Draconis v Abazigal

GNGSpam · Post by **GNGSpam** » Wed May 01, 2002 11:26 pm

Anyone else think Draconis, the Green Dragon you meet before going into Abazigals lair, is like 170 times tougher to beat then Abazigal himself?

Abazigal was probably the easiest Dragon ive faced yet (including Firgkhar). Man, all he was was Edwins Time Stop, Spell Thrust, hack hack hack. Easy as pie, especially with a Deva, Golem, and Skeleton warriors covering my back.

But Draconis, jesus christ. I had to get lucky to even beat him. Im convinced if I played him another 10 times id lose 9 of them. Seriously. He flies up and comes back down and is fully healed.

I think its the fact that he isnt in a lair while every other dragon is. Maybe its just my tactics are all wrong for fighting a dragon out in the open, but did anyone else have an easy time with Draconis? If so whatd you do?

Edit - Anyone else think Melissan is hot? ; )

Glod · Post by **Glod** » Thu May 02, 2002 12:07 am

Thats why theres the improved Abaz patch. Makes him harder than Draconis anyway.

Ode to a Grasshopper · Thu May 02, 2002 1:35 am

How did you guys beat Draconis, anyway? I've taken him on twice so far on Core rules, once with two planetars, and he's wiped out my party both times(stupid Heal contingency). He switched into dragon form and my two planetars just disappeared, which sucked.

GNGSpam · Post by **GNGSpam** » Thu May 02, 2002 1:58 am

His normal form is totally easy. The key with his normal form, which I discovered by accident truthfully, is to make sure the main character is the one right beside him when he cast time stop. His attacks during time stop are totally brutal and do massive damage. HOWEVER

They arent +2 weapons and your character is immune to +1 weapons and worse ; ) Its kind of cheesy because he sits there attacking you to no effect instead of realizing it and casting spells, but whatever.

ANYWAYS THE POINT

Dont spend any energy on this. You should still have wands of spell striking from Watchers Keep, if not plenty of breech. Close in, attack, cast True Sight, breech, attack, he time stops, wastes attacks on you, time stop ends, breech 3 times (first 2 are deflected) kill him.

Ok true form down, no problem, you probably didnt even suffer any damage.

Then the big daddy falls. Spell Thrust is key. You could do a combo of greater Malison and lower resistance and try to spell power him, I didnt experiment that much. The way I beat him was some lucky rolls. I did spell thrust, and managed to get like 3 critical hits curtousy of myself with Carosmyr +6 and Korgan dualing Crom and Axe of the Unyielding. Did massive damage. For some reason he didnt fly off. I dont know if his scripting hung up or if I was just lucky (well both are lucky) either way he hanged around, wing buffetted my skeleton warriors away but not Korgan or me, and let us finish him off.

The battle was much longer then that, but basically it consisted of me running characters around like scared sissies and trying to recover from wing buffets and such, Anyways, when it ended Korgan had like 8 hit points, I had like 20 something, Jan was dead, Anomen was dead, Edwin was dead (edwin always dies, sissy). Viconia survived ok quite remarkably.

The main things to worry about. His breath weapon really didnt cause me too much trouble. Its the landing and dealing out 100 points of damage instantly that hurts. That and wing buffet. He lands out of positon (for you at least) and wing buffets disorienting your whole party. By the time you close back in on him he's healed himself. So the key really is closing in quickly. Dont let him get to far away from you. You might want to stock up on oil of speed for your fighters, or wear boots of speed

hmm actually thats a good idea =/

DONT PAUSE TO HEAL. If he lands out of sight, dont pause and heal/ressurect. Because guess what, when you see him again, he will be "Uninjured" and youll curse everything in the world and out of it twice over. Im telling you. Also, after the first few rounds of spell protection removals, your mages, or mine at least, worthless, let the bastards die. Key is keeping your front line fighter healthy and ticking.

But dont take my word on any of this, I sure as hell am not the expert on this battle.

Intrestingly enough. Beyond this battle which took like 3 or 4 reloads, I only reloaded twice elsewhere in ToB. Once cause Jaheria got petrified and I heard if she gets petrified it ruins the romance. The other time the first time I faced Melissan, didnt know she had protections on her to be dispelled.

