[1.004-1.01] Life/Death magic against dragons

Have you actually tried that or are you just speaking theoretically? 

Tuidjy used combo: some Dodge + Fortify + Blindness in his playthrough. So dragon has only 3% chance to hit.

My Lady Irane defeated Clambercoil Dragon in about season 50 using Shrink.

It is possible to shrink a dragon, but they are pretty resistant and you can only shrink them once.  They are still pretty damn strong even when shrunk.  Blind is pretty effective, so is Curse, but once again you have to get the spell to stick, and your troops are probably pretty crappy so even semi crippled it will still be tough to kill a dragon.

At first you gain levels on average monsters: Cave Bears, Naja, Troll Party, etc. Then Forest Drake, Slag. Shrink/Blindness helps you on every battle. When you are ready and have potions you can defeat big fat dragon.

If you could attach a save of a sovereign than can beat a Clambercoil before turn 50 I'd love to check it out.  From what I can see they should have 270 hit points, 46 attack, 41 defense, 31 init, 87 accuracy, fear, fire breath, do 4-12 poison damage a turn to anyone they have injured, have their damage multipled by all the members of the defending group and have a really good spell resistance.

And that's the smallest dragon.

Shrink/growth means that Iranes attack would be doubled as she tries to chew through those 270 hit points and 41 defense.  It's still going to be a long process.  And shrink means that the dragon will have a 23 attack instead of 46.  Still a daunting process, especially with that poison damage happening each round.

Blindness/curse both need to get through the dragons spell resistance (and curse only lasts for 3 turns).  But even with his accuracy reduced to 43 he still has a breath weapon that doesnt need to make a hit roll and 43 attack when he does hit.  curse is great against him for 3 rounds, but he still has 270 hit points to eat through when his defense is totally gone.

Not that I'm doubting what you are saying, there must just be some piece I am missing so I would love to check it out.

Unfortunately I lost my save with Irane. I remember Irane had 32 Initiative, Double Strike, Shadow Strike 2, Burning Blade enchantment and Shadow Dagger. So she completely ignored armor and made big crits. Also she had Prismatic Potion and Quendar Wine. Maybe I will start new game to make save for you.

Kavarox can defeat dragon even simplier. 23 dodge + Fortify + Blindness + Curse + Ring of Embers + Nature's Cloak + Potions. Of course Kavarox needs a hero with Death magic.

You'll have to do this again with 1.01 and post the save so we can check it out.

i must give my 2 cents, that i feel dragons are overpowered in the earlygame (due to roaming and nomming your armies) but they're too weak in the lategame. A combo like graveseal+flamedart with a ton of spell damage, can sometimes 1-shot them.

i think they just need more HP. bump them up to 1000 or something ^^

The Kill spell works well too.....

Shrink helps a lot, so does slow. But Shrink doesn't effect fire breath or poison. So it still has a trick up its sleeve. I lose a lot of troops to fire breath... Reduce cooldown or make it used more frequently?

A strong lightning mage can kill dragons fairly quickly. I usually make my mages focus on lightning and learn the fireball from the tech tree. No reason to make a real fire mage.

I don't think you can get strong enough this way by turn 50 though.

Also on the hardest difficulty mages are kind of a joke because of triple HPs. It just takes too much mana to kill anything.

Mike.

and earth magic for the cloak (and plenty of earth shards to power it).  I'm also curious what level you are getting to in 50 turns that these dragons are failing their resistances, they are pretty high level, and start with spell resistance so starts that rely on them failing checks seem risky.

but it seems to undermine your original argument that growth/shrink or blindness/curse allow you to defeat dragons and are op if so many other pieces are required (if anything it's the consumables that seem to make this possible, prismatic potions are pretty awesome, but they won't help against the breath weapon).

either way though I'm happy to check out the saves.  I'm sure there are lots of balance tweaks that should be made but I'm in no hurry to start boosting dragon difficulty (though maybe having them earn more do throughout the game so they level up a bit if left alone to long would be nice).  Or have them switch from young, adult and ancient versions could be cool.

That would be neat.

