DA:O Mountaintop Dragon Fight (potential spoilers)

This is how I beat the mountaintop dragon, I saw it referred to in the REdcliffe spoilers thread and wanted to share my experience. It's a fun fight, but can be tricky, this was on normal btw.

the dragon, at first, was a killer for me. There just was no way my party was surviving it. Draconia, Mischief (Mabari), Morrigan (entropy), and Alistair. Everytime I'd cast any hexes or freezes on the thing, it would smoke Morrigan. If I shielded her it would sit there and bang away until she thawed. Nobody else stood a chance in direct melee except alistair, and he could only take so much.

The fight ended up kinda easy (albiet a bit protracted), on normal difficulty w/ some "strategery".

Basically hung Morrigan back and have her cast two spells alone - Heal (thankfully i remembered to take at least one level of this line) and Force Field on the dragon if Alistair's life is in peril. If Alistair falls, it's over. She can otherwise fire away at the dragon, she doesnt do enough dmg w/ default attack to aggro. If she hexes or anything, he wont leave her until she's dead. Thankfully, it doesnt seem like FF will aggro it. At least that's my experience.

Draconia, I kept wayyy back in the shadows of the mountain pass towards the temple, wittling away w/ her bow. This is one instance where she couldnt run up and get all personal in combat, and was a bit disappointed. She still got in Mark of Death tho a couple times, tho this would aggro the dragon. His pouncing really is easy to avoid. When the dragon takes off, run as far from your point of origin when he took off, then run back when he takes off again. Eventually he'll lose interest or Alistair will draw his ire.

So, Alistair pounds away, getting healed by Morrigan and gulping potions as needed. This is one of those times when, if you have the fire-resist potions that have been laying in your inv for a month - use them. Also, it's prudent in my opinion to give Al one level of poisons - all he needs is one to use them, and poisons all stack. It adds up. The potential for Alistair to get killed is when the dragon picks him up and rocks his world. If your heals arent strong enough he may take too much damage. So when the dragon picks Al up, force field - he'll drop him. Heal him, gulp a potion, get back on it. Also, the time to gulp potions is when he's getting knocked around in chaos. The time to strike is when the dragon is breathing fire, you can get a few good whacks in then.

The Mabari, i just have hang out w/ Draconia a while and keep her company, any effort by him to contribute to anything but morale sends him to that big dog pound in the sky..

I found it pretty easy actually. Me as a Mage / Alistair / Leliana / Morrigan.

Split all the characters up before blowing the horn, send Alistair in (frost weapons & kinetic weapons loaded), hexes on the dragon, Leliana with a bow, mages sneaking around staying out of the way CCing and chucking non AOE spells at it, keeping an eye on HP & mana.

I was expecting it to be much worse.

I find Alistair pretty useless compared to my dual-wielding warrior and Shale, actually.

Btw - I don't know why you kept dog away, Samhain.
Using Wynne as a healer, my dog was an absolute star against In fact he was the last one to die just before Wynne killed the last speck of dragon health left with her stone fist. She was the only one left standing - so no spectacular screenshots with that one…

Shale was also good against the mountaintop dragon, because he didn't pick her up and gnaw on her… I think for that dragon the best is to forcefield the person with aggro, then have Shale slam rocks, and any kind of other damage your mages can do - freeze does work well, and then you could have your rogue pelt it with bombs too.

It's just that dang dive clean out of the sky that got to me…

Very timely! I'm about to play that battle tonight. It will be my second dragon after "F".

I too found that my favorite mage spells (Cone of Cold, and Crushing Prison) attracted aggro permanently away from Alistair, even with taunting. Luckily all my mage got was fire breaths, but with a warmth balm and LOTS (and I mean LOTS) of minor healing balms and a few lyriums, it was doable without any deaths in the family. And yes, Force Field was great when Alistar got grabbed.

Hopefully this time it will be easier now with my mage and Wynne having Blood Magic (Maker forbid). If the encounter scales up with character level, I may be fried.

would have been easier if i'd branched out and used some different companions, but I'm sticking w/ my current lineup. Ive been rollin only w/ my one steady "original crew", as previously noted (AL,Morrigan,Mabari). I only use other members when forced. When i did use Wynnne in the tower tho, she definitely made things a bit easier! My no-healer strategy is all about hitting them so hard and fast that I dont need to heal - theyre dead. Morrigan has to fire off some heals now and then and we have to slug some potions and crunch some mabari biscuits now and then, but so far so good.

In another playthrough I plan to mix it up and use various party members, hopefully giving me some more replay value for my buck

Wynne with BLOOD MAGIC?? I think my Wynne needs to go kill your Wynne.

I did it very late in the game, using it as a warm up for the final battle. (The game definitely gets easier as you go up in levels, even with level scaling.) My main, a mage with arcane warrior and some spirit healing, Wynne, Sten, and Leliana. Sten was in front of the dragon, chopping away with a big two-handed hammer. Leliana was behind and a bit to the left trying to do backstabs - though she often got kicked away. My mage was mostly hitting with attack spells from the dragon's right (mostly single target but that cone attack does great damage, too). Wynne was WAY back behind the dragon doing heals, heroic buffs, and haste.