Just to illustrate to you how hard I found this dragon.

Ode to a Grasshopper · Thu May 02, 2002 3:08 am

My party is my elven archer, Aerie, Imoen, Minsc, Anomen and Sarevok. The human form was easy, it's just the dragon shape which had me cursing the Universe. I haven't had to reload for any other part, except when I pressed two of the door seals on the 2nd-last level of WK without having re-memorized Aerie and Immie's spell books beforehand. Pausing for healing isn't a problem because Aerie is my healer, whereas Anomen just dual-wields Crom Faeyr and FoA and is basically a stupidly effective warrior who just happens to be able to cast spells. All my fighters have Boots of Speed, but they take too long to recover from Wing Buffet to get back in time.

I hate this dragon.

gnomethingy · Post by **gnomethingy** » Thu May 02, 2002 6:58 am

if I remember corectly.. the way I beat stinky draconis was with improved alacrity and multiple sunfires.. they ingore mr invisibility and spell protections

and with robe of vecna there casting time is nil.. I had edwin memorize nothing but sunfire (about 6 I think) and let them all off before alacrity had run out the moment he hit dragon form
My cleric mage then triggered bolts of glory and contingencied some bolts of glory for 6 bolt

I think he died just form that.. but I might have had to mellee him a little, or I might have done something different, I dont remember

Bruce Lee · Post by **Bruce Lee** » Thu May 02, 2002 7:13 am

Yeah once you get improved alacrity things do become quite easy. With Vecna you have time to finish him off in a number off different ways before he can do anything.

Ode to a Grasshopper · Thu May 02, 2002 8:25 am

OK, ta to everyone who gave advice. Time to whip out the old custom gloves.

GNGSpam · Post by **GNGSpam** » Thu May 02, 2002 10:03 am

I never even thought of Sunfire DOH

Bolt of Glory stinks in that battle. Casting time is to long and Draconis is to disruptive of your party. But Edwin with the Robe of Vecna gets spells off virtually instantly. I bet that would work, hmmmm

Leonardo · Post by **Leonardo** » Thu May 02, 2002 1:18 pm

There is a trick:
Try to bring his human form near the door and stay there. When he transforms into dragon, he will be trapped in the archway and won`t move around anymore.
Then it`s a matter of some lower resistances and damage spells, area or direct (need True Sight activated)

GNGSpam · Post by **GNGSpam** » Thu May 02, 2002 1:26 pm

Thats cheap. I could also just cntrl Y him dead, but what would be the point?

Leonardo · Post by **Leonardo** » Thu May 02, 2002 2:23 pm

You still have to bring him to the spot and make sure he stays there. And after that, you still cannot underestimate him.
It also makes sense from a roleplaying POV, movies are full of instances where the character draws a big monster to a narrow spot. I didn`t intend to do it when I did, he was hit by Jaheira`s Staff of the Ram and retreated to that point, where Korgan finished him off.
If you put that way, I`d rather CTRL+Y instead of Time Stop + Improved Alacrity. Or Greater Whirlwind + Carsormyr (like when I downed Draconis for the first time, no tricks).

gnomethingy · Post by **gnomethingy** » Sat May 04, 2002 7:12 am

Originally posted by GNGSpam
I never even thought of Sunfire DOH

Bolt of Glory stinks in that battle. Casting time is to long and Draconis is to disruptive of your party. But Edwin with the Robe of Vecna gets spells off virtually instantly. I bet that would work, hmmmm

tsk tsk tsk.. you dinna read my post properly, "my cleric mage triggered some bolts of glory" Spell trigger casts instantly !

Btw.. I think he heals at under 60 hp.. and he has no protection from that opcode in his stinky dragon ring so just before he heals try a power word kill..
He only has 190 hp's

I beleive he is either immune or some 90% resistant to missle weapons as well.. so leave your archers at home

Machai Soulwind · Post by **Machai Soulwind** » Sat May 04, 2002 1:58 pm

Originally posted by Glod
Thats why theres the improved Abaz patch. Makes him harder than Draconis anyway.

very true - that battle had me reloading more times than just about any other in the game

very fun and well worth it.

