PoE Hard difficulty questions

Pillars of Eternity
wolfing

wolfing

Dalek SasqWatch
Joined
September 23, 2008
Messages
5,645
Location
Tardis
I thought I would open a thread where people playing in hard difficulty can discuss and ask questions about specific fights. Spoilers should be put in spoilers tag with a non-spoilerish header saying what area/level it talks about.
I'm going to start with…

Lord Raedric Hold
How the hell can you beat Lord Raedric? My current level 3/3/3/2 party gets obliterated if I try to fight him. If you beat him, what was your party composition, levels, strat?
 
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
5,645
Location
Tardis
Ohhh I think that's the keep I'm currently in, I'm working to depose that guy, but I likely won't be playing again till Monday. If I whip him, I'll be sure to let you know how I did it! I'll say this for playing on hard so far, most every fight that hasn't been some silly wolf has been challenging, usually I position my tank first, spread everyone else out to avoid any ae's, then slowly unleash the dps.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2011
Messages
19,051
Location
Holly Hill, FL.
A few pointers:
- Remember to re-equip armor if you took it off due to wearing robes (I forgot that and my main tank got smashed in a few seconds).
- I know it seems like fighting near his throne is the intended area, but I found that virtually impossible, so I pulled my entire party back and only went near him with the tank (who then ran back as soon as the fighting started). That way I could control the fight a bit more.
- Get the spell "Fetid Caress" (2nd level Wizard spell). It paralyzes enemies, and has a good shot at paralyzing even tougher enemies.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
7,586
Location
Bergen
I just can't beat the Master Below. If anyone has any tips, I'd love to hear them. I've even googled it, but nothing came up. I tried lowering the difficulty, but that doesn't change much (it doesn't affect stats, only number and types of monsters, and the Master doesn't exactly need help to squash me).
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
7,586
Location
Bergen
Ok, another addition to hard challenges:

The Master Below (Final level endless dungeon)
I finally beat the dragon! Took me I don't know how many attempts over 4 days. My party was level 10-11 when I started the fight. This fight on hard is ridiculous! Mega dragon + a lot of kobolds, I mean, xaurics, including a bunch of high priest healers, and for a cherry, a bunch of big hitter mind controlling Agrakas or whatever their name is that can also summon fire, water and earth elementals when they're not charming members of your party. The dragon with huge damage reductions, that when I'm lucky it's two-shotting my tank instead of using its huge area breath that insta-kills most of my party with 180+ corrosion damage. I mean, seriously?

Eventually I found a tactic that helped a lot (still, even with the tactic it took me like 7 attempts).

The tactic that worked for me was to use Kana with the level 3 damage phrase as a chant, in full armor and shield, with a potion of regen, he sneaked his way to where the xaurics were and tanked while his music slowly killed all the xaurics. While this happened, the dragon came down on the rest of the party. A lucky paralyze paralyzed the dragon, Aloth used the ray of cold, I positioned my rogue to one side while Eder tried to tank the dragon on front for a bit. I was actually surprised when the dragon went down, as all my previous attempts it took much longer to lower its health. The only thing different was that I used the cleric's level 4 damage spell, maybe it bypasses the dragons natural DR or maybe the rogue landed a bunch of crits while the dragon was paralyzed.
Good loot in the dragon's horde :)
 
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
5,645
Location
Tardis
I have only fought dragon once (and got murdered) but have you guys tried Falanroed's "Scale-breaker" talent? It's not supposed to make this fight a pushover but it's supposed to make it easier.
 
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
4,721
zahratustra said:
I have only fought dragon once (and got murdered) but have you guys tried Falanroed's "Scale-breaker" talent? It's not supposed to make this fight a pushover but it's supposed to make it easier.
Click to expand...

My conversation didn't allow me to go for the diplomatic solution (at least not the options I chose), so it was the aggressive path for me.
 
Joined
Sep 23, 2008
Messages
5,645
Location
Tardis
Diplomatic? There is nothing diplomatic about this solution! I got it by mentioning few times that supply of adra in EP is getting low but I'm not prepared to carry out dragon's schemes.
 
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
4,721
I never tried that. I should look into that the next time I fight it, because it seemed totally out of place in terms of difficulty. It's not just the hardest fight - it's the hardest fight by an absurd margin, unless you cheese it with summoned monsters that manage to get the dragon stuck etc.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
7,586
Location
Bergen
The only way I could defeat it was to keep paralysing it with Mental Binding (level 2 Cipher spell), otherwise it would insta-kill almost all of my party. Petrify is supposed to be even better, but I could never get it work reliably, whereas paralyse would hit every time, even with its short duration.
 
Joined
Sep 30, 2009
Messages
210
Location
UK
Made it! After several tries with my 4-character party I managed to get him down to "Near Death" before my tank died his final death and that was it... soft enrage timer at work. In retrospect I suppose I could have made it with a different spell selection, but I didn't want to bother and recruited a rogue and cipher in the next tavern, which helped a lot.

The Dragon is weak against Slash and Ice, so the rogue with daggers worked wonders, as did my mage as soon as I let him actually cast ice spells.

