Dracula beat us

[MordredMS 鬱賢]

I've played this game in a three-man co-op team for somewhere between 60-65 hours, plus 50 or so more on a solo game, and have been mostly having fun, powering through a couple of the harder bosses (especially that damn spider). Beat Solarus on first try and Adam on second with my mates.

But Dracula... he beat us.

Level 90, all soul fragments, all potion'd up, and after 4 hours of tries the most we could do was shave off like 10-15% of his health, AT MOST. I don't think I can remember ever feeling this utterly powerless in a game except Super Mario 3.

-His health is absurd;
-He's got so many different attacks that, while we can see how to dodge or block each of them, we then get caught by the next one before our spells or veils come back up from cooldown; not to mention, his attacks always seem to have more range than we think;
-If we focus on defense, we end up barely hitting him at all; while for us, all it takes is four-six serious hits to be basically down for the count;
-All those minions he keeps spawning turn the arena into a bloody bullet hell, so that it becomes pretty much impossible to keep track of all that ♥♥♥♥ going on on screen; basically, if we fight the boss the minions chip us down, if we fight the minions it becomes a never-ending cycle in which we barely get to hit Dracula at all for entire minutes.

So, after admitting defeat, and after I had to do a whole lot of convincing to prevent my mates from throwing in the towel and uninstalling, we decided to go change the server settings to max our health and damage, and most importantly remove weapon degradation. (Is it cheating? Probably. Do we care? No.)

So, while we wait for the next session to re-craft all our equipment from scratch in order for the stat changes to take effect, I humbly ask for tips, because we're at a loss here.

[Dorim]

Yes it is cheating and many players beat it in normal way... try to watch some video on youtube and learn?

[poxxy]

Did it on brutal solo. It is probably easier solo tbh because if everyone is not pulling their weight ♥♥♥♥ can get crazy. Just keep practicing. It's less about buffs, or even gear, and more about knowing attack patterns, when and how to dodge and when you can get damage in without getting punished.

Going double shield build is nice because sustain, with a little bit of DPS (chaos and frost). Weapon swap accordingly -though on phase 1 you can just stick to one weapon-
Mace does more DPS against crystals in phase 2.
For phase 4 everyone goes masquito and death knight and you spam the ♥♥♥♥ out of it with free spell casting and nuke him quickly.

[Yumeko]

solo dracula feels better and learn how to use your weapons for dmg especially iframes.
If you still struggle to not get hit then use e.g. a barrier.

[orionmnt]

Playing on brutal 2p, Dracula required like 4-5 hours of tries. I was using only bow, my friend slashers. 1st phase is whatever, prolly using more defensives untill you get used to he mechanics/tempo, you shouldnt take any damage here, phase 2 youll prolly need skill changes, something for the crystals and some iframes godmode like Blood Rite. Next phase 2 dps skills, and the last phase is a fast "dance"', depending on your weapons I pretty much died very early on and my friend finished it (slashers are insane there, bow less good or I was just not experienced enough and had bad skills).
So after that I was pissed that my friend carried the last phase and went solo, spend like another 5 hours. My new problems were that the bow is great for kiting or fights that are not time dependant but for dps check phases (3rd and 4th) I struggled. Testing different dps spells, sooner or later it will give good outcome. And for the final phase, Had really bad time with the bow, until i tested double counter spells, barely moving, countering the projectiles and just dpsing and it was amazing. Dont really play soulslike solo games, but that boss felt like one.
In general, first phase, take your time, dont take big hits, just restart (exit the room) if major hit is taken,
phase 2, you dont need all the crystals, 1-2 crystals, maybe 3 then dps the boss,
phase 3, shouldnt be a problem with more players, be quick switching to some dps spells
phase 4, depending on weapon (if it does have some iframes skills you can use something outside of counter spells like I had to do with my bow....) counter spells are great - give more damage uptime

[LuckyToShoot]

