How on earth does one defeat dragons in NWN2 ? I thought i was pretty much a veteran when it comes to handling these kind of situations in games, but this time i get my behind kicked time and time again. I've tried several approaches, all to little or no effect, so spoil me before i go mad.

I haven't gotten that far yet, but here's an excerpt from our NWN 2 forum news from Nov 4th:
I was super min-maxy with Zhjaeve on this one. I loaded Zhjaeve with Energy Immunity across 6th level. I prepared silent Heals as 7th level spells, silent Resurrections as 8th level spells, and Mass Heal for 9th. I kept her far away from the dragon unless Resurrection was required. If someone needed healing, I pulled them out toward her instead of pulling her in where she might be knocked down.

I had my main character (EK) use Breach on the dragon to bring down the couple of buffs she had. Casavir was all paladin buffed out with Smite Evil queued up until the end of time. Khelgar was just straight-up slammin' with AJ in the background using Devour Magic and random blasts on her incessantly. She went down in about three or four rounds.

Another tactic, if you have Elanee along, is to rush the dragon with your melee folks and have her cast Foundation of Stone. It's tricky, because it makes it hard to get healing to those characters, but the dragon shouldn't be able to knock them down.

****Spoiler****


The only tough dragon is the one red dragon. I talked to it, went to the fire giants, then told the giants "no deal" to kill the dragon. I then proceeded to say, "Attack both" and run away... one fire giant went after me, the rest fought the dragon. When the dragon was low on HP I sent in Zhjaeve to harm it. (my party was level 15), so she was taking 150 damage twice I think before she died (has crazy regen), then the fire giants were a cake walk.


****Spoiler End****

That never worked for me, i think it was some sort of bug. The thing is, i agreed to kill the giants for her, and so i did, but when i returned to her to finish that quest, she told me to go ahead and attack the giants camp, which i obviously just did. It was there and then that i decided the kill the dragon as well, and see what's in all those chests behind here. I haven't had much succes so far.

Did you go kill the king Giant, it's the *other* enterence to the canyon that the dragon ISN'T at.

After getting my butt handed to me several times I just spammed the heck out of it with Flesh to Stone. By the sixth attempt or so she rolled a 1. Dragon statue! Woot!

I give Obsidian credit for this fight though. NWN1 had incredibly easy dragons, especially compared to BG2, so it was nice to see a worthy opponent especially so late in the campaign.

It was a tough dragon.


FYI a dragons lowest save is reflex (dragons have a dex of 10 - period. All their saves grow strong based on HD, so with a CON of like 30 and WIS of like 25, Reflex is the weakest save. For a red dragon, this means you want to use cold spells to do double damage and avoid red spells which do 0 damage).

That was a tought fight (I took her on in her lair rather than letting the Fire Giants weaken her).

I had Elanee, Zhaeve, Neeshka, and Khelgar.
I cast Energy Immunity:Fire on everyone, Bull's Strength, Foundation of Stone, Tortoise Shell and Stoneskin on me and Khelgar, Barkskin and Stoneskin on Neeshka, Stone Body on Zhaeve, Greater Stoneskin on Elanee.

Then I loaded the casters up on things like Moon Beam, Destruction, Harm, Bombardment, Flame Strike, Hammer of the Gods, Ice Storm, etc.

The time I added Moon Beam to the list was when I won, so I think reducing the Dragon's strength with a bunch of those helped a lot. When the fight was over, everyone still had a lot of HP left.

I think Elanee got the actual kill with her last Harm because she has the Dragon Slayer epithet.

Harm is amazing, it's 10/level or 5/level when saved on, so when you're fighting the dragon at about level 15, that's 150 damage or 75 a hit, and you won't miss, because as stated above, dragons dex = 10, touch AC = 10. With a buffed crew it's only a 5% chance ot miss (rolling a 1).

The other thing to do would be buff the tanks and nail the dragon with cone of cold until it dies, since it takes double damage from that spell.

Am i missing anything? I experienced a bug with the dragon that, even after i had agreed to help her kill the giants she didnt show up... Anyway, after heading back to her lair, i fought it out and... had little to no difficulty. I did the usual anticipatory buffs and few characters *died, but other than that, she went down fairly easily. Lots of fire-resists. lots of disintegrates. lots of wacking with sharp objects. Little challenge. And it was on hardcore.

The only problem with Harm is you have to come in close where the dragon can disrupt your spell.

The main problem I had was with the buffs the dragon put up. The only thing I had to take them down was Dispel Magic (and the Greater variety) and that didn't seem to work real well. I also had problems targeting just the dragon with the Dispels, so sometimes I'd take down my own people's buffs instead. So melee wasn't all that effective with the 50% concealment the dragon had (Ghostly Image? Not sure what it was).

Also, I don't consider a battle won unless nobody "dies" (excepting animal companions), so I guess I'm harder on myself than I need to be :)