Tactical advice on the Adra Dragon

[mainer]

My party is currently level 13, playing on normal because the game balance suites me the best, being challenging at times, but not frustratingly so. Haven't lost any battles, even Raedrics Hold and the Bountys through WM1. Had a few battles, especially in early levels, where I had 1 or 2 characters fall unconsious, but no losses. But this green lizard is just kicking me all over the place.

I lost 3 battles to her yesterday. Party: Me (ranger/wolf), Eder, Pallagina, Kana, Durrance, & Aloth. We started well in all 3, but then she belches that purplish gas and it just devastates my party. She will kill 3-4 out right, and the others are down to less than half endurance. Just one shot, and I can't seem to recover from that.

Tried staying in a group so Durrance could buff & eliminate hostile effects. Tried splitting up & flanking to left & right, but I lost the buff & healing of Durrance, and the Adragons killed my flanking manuver. Tried falling back to that little dead end to the SW, which slowed down the approach of the Adragons, but then the dragon belched again, and I lost 3 party members. All my previous combat strategies appear to be ineffective. The 2 major battles that occur before encountering the dragon weren't a problem. Challenging, but easily dealt with.

I don't create adventurers, I always use the companions I meet in my journey. That's why I play games like this, I like the interaction and personalities. So I'm just looking for any advice from players who've killed the dragon. I know there is another option where you don't have to kill her, but it doesn't seem morally right to me. I also won't drop the difficulty down for one battle, when the rest of the game is balanced perfectly for me on normal.

Watched a few Youtube vids, one where a player playing solo on POtD, and he/she killed the dragon in under 10 minutes, that was awesome.

I avoided mentioning location specifics, just for the fact that there are some new players here and I wanted to avoid spoilers. Thank-you for any advice.

[Batbro]

1. There is indeed a route to complete this quest that doesn't involve fighting the dragon. Talk to her about it and she'll propose an alternate solution that only requires you to fight a high-level dragonslayer, much easier.

2. If you want to fight her, the biggest thing players often struggle with is the FEAR AURA. It's tremendously impactful, inflicting -4 DEX, -4 RES, and -20 Accuracy on your entire party. Prayer Against Fear is a level 1 spell any priest has that grants you immunity to this. USE IT FIRST THING.

[It´sAllAimAssist]

was awhile since I fought it but if I recall correctly you can get lucky with a charm/confusion spell and have it kill of it´s own support.

Also unless they changed it -scrolls of paralysis. make a bunch of them and keep it stunlocked.

Ofc you don´t want to stun it if you get it charmed/confused.

I guess a good way would be to get the dragon on your side for a bit and have it help you destroy it´s own guys , then stunlocking it.

You could also finish all the white march,main quest up to point of no-return etc. And max out your chars and get all your gear ubererd up and return to it later.
Should make it quite a bit easier.

[belangf]

Originally posted by Batbro:

1. There is indeed a route to complete this quest that doesn't involve fighting the dragon. Talk to her about it and she'll propose an alternate solution that only requires you to fight a high-level dragonslayer, much easier..

You can choose that option to avoid the fight and then betray the dragon and tell the truth to the dragonslayer. She will teach you a special ability usable once per rest against dragons (Scale-Breaker: something like -6 DR and -12 accuracy and all defenses for about 15 sec). Then you can go back and fight the dragon when you are ready, (which I haven't done yet). I've heard that the wizard spell of petrification can be very usefull.

[ParasiteX]

Also been a while since i fought it. But you should focus a lot on spells that reduce it's stats and defences. This will allow you to easily stunlock it with confuse and paralysis. Altough i think they changed it to be immune to paralysis some time ago.

Spamming summons is also a good way to initially draw away it's attention, while you focus on buffing your party and casting debuffs on the dragon.

[haramb3]

Good advice above, I will add a view points to outline the basic strategy.

1. Make sure you get the Scalebreaker talent FIRST by talking to the dragon.

2. Return for the fight. Buff your party with food. Make sure the tank has these potitions: Potion of major endurnace, bulkwark against the elements, flask of war paint, potion of spirit shield.

