A compressive guide to Krakens (Spoiler ahead) by Nikolai

[jngadea]

Intro:

Hello everyone, Name’s Nikolai proud owner of the "Goldenclaw company" and today I bring you a compressive guide to outmatch the kraken. In this guide I will describe mostly in detail this fight and its mechanics. This guide is long as hell, so I put the tips in the beginning so you can skip the rest if you are rushed or you hate reading ;3. ALSO be aware, my english is not perfect ;#.

1.¿What the hell is the kraken?
2. Kraken tips for the rushing ones
3. Kraken location, stats and loot
4. Kraken mechanics and stages
5. Kraken and your perks n’stats
6. Guess who and Items
7. Main strategy to defeat the beast
8. Soloing the beast.
9. Bugs

1. ¿What the hell is the kraken?

Kraken is an End-game boss introduced in Beast and Exploration DLC, and bestows quite a challenge.

2. Kraken tips for the rushing ones

-Use land tiles. Swamp will be your dead.
-Bring a 12 men party, of melee mercenaries with 85-90 matk and 40-45 mdef if possible.
If a merc is about to die for tentacles hits you can separate him from the rest of the team (going away from the kraken) and put him in one of the tiles with weeds to obscure vision. Tentacles won’t see it (if that makes any sense)
-Make a tight formation making every merc adjacent to 3 (if possible). Also if you release inner mercenaries tentacles can lose their turns.(Explained later in this guide)
-If you bring archers, remember that cutting free from grapple is a melee check so they will probably suck at it. (They are usual targets of tentacle attack which will surely hit and make a mess)
-Use “GOBLIN THROPHY” accessory. It makes you immune to grappling tentacles. Wich is awesome.
-Use Polehammers to easily break the beast armor during the last stage of battle.
-Use maces to stun tentacles and lower risks of grab-pulls.
-Use swords to secure hits against tentacles in the late part of the game (especially in low matk mercs)
-Don’t use poison, or dogs, is just a waste of resources.
-If you want to use nets use them in last stage of the fight when you don’t want to kill the tentacles just stun them or free yourself.
-Maintain your team close so you have more chances to free grapple.
-Save on fatigue. Attack tentacles only if next turn you will have enough fatigue to try releasing 2 times (30 fat)

3. Kraken stats, loot and location

This are estimative stats of what you are facing.
Kraken has about 6000Hp, and 2000 head armor (the only one that you can actually hit) the head have about -5-0 Mdef so you will be probably hitting it always.
The tentacles (in any stage) got about 300+ hp and no armor at all.
Kraken head can kill every single unit that is adjacent to it in its turn (if you surround him it will actually kill them all in the same action). This “devour” action has 100 of procc and 1-shot kills everything
Tentacles can move long distance with some sort of teleport ability ignoring units and terrain. This movement doesn’t ignore terrain if they are grappling a merc.
Open mouth tentacles can hit your mercs with a melee attack that have 2 tiles range, which hit like a ton of bricks. They got about 60matk and hit 70-100 armor damage, 20-30 hp damage with low armor ignoring damage and producing bleed.
The kraken will drop a small amout of random Horn plates and severed tentacles (about 1-3 of each)wich cost 3200 gp and can be used as materials in taxidermist.
You can fight kraken in the legendary location "circle of stones" once you arribe you must fulfill a 2 step fetch quest, the first one fetching unhold hides and the second a random amount of random items like shining ashes (unhold hides will be consumed but other items not)

4. Kraken mechanics and stages

The kraken has 3 stages. In all these stages Kraken head will stay in the same spot, and when it its turn comes, will eat anything that’s not a tentacle adjacent to it, killing it in a single unblockable hit.
1st- In first stage you will be facing Kraken head and 8 enclosed tentacles. Each one of those tentacles can move 2 times or move and grab one of your mercenaries. Grab auto success every single time, and will pull your mercenaries to kraken Head to be eaten. This Pull can move your mercenary 1-4 hexes and is affected by swamp terrain (the tentacles move you less in swampy terrain), also it happens at grappled mercenary’s Turn which is annoying and dangerous as hell. Tentacles can’t be targeted while they are grappling someone. You can defeat them by hitting them or by releasing your mercenaries from their grabs. Each time you release one mercenary, it will take about 30+ damage. You can release mercenaries by using an action next to them or they can free themselves AFTER they are pulled. While you are grappled you can only take action to releasing yourself. Releasing chance is (melee attack – 10)% and each tentacle got about 300+ hp. If you prefer hitting them you must know they have 0 armor and 25 mdef, and are affected by swamp terrain. Each time you “kill” a tentacle it will damage kraken and then respawn the tentacle in a random place. The first stage will take about 8-10 tentacles to finish.
2nd- In second stage you will be facing Kraken head and 8 open mouth tentacles. This tentacles gain some new features. First one is that if they grab you and pull you they will make Direct damage to your hit point (about 10-15 damage). Second one is that they gain a new 2 hexes-ranged attack wich does massive damage to hit point and armor, have low armor ignoring damage and cause bleed on hit. (70-100 armor damage, 20-30 hp damage, 60+ matack). The second stage take till the kraken lose 80% of his hp, which translate in about 16-18 more tentacles killed.
3rd-Last stage is exactly like the 2nd one but tentacles will stop respawning until they become 4.

