*Spoilers* How did you beat the Slayer of Sands? (hard bosses, no exp - drac mode)

[K4ever]

I spent more than 5 hours of constant readjusting my strategies.
For me, this is turning point when either people turn off "super hard bosses/no exp" draconian modes, or they ... "git gud" at the game.

In these hours I learned soooooo many things about dqxi mechanics that I wouldnt have learned if I just wanted to farm levels, or spam the same attacks on a lower difficulty run.

I could have beaten the boss in 3 other opportunities, but I wanted to activate the "WILD SIDE" pep group attack in order to finish a quest. Then I realized I didn't need to perform that attack on the Slayer of Sands but on one of those Lion with wings creatures. Oh well, I still beat the boss with that specific attack, with super low hp on all my party members, and with Veronica dead before I was halfway done (no blindness cure, no low enemy defense ailment).
I was at level 15 btw.

How about you guys?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1511788693

[aweigh]

Yeah this is the very first enemy that gives a challenge. I consider him the first boss of the game. My tactics were easy, Sap with Veronica to lower his defenses, venom slash from Erik, Cutting Edge from Hero as main source of dealing damage, and remaining character using Strong Herb/healing spell every turn.

[K4ever]

I never tried poisoning him. Do you remember how much damage per turn he was getting?
By the way what was your party level?

I could have beaten him more easily if I had LESS PARTY MEMBERS. Yes, I meant less.
The thing is that I had Eric's sleepy hit ability. and everytime it worked sending the boss to sleep, Sylvano will attack him and wake him up. Glad for me that he didnt do that in 2 occassions which let me use Persecutter and get 160hp damage the first time, and 260hp damage the second time. I was on WILD SIDE mode and that was the final hit on the boss.

EPIC Finale!

[Fyk0]

I couldn't beat it at level 15 at all and only managed to beat it at level 16 when you learn midheal spell. I turtled it by sapping it with Veronica and then defending with her during most of her turns because otherwise she got one shotted by desperate attack, and let Eric & Sylvano do the damage. I also blinded it with illusion when I had the time from healing, but it didn't hit everytime.

[aweigh]

Poison only deals 5-15 damage, less if they're bosses, but it lasts for about 25 turns and some enemies have no way to remove it (obviously bosses will have a way to remove it). The devil in the detail, though, and why it costs more skill points than the Sleep/Sleep Slash is that Poisoning an enemy is super easy as the vast majority of enemies and bosses have no poison resistance, or very little, so essentially you will always be poison-slashing the enemy with Erik instead of praying for the Sleep to stick.

in that way it ends up doing a LOT more damage over time because you will be doing poison 1 turn, then poison slash the next, so on and so forth, whereas with sleep/sleep slash it is less consistent. it does mean you get erik's dual-wielding later though, since the main reason people pick sleep/sleep-slash instead is obviously because it costs less skill points than going thru poison.

EDIT: Additionally normal attacks can't remove the poison so it also would have saved you from having Sylvando remove the status effect on his AI turn. I want to clarify that I'm not saying poison ALWAYS HITS, far from it, just that in comparison to landing Sleep it is MUCH, MUCH easier to land poison.

[solaris32]

This is where I turned off hard mode, and I've been having much more fun actually. I'm no stranger to difficult rpgs, like the SMT series, but I'm perpetually cursed with bad luck (it plagues me in SMT too). Status effects rarely land for me, but for enemies they almost always hit. At least in SMT you can cover your weakness and exploit the enemy's; strategy doesn't rely on luck of whether you can hallucinate a physical powerhouse boss or not.

Since turning off hard mode I instead only fight each enemy once, maybe a few times more to farm steals, and then I run past them. This makes me underleveled and bosses still present a decent, but manageable and more fair challenge. In the future I might try hard mode again, but with less experience turned off so I can do extra grinding if need be.

[TEAM SALTY]

RNGesus was good for me, that's how you beat it. It gets worse the farther you get into the game. Also ♥♥♥♥ that gay clown, every time the blue weeb put that monster to sleep the idiot woke it up with "great" 12 dmg.

[Jay]

I just abused poison on Erik and buffed/healed as best I could. Took me two attempts after getting rid of sleep in place of poison. Also, it did nowhere near 15 damage for me??? It was closer to 50 per turn (And this was with stronger monsters), though I got rid of it fairly quickly with victimizer or whichever the poison variant is called. This was at level 15 across the board.

[ruppe27]

Just sap and spank, I didn't find him hard at all with stronger monsters.
I did turn off the stronger monsters short after because fights were dragging and levelling went too slow without it really being an extra challenge with the infinite heals and all.

[Martok-Worf]

Originally posted by < blank >:

I never tried poisoning him. Do you remember how much damage per turn he was getting?
By the way what was your party level?

I could have beaten him more easily if I had LESS PARTY MEMBERS. Yes, I meant less.
The thing is that I had Eric's sleepy hit ability. and everytime it worked sending the boss to sleep, Sylvano will attack him and wake him up. Glad for me that he didnt do that in 2 occassions which let me use Persecutter and get 160hp damage the first time, and 260hp damage the second time. I was on WILD SIDE mode and that was the final hit on the boss.