3. Start the fight. Send Eder in to initiate the fight. Move him back to your party and the dragon will slowly come. Summon 3 shades or some trash summons and send them to the right and behind the dragon. This will distract them. Send your party back an BUFF UP!

4. Summon more and send them as distractions. Continue to Buff your party with Fear immunity, Immunity to Petrification, Immunity to Charm/Dominate (Trecharcy) Scroll of Defense, Scroll of Valor, and the best Priest and Druid Buffs. ALWAYS read the spell descriptions for the priest! Then, you will know what the best ones are. Many Level 1 spells are very good.

5. Now you are buffed up, so send Eder back to the Dragon. Turn it to the side so the breath attack will not kill your entire party. This cannot be overstated. Meanwhile, summon more figurines to cover your back side as the xariups come.

6. First, kill the adds. starting with the Adragan first. You can: (1) confuse the dragon with hopes of killing adds or (2) stun lock it with scrolls of paralysis or even whisper of treason/domiante it for a charm. Send the off tanks and the party to focus fire on the Adragan ASAP or you will die from their stuns and charms. Wizard spells like slicken, confuse, are very useful. Scrolls of maelstrom and Confuse, or paralysis can also like you focus them quickly.

7. Check your Status, because once the Fear Immunity scrolls drops cast it again. Otherwise, your party is too weak and their accuracy goes down the toliet.

8. Now, Eder tanking the dragon and you are finishing off the adragans. Also, the figurines you summoned should cover your sides for th xaruips. Once the dragans are dead, focus on the xaruip High priests.

9. Remember, you should be confusing and or paralyzing the dragon during all of this. The idea is you want disable. No shame in spamming scrolls here.

10. Once these major adds are dead. Time to kill the Dragon. First, paralyze it, and then use the scalebreaker talent. Now the dragon is very weak and paralyzed. Have 1 person to cast paralyze constantly, and other casters to use spells that target REFLEX. Also, you can use spells that lower defenses like deflection reflex such as nature's mark, and expose vurntrabilties , and misama dull mind. Also, holding shift will let you queue spells to be cast in order, after you cast the first one. I highly suggest doing this.

11. While your casters are doing their jobs, send in your off tanks. Keep them to the SIDES of the dragon to avoid the breath and the tail swipe attacks which are fatal. The dragon should be weak enough now with the debuffs.

12. Did you remember to cast scroll of fear immunity? Make sure you are doing this.

13. The dragon will dies as you blast it with reflex attacking spells and your melee characters. the 15 seconds of scalebreaker should be enough to kill it.

14. You win!

Notes:
1. Chanters' Drake summon is a great idea that can actually tank the dragon if Eder dies
2. Give your characters high DR armor, it does not matter if they are casters. I do this and the defense is more important than casting time. This is a matter of choice.
3. Make sure you have good equipment; this goes without saying!

[Hamster?????]

If you dont mind cheesing it...

Meet the dragon and talk your way out of it.

Set up a party on the cliff all equipped with guns (do not drop down, and have Kana use a ranged buff chant)

Have a caster in your party cast some long ranged spell to aggro the adra dragon.

Take out the smaller mobs first then focus on the dragon later.

It's gonna take a veeeery long while (maybe 10+ minutes?) since you're gonna chip away small dmg. So take a break while your party auto fires their guns.

It's cheap buuut if you dont mind playing fair, this is always an option

[psychotron666]

Keep everybody except one tank out of his face, either to his side, behind him, or far enough out front to not be hit by that one hit kill breath attack.

And have a priest ready to revive your tank if he goes down.

Then get dps like wizard, Monk, rogue and druid to mess him up from afar (or behind or beside in case of Monk and rogue)

[mainer]

Rather than quote all the posters here, I'd just like to say thanks to everyone who replied, there are some really good strategys here. Sorry to be so long in responding, but I've had to work all week since I made that post.

