Drakes feel like they have terrible design; they don't feel any fun to fight.

[PeculiarTendencies]

Something is incredibly wrong with drakes. I am level 35 currently with Mage, Warrior, and Fighter pawns of equal level. I played the first game extensively, and I know that the heart is the weak point. It feels like in between absolutely horrendous ability spam, your entire party is one-shot with their meteor storm. I have NEVER beat a drake in this game despite trying different tactics and vocations. I always come well-equipped and put out a lot of damage. Despite this I am somehow going through five Wakestones and still losing once I get it down to 1 or 2 bars.

I think that a lot of this is attributable to terrible pawn programming as well, but this just feels miserable. I am popping defense potions, but even that doesn't appear to significantly contribute to NOT getting one-shot by the meteor spell.

In part this post is to vent, because drakes feel terrible to fight, but it is also to see if anyone has tips. Right now I am at a point where I am asking myself if I should even be fighting them, because so far there doesn't seem to be literally any benefit aside from crafting materials. They don't protect anything valuable and just don't feel fun to fight. Am I wrong about this, do they ♥♥♥♥ out 50000 gold to compensate you for the absolute misery of having to deal with them? In the original game I don't remember any reward outside of crafting materials, but at least they were manageable and fair.

[Matt Murdock]

Knight Without Sword님이 먼저 게시:

That meteor storm is mechanic. You need to run until he will stop cast that ( he stands with claws up like casting) and next same is with electric shocks he cast. But ye pawns should be more smart ....bcs they always stay in meteor explosions + drake more likely harasss you when you try to revive them with multiple cast of spells instead one like normal

+ he try to waste your stamina before he cast meteor spell ....with roar or other smashes etc. try to save stamina before he will cast to run out (there will be little fire beams before meteor will fall out on you)

[PeculiarTendencies]

Thanks all for replies. I am actually an archer and I have had good success in getting its health low, the main problem I have had is it DOES appear I am enraging the drake and my pawns aren't able to keep up. Usually I get a drake down to one health bar, and end up running in circles to dodge its spells. My pawns usually do pawn stuff, dying in stupid ways while their AI tries to be helpful (but in reality end up making things more difficult).

I agree that I probably do need to just level up; it's just frustrating that I can almost completely kill the drake but then I get blasted at the end. One issue I am really having is that the meteor explosions are hitting me even when I am outside of them. It looks like the drake casts three at a time, but even when I am not in the implied radius (usually double the radius) I am still hit, and then staggered into oblivion.

I think the best way forward for me is going to be leveling up and investing in even better gear for my pawns so that they can frontline. I have decent gear on them now, but I just don't think I have the knockdown power that I need from them at this stage in the game.

In the end it is definitely frustrating; I like to think that if you play any fight smart enough then you SHOULD be able to win it. The reality is that I am getting stat-checked right now though. My party just doesn't have enough knockdown power to pin the drake down at the later stages of the fight, which is leading to failure. I could definitely do something different, and right now I am just going to wait until my pawns are stronger.

I do stand by my opinion that drakes don't have good design. I am actually not opposed to their use of spells, despite them giving me the most grief. My main complaint is some of the other miscellaneous abilities, such as the roar staggering and draining the stamina bar. Some of these abilities don't have very good flow, and it makes the fight difficult in a way that isn't necessarily fun. That being said, maybe my opinion will change when I come back to them at a later level. To be clear, this specific encounter was with a drake in Batthal, so it is probably significantly stronger than the other drakes that I should have started with.

[PeculiarTendencies]

Update, I just killed my first Drake at about level 40. As for my previous statement, having pawns with better equipment definitely helped. They were able to tank a lot more damage, and I didn't have to play babysitter the entire fight. My composition was practically the same, but instead I swapped the Warrior out for a Thief.

[Tempest Fox3]

I've killed 3 so far, but the second once was kinda cheesy. I used a severed Medusa head to turn it to stone.

