How to Defeat ZANT Without Using Any Seals

Having trouble beating Zant without using any seals? this guide may perhaps help you on it. This is based on my personal opinion after beating Zant 4 times, 3 times on highest difficulty and 1 times on normal difficulty, i based this guide on the highest difficulty run, therefore it applies on other difficulty you are in, i hope it helps, good luck!.

Table of Contents

Part 1 ........................ Knowing Your Enemy is Half of the Battle
Part 2 ........................ Preparation
Part 3 ........................ Preparation Part 2
Part 4 ........................ Facing the Demon
Part 5 ........................ Reward / Is it Worth it?
Part 6 ........................ Conclusion and Closing

Part 1 Knowing Your Enemy is Half of the Battle

A Quick TLDR (Too Long Didnt Read) Version so You Can Skip a Head to Part 2
- Zant reducing you damage, vitality, endurance, astral energy, also reducing your astral energy each round rendering mage useless, but you can still use summons
-Zant immune to status effect from magic, wound, poison, knockdown, parry, bleeding, but not to burn damage therefore weak to fire arrows
- Zant has high armor and evasion, has massive damage that can cause knockdown and or fear, might teleport at short distance and has aoe attack
-Zant not immune to Phex magic, such as Starscatter and Stardust

Zant is an interesting boss battle in Drakensang TRoT. You can defeat him quite easily by using any seals, but without it, it's quite challenging, it's not impossible, and after a few attempts i might said it's not hard at all, it's all depends on how you build your characters.


Zant has interesting perk compared to other bosses, that it has :

1. Has 3 Presence Auras that cause a negatif effect / debuff on your characters (but doesnt apply to summons)
   
   - Demonic Presence, causes :
   Attack -5
   Rarry -5
   Ranged combat -10
   
   - Debilitating Aura, causes :
   Vitality, Astral Energy and Endurance -10
   
   - Drain AsP, causes -3 AsP might happen twice in a round therefore it goes -6 AsP perround.
   It's not possible to outregen drain AsP even with rapid astral-energy's advantages and robe of astral power.
   Therefore magicians are almost useless during fight with Zant , but it's still recommend to bring magic potions which i will explain later.
   
   
2. Has regeneration, which is quite annoying to deal with.
   
   
3. Has Immunity to status effect that caused by magic
   - Immune to Lightning Finds You
   - Immune to Corpofrigo Cold Shock but will still receive damage from arcana ice between 2-8 damage
   - Still receive damage from damaging spells such as Culminatio Ball of Lightning causes 7-12 damage, Ignifaxus burts of Flame may caused up to 12 damage and burn effect, Thunderbolt may cause 5-9 damage.
   
   
4. Has immunity against :
   - Poison; tested and verified with poison arrow.
   - wound; tested with ranged skill marksman.
   - bleeding; tested with melee skill bleeding.
   - knockdown; tested with melee skill knockdown.
   
   
5. Has high armour and evasion, which render most of melee skills to be useless, like for example, you can land mighty blow provided that its not evaded it, but its still deals no damage, even if i did, it will only deals 3-6 damage. It's also dodges arrows sometimes even though it has a large model.
   
   
6. Has short distance teleportation that randomly place it nearby the target that he's been attacking in the recent combat round. This teleportation always break your queued action towards it such as using spells on it, using skills or attacking it, therefore everytime he teleports, you have to re-queue your actions.
   
   
7. Has an AoE (area of effect) damage that cause all of its surrounding to receive high damage. It has animation where it will charge and then release, could be avoided if you fast enough, most of the time i will just tank it and heal after that.
   
   
8. Assuming were playing on highest difficulty, it has 1050 hp with evasion and high armor, so its gonna take a while to deal with it.
   
   
9. Last but not the least, it that its attack can not be parried and can only be evade and it might deal massive damage between 20-50 depending on your character armor, but the thing that you should be worried about is that each of his attack might caused wound, knockdowns and or fear effect, this will render your tank character to get stunned for a moment where it can took advantage to either kill your tank or attacking your other weaker characters.

Now that we know its strenght lets see its weakness, yes it does have weakesses even though you werent using any seals, this will be the key on defeating it.
It weaknesses are :

1. DOES NOT IMMUNE TO FIRE DAMAGE; this means that fire arrows are absolutely usefull, in fact dont ever try this without fire arrows. Not only it does damage but also render Zant regeneration useless.
   
   
2. DOES NOT IMMUNE PHEX MAGIC (ROGUE MAGIC); therefore Cano is very usefull and if you have rogue character its even better, since Zant will still receive damage from Starscatters and receive debuff from Stardusts.
   
