 

 

Step 4. I then move my party down to the tunnel at the south of the cave (clearing any remaining Xaurips) and use Kana's summoned Ogres to lure  the remaining mobs towards us and let either a. the Dragon kill them b. the Ogres wear them down with repeated attacks or they come into range of the party. Rinse and repeat until it's only the Dragon left. 

 

Step 5. With the Dragon in the centre of the room it's careful positioning of your tanks and the Ogres to keep the Dragon away from ranged characters.  Plentiful use of Paralysing scrolls (with a modest success rate) and all the buffs you can maintain to improve accuracy and remove fear. All of those necessities are detailed on this post by lots of people. 

 

It's a satisfying victory and three superb items was a decent reward. Good luck and I hope this help.  

Edited May 29, 2017 by spikadelia

[BenGessel]

This is some of the worst advice I have ever heard in my entire life, for any game-for the vast majority of these comments.  This is also one of the top 3 most frustrating battles of any battles I have ever fought in my entire life with fantasy rpg video games.  Traps don't work.  My spells don't work.  I'll consider tricking the dragon to acquire some magic that will help.  I just spent over 5000 coin on traps, again, none of them work, doesn't matter if they are right under the dragon's feet.  Thanks guys...  This adra dragon is just virtually invincible, unless you are able to dance around it for hours, and are lucky enough to not get roasted.

 

I mean, this is worse than that battle before Demagorgon in Baldur's Gate 2/Throne of Bhaal...  

[Boeroer]

It's one of the easier bossfights in PoE. Maybe you were underleveled?

 

The really annoying thing in that fight are the Andragans. The rest is pretty easy if you know the game a bit and doable if you're not an expert. There are lots of solo players who kill this dragon on PotD difficulty on first try (including me) - because they have to (see Trial of Iron).

 

Just because you can't do it doesn't mean that a) all the advice is bad and b) that the fight is too difficult.

 

Strolling into the forum an yelling around that all advice (that was given freely and with good intentions) is kind of ungrateful and puffy.

Edited January 21, 2018 by Boeroer

[Raven Darkholme]

Just get a cipher with psychic backlash and watch the permastunned dragon while you do whatever you want.

[Torm51]

You mean the fear aura is a will attack so triggers pysihich backlash. As many times as I’ve beaten the adra dragon I never thought of that! Only thing is ciphers are usually have crap HP and endurance and you have to get them somewhat close but the dragon aura is big so shouldn’t have to be that close. 10 meters maybe?

 

Useless against the alpine dragon though

Edited January 22, 2018 by Torm51

[Aidames]

It's one of the easier bossfights in PoE. Maybe you were underleveled?

 

The really annoying thing in that fight are the Andragans. The rest is pretty easy if you know the game a bit and doable if you're not an expert. There are lots of solo players who kill this dragon on PotD difficulty on first try (including me) - because they have to (see Trial of Iron).

 

Just because you can't do it doesn't mean that a) all the advice is bad and b) that the fight is too difficult.

 

Strolling into the forum an yelling around that all advice (that was given freely and with good intentions) is kind of ungrateful and puffy.

 

I wouldn't say 'easier' bossfights. This was the only fight that I ended up completely avoiding because I just got pissed off. Doing the quest instead felt better anyway. None of the other fights (dragon or else) gave me this much trouble. Then again, I did not have a cipher in the party, and it looks like it's very much required for this encounter.

[Boeroer]

The range of the fear aura is far bigger than 10m. I guess 20. It will hit you before you can even see the dragon.

 

You can use Brutal Backlash to kill the Alpine Dragon. Even if he's not stunned (wasn't PB bugged in a way that it even stunned immune enemies?) he will get shredded by raw damage.

 

Trivializes all dragon fights to be honest. Combine with a Dragon Thrashed Chanter (targets reflex) and it's over very quickly.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Boeroer

[Raven Darkholme]

You mean the fear aura is a will attack so triggers pysihich backlash. As many times as I’ve beaten the adra dragon I never thought of that! Only thing is ciphers are usually have crap HP and endurance and you have to get them somewhat close but the dragon aura is big so shouldn’t have to be that close. 10 meters maybe?

 

Useless against the alpine dragon though

I did it solo very recently, getting close is not a problem with the proper equip and build.

Why is it useless vs Alpine? Worked just fine for me.

https://youtu.be/nqYMcjk4kNg?t=2120

Edited January 22, 2018 by Raven Darkholme

[Boeroer]

- nevermind - 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Boeroer

[Raven Darkholme]

Oh you mean because of stun immunity?

Psychic Backlash has it's own affliction (which doesn't qualify for Sneak Attacks and I don't think reduces the stats like a stun would).

