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I wondered also

Exactly. That's what makes me wonder if they really have beaten Draconis.

The M swords should work -- except for the aerial servants Draconis summons.

The removal spells should work -- except Draconis is layered.

The super killing spells should work -- except Draconis' defensive spells turns the spells YOU cast against your own party.

The Dragon killing weapons should work -- except that Draconis is a Dragon MAGE.

I don't care how buffed your fighters are, they cannot take on Draconis in dragon form until the creature is worn down. Unlike Kangkaxx, this creature CAN do more than throw spells at your fighters.

I don't care how powerful your mages are, they cannot take down Draconis whose protection spells are inter layered.

In a way, killing this creature is like killing the magic golem. You have to get back to basics. Yes, Draconis has all kinds of immunities and unbelievable protection BUT if there is one thing all players know, nothing lasts forever and nothing is complete.

Even the smallest rock constantly hitting against something WILL wear it away so that there is an opening. The goal then becomes surviving long enough to use that opening.

The aerial damage wears out the creature so that the fighters CAN take it on and keeps Draconis from casting spells. The protected from magic fighters keep Draconis from killing off the mages.

It is a run and wait time. When my main character's slayer self came after my main character (who is a mage/cleric), I did a lot of running and healing while the other characters ran interference and finally killed the slayer. It is the same idea. Use your magic protected fighters to keep your mages alive while they wear down Draconis. NO magic gets in with Protection from Magic and as long as your fighters don't take Draconis on until he is weak, they should be able to provide enough defense to accomplish this. But it is a real run and wait process.

It is the system you used in the beginning when you weren't so cool and powerful. It is also extremely difficult because you want to use stuff like Spell Strike and True Sight.

You forget that in the beginning, fireball, ice storm, and cloud kill took down mages, dragons and revealed them no matter how invisible they were.

The point is, and you should be aware, YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN BUT SO HAS THE SUPER MONSTERS. It's like having nukes and forgetting that even a simple knife can kill ya.

You just need to hold on to that knife and wait for the opportunity to use it.

OK, I have taken Draconis down easy. Four fighters tanking him, one with carsomyr for the dispell magic, and he goes down quick. Actually, my real problem was that he couldn't transform to dragon! And once I got him to dragon he wasn't a problem, at all. Note that I hardly had any trouble out of him except for his refusal to transform / die (He was at near death, and even CTRL - Y couldn't kill -- I accidently hit that instead of the CTRL - R that repaired his transform script the first time around)

Re: I wondered also

Hmm...I think I can speak to this, having recently squashed Draconis (tactics mod) like the oversized lizard he is. I will speak mostly to the stragegies I used, though I'll address one other item.

Originally posted by Malia Nash
SNIP ....
The removal spells should work -- except Draconis is layered.
SNIP

Layered spell protections just mean you have to be a little sneakier. You have to target him with a chain contingency (which bypasses the SI-Div targeting thing) to get his spell protections down - Breach, 2 X Ruby Ray ought to do nicely. I can't recall if I bothered with spell protection removals on either of his iterations.

Anyway, my approach was a simple brute force one.

Edwin(Sorceror) summons a wizard eye
Edwin casts Project Image
Fake Edwin summons 5 or 6 planetars
Wizard eye targets Drac at the back end, he goes red, send in planetars. I think he summoned one efreet before he was occupied with planetars.
Planetars eat efreet for breakfast, start in on Drac.
Fake Edwin heads in to cast spells - LR ? don't remember, Greater acuity, cast spells, blah, blah, blah
In fairly short order, the planetars beat Draconis to a pulp.
Draconis turns into a Dragon - the planetars, fake Edwin, and the eye all go away. Draconis is, however, back at the door to Dad's lair, where the ffight happened
While he's heading down to attack the party, PC & Jan lay spike traps (1 each), Valygar summons a simulacrum, Jaheira summons an elemental prince, Edwin summons a planetar.
Drac shows up, sim Valygar, planetar, elemental all engage in melee. Everyone else is doing missile attacks at least at first. I may have had a GWW fighter with a vorpal weapon engage once he was beating up the pets (I'm not sure if Drac is immune to vorpal effect, though - Improved Abazigal certainly is ).
Drac takes heavy damage from the spike traps, and dies pretty quickly.