EPIC Finale!

Sylvando made this fight hard, otherwise it would have been a cake walk with sleep. I lost 3 times in this fight, every time due to Sylvando which really made me hate him :/

[Raiko]

grinded hard to lvl 17 , deccelerate/dazzle debuff were the keys. hated sylvando in this fight (but he is mvp in many boss fights in draconian after with his massive group heal and his condition clear) . I'm 45h in and halfway through the game (won't spoil) : Slayer of sands and lvl 30 boss Meltore who spam charm were the hardest foes in draconian.

[Raemnant]

Ive got hard monsters and less XP active, and I was 14 when I first took on that beast. Leme tell you, the ease at which it destroyed me, I had no choice but to go out and try and grind a lvl or two and get some slight gear upgrades. I managed to catch two metal slimes and take them both down, hitting lvl 16.

But my key to defeating this boss? Care Prayer. With a party wide defense boost and healing boost, he didnt hurt nowhere near as much as he did. I kept it Sapped and Deccelerated at all times. Veronica didnt even get to do much damage, mostly all flame slashes

[Kartoffelsuppe]

5 hours? I killed him on first try.

Though I don't understand why they give you no group heal at that point in the game when this guy can attack the whole party 2 times in a row.

[K4ever]

Originally posted by aweigh:

EDIT: Additionally normal attacks can't remove the poison so it also would have saved you from having Sylvando remove the status effect on his AI turn. I want to clarify that I'm not saying poison ALWAYS HITS, far from it, just that in comparison to landing Sleep it is MUCH, MUCH easier to land poison.

You are right. I didnt get the poison ability because I didnt have enough skill points to get both "Cobra Strike" and "Victimizer". Although I could have taken out the skill points I used for "Steal" (8p) and used them towards both poison attacks. I think eventually I would have tried that strat. I just learned by trial and error, so if the sleep combo abilities didnt work I would have probably tried the one you are mentioning.

EDIT: Actually at level 15 it is impossible to get both Cobra Strike and Victimizer. Even if I reallocate all his skill points towards daggers I only get 23p. You need 24p to get the latter abilities. I could have grinded one more level, but I prefer to do that as a last resort.

Originally posted by God Emperor Trump:

every time the blue weeb put that monster to sleep the idiot woke it up with "great" 12 dmg.

I know, right?! But if you trigger Wild Card group Pep ability you actually get 2 turns with him back to back. You can use the first one to put the boss to sleep, and the second one to use Persecutter and inflict over 200 damage.
I always thought of doing this before, but I had my doubts about how reliable the status effect attacks were. It wasnt until the Slayer of Sands encounter that I actually experimented with it, and realized it is a very good viable strategy.

Originally posted by Arios5114:

I just abused poison on Erik and buffed/healed as best I could. Took me two attempts after getting rid of sleep in place of poison. Also, it did nowhere near 15 damage for me??? It was closer to 50 per turn (And this was with stronger monsters), though I got rid of it fairly quickly with victimizer or whichever the poison variant is called. This was at level 15 across the board.

If only I would have realized sooner ... good for you!
This was my first time that I actually cared about status buffs and ailments, and how you can exploit them to your favor.

Originally posted by Raemnant:

Ive got hard monsters and less XP active, and I was 14 when I first took on that beast. Leme tell you, the ease at which it destroyed me, I had no choice but to go out and try and grind a lvl or two and get some slight gear upgrades. I managed to catch two metal slimes and take them both down, hitting lvl 16.

But my key to defeating this boss? Care Prayer. With a party wide defense boost and healing boost, he didnt hurt nowhere near as much as he did. I kept it Sapped and Deccelerated at all times. Veronica didnt even get to do much damage, mostly all flame slashes

Nice.
I still havent been able to kill one single metal slime. I guess you need the abilities to hit metal enemies in order to be more consistent (you can also hit them with normal attacks but only if you are lucky). Is Care Prayer the one with Hero and Serena? I used it but I resetted the game. I just wanted to use WILD SIDE to also finish a quest given in Gallopolis, when in fact I didnt need to -__-

Originally posted by Kartoffelsuppe:

5 hours? I killed him on first try.

Though I don't understand why they give you no group heal at that point in the game when this guy can attack the whole party 2 times in a row.

Cool Story bro.

[ShipShrecked]

I had to go to level 17 and Get the Midheal for Serena, i chose the sleep route with Erik and it worked about 1/5 times then used the super sleep hit for the 6X damage, i had Serena and Hero healing, and veronica was buffing or debuffing and let eric and Sylv do most of the damage and played the long game. You can sleep/silence the Boss, and i used The pep powers with Hero and serena for the defence boost and go all out with spells and attacks while that was in place. It took me a few hours of grinding to catch up to it, I had the draconian harder monsters on though.

[ickabod27]

I hate Sylvando