5. Kraken and your perks n’stats

Perks
-Fast adaption and backstabber can help you a little in hitting tentacles but not really that useful.
-Crippling strikes and executioner doesn’t affect it at all.
-Taunt: This one is weird. Taunt makes the 2nd and 3rd stage tentacles forget grab for a turn and attack anyone they want in range. And they will focus the one with less mdef. Situational but useful in last stage.
-Recover:The first part of the battle will be very fatigue expensive. This perk is mandatory
-Pathfinder: The battle is in a swamp. Without this perk you won’t be able to regroup your team if someone got carried away (also is one of the best perks in the game…:3)This perk is mandatory
-Fearsome: the beast cant feel fear.
-Indomitable: OK, you can use this to be immune to grab, but Is not very fatigue wise. Is best to release yourself with help of the team.
Stats:
Kraken can be a hard and tedious fight what you need is a team composed of men like this:
45+ Mdef- The tentacles can hit hard in 2nd and 3rd stage use shield if needed to get close to this number and will not hit you at all.
85+ Matk- Releasing you and killing tentacles is what is this all about. This number will give you 75% release chance. That’s good enough. (will give you only 60% hit chance but…. You can actually defeat him without hitting tentacles at all.)
75 fatigue- this will allow you to make 4 turns of 2 releases on tentacles… more than enough.
Armor: 250 in head and body will give you around 6 hits of life.
Others stats are irrelevant unless you are playing the nude nimble build.

6. Guess who and Items

Consumables:
Nets: You can trap tentacles but the head Is immune to it. Can be used to lower tentacles armor but don’t affect their ability to move and grab people.
Poison: The beast is immune to all poisons.
Potions: Only second wind can be of use.
Acid flask: This one Is popular but suboptimal. It can be used to corrode the armor of the kraken but it’s easier with the method bellow.
Dogs: They are most worthless. You could use them to find where the head is if your game I bugged (like mine)
Amulets:
The only amulet that’s worth mention is "GOBLIN THROPHY". Just by using it you are immune to grabs. Thanks to it, you could solo the kraken with a little bit of strategy and luck.
Weapons: (Here Is the key to victory)
-Maces: You can actually stun those pesky tentacles; this weapon makes the fight much easier, especially in last stage. Btw The 2 handed mace stun will only stun them for 1 turn, so it’s better to use 1 handed.
-Polehammer: HERE is the solution of that beast armor. You’ll have to destroy about 2000-2500+ armor, or 10 “demolish armor” of this baby. Also 2 titles range makes it very solid choice.
-Polearms: You will need some of your men with this to finish the beast of. They do a bit more damage to hp than polehammer (you could use just polehammers)
-Two handed: Doesn’t really worth it, use polearms or single handed weapons
-1 handed: You can use sword and spears if you can’t manage to bring a high Matck team but none of their special attacks works.
-Ranged weapons: Haven’t tested ranged against it. Probably worthless.
Armor:
Use about 250+ helm and body armor. The tentacles hit hard.

7. Main strategy to defeat the beast

First stage is pretty hard in comparison with other 2. Here you must agrupate your team trying to make at least 2 of your men be surrounded by 6 allies. These will maximizate their exposure to other mercenaries allowing the team to have more releasing chances. Also gives the possibility to make tentacles lose a turn. How? If you release a grappled man and the tentacle can’t spawn next to him, it will be randomly relocated, sometimes enough far to make it using 2 actions in movement preventing it from grappling. You must agrupate in land squares, the penalties of swamp terrain are heavy and will decimate your chances of survival. Use first turn to releasing yourself and relocate your team in a land patch of terrain. Keep an eye in everyone fatigue and don’t attack tentacles if next turn you won’t be able to try releasing twice (so don’t attack if next turn you won’t have 30 fatigue to waste) keep releasing your men until you see tentacles change their model.
Second stage is where the fun starts. Keep releasing your men but now you can start stunning the tentacles using maces (attack that also inflict damage) giving you much more freedom. Also, you can use taunt to put the tentacles in a aggressive mode that will attack someone in range (not necessary the taunting character unless it’s the only one in range) . Keep killing them until only 4 are left.
At this point Kraken won’t receive damage if you kill the tentacles so you will have to go face their head. This means that killing tentacles isn’t worth it anymore, ad you must just free grapple or stu them with maces. Be very careful and read the bug section before next step .First you will have to strip his armor off. You must try to place 3 mercenaries with polehammers or polearm 2 tiles of distance of the head, leaving you hit it, but don’t allowing it to eat you. Now with help of polehammer you must strip the armor. Remember that skill is very fatigue costly so use carefully. You will need to make 2000+ armor damage, after that you will have to bring his life down to 0, polearms are most useful here, polehammers also work nice.
Hit it, till is dead, without losing attention in tentacles and grappled units… Congratulations! You killed the beast of beast of beastier beast (or something like that)