   
3. PRESENCE AURAS DOESNT AFFECT SUMMONS; therefore summons are not only important to have but might also be the key to survive and kill Zant before it kills you.

Now that we know its strength and weaknesses, lets proceed on how to prepare to deal with it.

Part 2 Preparation

A Quick TLDR (Too Long Didnt Read) Version so You Can Skip a Head to Part 4
- Have at least 1 Tank with at least 50 vitality equiped with best armor, best shield, have at least 60 Oneberry Juices, 5 Healing potions, at least 2-3 Courage potions to prevent fear, and a bunch of weapon modifiers such diamond whetstone, whetstone, and weapon balm.
- Have at least 1 Archer equiped with Orchish Composite Bow and at least 300 fire arrows, dexterity elixirs, Water of Acurracy, and Endurance potions. Have it learnt Marksman skill.
- Have at least 1 summoner, if you have Fayris that works as the point above as well, have them at max point on summon spells and at least 4-5 magic potions, use magic potions to re-summon every time summon died or runs out of time, best summon is Mage skeletons > Black Bear > Bear > Warrior Skeleton > the rest of the summon.
- Have at least 1 Phex magic user or Rogue, use Stardust every time it available and Stardust every 2 rounds.
- Have your mage learn Attributo Strength and Attributo Dexterity, cast Strength on your tank and melee damager, and Dexterity on Ranger.
- Prepare for a fight that might lasted between 20-60 minutes depend on your luck or preparation.

2.1 Building Your Party

Its very important for each characters on your party to have spesific roles, although that on one of my playthrough its possible to only use 3 characters as long as they have the 4 main factors, sand those are an archer, a tank, a rogue or a person with phex magic and a summoner (if you have Fayris, she can act as an archer and a summoner).

1. Jaakon VS Fayris and the Importance of an Archer.
   Since we already know that Zant weak towards fire arrows, its obvious that Fayris is far more superior choice compared to Jaakon, but incase you were picking Jaakon on the first place and its obviously too late to go change it back, you can either transition him into archer. On one of my run i have him on my party thus i change him to archer and its suprisingly very useful until the end of the game. Even better you can also change Cano into archer, since its not recommended to send in weaker character to fight Zant since he might 1 shot your rogue or mage.
   If you have Jaakon in your party but your main character its self an archer that it should not be a problem.
   Also important that if u have 2 or more archers, MAKE SURE ONLY 1 OF THEM USES FIRE ARROWS while the rest can use either war arrows or Linwens arrows because fire arrows burning status doesnt stack, therefore might useless to have more that 2 archer with fire arrows. But if you prepare for it anyway, it doesnt really bad either cause you can keep Zant burning just incase one of your archers keep missing their shots. For 1 archer you need at very least 200-400 fire arrows depending on your party formation or how lucky you are (keep in mind that you can get free fire arrows recipe from Bospanarian Recipe quest).
   
   
2. Forgrimm as a Tank.
   Or doesnt have to be if your main character is a tank it self, you can use Forgrimm as melee damage dealer with either axe or two handed weapon, but having 2 tank wasnt bad idea either. Your tank has to have at least 50 vitality and high armor, at least each part of their armor slots have 4-5 armor, this will prevent them from getting 1 shot by Zant.
   While your tank might not deal damage, it still a good idea to use weapon damage modifiers such as whetstone, diamond whetstone and weapon balm on your weapon, since weapon modifiers does not blocked by armour, and whetstone stacked with diamond whetstone, its a guarante 5 damage every time you land an attack for every 10 attack.
   Also make sure your tanks to carry a bunch of healing items, you need at least 50-60 oneberry juices and at least 5 Healing potions to be safe, also you need at least 2-3 Courage Exilir to prevent fear that caused by Zant attack. ALSO KEEP IN MIND IF YOUR TANK DIED ITS BETTER TO RESTART THE FIGHT
   
   
3. A Rogue and Phex magic.
   The best thing about Phex magic is that Zant doesnt immune to them and it doesnt require AsP. Instead for Starscatter it replenishes every 2 combat rounds, and Stardust replenish not long after it loses it debuff / buff. With 1 Starscatter you will deal at least 8-12 damage per 2 round, if you happened to have a rogue or charlattan as your main character that means it doubles the damage up to 16-24 per 2 rounds. I had this situation before, i ended up killing Zant in less than 25 mins on the highest difficulty. While Stardust not very effective, it still a decent buff or debuff to use to minimize Zant attack effectiveness.
   
