Alpine Dragon..?

[0rangekun]

It's basic attack targets Fortitude? How do you defend against that? This thing's hitting (not critting) Eder for 120 damage.

 

Edit: And just grazed my PC for over 300 damage. What?

Edited February 19, 2016 by 0rangekun

[AndreaColombo]

Shield up your tank like their life depended on it (which it does) and send it alone against the dragon from the far left.

 

Your party will have time to buff and attack from the right side of the cave.

[Raven Darkholme]

Also to note is that the dragon has Sneak Attacks and Deathblows.

Eder is not the best choice if you actually want to tank the dragon.

Respeccing a PC paladin is pretty awesome here, since the dragon does not target deflection at all.

[Boeroer]

If you pump MIG like crazy you not only will experience a very high fortitude defense, but also do more damage to the dragon.

You can also pump CON quite easily in order to get high fortitude: Girdle of Eotun Constitution + Whispers of Yenwood = +5 CON, then add all the other buffs for CON and fortitude that you might have. 

 

I wonder if a wild orlan barb with high CON, high MIG, PER and DEX and Frenzy + Stalwart Defiance and the appropriate talents would be good enough to tank that beast? While hacking at the adds? At least he can get +20 on all defenses from Defiant Resolve and Stalwart Defiance?

Or a monk with the same attitude?

 

The great thing about the paladin is that he not only tanks the dragon but also supports his party at the same time.

[0rangekun]

If you pump MIG like crazy you not only will experience a very high fortitude defense, but also do more damage to the dragon.

You can also pump CON quite easily in order to get high fortitude: Girdle of Eotun Constitution + Whispers of Yenwood = +5 CON, then add all the other buffs for CON and fortitude that you might have. 

 

I wonder if a wild orlan barb with high CON, high MIG, PER and DEX and Frenzy + Stalwart Defiance and the appropriate talents would be good enough to tank that beast? While hacking at the adds? At least he can get +20 on all defenses from Defiant Resolve and Stalwart Defiance?

Or a monk with the same attitude?

 

The great thing about the paladin is that he not only tanks the dragon but also supports his party at the same time.

 

Those stack? That's pretty great, but geez. It's so hard to figure what stacks and what doesn't in this game, everything seems a bit inconsistent. Two flat +CON items stacking, but my +12 Will below 33% Endurance from Mantle of the Undying Boar is suppressed by my +9 ring.

 

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I did manage to take down the dragon with a bit of luck (I was trying to confuse the other enemies, and wound up confusing the dragon for 20! seconds) and a bit of cheese (Gaze of the Adragan might be a legitimate spell, but it feels entirely cheap; I feel less dirty about using it out of desperation when the dragon's already got immunity to virtually every other major CC, however).

 

I was just utterly blown away by how hard this thing hit, it felt plain unfair.

 

Now I'm back to breezing through just about everything in the game 'til I go fight the Adra Dragon.

[Boeroer]

Item enchantments don't stack. Only exception is weapons/shield. That stacks with everything. That's a reason why you can have two retaliation effects with Sura's Supper Plate and any other retaliation item. Or why the +1 MIG from Godansthunyr stacks with everything.

 

The Adra Dragon is easy compared to the Alpine - maybe just my opinion.

Edited February 20, 2016 by Boeroer

[Hayte]

The dragon has deathblows meaning that if you have 2 or more status effects on you, you will get mega owned. Remember that Dragons have a terrify aura so that is one status effect automatically.

 

In terms of companions, you want these guys: Eder, Aloth, Hiravias and Durance.

 

Move Eder solo to the left side of the cave and give him a ring of suppress affliction. If you don't have one, you have to manually cleanse him. Eder should have potion of major recovery, potion of major endurance, potion of llengrath's displaced images and scroll of defence. You get the idea - its to make Eder's deflection/defenses as high as possible and have some heal buttons in case he eats an unlucky crit.

 

Position the rest of the party somewhere in the middle and south of the cave, where the bones are and close to where the spirits will spawn.

 

When you go hostile with the dragon the first few actions will involve cleansing everyone of negative status effects. So use your liberating exhortations, your prayers against fear, suppress afflictions etc. This is good for two reasons - you won't lose a tonne of accuracy from being terrified and Eder is less likely to get owned by deathblows.