[Boeroer]

Yeah, it just disables. Like the first "stun" effect that was on stunning weapons. That worked the same until they patched it. Guess they just copy&pasted the code to Psychic Backlash back then and forgot about this.

[JerekKruger]

Yeah, it just disables. Like the first "stun" effect that was on stunning weapons. That worked the same until they patched it. Guess they just copy&pasted the code to Psychic Backlash back then and forgot about this.

 

I've got to say, whilst I love PoE I do wonder about the way Obsidian codes this stuff. Surely you have a single master stun function (with variables for duration, accuracy etc.) and then have all weapons and abilities in game that can stun call that stun function. That way, if you decide to change the way stun works you can modify the master stun function and everything else changes easily.

[Boeroer]

In Unity everything works with components, Scenes and GameObjects and stuff (and C# is used as scripting language, therefore they will use class methods rather than global functions) - but basically you are right. There should be a basic stun component somewhere that can take some variables and gets used in every case where stunning is needed. 

 

But who knows which problems lead to this. In the past I also saw myself copy&paste code because I needed a really, really quick hotfix for a live system and it was too much fuzz to access the "real" method - and then I forgot about it. Better to avoid that though. It's really bad. 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Boeroer

[Raven Darkholme]

I feel like there is one person confined to a dark basement with candle light whose job it is to keep the game from acquiring new bugs, while the whole team works on future content.

The amount of gameending bugs I ran into while doing my cipher pt was much bigger than ever before and if it was TCS I would have been a very angry nerd.

 

Ranging from an enemy becoming untargetable after they got charmed by Deadfire hat, even tho they were almost dead before the charm

(Happened several times, worst one was asgainst Sky Dragon and only fixable by reload)

over countless maybe less fatal but still potentially deadly bugs,

to the inability to leave combat either if you run away and the enemies return to their positions or much worse after you killed all enemies, which happened to me after the Thaos fight with no way to save or do anything but reload.

[Torm51]

I feel like there is one person confined to a dark basement with candle light whose job it is to keep the game from acquiring new bugs, while the whole team works on future content.

The amount of gameending bugs I ran into while doing my cipher pt was much bigger than ever before and if it was TCS I would have been a very angry nerd.

 

Ranging from an enemy becoming untargetable after they got charmed by Deadfire hat, even tho they were almost dead before the charm

(Happened several times, worst one was asgainst Sky Dragon and only fixable by reload)

over countless maybe less fatal but still potentially deadly bugs,

to the inability to leave combat either if you run away and the enemies return to their positions or much worse after you killed all enemies, which happened to me after the Thaos fight with no way to save or do anything but reload.

Ooooo don’t tell me that currently in one of my last TC runs. What should I avoid doing?

 

PS I have exclusively played TC since release and never had a game ending bug, that being said maybe I’ve been lucky.

 

PS PS for this reason I every once in a while make copy of the file and put it in an emergency folder for this reason.

 

PS PS PS I have NEVER ONCE used those files to restore a TC run in which I messed up and died. I’m not very good my total record against POE on TC is like 4 wins vs more then 15 losses for sure. I don’t know I’ve logged almost 2000 hours lol

Edited January 22, 2018 by Torm51

[Raven Darkholme]

 

I feel like there is one person confined to a dark basement with candle light whose job it is to keep the game from acquiring new bugs, while the whole team works on future content.

The amount of gameending bugs I ran into while doing my cipher pt was much bigger than ever before and if it was TCS I would have been a very angry nerd.

 

Ranging from an enemy becoming untargetable after they got charmed by Deadfire hat, even tho they were almost dead before the charm

(Happened several times, worst one was asgainst Sky Dragon and only fixable by reload)

over countless maybe less fatal but still potentially deadly bugs,

to the inability to leave combat either if you run away and the enemies return to their positions or much worse after you killed all enemies, which happened to me after the Thaos fight with no way to save or do anything but reload.

Ooooo don’t tell me that currently in one of my last TC runs. What should I avoid doing?

 

PS I have exclusively played TC since release and never had a game ending bug, that being said maybe I’ve been lucky.

 

PS PS for this reason I every once in a while make copy of the file and put it in an emergency folder for this reason.

 

PS PS PS I have NEVER ONCE used those files to restore a TC run in which I messed up and died. I’m not very good my total record against POE on TC is like 4 wins vs more then 15 losses for sure. I don’t know I’ve logged almost 2000 hours lol

 

I don't think those bugs would happen in a party (assuming you don't solo).