   
4. A summoner.
   This could be either Fayris or Jaakon or your main character if it has a summon, in my opinion Fayris Helpful Paw is much better than Jaakon Elemental summons, since Helpful Paw can summon a bear at level 9 which has high armor and high vitality, it can tanks Zant damage most of the time, Elemental summons wasnt that terrible but its burning effect doesnt really stack with fire arrows and it has low armor and vitality. But if you want the best summon, that will be Metamage's Skeleton summons, at level 7 or level 9 a metamage can summon a mage skeleton that can not be affected by AsP draining aura which makes them can cast spells on Zant and still can regen their AsP, the only downside is that they are weak, so try summon them far away from Zant.
   A mage skeleton can cast Lightning Finds You (but its kinda useless), Culminatio Ball of Lightning cause 7-12 damage (pretty good), Corpofrigo Cold Shock (immune to spell but receive damage arcana ice 2-8 damage, which is not bad), Ignifaxus Burts of Flame (may caused up to 12 damage which is pretty good), Thunderbold (may cause 5-9 damage also pretty good).
   Remember to stock your summoner with a few magic potions, 5 at least, so that whenever your summon death or times out, you can always resummon it.

2.2 What My Main Character Suppose to Do?

If your main character can not fullfil any of the main factors/role above, it might be useless on the fight, like for example a mage with lesser summon, or mage with not usefull spells such as buff spells, you can just put them somewhere in the corner away from fight since even with only Fayris, Forgrimm, and Cano you can still win the fight with the right preparation.
However for other character such as rogue, archer, or melee character will always have a use.

2.3 What Level Can I do This?

On lower difficulty you can probably do this on level 5-6, but since you will do some sidequest anyway, you will ended up on level 8-9, which is very recommended, but it not bad either to have higher levels especially if you have Philleassons's Secret DLC. The current lowest level i can do it was on level 7 on the highest difficulty, with my main character as metamage, summoning mage's skull which is the best summon and Fayris as archers.But i think level was not very important what important is your build and how you allocate your leveling points.

Part 3 Preparation Part 2

A Quick TLDR (Too Long Didnt Read) Version so You Can Skip a Head to Part 4
- Have at least 1 Tank with at least 50 vitality equiped with best armor, best shield, have at least 60 Oneberry Juices, 5 Healing potions, at least 2-3 Courage potions to prevent fear, and a bunch of weapon modifiers such diamond whetstone, whetstone, and weapon balm.
- Have at least 1 Archer equiped with Orchish Composite Bow and at least 300 fire arrows, dexterity elixirs, Water of Acurracy, and Endurance potions. Have it learnt Marksman skill.
- Have at least 1 summoner, if you have Fayris that works as the point above as well, have them at max point on summon spells and at least 4-5 magic potions, use magic potions to re-summon every time summon died or runs out of time, best summon is Mage skeletons > Black Bear > Bear > Warrior Skeleton > the rest of the summon.
- Have at least 1 Phex magic user or Rogue, use Stardust every time it available and Stardust every 2 rounds.
- Have your mage learn Attributo Strength and Attributo Dexterity, cast Strength on your tank and melee damager, and Dexterity on Ranger.
- Prepare for a fight that might lasted between 20-60 minutes depend on your luck or preparation.

3.1 Traps, Are They Good?

I saw a discussion on another site once mentioning that they craft over 100 traps to deal with Zant, it might be useful if you have a character that cant not join the fight but for me its tedious since you can only plant 3 traps at the same time, using lots of resources and you still have to lure Zant to it, i personally avoid it, but i dont recommend against it.

3.2 Allocating Leveling Points, Some Notable Skills and Spells to Learn

For your tank character its best to raised Strength first, not only it will raised your damage it will also raised carry capacity and your vitality, and then raised your Constitution, but for the best some some of your leveling points to level up willpower, you need at least 10 willpower to avoid getting wounded. I recommend you to get at least 50 vitality on your tank, you can level up to 40 vitality and then use at least 1 vitality ring to get it up to 50, saving you some leveling points to use on stat or for later use. Raising points in parry and getting parry skills seems almost useless since most of the item Zant attack can not be parried.
For your archer its best to raised Dexterity and Intuition first, but for Fayris, its better to raised important spells first and then raised stat and bow skills. Also raise her Hawkeye Marksmanship to max points and have her learn Attribution Dexterity, have her max that also. If you dont have other mages, make sure she Learn Attributo Strength also and level it to max, which later you can use on your tank or fogrimm. I usually get Marksman skills on Fayris or my archer for more damage.
Have your rogue learn both Starscatter and Stardust from Vixen.
I havent tested any parry skills on Zant, but it might wont work since most of his attack un-parriable.
And make sure to max your points on summons. Remember to tweak your modifier on summon so that you can have the best summons, for example bear is always better than wolf on a Helpful Paw, therefore lowering the modifier you can have bear instead of wolf.
You might also be able to cast at least 1 spells at the start of the fight before your AsP drained so its best to max a damaging spells that you're gonna use.
Its for the best to use leveling points on stats rather than melee skills, since with high armour, it wont do much on Zant anyway, its best to rely on weapon modifier, fire arrows, summon and phex magic.

