Dragon Fights level req?

[Phyriel]

Hey guys, what was the lowest level of your party when you killed adra/alpine dragons? I just managed to scale up WM I (problem I had in my previous topic) and I gave it a try with alpine dragon. My party is 4x lvl 11 - wizard tank, chanter off tank, priest, cipher, lvl 10 ranger and lvl 9 monk. I don't have much problems clearing all the adds with all the summons (ogres from chanter, essential phantom from wizard, bear pet from ranger + 4 figurines to buy time) not to mention confuse and hex spells from wizard, meanwhile at the start of combat dragon cant rly touch any of my chars because he's blocked by his own adds. But once I clear some adds and dragon actually get to my tank... ugh... with all the buffs stacked I think im touching like 250 deflection on him and he still lands hits... and im telling you... getting hit on wizard is not fun, I can survive just 2 hits, seems 250 deflection doesn't impress dragon one bit. Any idea how to actually tank this guy? Is there anything in game that would allow me to stand toe to toe with it for atleast 10 seconds? I tried few times and everytime I have a clear room with just dragon left I have my monk down, pet down and I just don't have enough tanking time to get it down, most of my tries ended with injured state on dragon, best one was badly injured but thats it. Is it just I'm too low lvl for that?

 

Ofc Im talking Potd difficulty

Edited March 7, 2016 by Phyriel

[ottffsse]

Level 11 full party is pretty doable though you have to disable the dragon either way before your dps engage it.

 

I suggest bringing a priest instead of the chanter though you want to cast stuff immediately. Do all rest bonus and eat food. You are doing it right by making the adds block out the dragon to give you time.

 

Best strategy is to split party in two groups group 1: tank + priest. And everyone else. Tank and priest chill on the left side of the cavern. Place tank that it can engage the adds there which will block the dragon from actually getting to your tank. Have the priest buff the tank and the tank should hold out on the left side as everyone else clears the adds and phantoms but ignore the dragon who is desperately but stupidly trying to get to your tank but is blocked by his own adds.

 

Rest bonus: accuracy vs beast on everyone. Wizard should get cloak of the frozen hunt for more accuracy. After these preparations everything should be simpler. Control the adds while the dragon is doing nothing trying to get to your tank, buff the wizards accuracy through the roof, you can carefully move your guys forward to be in range of the priests buff spells but don't engage dragon yet (since the priest will be on the side with the tank have someone else use a prayer against fear scroll) through a petrify gaze spell at the dragon once it's debuffed a bit and than hack away at it. Other than priest have maybe the wizard have scrolls of revival handy they will be of use. Retaliation + flame shield + pain link works well against the dragon too. If you have a paladin sworn enemy the Alpine and spam confusion and other scrolls on it.

Edited March 7, 2016 by ottffsse

[Crucis]

A chanter is OK for casting stuff immediately.  It just has to be spells he's casting from scrolls, not his own invocations.  One of the very best scroll spells to cast on a dragon is Paralysis.  If you can paralyze a dragon, and keep him paralyzed, you can take it down fairly easily.

 

Beyond that, it helps to know which of your spells will debuff which defenses.  And also target a dragon's weakest DR's with the right spells and weapons.  If you see a dragon that's weak against fire damage, by all means start spamming fire spells at that bad boy!

[ottffsse]

Except alpine is immune to paralysis. But not confusion.

 

But a paladin is a way better scroll spammer after sworn enemy dwbuff anyways , or a fighter with the accuracy barrage buff.

Edited March 7, 2016 by ottffsse

[Boeroer]

You have to make sure that he doesn't get sneak attacks. So you should watch out for afflictions that you catched. Especially getting flanked can be a problem and there's no spell against that.

 

Another thing is that the Dragon's Breath doesn't target deflection but reflex. So 250 deflection only is of little use. You also need a lot of reflex and fortitude.

 

If you want to block the dragon a bit longer try the Withdraw spell of your priest. Cast it on two of your party members who can then block the way of the fat dragon. You can buy a lot of time that way. Perfect with animal companions I guess.

Edited March 7, 2016 by Boeroer

[Phyriel]

Oh that withdraw trick is super smart, but I don't wanna do it this way, I'm sure with that approach I could just trap poor dragon between Withdraws forever and just shoot him to death but since I didn't kill Adra Dragon but freed it instead I want to achieve a legit kill on a dragon:P

 

I feel this ain't gonna be my last playthrough tho:P

Edited March 7, 2016 by Phyriel

[Phyriel]

Meh this is impossible, clearing trash is easy but dragon alone reks my party to shreds, theres is no possible combination of buffs to let anything tank this ****er, if I follow advice to just send my tank and priest left the dragon just spams breaths becuse he can't reach them with auto attacks... I dont need to mention how it works for poor tank and priest right? Its literally breath after breath after breath if he can't reach anything to hit in melee. My best bet for clearing trash so far is just to spam figurines while buffing up, hexing with wizard and **** like that but then as I mentioned, I'm left alone vs dragon and he just destroys my party alone. My monk doesn't seem to do ****, the only dmg that I can get thru is from ranger and cipher thru tactical meld and body attunement but its just too ****ing slow. Getting tired of this crap... I guess ill just come back here when im proper lvl.