Hardly a finesse fight, but a workable strategy which didn't require a lot of spells.

Improved Abazigal is significantly harder. I concentrated on debuffing & killing Tamah (mostly attacking with ranged weapons), while a string of pets & simulacra kept Abazigal busy chewing them up. Once Tamah (and most of the drakes, as it happened) were dead, I again used Edwin project images (4 this time) to summon planetars to melee Abazigal while the party did ranged attacks and cast debuffs & damage spells. After a round of lower resists, Abazigal aggroed the Edwins, and took them out of action for most of the fight, but the Planetars and Simulacra managed to hold him in melee, while the rain of missile damage and spells made his life short and unpleasant.

Most of these fights can be done in a variety of ways, but I lean to simplistic brute force techniques

With crtl-r you can just send in your tanks and hack away, when they get hurt crtl r!

Not sure if anybody brought this up, but what is your current difficulty setting? if you're playing by the default Core AD&D rules, you may want to adjust your setting for the duration of the battle so the fight won't be so impossible.

In human form he is too easy send a deva and an archer. The archer should have a non-magical bow and regular arrows. The deva leads the way. Keep the AI off and keep redirecting the deva to attack Draco

Dracos' contingency will fire and the illusion will appear. A mage/cleric who is well back casts true sight. The illusion disappears and our boy shows up. Keep the deva in his face and start to nail him with the non-magical arrows…love it. He will cast his time stop and attack the deva but to no avail. Mean time the archer is slowly killing him.

He will start to cast sunbursts and kill off all of the invisible stalkers. Move the archer to the far side of the Battle (by the door or one of the corners at the end That way when he turns in dragon form he will turn away from the balance of your party to attack the archer.)

When he turns into a dragon he turns to attack. At that point you advance with wizard one. This wizard has a contingency equipped. (See enemy, target nearest enemy, Ruby ray, warding whip X2.)

The second mage, who has previously cast shape change (also equipped with the same contingency as above) starts to cast time stop. By the time the second mage has cast time stop the first mages contingency has gone off.

The time stop mage advances and when he/she is beside the dragon trigger the change to mind flayer. While this change is occurring the time stop mage’s contingency should also fire. Attack…after a couple of “weapon ineffective” reports you will get the devour brain. And a dead Draco

You can cast the time stop and change to mind flayer while draco is in human form but if you kill him in human form all you get is his stupid head, you don’t get the neato braces –1AC +15HP. As I always play a M/T or F/M/T or F/T as such I want them !!!!!

If you found Draco easy then go to wiemers site and download ascension that makes daddy 10X this difficult

Huh. I'll grant you that I was slightly higher level when I fought him, but I never had all that much trouble with Draconis. My sorcerer was probably level 23 or 24 at the time, and he mopped the floor with Draco pretty much all by himself.

Once he changed into his dragon form, it was just a matter of timestop, improved alacrity, spell trigger (three lower resist), chain contingency (three horrid wilting), sequencer (three skull trap), horrid, horrid, horrid, skull, skull, skull, dead. That'll work against pretty much anything.

For a party without primo spell casters, I fell back on Keldorn's Dispel Magic and just bit the bullet when it came to my own buffs. Once his protections are gone, it's just a matter of wailing on him until he falls.

Anyhow, I do apologize if it seems I'm oversimplifying the matter. I know Draco can be tough, but beating up dragons is kind of like learning how to whistle; it seems impossible until you finally get a knack for it, and then it's the easiest thing in the world.

If you think Draco's a biatch, try taking on Abazigal and his legion of dragons in the improved tougher Abazigal patch that comes with Ascension. Now THAT'S epic.

I agree, draconis is probably the hardest dragon in the game. Anyway, the way I took him out was fairly simple and didn't utilize any cheats or cheese or anything.

First off, cast a deva or planetar and send him up to take on draconis in human form. He can't hurt it, so then you just sit back and wait. Once he turns into the dragon the fun begins.

The thing that made the battle really easy was insect plague. If you are able to get it off and then hold him in place long enough for him to get hit, then he can't cast anymore spells. After this, just nail him with your fighters using greater whirlwind or smite (cause it lasts longer than critical strike) and horrid wilting. In the end, he was killed by Jahera's storm of vengence.