Also, for each of the lairs could you check in the fact that the only monster to level is the lead monster. It leaves some of these encounters seem odd... One super buff monster next to 2 (really) weak monsters. If I could suggest a moderate level up for the partner monsters, maybe not on the same scale as the original monsters.

It might be nice if the dragon cave turns into a quest where you fight the adult / ancient versions in the cave, then it turns into the lair to recruit dragons. Just some suggestions

If you come prepared to fight the dragon and you've leveled up your sovereign a bit they can easily solo dragons without potions at level 20. I think quest related dragons should be buffed up, but the freely roaming ones you find every once in a while are strong enough for normal monster encounters.  

Takes me a while to build up to that though (Turn 325, epic research rate) I have a level 22 sovereign on my new game with an attack of 85 with the Sword Of Wrath. Without enchantments. If you use a skill or two and depending on hitting a critical you can see numbers above 300 which ends a dragon pretty quick. Melee seems far to superior compared to magic so far in terms of raw damage. 

Also - A side note..  Has any of you made evasion based units and faction bonuses in it? Seems pretty nice so far, seeing 45+ evasion on warg spearmen makes me giggle a bit. 

[1.01] My Lady Irane defeated Fell Dragon on season 50. Save before the battle.

Video of the battle:

It is possible with blind.. Done it myself.

Point is the dragon uses its physical attacks 99% of the time.. 

All you really need to do is spread your guys out.

Nice battle, but I fail to see how this proves your point. Without the Air Elemental, you would have probably lost. Even with the Elemental, the battle was a pretty close call. Had the dragon not used its breath weapon in close range and hurt itself, it would have most likely killed you in the next round. All in all, Shrink and Growth were a contributing factor, but not the sole reason you won the fight.

Buggy fire breath and lucky items.  But still, he did do it.

Yeah - this deosn't seem to bad.  I've beaten ridiculous creatures on like turn 20-30, but it's because I got a studded collar, b-lined to the nearest gigantic spider and let it to all the rest.   Next playthrough I have trrouble getting through the early levels because i didn't get the same stuff.  It's one of the very good features about the game so far.

If you were defeating dragons EVERY game on turn 50, let us know.

PS - there needs to be better AI on the breath weapon.  Take a step back, for goodness sake, Mr. Dragon!

I concur about getting better AI for breath. At the very least make the dragon immune to his own breath. I know that I will just select the area just beyond the enemy when I am using my own dragons.

The ability (and others) needs a <CasterisImmune>1</CasterisImmune> kind of flag

speaking of dragons, does anyone else have the issue where the sweep command takes over 10 seconds after the animation to actually give damage? I had this same issue in EWOM, and it was a huge pain with forest drakes that dont hqve the fire breath ability.

No need to shrink the dragon. Just cast Stinking Mud all over the battlefield except the very edge. Not affected by resistance, and allows you to kite a dragon (ANY dragon) with ranged troops ad infinitum. No casualties either.

You also used an air elemental.  Which is probably the storngest of the elementals, and is not life or death.  Life or Death magic didn't kill the Dragon and it was a good battle.  It took your three tries to shrink him. What happens if it never worked.  I don't see it as overpowered as much as using the things you have gathered and finally get the spell to work, without him shrunk, that fight is completely different.  The biggest of which was an air elemental.  The over grown air elemental killed the shrunken dragon, not Irane using life magic.  She basically sat that there and tried to keep herself alive.

The problems I saw was why didn't the dragon use sweep and hit both of your characters.  That is an error in the AI tactical and I think it could have really changed the outcome of the battle.  Two or three solid hits and the Air Elemental could have died.  Irane was not helping but just sitting there casting heal each turn.  Also, the initial hit was on the character that was afraid, again that is a poor choice tactically.  The dragon should have hit the unit or Irane that had resisted and was not afraid.  Better yet, made the first move to be in position to fire breathe the entire group.  Again, I don't think it is Life or Death being over powered, as much as the dragon could have made better choices and easily have killed you.  Against a human player, your group would have died, and the Dragon wouldn't have broken much of a sweat.

First off I salute you for accomplishing this.  I do however wonder how many reloads it took before the stars fell into alignment and allowed everything to work out.  You need specific items, and you have to get very lucky during the battle itself.