8. Soloing the beast.

Ok… so can you solo this s#it? Well in theory you can. I’ll upload a video doing so in a while so you stay tunned. Meanwhile I will explain requirement for soloing it with a very specific build.
To solo it is recommendable a nimble build merc with about 120 hp, 95 matk and 55 mdef. Of course you don’t need to get that high if you use “lone wolf” perk with it 85+ matk and 48+mdef will suffice. You will need also bags and belts because the beast has so much hp that can probably wear down 3-4 polearms-hammers. The main strategy is using “GOBLIN THROPHY” that will make you immune entirely to stage 1. In stage 2 the tentacles will randomly try to hit you so you need to be in a land tile wich is 2 tiles away from thebeast. Start by destroying its armor with a polehammer (10 hits of “shatter armor” should do the trick) and use polearm or poleaxe to slowly (VERY SLOWLY) wear down beast hp.

9. Bugs

The only bug I found is that sometimes you can just don’t see the head of the beast. It becomes invisible. To solve this you can check one by one the tiles to see where is it, also the tiles with the head is usually got blood around so it will be easy to locate it. ASSURE YOU KNOW where the head is or you risk heavily losing mercs.

[jngadea]

Hope You guys enjoy the info. Have a good and sweet new year start.

[Abel]

Very good summary with detailed information!
I find it really strange that the first stage of this fight is harder than the next ones.The sheer number of tentacles make Archers undesirable which can be really annoying if you don't have a full party of melee units.
I tried doing it on day 120 or so but couldn't win for that reason. I did the Black Monolith instead and it was much easier. Random terrain generation can also screw you hard.

[Lampros]

Thanks for this!

Just one question: How can you tell when the stages progress? Do the tentacles look different? Or does the game tell you?

[tkbb_]

Thx a lot for this guide!

I just went through that fight with no losses. The tentacles in the 2nd and 3rd phases didnt bother to attack except for 3 times. Anyone else experienced this?

What i found from the log was that their melee skill is 80 rather than 60. Only damage i took in that fight was 47 or57 (cant remember for sure) vs 421 heavy armour / battle forged.



Btw. i can recommend this formation: from left to right column of 3/ column of 4/ column of 3 / column of 2 . The ones in the front lines have to have very good melle skil.

Towards the end move that entire thing closer to kraken and have two 2-tile weapons in front, ideally one polehammer and a billhook.

[Stal Hamarr]

Thanks for the tips, just defeated the kraken.
I don't think it's a particularly well designed encounter, because it's hugely dependant on terrain.
If most brothers start in murky water, the huge penalty on melee skill will quickly cause a chain of pulls, leading to inevitable defeat.
On solid ground, it's manageable, as long as one keeps a tight formation.

I only lost my sergeant from several focused attacks in the second stage. I didn't bring him because a sergeant is needed, but just to have an extra polearm.

Anyway, if bad terrain: ranging from "way too RNG-dependant" to "impossible".
If good terrain: boring but manageable with some patience.


EDIT: this is super-annoying. For the last 2 achievements I need to level up a new sergeant. I need petrified scream (alp loot) for the potion of oblivion.
And I need to fight the rachegeist to craft the legendary sword.

[McGrits]

One way to help this fight is to put the goblin trinket unit 2-hexes away from the kraken mouth next to the common pull point. This will always give you a bro that can rescue a bro that gets pulled all the way to the mouth. Give the trinket guy a pole arm so he can hit the mouth when not rescuing a bro.

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by McGrits:

One way to help this fight is to put the goblin trinket unit 2-hexes away from the kraken mouth next to the common pull point. This will always give you a bro that can rescue a bro that gets pulled all the way to the mouth. Give the trinket guy a pole arm so he can hit the mouth when not rescuing a bro.