3.3 Best Equipment to Have

1. Forgrimm or your tank
   - Tulamidian Mail : you get this from the quest Trolls at the Bridge quest (its the best armor that you can get, but you can always buy chaimail if you missed it)
   - Kurkimian shield : drop by dark amazon in the ruins
   - Caraprace Shoulder Plates : bought from Brother Emmeran at Isles of Forgetting
   - River Mussel Amulet : + 2 Constitution bought from Brother Emmeran at Isles of Forgetting
   - Vitality Ring : + 10 Vitality
   - Any helmet with 3 Amor rating.
   Optional :
   - Titanium Ring of Irrepressible Strength : +3 Strength (bought from Medicus Modllemash in Nadoret basement, near fighting arena for around 70 Ducats)
   - Caraprace Arm Greaves : +1 Strength (crafting, Blacksmith Tarno in Nadoret sells the recipe, you can get Giant's Crab Pincer by buying it from or farming it at Isle of Forgetting)
   
   
2. Fayris or your archer
   - Orchis Composite Bow (can be crafted or get from ork at Hunting Preserve ) or Improved Soul Bow if your main character is an elven ranger.
   - at least 300 fire arrows
   Optional :
   - Ring of Phex : (bought from Jeweler Candilor at Nadoret Marketplace)
   - Storm Sentinel Plume : + 1 Intuition (bought from Merchant Castelanni at Nadoret, near your boat)
   
   
3. Cano or your Rogue
   - None aside from what they already have, keep them away from fighting, they should just cast phex magic instead.
   
   
4. Jaakon or your Mage
   - None aside from what they already have, keep them away from fighting
   
   
5. Your main character
   - For tank, same as Forgrimm above
   - For ranger, same as Fayris above
   - For rogue, same as Cano above
   - For mage, same as Jaakon above
   - For melee damage dealer : Amulet of Rondra, any sword, rapier, saber, and two handed weapon will do since they all will deal less damage, but if have the money always get the highest HP points.
   - For ranged non-archer, thrown weapon and stone bow are not good enough, while crossbow almost the same with bow in term of usefulness only with slight extra damage.

Part 4 Facing the Demon

A Quick TLDR (Too Long Didnt Read) Version so You Can Skip a Head to Part 5
- Make sure you are not over-encumberred
- Make sure to save before fight
- Buff your character, make your tank as party leader, and set your stance to aggressive on tank, melee damager, and archer, while setting passive stance on rogue and non combatants
- Spread your formation, make sure rogue, archer and non-combatants to stay far away from harm
- REMEMBER TO PAUSE!

4.1 Avoid Getting Over-Encumberred

Make sure before facing Zant that you inventory only consist items that you need to fight him, since being over-encumberred only lead to reduced stats that might give you slight disadvantages. There's a hidden treasure nearby in a shape of coffin where you can put all other stuff before fighting Zant.

4.2 Save Before the Fight

:)

4.3 Set the Most Important Spell, Skill and Item on the Closest Quickcast Slot

This way you can use items or activate skills and spells faster.

4.4 Last Preparation

Before entering the fight you will have to solve a simple puzzle, rotate all the rings until the last one that needed to rotate is the inside one just like this :
With this you only need to rotate the inner circle once to start the fight, instead this is the best time to buff your character, and summon your summon, you may also use potion and make sure all your equipment already equipped.
The next important thing to do is adjusting your character formation, make sure your tank set as party leader, and set it to aggressive stance, set your archer also on aggressive stance, and your rogue and non-combat character to passive stance. It should look like this.
if you dont know how to set party leader, just click and drag the portrait of the character that you want to put as party leader, to the top, release and it will replace your main character, for setting the character stance just click on the picture of shield or sword on their bottom right corner picture to adjust their stance.
YOU MAY ENTER THE FIGHT NOW, just click the inner circle once and wait for Zant to spawn.