My party consisted of:

P/C: Cavilier lev 23 or 24 (forgot) duel wielding angurivadal +5 and Purifier +5
Minsc lev 24 or so with vorpal sword
Keldron lev 23 with carosmyr
Anoman lev 28 w/flail of ages +4
Jaheria lev 16/14 with staff of the woodlands
Imoen lev 17 or 18 w/gesan bow and staff of the magi

Killed draconis on the third try without losing any of my characters. With this party (at a lower lev of course) I was able to take out Irenicis both times without losing anyone and I took him out in hell in about 2 minutes.

Oh boy....

This one is good. When I first played BG2ToB this was were I gave up. Now I've started again, and this confrontation is coming up pretty soon. I'm not looking forward to it. I remember rushing to the attic, digging out about 2 tons of AD&D rulebooks to try to figure out how a party containing three 24th level fighters and a powerhouse Mage with 23 Int and 21 Wisdom couldn't handle one single dragon. This was the gang who turned Firkraag into luggage in about 8 seconds in the first game, and Red Dragons were supposed to be the second nasties creature in AD&D. So I ranted, shrieked and finally gave up.
Now I've bought the expanded BG2 pack, and I've heard a rumour that Draconis is supposed to be even tougher in the latest version? What's up with that?
Thanks for the pointers anyways. This thread is really useful.

Strange but soooo easy

This was my second go run and I was NOT looking forward to facing Draconis and the mage-dragon. After dying a few times, I went back to read what I had written about how I HAD finally beat him last September and came across advice given by someone. (I'm sorry but I can't remember which thread it was on.)

He mentioned using the "shape-changing spell" and turning into a mind flyer. He suggested waiting until after Draconis turned into a dragon which I did, but the dragon blew his fire breath and either knocked half my party out or out and out killed them.

So I had my fighters keep Draconis busy with aerial stuff while two of my mage turned mind flyers walked up and devoured Draconis' brain.

He never turned into the dragon, the head was on his body and whah lah I was on to fight his daddy!

Not the drama of the last time, when I had spent 2 weeks practically living and dreaming Draconis--and no I didn't jump up and down when I killed him saying: YES, YES, YES, TAKE THAT YOU...then shaking for fear that the program would crash without a save...

But I DID smile...I like easy...

Dragons? Hah - don't make me laugh! With a high-level thief and four spiked traps (often just three will do), dragons last all of a few seconds.

Why throw your head against a brick wall when guile is so much easier?

Originally posted by Dueller
Dragons? Hah - don't make me laugh! With a high-level thief and four spiked traps (often just three will do), dragons last all of a few seconds.

Why throw your head against a brick wall when guile is so much easier?

You use CHEESE !

The Thief's ability is very Cheesy, but what do you do when you don't have Spiked Traps ? AFAIK Thieves need 3.000.000 XP to get'em...
Unless the protaganist is a thief build you don't get those...and IMO Jan Jansen's aren't strong enough at this level...

With a strong party of 5 or 6 this fight is, even un-modded, very hard. Mod-ed it might even be worse. You might very well loose some Npc's to death in this one...

Originally posted by Mulligan
You use CHEESE !

The Thief's ability is very Cheesy, but what do you do when you don't have Spiked Traps ? AFAIK Thieves need 3.000.000 XP to get'em...
Unless the protaganist is a thief build you don't get those...and IMO Jan Jansen's aren't strong enough at this level....

Hehe don't worry, Draconis doesn't give you any time before the fight to lay spike traps. As soon as anybody seems him, he attacks. You *could* potentially cheat and use a projected image to lay the traps (which doesn't trigger creatures) but then there is still a problem.

You fight Draconis first in his human form and then in his dragon form and therefore any traps you manage to lay before you fight his human form will be gone when he turns into the dragon.

Oooops, eh? I can now see Dueller's ****y reaction change from: "Hah, a dragon, eh? Another notch on my blade!" to one of sobs and "PLEASE DON'T HURT ME AND GO AWAY! I JUST NEED TO LAY A COUPLE SPIKE TRAPS!! *sob* *sob*. You can come back when I tell you to, OK?

Originally posted by Black_Paladin
Hehe don't worry, Draconis doesn't give you any time before the fight to lay spike traps...

He gives plenty of time - it's not like he's waiting for you when you first enter the map. If you're in the habit of sending wizard eyes on ahead to scout about (as I always do), you get plenty of warning.