I remember I used chaos barrier + lightning ball and greatsword (for the big aoe cleaves and iframes) to fight dracula, whenever he spawned the wolves minions or crystals i just throw a lightning ball, ram into them with greatsword Q skill and then finish them off with a few primary attack, that kills them off fairly quickly unless they nerfed lightning ball over the last year. if the wolves somehow survive attack after that, I'd normally just anticipate the next dracula attack and block it with chaos veil and redirect that absorbed attack towards the minion that survived. And i use the E skill to avoid damage when I dont have a veil to use, but i usually like to save veil for the long range sword shockwave attack he likes to do or his long dash attack. otherwise most of his attacks can just be dodge by moving sideways as long as u arent attacking, cause that slows ur movement speed down.

Dracula definitely takes some practice tho especially in brutal, and i saw many different ways people fought him. But that was just how I personally did it. You can switch spells between phases if you want, but I didnt bother.

Also don't forget to get juiced up on potions or even farm for that orange artifact weapon, every little bit helps.

[Kappa]

It was challenging for us too ( brutal difficulty. 3 players ).

We got killed a lot, but then swapped our old necks with the monster necks ( the ones that lose durabilities if one doesn't grind events time by time ) and it went down on the first attempt ( we did a great attempt, but I think the difference in terms fo dps given by the neck was pretty high ).

ps: Note that none of us had shields/counters ( otherwise the whole game would have probably been a joke ), and spent much time to roll endgame jewelries ( though we unlocked all passives and got a legendary ).

ps: Dracula is how the brutal difficulty should be ( and I hope that someday even other bosses will be make that good in terms of challenge. Adam could be considered fine, and the strongest among the 3 "monsters" that drop a shard, in addition to dracula ).

[( ͡° o ͡°)]

Diposting pertama kali oleh MordredMS 鬱賢:

I've played this game in a three-man co-op team for somewhere between 60-65 hours, plus 50 or so more on a solo game, and have been mostly having fun, powering through a couple of the harder bosses (especially that damn spider). Beat Solarus on first try and Adam on second with my mates.

But Dracula... he beat us.

Level 90, all soul fragments, all potion'd up, and after 4 hours of tries the most we could do was shave off like 10-15% of his health, AT MOST. I don't think I can remember ever feeling this utterly powerless in a game except Super Mario 3.

-His health is absurd;
-He's got so many different attacks that, while we can see how to dodge or block each of them, we then get caught by the next one before our spells or veils come back up from cooldown; not to mention, his attacks always seem to have more range than we think;
-If we focus on defense, we end up barely hitting him at all; while for us, all it takes is four-six serious hits to be basically down for the count;
-All those minions he keeps spawning turn the arena into a bloody bullet hell, so that it becomes pretty much impossible to keep track of all that ♥♥♥♥ going on on screen; basically, if we fight the boss the minions chip us down, if we fight the minions it becomes a never-ending cycle in which we barely get to hit Dracula at all for entire minutes.

So, after admitting defeat, and after I had to do a whole lot of convincing to prevent my mates from throwing in the towel and uninstalling, we decided to go change the server settings to max our health and damage, and most importantly remove weapon degradation. (Is it cheating? Probably. Do we care? No.)

So, while we wait for the next session to re-craft all our equipment from scratch in order for the stat changes to take effect, I humbly ask for tips, because we're at a loss here.

Get gud, he is skilled based

[MordredMS 鬱賢]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Dorim:

Yes it is cheating and many players beat it in normal way... try to watch some video on youtube and learn?

TBH, I treat games much like I do any other work of art, such as a book, rather than like a school test or a certification: it's something that has a beginning and an endpoint after which I'm satisfied and put it back on the shelf; I'm going to finish the book and be done with it no matter what. If I didn't care to use guides, in-game cheats, or even Cheat Engine other times that I needed them, I will not lose sleep over something that was allowed by the developers themselves in the game's options.

