Adra Dragon [Spoiler Warning]

[PLehnard]

Is it actually necessary? I mean does it show up in the end credits? (as consequences etc)

It's just annoying because it's the only thing left for me to do before going to the very final part of the game, but if it doesn't have any consequences then I might as well skip it...

 

It does change a small part of the tale in the credits.

[dwill10]

So uh..

 

Yeah got a level capped party about to do the final quest and I'm like oh yeah I totally forgot to the the levels under my stronghold thing! I should do that first!

 

Just been been playin' on medium, doin' mah thing. enjoyin' the ride, diggin' the story, had 1 party wipe the entire game due to cat on keyboard.

 

Struttin' mah **** as I walk down those stairs on the last level like, lol pls dragon it's medium difficulty.

 

The fight starts, I'm like alright well I should probably start by.... Aaaaaand everyone's dead.

 

They lasted a whole 2 and a half seconds.  lolwut.

 

Reading through this thread I now realize this fight has no difficulty level.  I mean.. that ****, was not a 'medium' difficulty encounter.  Every other encounter in the game, has a difficulty level.  Then there's this fight.  There were no tactics, no micro, no tank aggro, no heal, no pet spawning, nothing..  I literally walked in,the encoutner starts,  and everyone dies instantly in 1 hit 2 seconds later. I'm like... o.O  Did I accidentally turn it to highest difficulty? Uh, because if you take literally every other encounter in the game, on the same difficulty, then compare it to this one.. I just.. I don't..LOL like, I'm not even mad, that was amazing.

 

 

[1teacherr1]

Kinda lame but effective, probably fastest way. All maxed lvl12, high diff. 12 spells in total.

 

http://share.pho.to/9BDNq

[omegabet]

What a huge disappointment. I'm shoked this kind of install-kill tactic is supposed to make any fun.

[PLehnard]

I kind of liked this fight because it wasn't the typical tank&spank fight like all the others. As long as you keep the lizard in motion there is no insta kill.

[omegabet]

Did it, still very disappointed.

 

As long as you keep the lizard in motion there is no insta kill.

 

I followed that.

 

This helped me additionally:

Pallegina got boots of speed and Savory Pie

My priest cast Prayers against Treachery and Suppress Affliction

Gaze or Adragan or other spells to hold down adds or dragon

Sneak attacks from rogue and many many potions

 

Thanks very much for your suggestion!

[anameforobsidian]

I had a hell of a time killing it tonight.  I had my cipher, hiravias, grieving mother, eder, pallegina, and durance.  Here's what tactics worked without cheese:

 

Displacement potion on Eder, meals on everyone (meal bonuses are separate)

LOTS of full heal potions on everyone else I made 40 or so for this fight and used half of them.  (10 on eder and palegina each).

Lots of potions of power / war paint (get the secret room in the blood sands),

Drake summon on Durance (since he sits around a lot this fight).

 

Move everyone back in the grotto, pull eder up to pull dragon.  Let Eder take the full blast.

As dragon attacks, keep hiravias and durance in reserve.  Try mind controlling the dragon with both your ciphers, one should get through.  Use your ciphers physical attacks on the adragan, this'll probably be the last focus you get in the fight.

Let the dragon kill the adragan and any kobolds that got pulled.

Now start using hiravias.  Wall of thorns right away, then use his top level flower patch ability, then insect swarm.  At the same time, your ciphers should be disintegrating and stealing attributes one at a time.  My ciphers never got focus back because they were both using blunderbusses, and a superb leadsplitter still can't pentrate that hide (maybe bring arquebus in the other slot).

Durance should only be resurrecting, even healing is mostly a waste of his time with the mass of potions.  Save pallegina's resurrect for durance.

 

The tick of thorns, disintegrate and insects should kill the dragon.  You can do some cheap raw damage stuff with your ciphers.  You don't actually need that much damage to kill the dragon, you just need raw damage to get through it's awful armor.

 

 

Beaten in three minutes after an hour of testing.  No achievement, but some awesome loot is down there.

[Climhazzard]

At level 11 on hard I kited it around in circles for an hour with my monk after killing the adds.  There were actually 5 standing party members after finishing the adds but all but my monk got caught in a breath attack.  I just plinked at it with a crappy hunting bow for the entire time, for like 3 damage a hit, plus a proc my bow had.  Between his 140 something defense, fear aura, and the fact my bow had no accuracy buff, I had around a 12% chance to hit, so it was time consuming and a bit nerve wracking.

