I've just reached the shadow dragon in the umar hills quest. Will my party be able to kill it yet? I know I can get past it without bein noticed cos of that stone, or should I have a go at killing it? Most of characters are lvl. 10 or so with +2 weapons (cept for Minsc, flail of ages and mace+3) Cheers for any help.

I suppose it depends on how you want to kill a Dragon? Are you satisfied with standing out of its line of sight and casting Cloud Kill over and over again or do you want to have a full out battle fairly?

If the latter is the case, I suggest you go up a few more levels, even though the Shadow Dragon is the easiest out of those in the game, it's a lot more fun to have everyone involved than just a few members of your party. You'll still be able to go back to the Temple Ruins even after clearing it out.

I haven't killed any dragons yet and the one time I attacked the Shadow Dragon, well...I died ;)

Syl...

Cheers syl, I guess I'll tahe your advice and come back around level 13 or so. i tried it once as well, killed me straight away.

The first time I fought a dragon was truly awe-inspiring -- I was taking damage from the thing just flapping its wings at me!

Here's a tactic to take down a dragon (or any other tough single critter) in a VERY short time, but without resorting to any cheesy Game limitations or AI exploits:

Cornerstone is the cleric's Harm spell, which will usually not work ;)

To make it work, you need a cleric able to actually HIT a Dragon's AC - that's easy as there are Anomen AND Jaheira (I had both in my 2nd party) who can be doped enough to have their respective Thac0s in low single digits for the fight.
It also means the cleric needs to be at least level 12 of course...

Now, if the cleric can actually hit the beast, only thing to overcome is the dragon's magic resistance (there's luckily no saving throw vs. harm).
So you also need 2 mages throwing lower magic resistance and pierce magic at him. In my case those were Nahlia and Hear'dalis (from scroll)
Another nice bonus is having Keldorn and his ultra fast, super-duper dispel magic (twice his level - lvl 20 dispel!) for any other protection the Wyrm may have.

So in round 1, Jaheira and Anomen cast Harm, while the rest hits the dragon with Lower resistance, Pierce Magic, Dispel and arrows of dispelling, all the while a few summoned critters take his initial attack (lesser fire elemantals work fine)

In round 2 both Jaheira and Anomen charge in and attack, with a pretty good chance to hit and a pretty good chance the harm makes it past the lowered magic resistance. All other characters attack for one extra point of damage...

Try it. Might not work in the first attempt, but chances aren't bad. Both characters doped with pots and spells will have a 50% or better chance to hit and magic resistance should be down to only about 30%...

Why bother doing all that when you can just use Lower Resistance 4x, Greater malision, then Finger of Death? I've killed 3 dragons with no problem using that method.

There is no fun in that.

Syl...

I keep trying to kill Fyrkraag...I'm lvl 13 or so...tough fight. I think it would be possible in a fair battle, but only if I could interrupt his Heal. But by that time, I'm usually not in good shape anyway, and my sorcerer is just summoning enough to keep the dragon busy.