That said... we did watch a bunch of videos, yes, and our problem seems to be not about understanding what to do, but actually doing it, considering how Dracula can take each of us down in 4-8 hits depending on the attack while he's a damn sponge. We can't get the distance or the timing right consistently enough not to get out-dps'd rather quickly. In my personal best try I managed to avoid getting hit completely for over three minutes, I was the last vampire standing, but still I don't think we shaved off more than 15% of his health, 20% at most... and when all of Dracula's attacks and minion came constantly on me, I got overwhelmed rather quickly.

Diposting pertama kali oleh poxxy:

Did it on brutal solo. It is probably easier solo tbh because if everyone is not pulling their weight ♥♥♥♥ can get crazy. Just keep practicing. It's less about buffs, or even gear, and more about knowing attack patterns, when and how to dodge and when you can get damage in without getting punished.

Going double shield build is nice because sustain, with a little bit of DPS (chaos and frost). Weapon swap accordingly -though on phase 1 you can just stick to one weapon-
Mace does more DPS against crystals in phase 2.
For phase 4 everyone goes masquito and death knight and you spam the ♥♥♥♥ out of it with free spell casting and nuke him quickly.

We're playing on normal. Do you suggest we should go at it one by one solo, rather than as a group?

Swapping spells mid-fight? How? The game doesn't pause while you're on the pause menu... or is there a pause in the fight between phases?

Would you say that going double barrier (necromancy and chaos, for example) could be viable or would we lose too much damage?

Diposting pertama kali oleh Yumeko:

solo dracula feels better and learn how to use your weapons for dmg especially iframes.
If you still struggle to not get hit then use e.g. a barrier.

So do you think that going at him one by one would be more practical?

Diposting pertama kali oleh orionmnt:

Playing on brutal 2p, Dracula required like 4-5 hours of tries. I was using only bow, my friend slashers. 1st phase is whatever, prolly using more defensives untill you get used to he mechanics/tempo, you shouldnt take any damage here, phase 2 youll prolly need skill changes, something for the crystals and some iframes godmode like Blood Rite. Next phase 2 dps skills, and the last phase is a fast "dance"', depending on your weapons I pretty much died very early on and my friend finished it (slashers are insane there, bow less good or I was just not experienced enough and had bad skills).
So after that I was pissed that my friend carried the last phase and went solo, spend like another 5 hours. My new problems were that the bow is great for kiting or fights that are not time dependant but for dps check phases (3rd and 4th) I struggled. Testing different dps spells, sooner or later it will give good outcome. And for the final phase, Had really bad time with the bow, until i tested double counter spells, barely moving, countering the projectiles and just dpsing and it was amazing. Dont really play soulslike solo games, but that boss felt like one.
In general, first phase, take your time, dont take big hits, just restart (exit the room) if major hit is taken,
phase 2, you dont need all the crystals, 1-2 crystals, maybe 3 then dps the boss,
phase 3, shouldnt be a problem with more players, be quick switching to some dps spells
phase 4, depending on weapon (if it does have some iframes skills you can use something outside of counter spells like I had to do with my bow....) counter spells are great - give more damage uptime

Wow, congrats mate... we're playing on normal and we didn't even get to see past the first phase.

You too are talking about swapping spells mid-fight, if I understand correctly. Can it really be done? Last time I tried doing it I was dead by the time I closed the menu...

Unfortunately at the moment we've only got one lvl30 weapon each and the rest are lvl26; is it better for us to stick to the highest level weapon, or we give priority consideration to the moveset?