Higher defensive requirements than other bros? I.e. does he get attacked by multiple tentacles?

[McGrits]

Originally posted by Tephros83:

Originally posted by McGrits:

One way to help this fight is to put the goblin trinket unit 2-hexes away from the kraken mouth next to the common pull point. This will always give you a bro that can rescue a bro that gets pulled all the way to the mouth. Give the trinket guy a pole arm so he can hit the mouth when not rescuing a bro.

Higher defensive requirements than other bros? I.e. does he get attacked by multiple tentacles?

The tentacles seem to grab way more than strike, so they left the bro alone for the most part. Also since he was by the kraken and all the other bros were 8 to 9 hexes away (most of the time), the tentacles focused on the group and were not in range. I am sure he was between 30 and 35 melee defense and a full 300/300 armor.

[Saint Thomas d'Aquin]

Thanks for the guide, i'll try it this week.
By curiosity how many kraken battles do you launch for making this guide ?

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by McGrits:

Originally posted by Tephros83:

Higher defensive requirements than other bros? I.e. does he get attacked by multiple tentacles?

The tentacles seem to grab way more than strike, so they left the bro alone for the most part. Also since he was by the kraken and all the other bros were 8 to 9 hexes away (most of the time), the tentacles focused on the group and were not in range. I am sure he was between 30 and 35 melee defense and a full 300/300 armor.

Did it today. The strategy of having the goblin trophy guy 2 tiles away the whole fight was really helpful. He did take the most damage out of anybody, but he saved the one guy who was on his way to getting eaten.


The start:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1659607921


The savior:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1659608003

The end:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1659608109


I have to say, I disagree with the OP about acid flasks. It did 3 turns of about billhook level of damage (according to combat log, but it looked like more on the armor display on the beast) so was well worth bringing on my goblin trophy guy. I would have brought 2 if he had bags.

Also key to know is tentacles have no zone of control. Hugely important fact. Use the first turn to make your position the best it can be and a guy getting dragged, once he's freed he can run past tentacles no problem.

None of my guys had pathfinder. May have been a problem if I started deep in the swamp, but I'm not sure if anything could save you anyway if you did. Dry land is necessary, I think. Other than that issue, I think the fight is great.

[Tephros83]

Speaking of krakens... anybody seen any other than the main one?

[turtle225]

Congrats on your win Tephros. To be honest I haven't fought the Kraken. I don't use Pathfinder and I'm too afraid of spawning in deep swamp and just dying.

You are the first person I've heard of winning without Pathfinder (not that I did a ton of research), but you did have a pretty favorable map layout to where you wouldn't have needed it.

My only problem with the fight conceptually (since I haven't tried it) is this issue with swamp spawning. It feels like too much of a roll of the dice to where you might just die because there is no land nearby.

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by turtle225:

Congrats on your win Tephros. To be honest I haven't fought the Kraken. I don't use Pathfinder and I'm too afraid of spawning in deep swamp and just dying.

You are the first person I've heard of winning without Pathfinder (not that I did a ton of research), but you did have a pretty favorable map layout to where you wouldn't have needed it.

My only problem with the fight conceptually (since I haven't tried it) is this issue with swamp spawning. It feels like too much of a roll of the dice to where you might just die because there is no land nearby.

Pathfinder just means you get to move an extra tile on bad ground and accrue less fatigue doing it. Definitely not as important as high melee attack and may not be enough if there's no patches of land (i.e. contiguous ones, isolated single tiles help you hit the tentacles but not get freed by fellow bros before being moved). I can't retry it for a worse start given ironman, but I think the main thing I will change next playthrough is more 2nd wind potions (like almost everybody) and 2-3 acid flasks instead of 1. Potions are better in this fight given no zone of control, and so they are available basically the whole fight for emergency fatigue. That would offset the fatigue part of pathfinder without having to be nerfed whenever fighting on flat ground the rest of the game.

[Saint Thomas d'Aquin]

To solo kill the beast, don't you think it's more effective to take 1 (or 2) polehammer and 3 (or 2) billhook ? Because when the kraken doesn't have anymore armor you can switch to billhooks which are more effective for hp, for earning few turns of fightings ^^

[Stal Hamarr]

I did it without pathfinder (I never take it on any brother) but I admit I alt+f4'ed a couple of atrocious maps. The final map was far from perfect, but at least I didn't start with the entire company in deep water.

I think pathfinder wouldn't change anything in a bad map. The real issue is the big penalty on melee skill, wich lower the odds to break the tentacles. The fight is very long, so if the map is bad and you have to stay in deep water the entire time, you will fail a couple rolls at some point. And it's all over at that point.

The fight itself is interesting, but an unlucky map roll makes it impossible.