The dragon eventually took Sten into his mouth. That let Leliana really lay into the dragon's backside while Wynne and my mage kept Sten going with heals. When the dragon put him down, she came after my mage. My mage had Arcane Warrior maxxed out so she just turned that on and combined it with the generic mage shield to crank her defense up. She healed herself and took some lyrium potions while Wynne helped keep her healed and defended (though I think she had to drop haste and hit her spirit mana thing around that time). Sten and Leliana kept chopping up the dragon's tailpipe. Eventually the dragon turned on Leliana and took her up into the air. We tried healing her but she just didn't have the hit points or armor to handle it, so I had to pop a force field around her. (That always looks so silly when they are floating in the air.) Sten continued chopping and the dragon decided to go after my mage again. Leliana came out of stasis and went after the dragon's backside again - taking him down.

Edit: One odd thing happened near the end. When the dragon got down to, oh, 10% of her hit points, she just stopped attacking and stood there. She took a few more seconds of pounding before Leliana teleported in front of the thing so the defeat animation could play.

Mmm, Zloth, I'm rather amazed that you never mentioned the dragon flying up and swooping down in a slam attack. This was the worst aspect for me, because you never know who or where it's going to hit next.

I often have party members die, and IIRC my Wynne died quite close to the end of this one.

I generally use a very simple tank'n spank approach:
1. Equip Shale with fire armor crystal, making him resistant to fire.
2. Let Shale tank the dragon.
3. Heal Shale.
4. Place everyone far away from the dragon, but spread out so the dragon can't hit more than one if it shoots a fireball. Equip everyone other than Shale with ranged weapons (yes, even the ones with zero points in archery).
5. Win.

This works on everything from Easy to Nightmare, simply because the party hardly takes damage. Even people like Sten/Alistair will do more damage with a ranged weapon simply because dragons tend to knock back melee folks more or less constantly.

Edit: The same approach works very well against Revenants too, as you avoid their double swinging, so you take very little damage. Only Shale should be taking damage.

I found Alistair a bit crap to start with compared to Shale, but brought him back in for Denerim (all the other bits done except the urn) and found he was actually pretty good.

I suppose Alistair's not too bad a tank with all his shield skills on and working, but he still is crap as a damage dealer. Ah, well- I gave him champion specialty and that gives rather nice buffing/debuffing talents as well.

RivianWitch said:

I suppose Alistair's not too bad a tank with all his shield skills on and working, but he still is crap as a damage dealer. Ah, well- I gave him champion specialty and that gives rather nice buffing/debuffing talents as well.

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He's pretty decent with a couple of the frost / flame / kinetic weapons buffs up and a sword with a few high level runes on them.

Mostly he just needs to draw the damage while the mages keep everyone largely out of action and Leliana stabs them all up.

@Maylander

That's how I handled it too, substituting Alistair for Shale.

But it was tedious. Why? Not because of it's length, but because of the damn controls. You'd think Bioware would at least have kept the controls like NWN so you could tell one party member to hold while another attacked.

If I wanted to my tank to continue to fight the dragon, I could not use the hold position button. Otherwise he would just stand there, in particular after getting knocked down.

Without the hold button on, my mages won't stay out of harms way even with the passive behavior selected. Every time I select Alistair to do something, I have to tell them to back off. Why is that? Because all the damn behaviors EXCEPT "ranged" default to follow the leader, unlike NWN. So when I select Alistair to do something, the non-ranged party members runup to say 'hello' and get slaughtered. STUPID.

I didn't wan't to enable the ranged behavior for my mages, because the dragon would come after them, and spell almost certain death. Strangely, Leilani on ranged behavior would not aggro the dragon. And she was doing good damage.

So are the controls really a terrible step backwards from NWN, or am I missing something?

Is there a way to keep party member from following the leader without using the GLOBAL hold button or the ranged behavior?

Thrasher said:

@Maylander

That's how I handled it too, substituting Alistair for Shale.

But it was tedious. Why? Not because of it's length, but because of the damn controls. You'd think Bioware would at least have kept the controls like NWN so you could tell one party member to hold while another attacked.

If I wanted to my tank to continue to fight the dragon, I could not use the hold position button. Otherwise he would just stand there, in particular after getting knocked down.

Without the hold button on, my mages won't stay out of harms way even with the passive behavior selected. Every time I select Alistair to do something, I have to tell them to back off. Why is that? Because all the damn behaviors EXCEPT "ranged" default to follow the leader, unlike NWN. So when I select Alistair to do something, the non-ranged party members runup to say 'hello' and get slaughtered. STUPID.

I didn't wan't to enable the ranged behavior for my mages, because the dragon would come after them, and spell almost certain death. Strangely, Leilani on ranged behavior would not aggro the dragon. And she was doing good damage.