Half my encounters with Drakes just end with them flying away from me tbh. I take a couple of their health bars down and they just peace out.

[VeraelHasta]

Well, I was using the Mystic Spearhand class and it is much easier to take down a drake with it. It should probably be nerfed lol.

If you don't mind switching vocation, Spearhand has an invulnerability shield spell. It makes you and the pawns (if they are close) immune to damage for a few seconds. It has almost no cast time. So I just cast it before every spell of the dragon - his cast times are long - and I'm usually completely fine. You still can die obviously, because the shield doesn't last that long. Especially if he gets you with the fire breath, this is harder to counter with the shield since it is a continuus attack.

[MrCool]

Mid fight I had to see if anyone is having zero fun fighting these as-well and I totally agree I’m a lv. 29 with rank 8 warrior and had a full party consisting of a mage (lv. 31), sorcerer(lv. 29), and and archer (lv. 30) but they all got demolished by the meteor storm. I feel as though the attack openings are way too small and when you do get to attack he either flies up and spams spells making him impossible to hit for a good minute. Then once he lands, A he’ll start the meteor storm or B he roar and drain my stamina and since I’m a warrior my attack recovery is far to slow to get more than one attacks without having to run away or else risking my stamina getting drained by the roar thus leading to no damage done in these very tiny windows of opportunity, then him flying up and slamming my face in. Overall the fights feels horrendous and terribly boring and completely unfair like why have these all over the place early game if you have little to no chance of wining especially with the doo doo AI pathfinding of the pawns where they’ll run all Willy nilly into any and all spells with no sense of survival. I have also been fighting for 30 minutes and have gotten him down to 2 bars left but do such terrible damage and am also questioning why are they even here so early once again.

[Arc]

I've killed several and I still don't enjoy fighting them. Instant stamina deplete roar, spam casting Meteor, jumping up and down on your staggered body, it's not fun. I felt like Drakes in the first were more fun to fight

[WastingSanity]

Don't tunnel vision and learn to start moving when they begin to cast the big spell.

[AvG]

drakes and dragons had a limited pool of attacks in the first game as well
if it was a caster type it would spend the majority of the time just cating levin usually
you could bait a drake/dragon into it's grab move by moving to either side of its face over and over, not sure about in the 2nd game.
the one really dangerous move is the dragon "flop" where it would go up in the air briefly then immediately belly flop for infinite damage. Based on it's AI it could do it repeatedly, which you couldn't easily get out of stagger for.

[Mad Max]

Maelstrom for Drakes.

Meteor for anything else.

[Mite Jergenauf]

I'd say you can reliably fight them around 40-50, 60 is when they start becoming trivial.
I also thought I could fight one around 30 remembering the drake near the Goblin fortress in DD1 and got flattened.
Also it's pretty important to stack knockback resistance if you're melee because even them moving their feet can stagger you.

[Cadaver]

Hope this hasn't been suggested yet;

To help pawns survive the meteora spell of a drake just start running in a zig-zag pattern in any direction that is not to hard for your average braindead pawn to navigate all the while spamming the "To me" command. Once the first meteor bombs down, spam the "Go" command to once again swap your pawns movement and you'll more often than not get them to dodge pretty consistently.



On another note, fighting my first drake at level 20 with the Archer Vocation at level 2 was the most fun I've had in this game. Took me almost 20 minutes to beat the dragon down since I dealt zero damage, but it was an actual fight.

[BigBootyBethany]

Honestly gear and level don't matter at all if you want to kill a dragon. You just need the right vocation. For example a mystic spearhand can cast a magical barrier that will def you from ALL of the attacks for few secs. You can just spam it if there is a mage in your party. Literally spam it and the dragon won't hit you nor your pawns even 1 time.

[GetUrAssToMars]

Sorry if this has already been said, but silence spells are a HARD counter to their meteor spam.

[The Real Fragamemnon]

Dragons are easy if you play as a mystic spearhand and use the mirror shield bubble. It will probably get nerfed soon.