Originally posted by Black_Paladin
...I can now see Dueller's ****y reaction change from: "Hah, a dragon, eh? Another notch on my blade!" to one of sobs and "PLEASE DON'T HURT ME AND GO AWAY! I JUST NEED TO LAY A COUPLE SPIKE TRAPS!! *sob* *sob*. You can come back when I tell you to, OK?

Okay, here's how I did it:

The easiest method involves no less than seven spiked traps and a bunch of sacrificial summoned monsters.

Set four spiked traps in a close bunch in the middle of the first set of steps, and three further away on the second lot of steps. Try to keep them in line with the middle of the causeway, since 'dragon boy' will head straight for you once your summoned dupes are killed. If you don't have this many spiked traps, simply set as many as you have, sleep, and set some more.

I suggest teleporting to the pocket plane to sleep, otherwise you may be woken by something in the night (which will then ruin your existing traps). Once the two groups of traps are set, send a few sacrifices forward with a wizard eye. The three spiked traps will destroy Draconis' human form, with the last four finishing off the dragon. Keep the two clusters of traps well away from each other, or they'll all go off at once (leaving nothing for his dragon form).

Alternatively, set just four spiked traps further down the steps, haste everyone (protection from fear might help as well), send them forward to battle the mage, then run like hell when he does his resurrecting trick - leading him straight for the traps.

The trick is in luring only Draconis and not any summoned goons. Once your own summoned helpers are dead, Draconis (whether human or otherwise) heads straight for where your party is (but his invisible stalkers aren't that smart).

I use the same strategy on Abazigal as well - making sure to go around and kill off any pesky salamanders who might otherwise ruin a perfectly good trap ambush. In fact, there's not a dragon in the game you can't kill with a cluster of four spiked traps. Some require a bit of extra strategy (like Saradrex), but ultimately a high-level thief can out-wit a dragon any day.

--

And if this is cheesy - then so is every dungeon-maker in the realms! How often have your own characters been killed outright by undetected traps? If trap-setting was good enough for Durlag, then it's good enough for me! Besides - how are a thieve's abilities any more cheesy than a mage's? They're all there to be used. If setting traps us somehow akin to 'cheating', then so is using magic.

imo draconis is much much harder with a party. When i first played him if i recall correctly i had the following party

me-sorocer
keldon
imoen
jaheria
amoen
mazzy

i found this guy to be the hardest fight yet and after many attempts i beat him i cant remember how but it was with me imoen amoen all using energy blades while keldon and mazzy GWWed him to death jaheria took care of bluffs mostly and summons btw i dont see how ppl think that she is a very effective character she is always the worst for me and the first one to die the rest was standard battle tatics

when i played solo with my f/m i took him down in about 30 secs i dont remember much either but i summoned a planter that took care of his mage form and then mord's swords took care of those annoying summons of him i used staff of magi to get rid of his protections that he puts up so often and then GWWed him to death with my flail of ages and belm

If you MUST beat dragons to death, then the long sword "The Answerer" may come in handy. Every successful hit reduces the target's AC by 2 (or rather, makes it 2 HIGHER, since larger values are less... great logic there!). As the dragon's AC gets worse, it becomes increasingly easier to hit.
Even if the dragon is protected from magical weapons, the AC penalty may still get through (just no physical damage). Certainly when you attack a mage with weapon protection using Celestial Fury, you can still stun them without doing physical damage.

There is also a weapon that can level drain a target (is it the suped-up Spectral Brand?).

Although magic may be your best bet. I find that a few Reduce Resistance in a spell trigger, followed quickly by a Disintegrate, tends to turn most dragons to dust. The downside is that any items not critical to the game may be disintegrated as well. However anything critical to the game (like Draconis' head, or the Black Dragon's elven goblet) won't be destroyed. I had Aerie take out Irenicus's black dragon (in SoA) all by herself (wizard eye to distract, a single reduce resistance, then disintegrate). And by 'take out' I'm not talking dinner and a show...

Draconis isn't really that hard to beat. After some research I found a strategy that works very well. The key here is elemental damage. Since Draconis casts protection from magical weapons very early in the battle, macial weapons won't hurt him. So, use weapons which do elemental damage instead, like Dragon's Bane, Flail of Ages and Storm Star. Also, have your mages cast Cone of Cold or Lightning Storm and use your fighters' Greater Whirlwind Attack ability.

I tried this strategy after having been defeated three times, and Draconis went down so quickly, I couldn't believe my eyes.

Notes:
- This strategy works for both his human form and his dragon form. How convenient.
- Remember that Breach or Pierce Magic won't work since he casts Spell Immunity: Abjuration. Your only options to remove his protections are Kelben's Warding Whip and Dispel Magic. EDIT: After reading about Spell Immunity: Abjuration on http://members.chello.nl/~j.vanthull/BG2SR/Main.htm I'm not sure about Breach or Pierce Magic having no affect. Try for yourself.
- Don't forget to protect your party with the usual protection spells like stoneskin, resist fear, bless and chant.
- Ignore the invisible stalkers. I my case, the problem resolved itself because Draconis himself casted a Death Field which killed all invisible stalkers (smart move!). But you can always deal with them after you've dealt with Draconis.

I've just tried another tactic using a high level fighter-thief. You'll need an AC of around 20 (the Harper's amulet from the fire temple comes in handy here), Valor's helm, and a weapon that drains an opponent in some way.

I had my PC using two weapons: Blackrazor and the Answerer. Blackrazor has a 15% of draining 4 levels from the target (and conveniently heals the user by 20 HP and boosts strength at the same time). It also makes you immune to fear (and dragons LOVE their 'dragon fear' spells). The Answerer reduces the target's magic resistance by 15% with each hit, and incurs a 2 point penalty to their AC. The combination of the two weapons means that each hit weakens the dragon, making subsequent hits even easier to land.

Then I pulled out my trump card - Valor's Helm. By casting simulacrum ol' Draconis found himself facing TWO blackrazors and TWO Answerers. A few 'greater avoidance' and 'greater whirlwind' spells maxed out our ACs at 25, and provided ten attacks per round each. The poor old wyrm didn't know what hit him - he spent most of the time trying to become invisible and retreat to summon more helpers. I kept the AI switched off and ignored the invisible stalkers.

I also found that having both Blackrazor and the Ring of Gaxx equipped meant I was regenerating 1 HP per second. Using this strategy I didn't even lose my identicle twin buddy.

Abazigal also fell quite quickly to the combination of Blackrazor and Answerer (a planetar and elemental prince helped out as well). Other draining weapons like Soul Reaver could also be used (it reduces the target's THAC0), although you won't get as many attacks per round.

There's nothing much to add.. but something came up in mind: Jaheira's bug-spells. (you know the ones which send angry little creepy crawlies to swarm around victims heads. can't remeber the name)

Well, I was just trying different spells on the big D, and this one made the difference. He couldn't do anything but run around and heal himself every once in a while.. this gave me the time to heal myself and reorganize the troops. And then full speed ahead, with the tips from this thread, D was no longer a problem.

Draconis was the one, who almost ended my game.. so you can imagine the amount of happy-happy-joy-joy-thoughts swirming in my rotten brain. Thanks everyone!

I agree that this is one of the hardest opponents in the game. I had to restart a couple of time just because I wasn't willing to change spells and rest to properly prepare for him.

One key is to put three magic missle spells in spell squencer with as many mages as possible. This may sound crazy but I was able to get off 30 missles within a round of lowering his defenses. 2 mages a sequencer apiece, 3 MM spells per sequencer. Each mage was to a level where they got 5 missles with each spell. Damage = 30-150HP.

Memorize your usual summon, buff, and defensive spells, but remember to memorize magic restance with as low level cleric as you have in your party. Memorize a couple of lower restance spells along with breach with your mages. Also memorize Mordenkainen's Sword if possible

Ruby Ray and Secret Word always seemed to work to begin to lower the defenses.

Send in lower level summon to keep Draconis occupied while throwing a Ruby Ray off the bat. Follow up with breach and send in melee fighters with Greater Whirlwind Attack. This should wipe him out pretty quick. Before he dies summon M. Sword and a couple of high level and keep at a distance to send in after Dragon's first Wing Buffet when he appears. Send in your summons, cast Magic Resistance with Cleric, wait about half a turn and cast lower resistance with each mage. This will reduce his MR to less than 10% or so. Send in everyone and lauch the Spell Sequencer Magic Missles and watch how quick a dragon dies.


What doesn't kill you makes you stonger.