As for draconis usually I use my common dragon tatics but did have to improves a bit. For almsot all dragons i use M's Sword..that niffty 7th lvl summon spell...at times better than planetars. For draconis, as it seems all summons die on when he changes form saved a few M's swords in spell trigger and chain contengiency before the battle. And of course progect image to cast some more when they die to MM or whatever..THINK a few died from MM or deathspell....then from that point was a matter of truesight, breach and a few lower resistance....throw in a few MMs, MMMs, energy blades, or horrid wiltings.....

When I was feeling a bit cheesy and not up for a long battle used some spike traps at lower end of the map and dragged him there when he changed.....

Izgoth · Post by **Izgoth** » Sun May 05, 2002 8:56 am

I never understood why Draconis is so tough. I killed him on my first try but I got killed by Abi.

ltldrgn1 · Post by **ltldrgn1** » Sun May 05, 2002 1:33 pm

The tactics that I use (and I usually don't have to reload at all and don't sustain too much damage either) are, hack on him while he is human. Once he transforms, lower resistance, power word blind, then he just stands there, never goes invisible, tries to heal but with 3-4 fighter types hacking on him he never succeeds.

Ode to a Grasshopper · Mon May 06, 2002 2:36 am

Originally posted by ltldrgn1
The tactics that I use (and I usually don't have to reload at all and don't sustain too much damage either) are, hack on him while he is human. Once he transforms, lower resistance, power word blind, then he just stands there, never goes invisible, tries to heal but with 3-4 fighter types hacking on him he never succeeds.

It's simple, it's elegant, it's perfect!

EDIT-And it almost worked. Ignoring the limitation of no more than 5 summoned creatures allowed by summoning around 8 Invisible Stalkers, Draconis somehow managed to kill Anomen (and make it so he couldn't be resurrected) at a distance while blind, and then proceeded to use dragon breath on my archer, who was pounding away at him from a distance. In spite of this I managed to kill him, but a split secong later my protagonist died and so my victory, apart from being extremely satisfying, was worthless. If only you could resurrect your PC after they died, like any other character.

Geckopat · Post by **Geckopat** » Mon May 06, 2002 11:30 pm

will the 10% vapor hit work on Draconis??
i remember killing a dragon (forgot which one?) with minsc using the ravager+6 and the dragon died on first hit.

island007 · Post by **island007** » Wed May 29, 2002 3:09 pm

Hi

My tactics are similar for draconis and his dad.
Encounter him set off dialog summon sword to engage him everyone retreats back except one tank to guide sword to him. Main mage (the last time was Tashia) and P/C cast project image. Projected images cast Spell imunity (abju). Get close enough for dragon breaths, but not close enough to him. Remember the sword is keeping him busy. 4 dragon breaths he's toast and changes to dragon. While your prjected images are casting the second set of DB have auxcilary mage (last time was Jan) summon sword. Dragon lands you get blown back. Move Jan's sword to engage. Project images move back in range Tashia's image still uses DB, and P/C's image move in close set off spell trigger sun burst. P/C's image cast sun burst untill exhasted, Tashia's image after last DB moves in close spell trigger sunburst.
You have to love the spells that ignore magic resistance.

Draconis is history works for his dad too and you only use a few seventh level spells. Just too easy with mutilple high level mages, with images and simmi the mages are never at risk. The only boss's that need fighter support are Sendai and Mellisan. All the others, the fighters watch the mages take out the trash.

Thanks

Kassaras · Post by **Kassaras** » Wed May 29, 2002 4:15 pm

Yes Draconis is by far the toughest opponent I have faced.
I use the same tactic with most big battles.
I ready a spell trigger with 3 LR with the secondary mage(Imoen)
His human form is easy and I wont bother with that.
However as soon as he turns into dragon form I fire the spell trigger and my main mage casts timestop.Then Improved alacrity and fill the place with as much abidalzim's, delayed firebals,cone of colds sunfire ect.
When time goes back to normal you'll have a pretty dead Draconis there!