Basically I fought the sky Dragon no problem for a couple of minutes but I already had the issue with the Deadfire hat charm healing the Dragon off my Moonwell whenever it got charmed so the fight already took longer than it should have, but all off a sudden after a charm wore off I still couldn't target the dragon as if it was still charmed and while waiting for it to change and even running away to try and end combat at the end it was invincible and I had to reload and after another failed attempt (without bug tho, but charm + moonwell op) I finally took of the deadfire hat and killed it easily (I was level 10).

 

Then I had it twice that combat wouledn't end even tho I wasn't in combat anymore, once as I said after beating Thaos and both statues, while killing the laststatue who was stunned via Silent Scream, I had another Silent Scream held over the statue (you can't reapply it while the target is still stunned) but the stue died before the stun ran out, now my whole game went crazy, the combat didn't end and I couldn't get rid of the SS icon on my mouse cursor and not even esc, inventory, right click, trying to click on the "x" in the bottom middle menu, arrow keys nothing worked so I couldn't finish the game and hat to quit alt tabbing and forcing the game to shut.

 

The other time I couldn't exit combat was with my new monk who just sneaked thru Eothas temple and while sneaking back thru the mob with the phantom accidentally got spotted, so I ran back to the door close to which there is a point where the enemies will stop following you, which they did and returned to their previus position, but combbat didn't end so I neither was able to reenter stealth nor leave the area via stairs and I had to reload and actually kill the phantom/slime mob, which was thankfully quite easy with a level 4 monk with max might and con.

[Torm51]

 

 

I feel like there is one person confined to a dark basement with candle light whose job it is to keep the game from acquiring new bugs, while the whole team works on future content.

The amount of gameending bugs I ran into while doing my cipher pt was much bigger than ever before and if it was TCS I would have been a very angry nerd.

 

Ranging from an enemy becoming untargetable after they got charmed by Deadfire hat, even tho they were almost dead before the charm

(Happened several times, worst one was asgainst Sky Dragon and only fixable by reload)

over countless maybe less fatal but still potentially deadly bugs,

to the inability to leave combat either if you run away and the enemies return to their positions or much worse after you killed all enemies, which happened to me after the Thaos fight with no way to save or do anything but reload.

Ooooo don’t tell me that currently in one of my last TC runs. What should I avoid doing?

 

PS I have exclusively played TC since release and never had a game ending bug, that being said maybe I’ve been lucky.

 

PS PS for this reason I every once in a while make copy of the file and put it in an emergency folder for this reason.

 

PS PS PS I have NEVER ONCE used those files to restore a TC run in which I messed up and died. I’m not very good my total record against POE on TC is like 4 wins vs more then 15 losses for sure. I don’t know I’ve logged almost 2000 hours lol

 

I don't think those bugs would happen in a party (assuming you don't solo).

Basically I fought the sky Dragon no problem for a couple of minutes but I already had the issue with the Deadfire hat charm healing the Dragon off my Moonwell whenever it got charmed so the fight already took longer than it should have, but all off a sudden after a charm wore off I still couldn't target the dragon as if it was still charmed and while waiting for it to change and even running away to try and end combat at the end it was invincible and I had to reload and after another failed attempt (without bug tho, but charm + moonwell op) I finally took of the deadfire hat and killed it easily (I was level 10).

 

Then I had it twice that combat wouledn't end even tho I wasn't in combat anymore, once as I said after beating Thaos and both statues, while killing the laststatue who was stunned via Silent Scream, I had another Silent Scream held over the statue (you can't reapply it while the target is still stunned) but the stue died before the stun ran out, now my whole game went crazy, the combat didn't end and I couldn't get rid of the SS icon on my mouse cursor and not even esc, inventory, right click, trying to click on the "x" in the bottom middle menu, arrow keys nothing worked so I couldn't finish the game and hat to quit alt tabbing and forcing the game to shut.

 

The other time I couldn't exit combat was with my new monk who just sneaked thru Eothas temple and while sneaking back thru the mob with the phantom accidentally got spotted, so I ran back to the door close to which there is a point where the enemies will stop following you, which they did and returned to their previus position, but combbat didn't end so I neither was able to reenter stealth nor leave the area via stairs and I had to reload and actually kill the phantom/slime mob, which was thankfully quite easy with a level 4 monk with max might and con.

 

Ya I dont solo I like TC group runs cause the fun for me in the game is party synergy.  Cool thanks for the advice.  That being said Trial of Iron runs dont save during combat so if you did get a bug where you are stuck in combat just quite the game and start again.  You will just have to do the fight again.  Once again it has never happened to me (fingers crossed! ) and I have never quite a fight like that because I was going to lose.  Dammit i wish I recorded all my successful runs!