how to beat the Kraken fight in blazing desert?

[EUIX]

Has anyone been able to beat the kraken in the new DLC? It seems like you can be grabbed even while under indominitable buff. All the guides and videos I see are over a year old. I get grabbed by the second turn and from there on its all over. I am doing a cultist run on day ~600 so my party is fairly stacked that said not everyone in my party has over 80 Melee attack. Do I literally need to farm new characters until I get to that point and try again? I have made it to phase two twice with about 8 brothers remaining but by then fatigue becomes an issue. I am aware I could try to farm second wind potions in addition.

[NM9G]

I’ve done Kraken with the new dlc added, and it really comes down to stats.
The main stats would be 90+ melee skill and 80+ active fatigue (the more the better). If you run out of fatigue and can’t keep with grabs, you will likely lose that unit.

The archer strat for breaking into armour without being grabbed/stunning tentacles is kinda dead/not worth doing. Best to just do the polearm strat where you kill tentacles until they are down to 4 and then you go and polearm the head, haven’t tried acid potions for a while, I was unimpressed last time I tried them on the kraken, but some say otherwise. Some people also say dogs are good distractions for tentacles.

You will benefit a ton by having pathfinder, recover, and a weapon mastery (ideally with cleavers) for keeping fatigue drain low.

Anyone you bring into the fight who doesn’t specialize in melee skill/fatigue is somewhat a liability, and can result in you losing the fatigue/untangle war. Two handed cleavers work great, you can still choose to use 1h clubs to stun situationally.

Don’t forget to keep a tight formation, with your highest fatigue units next to the most people for untangling, and to follow anyone as a group if someone gets pulled.

I brought a few second wind potions, and I regret not bringing second wind for all of them. Don’t forget you can sometimes find them in alchemist shops down in the south.

Depending if you save scum or not, you can reroll the fight until you get dry ground on your units and near the kraken.

On a side note, high initiative units are not good for the kraken, as you will often find yourself waiting with them, then they get grappled and their turn is wasted.

[chandl34]

You can stun the tentacles. It may be useful to bring a few maces. I found whips to be highly effective against the tentacles. Not only does the bleed wipe them out fast, but you also have the extra range, so you can hit anything hitting your ball formation. I had whips on all my backline, and I also gave them shields to make up for their poor mdef.

[EUIX]

The issue for me is that sometimes one of my characters gets grabbed and then before anyone can take a turn to set him loose, he gets pulled from dry land and into the swamp. Unless he has pathfinder he is good as dead. Considering the fight lasts at least 30 mins, this slowly wears you down and I die. Even losing one brother at the wrong time means i don't have enough people positioned to free everywhere and slowly but surely its cascading doom as one by one my brothers get picked off.

I guess I will go farm 12 second potions and try again. It seems a pain because I think I need another 12 potions for the loremaster fight, which I haven't even attempted yet.

[Ichthyic]

I disagree with high init being bad for this fight. the point is (and this is addressed to EUIX) you need to WAIT with at least some of your bros, so that when someone does get grabbed, you have another bro ready to free them who has waited with their turn.

[A5G_Reaper]

Stats check aside, the first phase require strict management on who do what. I think that's what people are missing. The only time I retry a kraken fight is the first time to figure out what exactly it does (not counting immediate restart when I spawn dead center in the swamp).

First of all, tentacle grab will send the target to the end of the turn queue so you'll basically have free bros move beforehand. The drag happens when the bro reach their turn, you'll need to pay attention to the turn order. Just hover the mouse and see who will move in X turn.

Each time someone's turn come up, look who can he save.
-If there's someone that nobody else can reach, then free that one.
-If there's several people that can potentially disentangle one guy, check the fatigue and position to see who can do it, who need to rest, and whether any of them should hit a tentacle instead.
-Look for cascading rescue. Three people tangled next to one after another, and they move in 4,6, and 7 turns? Free the one moving in 4, and he in turn will have chance to free 6, who go to free 7.

Do it slowly and steadily. Prioritize getting every man free AND having sufficient fatigue for next turn before hitting tentacles. It'll take a while, but basically risk-free once it gets going. The only threat is the first 2-3 turns as you need to reposition the bros into a ball from their default double-line while the tentacles grab them, but after that it's just repetition.

PS: OP you probably should put someone with goblin charm between the starting position and the head, and just free anyone who unluckily got dragged. That should do wonders in reducing casualties.