I've temporarially left the adra dragon to go finsih WM part 2, but I will return to finish her.

Her breath weapon was the thing that was really killing my party. I tried to keep them together to have Durrance do his buffing, but I waited too long before flanking and pretty much got wiped out quickly. Seems like scrolls & potions, which I only sporadically use in other battles, can play a huge role here. Having all companions carry the fear immunity scroll seems advisable, since its low level and all but 1 of my companions can cast it.

One important item that I didn't know, was getting that Scalebreaker talent from the dragon hunter.

[haramb3]

Turn off Party AI, that way your charcters will not be running around all over the place and you have total comtrol. Move your non tanks WAY to the side of the dragon and away. The Dragon breath literally takes up all the space in front, and really to the sides of the dragons mouth. The best spot is to the side and behind, but NOT behind the tail. That attack can wipe you. Give yourself a lot of distance between the dragon and your ranged attackers. You can put Durance or the priest on an opposite side to run and heal after the Dragons Breath.

[ParasiteX]

I just recently did the Adra Dragon again. And found a good way to approach it. Is to sneak around it from the south side, and go inbetween it and the Xurips, straight towards the Adragan.

From there initiate combat with the Adragan, cast prayer against treacharay first, while the rest of you party craps out summons.
Keep party AI off so you guys don't run off while buffing. And then send in the summons towards the dragon to distract it.
While you cast prayer against fear. Also make sure the tank is chugging potions like Bulwark against elements and war paint. Once buffed with fear and treachary prayer. send the tank in to keep the dragon busy. While the rest of the party mop up the Adragan. Once those are dead, then the rest of the Xurips can be easily ignored while you focus on the dragon. Maybe have 1 party member mopping up the Xurpis if they get too annoying.

I prefer putting very light armor on my Priest and Wizard. I prefer the added recovery speed, as it really helps when they need to throw out buffs and debuffs quickly and on the fly. As long as you keep them out of harms way (not behind or in front of dragon) they should be fine.

If in a pinch, and you somehow managed to waste all your 1st level Priest spells, and cant cast Prayer against fear anymore. You can then cast the lv6 Priest spell "Litany against major afflictions" on your main damage dealers.

I ended up having to do that when i fought the harder Alpine Dragon. And was desperatly trying to find any alternate way to remove the fear debuff, as i had blown too many 1st level priest spells.
heh.. Also noticed late in the fight against Alpine Dragon, that it was immune to Crush damage... Which explained why my Monk with fists wasnt doing any damage.. Thankfully my monk had an Estoc as a side weapon and managed to turn the whole mess of a fight around last minute. :D

Soo.. yeah.. highly recommended to pause sometimes during the fight and read spell descriptions.. ;D

[mainer]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1390499886

Anyway, just wanted to thank everyone for the advice, finally defeated the Adra Dragon on normal difficulty. My Watcher was knocked out twice and had to be revived, once by Durance & once by Palaginia, but other than that, no combat casualties. My god, can Eder take a beating, he just never drops, I love that guy.

[Yosh]

I had trouble with this beasty(and only this beasty) for a long time. I beat it just the other day (on hard dificulty with 0 knockouts as a personal challenge) in my quest to progress onto PoE2 by stun locking it with paralyze scrolls. Thats it. I didn't even bother doing the quest(s) it sends you on. I made about 30 of those scrolls with the materials I collected throughout the game, retrained one of my 2 casters so they both had a minimum 8 lore, and stun locked the dragon. The dragon's main strength is its offensive capability in the form of its 360degree wing and 180degree breath attacks. Its health/defense isn't nearly as strong as its offense. Its a shame they made the "big boss" of the game so difficult that you have to cheese it.

[mainer]

Yeah, it was the one battle in the game that I made scrolls and gave them to everyone. Everyone had enough lore to use Immunity from Fear scrolls, and Durance/Aloth/Kana had high enough lore to use Paralize scrolls. Even with that I almost lost near the end when her status was "near death" and she belched that purple death breath one last time.