Diposting pertama kali oleh LuckyToShoot:

I remember I used chaos barrier + lightning ball and greatsword (for the big aoe cleaves and iframes) to fight dracula, whenever he spawned the wolves minions or crystals i just throw a lightning ball, ram into them with greatsword Q skill and then finish them off with a few primary attack, that kills them off fairly quickly unless they nerfed lightning ball over the last year. if the wolves somehow survive attack after that, I'd normally just anticipate the next dracula attack and block it with chaos veil and redirect that absorbed attack towards the minion that survived. And i use the E skill to avoid damage when I dont have a veil to use, but i usually like to save veil for the long range sword shockwave attack he likes to do or his long dash attack. otherwise most of his attacks can just be dodge by moving sideways as long as u arent attacking, cause that slows ur movement speed down.

Dracula definitely takes some practice tho especially in brutal, and i saw many different ways people fought him. But that was just how I personally did it. You can switch spells between phases if you want, but I didnt bother.

Also don't forget to get juiced up on potions or even farm for that orange artifact weapon, every little bit helps.

Thanks, these make a lot of sense. I was using the necromancy shield + death knight, while one of my mates was using the chaos barrier. Might try switching to chaos barrier myself and/or lighting ball, that combo you suggested sounds effective...

Diposting pertama kali oleh theworld:

Just stop with the "IDGAF" nonsense. If you didn't care you wouldn't have created the thread.

I really don't, though. We are still using the health and damage boost in the server options, that isn't gonna change, and none of us is losing sleep over it. It's just that, considering how little success we've had so far, I'm worried that even that won't be enough, that's why I came here looking for advice in order to be better prepared before our next session tomorrow.

Diposting pertama kali oleh theworld:

The 1st step towards solving a problem is admitting you have a problem. Doing the ego protection with a "yes, but" and very weasel-y roundabout way of stating you have a problem is NOT doing yourself any favors.

That's... what I'm here for. I literally began this thread by saying I got beaten and admitting defeat.

Diposting pertama kali oleh theworld:

This isn't just about V Rising, this is a very unhealthy attitude towards hurdles in life. Speaking from experience.

.........how old are you?

Diposting pertama kali oleh theworld:

So either re-learn from the ground up by starting over on Brutal, playing mostly melee and barriers/counters for skills, or prepare to practice teamplay specifically.

For hours if necessary. Luring mobs to a single tight spot with 2 people, then grouping them up with Void and finishing off with an Ultimate.

Either way it's going to take time and treating the game seriously like a job. I'm not sure the would-be "uninstallers" have the stomach for it, but that's for you to deal with, not others.

Yyyyyyyeaahhhh, that... ain't gonna happen, mate. Espacially not the parts in bold. I already have a job, plus a hobby that's almost a second job, plus a side gig, plus responsabilities in both local and party politics, plus a wife, plus two cats, plus a house to care of. One single game isn't going to become my fifth job, especially not THIS game. We're almost 70 hours in on this playthrough and it took us more than 4 months go get here, we simply cannot afford to throw all of that down the drain now that we're at the final boss. And for what? Pride? Honour? The approval of strangers on the internet?

Sure, there are games that I like to play for the skill challenge, and V Rising most definitely isn't one of them. It's not good enough in that department to be one of them.

Diposting pertama kali oleh Kappa:

It was challenging for us too ( brutal difficulty. 3 players ).

We got killed a lot, but then swapped our old necks with the monster necks ( the ones that lose durabilities if one doesn't grind events time by time ) and it went down on the first attempt ( we did a great attempt, but I think the difference in terms fo dps given by the neck was pretty high ).

ps: Note that none of us had shields/counters ( otherwise the whole game would have probably been a joke ), and spent much time to roll endgame jewelries ( though we unlocked all passives and got a legendary ).

ps: Dracula is how the brutal difficulty should be ( and I hope that someday even other bosses will be make that good in terms of challenge. Adam could be considered fine, and the strongest among the 3 "monsters" that drop a shard, in addition to dracula ).

We've already got the soul fragments, and we use one shield and one offensive spell each. However, we didn't unlock ALL of the passives, nor do we have more than one legendary weapon each, and only have level 4 jewels for the spells we use most. Should we go back to farming for those, do you think?