[Whatever100500]

1 - Is Kraken next to enough land for my whole company? If no, I reload. Fighting him in deep swamp is suicide.
2 - Don't kill tentacles, move whole formation close to Kraken, attack head with 2 tile weapons.
3 - Once Kraken gets enraged at 50% hp, kill tentacles down to 4 and finish him off.

Why killing tentacles early is bad - with each tentacle killed Kraken takes 5% less damage for tentacle kills for rest of the fight. At most he can lose about 75% hp to tentacles, after which he becomes pretty much immune. So don't waste this source of damage early, you do not want to prolong enrage phase.

Tentacles can be stunned, but it's mostly worthwhile on finish line, when you get them down to 4. Without nets and mace spec stunning is extremely fat inefficient.

If you get him to Fleeing morale, Kraken loses his melee insta-kill and shouldn't be able to recover morale with a bro is next to him (unless there is some special rule involved). Didn't try this myself though.

[NM9G]

Originally posted by Ichthyic:

I disagree with high init being bad for this fight. the point is (and this is addressed to EUIX) you need to WAIT with at least some of your bros, so that when someone does get grabbed, you have another bro ready to free them who has waited with their turn.

The main problem with high ini characters is that they go first, then wait, then if they get grappled, they will likely not have very many people able to untangle them before they are at the top of the wait order. This is because the tentacles will intermingle with the rest of your units in turn order, which leaves you with the potential for the units who waited or used their turn to be the ones next to your initiative guy. Essentially, it's less consistent than heavy armour units who will go after the tentacles entangle units. Most of the time is also a good idea to save a unit's turn if nobody is entangled near them to see if an ally needs untangling at the end of the turn order.

[Whatever100500]

Yeah, bros with Ini higher than tentacles are a liability here. I put them furthest from Kraken head, always adjacent to some bros with lower Ini to free them.

[A5G_Reaper]

Why are you guys bringing nimble guys to kraken anyway, they're a few accidental hits from dying

[A5G_Reaper]

Originally posted by Whatever100500:

If you get him to Fleeing morale, Kraken loses his melee insta-kill and shouldn't be able to recover morale with a bro is next to him (unless there is some special rule involved). Didn't try this myself though.

I was intrigued, taking the kraken fight and saw it randomly drop to fleeing so I let someone get dragged there to test.

The kraken skipped turn several times with the bro next to it, but eventually the guy failed to disentangle himself and the kraken immediately rally and ate him. Either entangled brothers doesn't count to prevent rallying, or it's just pure dumb luck.

[NM9G]

Originally posted by A5G_Reaper:

Why are you guys bringing nimble guys to kraken anyway, they're a few accidental hits from dying

Nothing wrong with Nimble, as long as you built them correctly with 125+ hp with a 40%ish Nimble %. We were talking about initiative builds, which typically do have Nimble, but are more focused on Dodge and leveling up of initiative over hp

[A5G_Reaper]

By the way did they changed the kraken AI and/or buffed it since WotN? The tentacle consistently two-three shot 300/320 battleforged unit and bites way more often than before. And they focus-fire one guy too, gave my nimble guy a shield and put him in center focusing on rescuing people then suddenly 6 tentacles bite him dead in one turn.

[Whatever100500]

Don't know if AI changed or it was always like this, but tentacles kill very fast and the only ways to stop them are stun/taunt. Or dropping them to low hp and killing at beginning of turn, which is easier said than done. Trying to hide a bro in the middle is pointless - even militia don't have enough units to fully secure single bro.

Which is why key is finishing the fight asap after enrage, which means you shouldn't kill any tentacles before that.

[NM9G]

Using two handed cleavers can be a really effective way to kill the tentacles so they don't have much of a chance to attack your units about 2-3 hits and they die, once they are down to 4, you should have little issue with their attacks, unless you are for some reason battered.
Regardless they really prefer to ensnare rather than attack for whatever reason (only one of these actions per tentacle a round), unless you have a weak unit like a poor melee defence unit with low armour/hp, then they decide they want to attack that.

Their tentacle attacks do quite a bit of dmg/armour penetration (typically you should run additional fur padding or bone plating for this tho) if they do end up hitting you.
"Bite does 70-110 Damage dealt with 100% Armor damage, 50% Direct damage and inflicts 5 Bleeding bleeding"

[Coldoge]

FilthyRobot has beat the Kraken several times with a solo build wearing the goblin trophy. You may find the video on twitch. He has done it with whips and two tile range weapons.

Twitch video on FilthyRobot channel.

"Late Game Cultists! Prophet + Adrenaline! Sunken Library and likely Kraken today! Davkul armor SECURED."

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