 

Eder should throw up a potion of displaced images immediately, followed by a scroll of defense. The rest of your party should spend their first few actions buffing accuracy so you can reliably hit the dragon with your debuffs. The main buffs to get up are Crowns for the Faithful + Devotions for the Faithful, Champion's Boon (on your best damage dealer) and Citzel's Martial Power on your Wizard. You want to use any aoe buffs that give you +perception and lots of accuracy.

 

When your whole party has like 120+ accuracy, Hiravias should use Returning Storm. This is not for the dragon (which is immune to stun I think). It is to mass stun all the spirits that spawn on your party when you start attacking the dragon.

 

Because you have decent accuracy, you can now hit the dragon with stuff that will reduce its defenses. The main one you want to reduce is fortitude so drop Venombloom and Insect Plague on it to make it sickened and weakened. why fortitude? Because the dragon is immune to most disables like paralysis, stun and prone but it is not immune to petrification. Gaze of Adragan is a petrify spell opposed by fortitude.

 

Hover over the dragon to check if sickened and weakened are applied. If they are, its time to cast Gaze of Adragan. When petrified hits, it will absolutely destroy the dragon's deflection and reflex so you can get easy melee/ranged crits and any spell that targets reflex will be pretty much guaranteed to hit. You need to quickly dump all your damage, so use your big aoes and per encounter/per rest abilities like Scale Breaker and recast Gaze of Adragan.

 

Remember to re-suppress afflictions if they pop back up on your party. Once you land the petrify, the dragon will die very quickly. Maybe 10 to 20 seconds tops with a level 14 party. You can mostly ignore the spirit adds because they will be constantly stunned by Returning Storm. You can use a melee damage dealer or single target ranged damager dealer to clean up some of the blights as your party is buffing but once Hiravias casts Returning Storm, you can pretty much just ignore the adds and focus on the dragon.

[0rangekun]

Item enchantments don't stack. Only exception is weapons/shield. That stacks with everything. That's a reason why you can have two retaliation effects with Sura's Supper Plate and any other retaliation item. Or why the +1 MIG from Godansthunyr stacks with everything.

 

The Adra Dragon is easy compared to the Alpine - maybe just my opinion.

It actually was, too. Granted, a part of that is the adds suck less than spectres, IMO. And a bigger battlefield gave me some time to actually deal with a lot of the smaller enemies and get my buffs going before the dragon joined the fight.

 

Apparently, though, Greyjaw is the most powerful enemy in the game. I keep landing bigger kills with my paladin, yet Greyjaw forever remains her strongest foe. 

 

I had no idea about weapons being an exception. Always thought it was weird that Godansthunyr had +1 Might, and now that I know that I'm a little sad I didn't use the hammer before.

Edited February 20, 2016 by 0rangekun

[Kaylon]

Yes, the "most powerful enemy defeated" doesn't make any sense...

[Malek_Deneith]

My experience with both Adra and Alpine was that they're most unfun, cheap fights I faced in the game thus far - and I'm not even playing on highest difficulty. To hell with them I say, Gaze of the Adragan spam is all they deserve.

[Boeroer]

Well at higher levels it's all doable by brute force if you have a full party.

Once your ACC is high enough and you don't get one-shotted anymore they are dead in seconds.

[Hayte]

My experience with both Adra and Alpine was that they're most unfun, cheap fights I faced in the game thus far - and I'm not even playing on highest difficulty. To hell with them I say, Gaze of the Adragan spam is all they deserve.

 

Adra Dragon is immune to petrify (but not paralysis). Alpine Dragon is immune to paralysis (but not petrify). The boss/dragon fights are more like puzzles where you have to find a weakness in its immunities and then target the appropriate defence.

 

One method of taking out the Alpine Dragon is what I described above - buff accuracy to hit, target fortitude and petrify lock. One method of taking out Adra Dragon is to buff accuracy to hit, target will and paralyze lock.

 

The difficulty with these two dragons is more about doing that with all the support adds harassing you. You could buff accuracy and spam scrolls of confusion since confused on the adds will make the dragon kill them for you. Could also work for tankless groups when you need to keep it busy somehow.

 

Adra Dragon is probably easier than Alpine because it is much easier to separate the dragon from the adds. You just stick your party to the left wall of the pit. The adds will almost always arrive well before the dragon because they walk alot faster. In any event, the adra dragon gets stuck on the stairs where the pit becomes narrow. Your party will be conveniently out of breath attack range.

 

A more interesting boss fight would probably be immune to petrify and paralysis as well as the other big disables such as stun. So to control the boss you would need to slow its movement speed and kite your party around the boss arena. Something like that.