4.5 Positioning

Now that Zant is spawning, the quest gives you leveling points, just incase one of your character is leveling up, make sure to use the leveling points to boost some of the important skills or spells that they have.
Now continuing with the fight, at this moment your game probably pausing, so its best to move your character to desired location, you want to have your archer, rogue, and non-combat character far away from the action, remember that Zant has ability to teleport so you have to avoid Zant to teleport near by your archer or rogue, if that happens just reposition to somewhere save, like in this picture :

4.6 REMEMBER TO PAUSE

Pausing during critical moment might save you, like when your tank is low on health, therefore remember to pay attention to your tank. The benefit of having it as a party leader is that you can access your tank faster by pressing F1 button.
TIPS : When Zant reach 1/3 of his health he might successfully knockdown your tank, make sure your tank always at full health when Zant reaching 1/3's of its health.

4.7 Other Useful Tips

Some other useful tips :
- Always check your weapon modifier, it only lasted for 10 hits but it always guarantee +5 damage, so always equiped them when they run out.
- its better to waste oneberry juices or healing items rather than having your tank falls, remember you have to restart if it happens. If your tank suddenly falls low on vitality use healing potions instead of juice, or if u dont have any, queue oneberry juice twice, u can do this by holding CTRL button and then use oneberry twice, works or skills, spells, and any other consumables.
- make sure to have your fire arrows loaded, watch your archer incase they run out of ammo so you can equip them fast.
- incase Zant suddenly chasing after your weakest character, RUN!, avoid getting hit while heal, Zant will then de-aggro (stop chasing and change its focus).
- By pressing O button you can activate All Overhead Display, this will show you a hitpoint above Zant which will display its current health or rather your progress.
- If you playing on lower end machines like me, set your graphic low to get more fps, this will make the gameplay smoother but making it easir to fight.
- Zoom out the screen so you can watch the fight better and also making it easier to avoid danger.

Well, that's all the tips and preparation that i can provide so far, i might improve them on the future, perhaps you can provide me with other ideas or approach, feel free to comment bellow, good luck!
But were not done yet in this guide, if you interested in what you gonna get from defeating it without any seals, continue to the next part.

Part 5 Reward / Is it Worth it?

Upon killing Zant you will automatically receive medicine for Ardo and a Demon Slobber, and then Archon Megalon will greet you, when you confirm that you didnt use any seals he will replied
So, is your greed worth it?
Lets see, for each seal you will receive a sum of money, up to 70 ducats, but in my opinion, money was never really a problem since you can farm resources and sell them, and there are many ways to get money in the game.

You will also receive a Ring of Magical Power, AE + 10, +5 RM and Culminatio Ball of Lightning +5, which you can get again later on a sidequest, therefore its not exactly "a rare items" but, still relatively usefull.

And finally the last, the most rare item that is a recipe for Demonic Armor, which create a light armor best use for rogue it has +15 endurance and -10 vitality.

It does look like it complete the Iryan sets which looks cool,
but for rogue, i think its still not the best armor since i prefer elven woven armor for my rogue.

So is it worth it? for me, not so much, but having beaten Zant it self its own reward, and the game feels much easier after beating it on higher difficulty, the only time i was having a though time after Zant was when i was surrounded by bunch of giant crabs :D, like no joke, they are tough as hell on highest difficulty.

Part 6 Conclusion and Closing

Finally i can conclude that to win this fight you need :
- a tank or just forgrimm with lots of healing potions and courage potions to avoid getting "fear" status
- cano with phex magic, 2 rogue even better
- fayris > jaakon, 2 archer even better with fire arrows
- a summon, mage skeleton > bear > any other summons
- spread your formation, and keep your weaker character out of Zant reach, keep healing your tank when it drops low.

its not impossible nor hard to beat him on even highest difficulty, but its down to preparation and a bit of luck. But you can always change the difficulty if you're having trouble since it wont affect the reward anyway.
Feel free to add you comment on any other ideas or perhaps criticism, i would also apologize for my grammar and vocabulary as english isnt my native language, finally i can say good luck on slaying Zant, thanks! :D
My other guide on TRoT :

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2566384545

##Version 1.0 ~ Initial Release / August 28, 2021

[Zer0]

I tried something different, you can place more than 3 traps when you re-enter an area, so I placed around 40 bear traps before the fight and it was over pretty quickly. It did take some time to set up, though.

[magier2010]

I thing to note is that you can get rid of the debuffs on your party with the "Restituo" spell. Just cast it 3 times on all party members and you have no debuffs left. Its the only way to really use a mage without sigils.