 

If you wanted to bow kite with a build for it, I think Paladin would work the best, the fear aura would be less of an issue and your accuracy would be good with sworn enemy, 140 defense is still pretty high though.

[Lasci]

If you don't want to cheese her:

 

Get the Dragon Slayer buff after promising to help her. This also lets you set up before the fight starts; you can begin in your terms (and skip having to do dialogue all the time!) by starting the fight.

 

Abuse every potion and meal you can before the fight starts.

 

At least set down one high-powered trap. Use scrolls. Revive, maelstrom, paralyze, and even fan flames to clear out the adds are all good.

 

Obsidian Figurine and similar summon items placed on each character can help with the adds and distract the dragon.

 

It's truly not that hard without wards/petrify.

[ICN]

I did it at level 11 on hard with a PC Cipher, Eder, Aloth, Durance, Grieving Mother, and Pallagina. I did use some cheese though, as I pre-applied Psychovampiric Shield and the dragon slayer debuff before the fight began. Everyone but Eder and PC removed armor, both Ciphers targeted Pallagina with Tactical Meld for extra accuracy. First spell everyone cast was a debuff, followed by a Gaze of the Adragan by Aloth. That landed, and the dragon exploded due to the x4 damage buff it gives to any attack. The adds aren't a huge problem on their own.

[meursault42]

Ok: here's how I did it. 

1. agree to transport the dragon's essence.

2. You'll want to load up the area around the dragon with as many traps as you can (6)

3. You'll then walk around the dragon and kill the two adds in the room. Doing so will lock you in combat but will not cause the dragon to attack you. (this is a good thing as you see)

4. Walk everyone back into a little corner and have someone summon a monster to start the encounter. You'll want to angle these summons to set off the maximum number of traps before your party gets involved.

5. I created a handful of revival and flame wall scrolls.

6. Once the traps are set off, attack the dragon with one more summon to turn it away from your party.

7. Use every flame wall and aoe spell attack you have (my screen was crisscrossed with about 10 of them).

8. Wait. The dragon will turn around and decimate you, someone (usually kana) will survive. Use the revival scroll and go at the dragon some more.

9. Keep going and you can and WILL eventually take down the dragon.

 

Your reward will dragon meat and some scales. Not sure if it was worth the hour of figuring out a way to beat the dragon, but who cares! 

[Space]

My tactic for defeating the adra dragon is to betray the adra dragon by warning the dragon slayer and receiving scale breaker first. Then approaching the minions of the adra dragon while the adra dragon is off screen and quickly defeating all the minions before the adra dragon comes on screen.

 

Once the adra dragon is onscreen I use scale breaker (the duration is too short) and get Aloth to cast gaze of the adragan on the adra dragon while scale breaker is in effect. With luck the adra dragon is petrified and you can crit the adra dragon while it is petrified. With some more luck the adra dragon will die from its injuries before petrification wears off because your characters tend to do many crits while the adra dragon is petrified. If not cast gaze of the adragan again hoping you don't miss after scale breaker has worn off.

 

Fighting the adra dragon where it first appears is bad because the adra dragon immediately uses it's breath attack at the beginning of the encounter. If you manoeuvre to a more advantageous position such as where the high priests are guarding the entrance to the adra dragon's hoard you can get lucky and the adra dragon doesn't use it's breath attack until later in the encounter.

 

In any case you must be max lvl to defeat the adra dragon and having all your melee characters wielding superb weapons is also recommended. I leave the adra dragon for the last encounter before Thaos. The sky dragon isn't as difficult and can be defeated earlier and the valuable dragon meat can be prepared as the dragon meat meal to prepare your characters for the adra dragon encounter. The 45 extra endurance from the dragon meat meal helps save your party from dragon breath giving your party the opportunity to use heal potions immediately after the breath hits.

[Markus92]

Okay after a lot of trial and error with petrify and charm spells to focus down the adds, I instead managed to get a petrify spell on the dragon and went balls to the walls dps on him, he died within seconds and the adds were easy enough to handle afterwards.

 

So just petrify dragon and hope for crits. This was on hard, lvl 12.

 

Edit; I made sure to initiate combat by having Eder and Pallegina run to the upper section and take aggro while the rest of the party was standing to the south, Aloth immediately casting Gaze of Adragan upon combat start.