 

One breath just ****ing kills half of my party right away... this fight is 90% reload galore, what a joke.

 

I think something is wrong with my game actually, I watched how ppl do it on youtube and if this worked the same on my game it would've been such a breeze. First thing I noticed is that alpine dragon ppl fight on utube have like 120 defenses, 130 will etc. Mine got nearly 200 O_o no wonder I can't ****ing land **** on it. I think something bugged out with scaler I forced to use via console. It got scaled to oblivion apparently. Oh well... rip my playthrough, gotta restart... 

 

I tried to cheese and trap it behind Withdraw targets, it works but as I mentioned dragon gets pissed off really hard that he can't reach anybody and starts shooting breath like m45, its literally SPAMMING breaths non stop, one animation isn't done yet, he already cast another. 

Edited March 7, 2016 by Phyriel

[AndreaColombo]

well, the Alpine Dragon is a 14th-level creature; could be done at 11th but it ought to be really challenging. Perhaps try again when you're level 14?

[Phyriel]

Yea i guess so, well I guess I've done pretty good being able to get him down to badly injured atleast:)

[ottffsse]

Oh sorry but I meant is you have to start the fight in position. Once you place your troops in an ideal way (tank etc on far left bottom edge others far right upper edge) have a bow user snipe a critter to initiate combat. Or carefully send your tank into the dragons sight range.

As for flat out tanking the thing you'll have to have saves and deflection of at least 150 on everything through buffs. And still have priest support. The best tankers I had against this dragon where simply characters with high enough endurance (barbarians or people with 18 con + items, as dragon targets fortitude sometimes). That way they can take a few hits but keep drinking pots. Pain link and flame shield on them and watch the dragon kill itself off of those 200+ damage hits.

 

But I did it with full lvl 11 party, and used confuse scrolls liberaly. If you have sub lvl 11 toons it makes it harder. At your level if you can petrify / confuse the dragon you can pull it out otherwise level up more for a more brute force approach.

[Boeroer]

Lvl 11 is a bit early. I killed him yesterday with a lvl 14 party and didn't even need tactics. 3 levels make a lot of difference. More ACC, higher defenses, maybe better gear.

[Phyriel]

Yea by the time I was try-harding to take it down i had 4x11 1x10 1x9 in party, at some point, im pretty sure fight totally glitched out because I saw nearly 200 defenses on dragon and he started using his breath like minigun. At this point I nerd raged because it was a try I pretty much nailed with trash, positioning and buffing up, at this point I didn't even try using confuse scrolls so I've been killing all the trash by myself and used figurines to distract dragon as long as possible. Imagine how upset I got after killing all the trash, and having just dragon left, already "injured", all my party alive and well, minor wounds here and there and then "breath... breath... br...br... breath" I honestly downright alt f4'd the game  

[Boeroer]

Hehehe. You'll come back.

[Reent]

hey, thats still better then what happened to me - i fought her exactly once and i died because the trash didnt survive long enough! Okay - it was a bad situation to fight a dragon in ironman solo run - but since i am playing wm blind - i had no choice - lvl 11 Chanter with no deflection, i was quite surprised the trash did about nothing to me - i had the dragon down to injured when - all of a sudden - the trash died and made a way for the dragon... killing me quite fast since i wasnt ready for the pain :D if i had summoned something and kited a bit after the trash was gone... but no, i just looked at the dragon and ignored the trash -.-

You can try again any time, i have to play to that point again (and i did, however i ignored the dragon and died to paralyse ghosts a bit further in the next run - my will defense was too low -.- now i will play through the game once with durance as a helper (ironman), when i know wm as i know the rest i will go back to solo)

 

(why my part is worse? everyone expects bugs (at least i do) so i dont mind dying to one but dying because the encounter looked too easy and you didnt use anything, took your hands off and just looked smiling at the screen - until it was too late to react?^^)

Edited March 8, 2016 by Reent

[Raven Darkholme]

Idk if anyone said that yet, buuuut NONE of the dragons attacks target deflection.

With my solo paladin I actually respecced for less deflection and max Ref + Fort.

If you get blinded or dazed remove that and don't get flanked or kill flankers quickly.

Use boots of stability and ring of Thorns. (edit: and the belt for +3 con and helmet with +3 MI)

If you ahve a party you might be able to do this at level 10 but since your wizard is 11 already you should be good.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Raven Darkholme

[Phyriel]

Wizard Tank, as strong as it is for 99% of the game, crazy high deflection, being frontline for sick CC, I gotta admit its probably super bad choice for tanking dragons tho. Super low fortitude sadly;/

[Cragen]

Around level 12 you can start doing most dragon fights. Does require a bit of clever thinking in terms of positioning and using summoned monsters to really make it doable.That was at least my case on my current POTD run.