So are the controls really a terrible step backwards from NWN, or am I missing something?

Is there a way to keep party member from following the leader without using the GLOBAL hold button or the ranged behavior?

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This is strange. The "hold" button works perfectly for me. I can orchestrate my party's movements in the finest detail, as if they are rag dolls, and they stay exactly where I tell them to, and not attack /attack exactly when/where I tell them to.

Maybe it's because I've disabled tactics and you possibly have not? I've been playing without tactics for so long now that I can't exactly remember if they disobeyed my 'hold' order while on tactics, or not.

Yes, but as I said above, if I do that my tank (Alistair) just stands there doing nothing unless I tell him to attack. If the dragon only moves slightly out of range or if he gets knocked back or thrown around he does nothing.

There needs to an ability to tell each each member to hold or attack on an INDIVIDUAL basis like NWN. Is this simplified interface for the console kiddies?

Thrasher said:

Yes, but as I said above, if I do that my tank (Alistair) just stands there doing nothing unless I tell him to attack. If the dragon only moves slightly out of range or if he gets knocked back or thrown around he does nothing.

There needs to an ability to tell each each member to hold or attack on an INDIVIDUAL basis like NWN. Is this simplified interface for the console kiddies?

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Well, you can disable tactics for individual members, then you need to control those, while the others will carry on doing their own AI thing according to the tactics orders you have preset for them. I played it like that for a while, but decided I prefer my HOMM-style control-freak mode, where I disabled every party member's tactics, and I pause-assign; pause-assign all the time.

Drakensang and NWN are perhaps slightly easier to play this way, because of their turn-based autopause function. However, with NWN you actually definitely had LESS control over your party members. In fact, I found the combat exceedingly boring in most of the D&D games, because it tends to be so passive from the player's POV.

I prefer turnbased Fallout 1 & 2 style.

Lack of a turn-based autopause function does not make DAO less tactics intensive, though (only difference is that I pause manually, and I even love that!) - in fact I think that the quite long list of tactics you are able to programme in actually gives you more choices regarding how you prefer your style of play - whether the personal control way (my preference) or the tactics way, which people who dislike micromanagment seem to prefer.

Regarding your console comment: -in fact, I've heard that the console controls are even more simplified...

I'm a micromanager, too, and have disabled each tactic, yet have the "disable tactics" unchecked, otherwise characters will just stand there and do nothing in fights. It's a backup for when I just want the character to keep doing what it's doing.

Are you sure that the "disable tactics" button for a character will also prevent them from following the leader? I thought I had tried that, to no avail. I'll try it again if you say that works.

Thrasher said:

Are you sure that the "disable tactics" button for a character will prevent them from following the leader? I thought I had tried that, to no avail. I'll try it again if you say that works.

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With tactics disabled, they will stop following the leader if your "hold" button (the little hand) is active.
Also, with tactics disabled, they will still follow you if you toggle the little running figure "follow" icon to be active. While on "hold" they become like rag dolls; but on "follow" they rally around the leader, though mages (and probably other ranged fighers) will hang back during combat.

Also: with my current settings, if I assign a fighter to an enemy, they will keep attacking that enemy until the enemy is dead, they will just not use special talents or spells on their own, which I prefer, because I prefer to micromanage those, and prefer to keep certain spells/talents for the stronger enemies.

Once the assigned enemy is dead though, they will just stand there. So I keep an eye on the "attack" icon next to their portraits, just to check in a glance if anybody has stopped attacking.

The funny thing is that Alistair would stop attacking the dragon if I turned on the hold button and the dragon moved out of range or if was knocked/swept away as I said above. Very frustrating. So I couldn't use the hold button.

Have you tried this on the dragon? I don't think it works like you describe for me.

Is this something that was fixed in a later patch?

Thrasher said:

The funny thing is that Alistair would stop attacking the dragon if I turned on the hold button and the dragon moved out of range or if was knocked/swept away as I said above. Very frustrating. So I couldn't use the hold button.

Have you tried this on the dragon? I don't think it works like you describe for me.

Is this something that was fixed in a later patch?

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I used it like I described in all my battles, including the dragon, but bearing in mind that the "attack" has to be renewed once your fighter gets stunned, and those knocks/sweeps would make them fall over or stun them, which would of course interrupt/disable their attack.

This is why I said that I pause every few seconds and I keep my eye on the attack icons to see if they have stopped attacking for any of the following reasons:
1) the enemy is dead
2) they have triggered a trap
3) they have been frozen/paralysed
4)they have been stunned
5) they've been knocked over
6) some enemy creature has picked them up into the air

Then you have to wait until they are able to attack again, and re-assign the attack.

Yeah that renewing "feature" is bothersome.

Alistair also stops attacking if the enemy moves out of range if the hold button is on. Do you not see that behavior? THAT'S the most irritating aspect of the hold button. I don't want him to hold, only the other party members.