Edited April 23, 2015 by Markus92

[Alaric Eisenarm]

Thank you very much, Gaze of the Adragan is the solution for the Adra Dragon. Aloth has access to this spell, I killed the dragon with a level 11 party, the only cheese I used is reload two times

I did not have scale breaker skill.

 

How to do it:

Eder in front, he initiates the conversation with the dragon. Rest of the party in the back.

Move Eder back (as fast as possible).

Summon something to pull the dragon to the north, does not matter very much what you summon (or pull it with Eder if you have no summons).

You can now pull the whole party (in the worst case Eder cannot be pulled) on the south side behind the dragon.

Aloth now needs to hit the dragon with Gaze of the Adragan. If he misses, well to be honest reload.

Ignore the other ememies as far as possible after Aloth hits.

If Aloth hits with Gaze of the Adragan, all party members need to attack the dragon with everything they have. If possible ignore the other enemies, or use spells that hit both the dragon and the rest.

The dragon should go down quite fast now.

Kill the rest.

[Kaylon]

A ranger with high int/accuracy can root the dragon in place long enough while everyone stands out of his breath range and attacks him with their ranged weapons. 

[Anonymous1924]

My tactic was straightforward, but it took me at least 10 attempts to do it right, at lvl 12. I put different heal pots on tank, but other fancy stuff is also highly desirable because it helps A LOT - scrolls, crit pots, attack speed pots, traps, food, summoned pets, etc. I had no idea what to expect there so I didn't plan the party composition but I think it should work in general. Here's what I did.

 

- tank starts dialogue alone - straight to fighting, no cheating the dragon

- everyone else waits at the very edge of the cliff near the stairs (to the right)

- tank runs to the party

- priest buffs party with charm protection

- tank runs to the left and moves so that dragon faces the stairs

- adds need to have enough space to pass behind the dragons tail

- some tanky character stays near the dragon to agro adds

- burn adds with all you've got

- tank and spank

 

Sometimes things went wrong because the adds are stuck on the other side of the dragon which wouldn't be a big deal if it didn't mean that they eventually land a hit on the tank with their mind control and then it's all over. Sometimes the dragon orients itself towards my melee dps and lands a breath (which crits everyone else) if I don't move fast enough.

 

Here's an image of what I'm talking about: http://imgur.com/1FAP6x9.

[TT1]

It was one of my easiest battles, in the entire game. I think I killed the beast in about 12...15 seconds.

 

All party at level 12, using petrify spell, summons and just beat the hell out of him. I dont think he hit me once, actually. It was weird. And frustrating.

 

My party:

 

01 barbarian (sword-axe/ gun)

01 fighter (sabre-shield/ gun)

01 priest (gun/ pike)

01 rogue (war bow/ pike)

01 chanter (hatchet/ pike)

01 wizard (wand)

 

Game in Normal

Edited May 1, 2015 by TT1

[tghinc]

I guess I got lucky and happened upon a great tactic for defeating the dragon.

 

I sent my rogue (main char) to start the encounter and chose the most aggressive path so there wasn't a lot of talk. (didn't know about the scale breaker skill).  Following the conversation, I entered stealth and was able to withdraw without combat starting.

 

I then decided to explore the area and followed the path down and around towards the treasure room.  That's when I ran into the Xaurips and decided that I should take them out first and THEN deal with the dragon.  Using stealth, I was able to manuever my entire party along that route and started engaging the high priests first.  Things were going great until I saw the dragon coming in from behind. 

 

I immediately broke all contact and moved further into the treasure tunnel, leaving some of the xaurips behind, thinking they might block the dragon, which they did long enough for me to finish off most of the adds including the Adragan.

 

I then started kiting the dragon using Kana's summoned wurms for a barrier and just ranged the dragon with all characters. That wasn't to effective due to the defense, so I threw down a wall of force and between the hobbling and the crushing, it made a HUGE difference and the dragon's health started dropping steadily.  Wall of flame did a nice job of chewing up the dragon's health too. 

 

Rinse repeat.  Piece of cake.

 

A few times I used party summons like the beetle and through some heals on it while Kana's chant recharged.  The wall of force just stops the dragon cold due to the hobbling effect.

 

Oh yeah.  Did this at 9th level on Hard and didn't lose a single person.

 

 

[Raven Darkholme]

I guess I got lucky and happened upon a great tactic for defeating the dragon.