My strategy that worked more or less reliably was as follows:

- tank moves east and makes the dragon face east as well, priest quickly provides him with an anti-charm spell
- rest of the party hugs the western wall at the stairs and moves north, then circles around in a wide arc to the northeast, to shoot the little enemies from there

Sometimes I got lucky and the enemies would get really close to the tank and die in the dragon's breath. My other characters would keep their distance to make sure not to get hit by a breath attack. It has a pretty wide arc (90 degrees?)

The dragon has a tail sweep and some wing attack, so melee was fairly dangerous. The mage's "sleep" spell worked sometimes, at which point the rogue could get in quickly to get some hits in, and the mage used ice spells to give him the rest.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
3,488
Congrats to all of you that beat him. I played the mega dungeon all day, so when it was about 2am I tried to fight him a couple of times. Everyone in my party was level 11 but after the 4th or 5th time I took the easy way out.

agreed to put his soul in the amulet and trick the dragon hunter into wearing it so his soul could use her body.
 
Joined
Apr 2, 2011
Messages
3,381
On my first try I got him down to a quarter health before my party wiped. First dragon breath wiped the ciphers. Durance revived and healed them. Aloth tried the icy ray but the dragon dodged all the secondary pulses. He got a couple hits with his cone of ice ( took out one of the adragons with it, too) while getting poked by the priests, and also confused the dragon, but the dragon turned on him away from Eder and took him out in one bite. Ciphers helped by paralyzingly the dragon, and the Druid cast spells but they missed most of the time. All attempts at cipher disintegrations we're dodged by the dragon. Eder got charmed and all it took was one more dragon blast to finish off everyone in the party but Eder. Next time I'll see if I can keep the dragon paralyzed the whole time.
 
Joined
Aug 18, 2008
Messages
15,682
Location
Studio City, CA
I killed him on 3rd try. 1st was a test of his Breath power that wiped everyone in party but Eder and two with second chance equipment.
2nd try Eder took the breath alone and the party came to join the fight but Adds with petrify and dominate raped my party until dragon used breath again.
3rd try Eder went left and up and both the Dragon and adragons decided to focus on him. The rest buffed up and confused half the shamans that came from right side and then killed all Adds with Maelstorm scrolls after using 3-4 buffs first. Some debuffs and flanking then finished the dragon.
 
Joined
Oct 3, 2014
Messages
3,819
You can actually kill adragons before fighting the dragon herself.
I have used on them "Blind" cypher spell which can be used out of combat. They both went hostile without aggroing the dragon.
The biggest problem with the dragon is permanent aura of fear. Your terrified team gets -20 accuracy which mean that most of their attacks will miss…
And yes, cypher "Mental Binding" and ice spells by wizard and druid are the key.
 
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
4,721
zahratustra said:
You can actually kill adragons before fighting the dragon herself.
I have used on them "Blind" cypher spell which can be used out of combat. They both went hostile without aggroing the dragon.
The biggest problem with the dragon is permanent aura of fear. Your terrified team gets -20 accuracy which mean that most of their attacks will miss…
And yes, cypher "Mental Binding" and ice spells by wizard and druid are the key.
Click to expand...
As soon as you approach the area dragon initiates conversation. If you are suggestion to talk him into a peaceful resolution and then betray him, my monk does not do that. She was lawful first and benevolent second .

BTW, did the dragon actually do anything evil in the game? He feeds on souls of some of the people that die in the mega dungeon but that is as "evil" anything animancers do.
He also does not want to let you leave because you know about him but that is self preservation. It is logical that if the world know about a huge Dragon on the bottom the world will eventually look to destroy it.

So what true evil has the Dragon done?
 
Joined
Oct 3, 2014
Messages
3,819
Well, if you want to roleplay it… I don't think that dragon was evil and I took her offer of soul transfer. Than I've talked to the dragon hunter that I was about to mindrape and reconsidered. It doesn't matter in the end since you have 2 choices anyway: fighting the dragon or mindraping dragon hunter.

Never liked lawful characters much…
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
4,721
zahratustra said:
Well, if you want to roleplay it… I don't think that dragon was evil and I took her offer of soul transfer. Than I've talked to the dragon hunter that I was about to mindrape and reconsidered. It doesn't matter in the end since you have 2 choices anyway: fighting the dragon or mindraping dragon hunter.

Never liked lawful characters much…
Click to expand...

Can you transfer the soul into the dragon hunter and then kill it in the weaker body? :D
 
Joined
Oct 3, 2014
Messages
3,819
No idea :biggrin: but after the amulet breaks Edér goes something like (quote from memory): "You did the right thing of course but I was kind of getting used to the idea of having dragon as a companion". Great idea really, don't you think? Companion with a dragon personality!
 
Joined
Jan 10, 2008
Messages
4,721
zahratustra said:
No idea :biggrin: but after the amulet breaks Edér goes something like (quote from memory): "You did the right thing of course but I was kind of getting used to the idea of having dragon as a companion". Great idea really, don't you think? Companion with a dragon personality!
Click to expand...
Probably a recruitable companion for POE 2 :D
 
Joined
Oct 3, 2014
Messages
3,819
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom