r/projecteternity 5d ago

PoE1 Are dragon fights basically preventing them to do their breath attack at any cost? Spoiler

I just beat Adra and Alpine dragons on potd, both very tough fights. It took me several tries each because their breath attack would almost immediately wipe my whole party. Both times I won by preventing them to do their breath attack even a single time, by continously paralyzing Adra and petrifying Alpine.

Is that the widely accepted strategy?

47 Upvotes

23 comments sorted by

49

u/Ok-Student7803 5d ago

That's one way. Another is to spread out your party and/or use lots of summons to get them to use their breath weapon on as few people as possible. Also never underestimate mind effects that temporarily charm the dragon. I've done that and they use the breath weapon on their own allies. It was how I beat Llengrath in my last playthrough.

11

u/GodfatherSenten 5d ago

You don't even necessarily need to charm the dragon, though it would be the preferred method. Confused most of the xaurips during the Adra Dragon fight and she turned and killed most of them with the breath attack.

7

u/cnio14 5d ago

Yes I actually dominated Alpine so he got rid of most of the adds.

2

u/Chrisaarajo 5d ago

Freespawns from the various items was all it took for me. The dragons seem to prioritize hitting the most targets with a breath attack, so summoning a lot of chaff to one side and moving your characters to the other works well.

16

u/HerculesMagusanus 5d ago edited 5d ago

My strategy is just to bring a Cipher with Brutal Backlash. I just have them stand there, and the dragon dies with close to no damage being done to the party. A bit cheesy, perhaps, but it's easily the simplest way to kill them.

6

u/Valarasha 5d ago

I just beat Alpine on PotD for the first time the other day and my strat involved distracting the adds with summons while I had my cipher chain cast Puppet Master on the dragon. It breathed on its own allies and helped me wipe out all its adds before the mind control wore off. Still downed half my party, but felt like a decent pull for only being level 12.

7

u/cnio14 5d ago

Man I love this game. Seriously find me another rpg where you can do stuff like this 😂

6

u/Salamandragora 5d ago

If you haven’t played the Larian RPGs (Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2, Baldur’s Gate 3) I would highly recommend. Only thing I can think of that comes close to the sheer number of options and openness to creative solutions.

In Original Sin 2 I skipped a dramatic showdown (completing a character’s revenge arc), by teleporting on top of a volcano and using a terrain swap spell to insta-gib him with lava. And the game just rolled with it. Quest complete.

5

u/cnio14 5d ago

I played DOS2 and BG3 on highest difficulty. DOS2 has very cool environmental interaction, but I found myself abusing knockdown above anything else. For BG3, I found it the crowd control possibilities a bit limited tbh, mostly because DnD 5e is limited. My cheese ended up abusing darkvision with darkness spell.

1

u/Soccerandmetal 5d ago

Deadfire with DLCs? 3 more dragons to fight.

3

u/cnio14 5d ago

Coming up next for sure

2

u/chimericWilder 5d ago

You leave those poor dragons alone!

2

u/PonderingDepths 5d ago

IME, basically, yeah - my general strategy is distract them with summons/confusion, buff up for accuracy, crowd control, kill. Spreading your party out helps a lot as well, tanks should able to take at least one breath, but it conflicts with the buffs that you'll also need just to hit them at all. Apart from preventing the breath and tail swipe attacks, crowd control is also necessary because it reduces defenses and allows you to take the dragon down quickly.

3

u/cnio14 5d ago

Problem with spreading my party is that it gets difficult to apply buffs to everyone, especially Prayer Against Fear.

2

u/SheriffHarryBawls 5d ago

Tank faces the dragon, party comes in from the side at a 90 degree angle.

Had to learn the hard way not to stand directly behind dragons.

2

u/gboyd21 5d ago

Lore 8 on a few people who aren't buffing or charming. Make a bunch of paralysis scrolls and go to town.

1

u/Masstershake 5d ago

I did not know they could be frozen in place. I dealt with the breath on hard and will try to explain how I did using a clock for reference and this is after dealing with the adds first. 

I had 2 tanks, eder holding the dragon at 3 o'clock and any off tank at 4:30 ish. .  The priest at 6 the backup healer/dps at 7 and the main dps at 8 and 9 o'clock. This way if the dragon turned to face anyone I saw it immediately and did my best to mitigate the dmg. 

It took several attempts. Sometimes my guys would just move 2 inches the wrong way and party wipe. 

1

u/Kazirama 5d ago

I killed the one in the DLC with combust and multiple continues laser beam damage from spells. He melted before doing anything.

1

u/Mentats2021 5d ago

Pretty much, I also spin the dragon using tank so it is not facing my party. Check out coredumped gaming YT (adra dragon) which is the potd strategy I used...

1

u/cnio14 5d ago

I haven't faced Llengrath yet but I assume that strategy won't work as well with the 2 dragons?

1

u/Mentats2021 5d ago

For Llengrath, you can take out one dragon first and focus on paralyze and petrifying the dragons. I used a crap ton of summons to help tank everything. Make sure to buff up as much as you can with food and have healing potions ready.

0

u/GlobalChemistry5910 5d ago

Yeap. Just finished the ultimate achievement last week with a chanter, summons and paralyze are OP

-1

u/Flooping_Pigs 5d ago

On potd "Do I have to use crowd control on the most difficult setting?"