I admire how you can be so nonchalant about it, we're on normal and Dracula seems an impassable wall to us. The only boss that gave us any trouble so far had been the spider; the rest we took down in no more than 3 tries each.

Diposting pertama kali oleh ( ͡° o ͡°):

Get gud, he is skilled based

Woah, thanks for your amazing insight, mate, why didn't we think of that? Golly, everything's crystal clear, now! You're awfully good at explaining, you should become a teacher.

[Kappa]

About legendary weapons, I suggest you to check on the V rising wiki.

Mostly because though the bonuses are maxed out, they are always the same depends the weapon one gets ( for example, iirc, the reaper was a spellcasting weapon giving spell critical hit, spell critical damage and spell cd reduction ).

Let's take that for example.
Spell CD reduction could be capped with 100% scholar blood, meaning it would go wasted ( and because so the weapon would only give spell critical hit and spell critical damage ).

This means that even with a nice purple weapon one could be fine ( or even better, compared to the legendary one ).

What I suggest is to get some Epic/legendary recipe ( they drop from rift events, and you can also purchase them from the vendor with the tokens that are also dropped during rift events ) and then decide what build to use.

In addition to that, monster necks are pretty good ( due to the extra dmg done to vampires ).

As for equipment and spells/abilities, youtube is probably the right place to start ( mostly because me and friends did on our own without checking anything ).

Keep trying!

[MordredMS 鬱賢]

I'm happy to announce that, after messing with the server options and applying some of your advice, we managed to take down Dracula in three tries.

(Fully aware that we did not learn his actual patterns and how to dodge his stuff with more than a 50% success rate, thank you very much )

Aaaaaaaand uninstalling the game.
Pheeew.

[CHG]

Diposting pertama kali oleh MordredMS 鬱賢:

I'm happy to announce that, after messing with the server options and applying some of your advice, we managed to take down Dracula in three tries.

(Fully aware that we did not learn his actual patterns and how to dodge his stuff with more than a 50% success rate, thank you very much )

Aaaaaaaand uninstalling the game.
Pheeew.

I am glad you got your closure. Congrats to you and your friends!

If you'll allow me to snoop a little out of curiosity, what do you reckon the next adventure will be for you? Or are you just going to land in having reached your goal even though not in the way you planned?

[MordredMS 鬱賢]

Diposting pertama kali oleh CHG:

Diposting pertama kali oleh MordredMS 鬱賢:

I'm happy to announce that, after messing with the server options and applying some of your advice, we managed to take down Dracula in three tries.

(Fully aware that we did not learn his actual patterns and how to dodge his stuff with more than a 50% success rate, thank you very much )

Aaaaaaaand uninstalling the game.
Pheeew.

I am glad you got your closure. :lunar2019piginablanket: Congrats to you and your friends!

If you'll allow me to snoop a little out of curiosity, what do you reckon the next adventure will be for you? Or are you just going to land in having reached your goal even though not in the way you planned?

Thank you!

We're not sure. We may muck about a little bit in our castles from time to time, but most probably we'll start playing "Return to Moria" in a couple of weeks.

[( ͡° o ͡°)]

Diposting pertama kali oleh MordredMS 鬱賢:

I'm happy to announce that, after messing with the server options and applying some of your advice, we managed to take down Dracula in three tries.

(Fully aware that we did not learn his actual patterns and how to dodge his stuff with more than a 50% success rate, thank you very much )

Aaaaaaaand uninstalling the game.
Pheeew.

This - achievements are worth ♥♥♥♥ if you can cheese last fight.

[IBOT]

He is way easier alone... in a group the abilities are way harder to predict.

[Tanyon]

I tried for about 2 hours with 2 other friends.. we never beat him on normal or brutal and I'm ok with that. I mean the game is still amazing. I'm just not a fan of the drac fight.. it's longer than any fight, harder than any fight and allows less mistakes than any fight by a lot. The most tries it took us to beat any other boss was 2.