Kana should really be renamed the dragonslayer for the help he brings to killing dragons.

The Adra dragon I'd sneak towards the treasure hoard, quickly AoE down the Xaurips and start moving up towards the treasure. This limits being bumrushed by all the adds. Then I had Kana just spam Ogres to act as distraction for the dragon while my party kills the adds that run up without any danger.
Kill all the adds then the dragon should go down easy. Either by prebuffing with priest for massive acc+damage increase to just blow it up before it wipes your party with AoE or just control it with paralyze.

 

Generally that tactic works for all of the dragons. Using summoned adds to distract while you clean up adds and give you time to use a priest to buff to the max before burning down the dragon.

[MaxQuest]

Idk if anyone said that yet, buuuut NONE of the dragons attacks target deflection.

Adra dragon's base attack targets deflection. But yeah, you are right you can get away with less deflection, as in comparison to breath and wing-slam attacks, it's melee damage is negligible (60-80 grazes before DR).

 

Hey guys, what was the lowest level of your party when you killed adra/alpine dragons? (potd)

I've killed adra dragon at level 11, with story companions. Without killing the adds first, charming/confusing/dominating the dragon. But I have paralized her twice, when needed time to revive and heal-up my companions.

But with custom companions, and good execution, I suppose she could be slain as early as level 9 or even 8. (Without cc'ing her completely/pre-killing the adds)

Edited March 9, 2016 by MaxQuest

[Raven Darkholme]

 

Idk if anyone said that yet, buuuut NONE of the dragons attacks target deflection.

Adra dragon's base attack targets deflection. But yeah, you are right you can get away with less deflection, as in comparison to breath and wing-slam attacks, it's melee damage is negligible (60-80 grazes before DR).

 

Hey guys, what was the lowest level of your party when you killed adra/alpine dragons? (potd)

I've killed adra dragon at level 11, with story companions. Without killing the adds first, charming/confusing/dominating the dragon. But I have paralized her twice, when needed time to revive and heal-up my companions.

But with custom companions, and good execution, I suppose she could be slain as early as level 9 or even 8. (Without cc'ing her completely/pre-killing the adds)

 

I thought this was about the alpine dragon?

[MaxQuest]

^ Hmm, OP did ask about both of them, in the starting post. Also you wrote  "dragons" in plural form.

Edited March 9, 2016 by MaxQuest

[Raven Darkholme]

^ Hmm, OP did ask about both of them, in the starting post. Also you wrote  "dragons" in plural form.

Even tho I'm German, I'm not a grammar nazi, I meant Dragon's.

Also even tho he wrote both in his first post I could only read about how he tried to kill alpine with mnaced deflection, so I pointed out he maxed the wrong defense.^^

[MaxQuest]

^ Hehe, but have you joined the ranks of grammar communists yet? We need you comrade!

[Raven Darkholme]

^ Hehe, but have you joined the ranks of grammar communists yet? We need you comrade!

Njet.

[Necrobro]

Level 11 should be fine unless you have a super melee heavy party.

Level 11 is actually my favorite dragon starting point as it's when priest gains access to Crowns for the Faithfuls which is an amazing buff for your casters.

The trick is to leave the draggy permanently debuffed which ain't hard even on POTD. You can knock down, petrify, confuse him.

Remember to debuff his saves first with hobbled, blind, weakened etc. You basically only need the tank to survive for a few seconds before setting up a field of doom that will ensure the dragons get permanently debuffed. 

Priest starts with Crowns for the Faithful, then the improved Daze with weakening effect or Holy Radiance with acc boost.
After that the usual buffs like dire blessing ,the party wide accuracy +20,  etc Leave a level 2 trap seal near the prone dragon so it'll immediately activate when they get up. 

Druid goes Relentless Storm to cc the draggy's allies, then Tanglefoot + Sunbeam + start spamming Calling the World's Maw or Embrace the Earth Talon for petrify or knockdown as needed.

Mage casts Confusion to handle the adds then Enervating Terror to hopefully terrify and weaken the dragon. After that Slickens for reflex based knockdowns or Gaze of the Adragan to petrify.

If you have a Cipher I like starting with the level 4 power I think that converts crits to hits and hits to grazes because frankly dragons have overpowered stats/damage, and still hit for a ton no matter your tank stats.

[Phyriel]

Hehe thanks for input, I finally got dragon down but not with lvls 9-11 as I originally tried. Yea its all good on paper but it gets rather nasty if your priests gets stuck from one of the ghosts ranged attack or you get smacked in the face with unlucky breath. At those lvls I tried to do it it was down to RNG rly and it wasn't what I was ultimately wanting to achieve.