Alternate way to beat Flemeth (dragon)

[Cpt.DipStick]

Hey everyone :)

Before you read this and I receive any flak, I intended this to be for people who are in my situation:
Low on gold, only has close-quarter characters (after killing the others as part of a 'bad' character storyline), and really wants to beat Flemeth in the companion quest for Morrigan.

Back to my tale:
So I purchased Dragon Age: Origins recently on sale (woop woop), and thought I'd share some information on how I managed to beat Flemeth with (only) my level 8 Masari Warhound. I've done some Googling and searching but haven't found anyone to have had the same experience as I did, so here I am :)

After playing the game with a 'bad' character and romancing Morrigan, I got to the companion quest where she gives the order to kill her mother (Flemeth) and retrieve the real Grimoir. After a good hour and a half of trying to defeat her, I wasn't simply going to throw in the towel and lie to Morrigan about killing her, or even go do a few more quests before getting the Superior Dragon armour or whatever... And after playing a couple more rounds, I noticed a few things:

Flemeth's Dragon Attacks:
She has 3 main attack types:
1) a 'roar' attack which stuns your character for approx. 2 seconds;
2) any close range attack (such as a claw to your face, or a tail whip to your crotch, etc), and;
3) a flame attack (hence the need for a high level character with armour posessing a high resistance to fire).

The Tactic:
After the dialog with Flemeth (any dialog that initiates her mutating into a golem-smashing, hipster beating dragon), send in your 3 squad mates to die (you'll want them to die quite early on for this to work), and position your dog by the bone protruding from the front-left(the dragon's front-left) arm (leg?) and begin attacking. It's important to note that its handy to have 15 (normal) health poultices aside incase things get a bit tricky.

From here on out, when the dragon jumps to face you, it will jump anti-clockwise. As soon as this happens, move your dog to be in a similar position. My Masari Warhound deals +-16/19 damage to the dragon per attack and it took me 15 mins to defeat :)

The Exploit:
It seems there's a blind spot to the dragon, and maybe there's some correlation with the reduced need to attack the dog because of it's smaller model? I don't know. I do know that for one, the dog cannot be initiated in the 'grab & throw' attack, so your dog can't be 1-shotted.

Anyway, thanks for reading (if you had the patience), and if you'd like to see screenshots of the exact area I mean for this to work in, just give my profile a browse :) I've taken a few there.

The only mod I'm using is Dragon Age: Redesigned to improve character appearance.

[Fire Warrior]

thanks for the help

[22b3]

No! Romancing Morrigan is the best decision in the game!
Her character is really the only reason I play the damn game.

[Cpt.DipStick]

@ fire warrior: My pleasure! Works at really low levels, and I was quite eager to beat Flemeth without getting that armour.

@Xsafro: Hahahaha I agree her character is really amazing and I commend Bioware for it, but I was just talking about having a rebel (or 'renegade') character, and Morrigan influences negative moral decisions through out the story if you want to romance her :P

I'll try make a video of it if I have some free time in the up coming weeks :)

[22b3]

Originally posted by N15M0:

@Xsafro: Hahahaha I agree her character is really amazing and I commend Bioware for it, but I was just talking about having a rebel (or 'renegade') character, and Morrigan influences negative moral decisions through out the story if you want to romance her :P

I must've had a different dialogue wheel then you then because when I went through the relationship with her, it seemed to consist of her, the pretty whatever personality she was, and me, the person who'd you'd see prancing around on a Darkspawn battlefield picking daisies while everybody else is getting killed by the darkspawn. But hey! Thats just how I played the game x3