 

Oh yeah.  Did this at 9th level on Hard and didn't lose a single person.

Great tactic.

[dekergus]

for me nothing works...

 

petrify is inefective 8 out of 10 times , kitting is impossible because any consequent damage , by spell or weapon make the tank lose the aggro , straight tanking is impossible...

 

i manage to kill all the adds, i did bring her down to 50%... but it only happened twice in 4 hours straight of trying. the dragon slayer debuff is... ermm... a waste of time while casting it, i see no change at all.

 

i have plenty of potions, scrolls... 

 

my party if full lvl 12 , 2 fighters, priest, rogue, druid, wizard.

 

i guess this fight is only a matter of luck , mainly if the petrify is working when really needed or not.

 

going back to try killing the beast

 

 

edit :

first try after this post , the beast is down

the difference was the petrify working at two "key" moments... 

 

the two adds are killed before engaging the dragon. i left eder controling the xaurips, he will stay there till the end of the fight, without requiring any attention.

all casters are buffed with dragon meat, the priest send dire blessing and armor of faith, the tank drinks a potion of elemental resist.

 

i engage with a petrify scroll wich doesn't work, then send wall of force , a searing seal, and my rogue in melee with a reveal wickness strike...

my tank loses the agro, the foe one-shot kills my rogue, my wizard, my druid... there a 1st "key" petrify works, i reanim everybody with a scroll, i heal the tank.

 

and another petrify works.

i send the dragon slayer wich stacks with the reveal wickness hit from the rogue, who stays in melee with a poison hit, druid sends two sunlances, wizard goes melee and cast two piercing burst, priest a pillar of fire.

 

all this brings the foe to badly wounded, my tank re-aggro , for few seconds, then lose it again. there the second "key" petrify works.

then my rogue goes poison hit, i send another searing seal, my tank drops the shield for a superb two hand mace, the wizard cast his 3rd and last piercing burst, and the druid his 3rd sunlance...

and finally she dies.

 

during all this time , eder killed one xaurip

Edited May 9, 2015 by dekergus

[detorr]

Like alaric have said Gaze or Adragan its the key. After so many attempts and readings this topic it was very easy. too much.

 

2 hunters, a mague, a tank, a priest and a 'singer'. I just petrified the dragon with gaze of agragan and she just explode with all the damage. The pets just blocking  the adds.

[Lohi]

deleted

Edited May 25, 2015 by Lohi

[Exoduss]

Tears of casuals is like first thing for a game to be recognized as decent ... PoE long way to go but the river starts flowing step by step ,

 

Oh please Sir casual shed more tears 

[Tennisgolfboll]

Annoying when games do this. You expect one difficulty level, then they spring something on you that is easily 10 times harder than anything that's come before, even if you drop difficulty all the way to easy. It's a nasty trick on the casual players who spend 14 levels only to have to head back up. I don't understand why devs would do this, it is not how the BG/BG2/PST games were done. Very disappointed.

You are right. Obsidian needs to work on their difficulty settings. Easy should be easy, hard should be hard.

 

Stuff like 9 spells in a row insta gibs dragon on Potd isnt hard. Its just lame.

 

Getting killed within 2 secs with a casual party on easy isnt easy.

 

Send me a message obsidian ill balance it for you.

 

Problem with having easy to hard is that paying customers becomes frustrated ex customers. And that means less cash, which means less poe for all of us no matter what difficulty settings we play on

[Lohi]

OK, I did defeat it finally.  Realized very late that I wasn't really on easy mode after all, and that when I did change difficulty the number of additional enemies was still high because I hadn't left the room.  Also lied to the dragon so that I could leave, talk to the dragonslayer, come back, and then managed to kill the few adragon before having to fight the dragon.  Xaurips showed up eventually but fight was long enough that I summoned a couple of ogres to occupy them, then would occasionally cast spells that way.  All of Aloth's petrify casts failed, and I swapped him in just for that reason, but he was better at dealing with xaurips than grieving mother (who never ever manages to dominate anything powerful).

 

I think a key thing was putting the Venombloom underneath the dragon.  Did not do any kiting because of all the xaurips, but spread out the party some.  The dragon never breathed after the first time (very unusual I think) but Eder was tripping it now and then. Or maybe the venombloom frighten effect did that?  First blast of breath dropped two spellcasters and Eder but Durant had enough endurance left to eventually raise them back.