[Malek_Deneith]

Adra Dragon is immune to petrify (but not paralysis).

When I fought him he wasn't, but I believe that was before 2.0 and there were no immunities at that time if I remember correctly.

[0rangekun]

 

Adra Dragon is immune to petrify (but not paralysis).

When I fought him he wasn't, but I believe that was before 2.0 and there were no immunities at that time if I remember correctly.

 

Yeah, I went in wholly expecting to have to petrify the Adra dragon only to find she's immune now. In the end I didn't need to anyway, as she hit for about 100+ compared to the Alpine dragon.

 

I had a blast fighting Adra. Alpine just felt entirely overtuned. I can deal with any enemy that has some immunities, high defenses, high DR, and a good bit of accuracy, but I can't deal with a monster that can one shot multiple party members with a single attack if it chooses to, or can one shot my tank when it lands a hit. If were due to some kind of "berserk" trigger once the dragon reaches a certain amount of health, I think I could manage, but when it's doing that right from the start I just shake my fist at the lack of prebuffing. It's hard to get buffs and debuffs going when any or everyone can die before you cast a couple spells.

[MountainTiger]

Just beat both for the first time: Adra was easier, since my PC was able to keep her paralyze-locked with Mental Binding for most of the fight. Alpine got dominated for a bit while I took out the rest of the enemies, then just surrounded by frontliners and beaten on with Moonwells and the frontliners' assorted heals keeping them up. Zahua did land a couple of critical grazes with Force of Anguish that knocked him down from time to time. That prone resistance is nasty, but it can be overcome.

[Boeroer]

Critical grazes, tehehe.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Boeroer

[Z09]

Killed it with my level 12 party on Hard, right after slaying Adra Dragon. Both battles are pretty exciting, My party has 2 melees 4 ranges: Zahua (soft tank + DD), Durance (priest + support), Aloth Macintosh (spell + DD), Kana (support, summoner), Sagani (disabler, DD) and main character Dex + Per Min max cipher.

 

Both battles have 3 phases, phase 1: take control of the dragon, micro intensive to position my cipher at the right place and keep the Adragans (Adra dragon) or spectres (Alpine dragon) busy,

phase 2: Kana's orges summon, position them appropriately, cleaning up the mobs, inflict more disables and damage while the dragon is under charm, like psycho vampiric shield, pillars of faith malignant cloud

phase 3: kill the dragon with everything Aloth, Durance and my Cipher could throw into its face.

Thanks to Sagani with her Stormcaller stunned the Adra dragon a few crucial times, Aloth's tentacles and poison cloud and mental binding also helped.

 

I killed the Alpine dragon without using petrifying gaze, Zahua finished him with a punch lol 

 

[falchen]

Took me a while but what I did ended up being pretty simple. Party moves to the lower left spot of the cave and bunches up against the wall, one tanky character goes to attack the dragon from the other side, while he's engaged party buffs and aoe nukes the mobs, then just concentrate on the dragon and make sure characters that need to get close attack from different sides, keep a priest or paladin back to raise the dead as necesary.

 

Or in short, just don't let it's breath attack hit your whole party.

Edited March 11, 2016 by falchen

[Mocker22]

 

 

Adra Dragon is immune to petrify (but not paralysis).

When I fought him he wasn't, but I believe that was before 2.0 and there were no immunities at that time if I remember correctly.

 

Yeah, I went in wholly expecting to have to petrify the Adra dragon only to find she's immune now. In the end I didn't need to anyway, as she hit for about 100+ compared to the Alpine dragon.

 

I had a blast fighting Adra. Alpine just felt entirely overtuned. I can deal with any enemy that has some immunities, high defenses, high DR, and a good bit of accuracy, but I can't deal with a monster that can one shot multiple party members with a single attack if it chooses to, or can one shot my tank when it lands a hit. If were due to some kind of "berserk" trigger once the dragon reaches a certain amount of health, I think I could manage, but when it's doing that right from the start I just shake my fist at the lack of prebuffing. It's hard to get buffs and debuffs going when any or everyone can die before you cast a couple spells.

 

My problem isn't that the Alpine dragon is hard.....its a dragon ffs. But I never felt like the rewards were good enough at all. At least the other dragons give you crafting items.

[Raven Darkholme]

I feel like if you know how to buff your tank vs alpine it's not that hard.

Not needing deflection at all is a very interesting bonus if you are willing to respec and adjust your buffs.