Of the three dragons you can fight, the two which I actually want to fight seem to be impossible.
Both the adra dragon and ice dragon (in the expansion area) are surrounded by hoards of enemies when I go in.
Both of them swarm or do shitty teleport things, which makes it impossible to deal with the dragon.

I can't believe anyone thought giving the most powerful creatures in the game a large swarm of henchmen was a good idea!

Anyone beaten either of these?
If so, how?

As for the dragon in White March area, he got manageable once I aquired certain spell from the new mage tower location in Dyrwood. It's a wizard spell. A hammer. You'll notice it once you find it. Basically, it can keep the dragon stunlocked long enough for you to deal with the little baddies, and then you can murder the dragon itself - but even that's an excercise in patience and takes bloody ages.

Adra Dragon, on the other hand, was such a bullshit fight that I cheated to get trough it. I know it can be won without cheats when you completely change your equipment around and use the right party composition, spells and abilities, but as it stands, I would even suggest to save your game, keep the save, and wait for the next expansion to rise the level cap even further.

I actually won the adra dragon fight without cheating, I just tried different strategies each time and learned as much as I could with any try, each time my strategy was more refined. It took me like 13 runs at it, until I managed to kill her. So it's definitely doable. At the same time I can't imagine anyone would just win that fight. You really have to figure out the weaknesses and exploit them properly.

Thanks for the tip; I'll try the hammer.
I already have it, since I did the wizard area first. :-) Ok... but HOW did you finally beat it legit?

Huh, bad news, I just hate when you must die 15 times to succeed, it's totally contrary to my vision of a RPG...
Up to now PoE was mostly exempt from this, seems they couldn't refrain anymore :(

So, the hammer spell work for knocking the dragon ? \Enjoy it now, because in theory that is a bug, and probably will be fixed in future patch (The spell does crush damage, if the dragon is immune then should not be affected by the knock effect).

Anyway, you can do something similar with the 4th level spell Confusion, by the way the dragon seem to be a Rouge with death blow and the the other nasty death-hit, that is why is more tricky than the Adra dragon

You can try to use many summons for giving meat to the dragon meanwhile you are fighting the other creatures (you need to kill them as soon as possible).

And ´probably ,you need a rogue with deep wounds in the team (or anything with access to a lot of raw attacks).

P.d. the hammer spells works splendid against the wraith (If Aloth or other mages have access is a good way to disable them fast)

Actually I just tried it now, with current version.
Doesn't stun the dragon. :-(

They did a shitty job of these dragon battles, mostly because of all the minion hoards! GRRRR!

This dragon is the new though encounter in the game, is a good idea to wait to finish the White Marchs campaign and be level 13-14 , you can upgrade your weapons even further with it. I think there are two items made for this battle (a mantle and sword with the beast slay property).

I had to add the Beast slayer property to weapons for two of my characters. And gaining time with the confusion spell and summons (Even Yoshi had better time with Mario than my summons :P), probably Grieve Mother would have a similar effect (Though will become very hard to gain new focus after the minions got killed).

Basically, you need to have the weapons slots with weapons for dealing with the dragon, the spectres and the ice creatures. The crush type of damage are almost useless here, so the monks will have a hard time, and probably you need more than 2 characters able to resurrect people (By lore or by class feature). Piercing damage or those weapons which can bypass DR (I think many piercing weapons have those) are very important for this battle.

If you are using the new rouge, remember to upgrade her shell-armor and give her the ability to heal a portion of her health (The one which restore 40% of health) because is the only way to restore health for her. And remember, she can't drink potions or food, so you can use her item's slots for summons and/or scrolls.

IF the creatures are killing you, then practices to move them to a center area for a massive blasting.
By the way, I'm sure that if you redo the new monk's levels, could achieved 120 or more of Deflection, this could give him the opportunity to give time to the others to clean the area meanwhile he is surrounded by the ice creatures and the dragon (I had a paladin with 112 in deflection and was the key to my strategies, yet the Patch 2.0 reduces his utility). Don't forget that the dragon's breath attack hit everyone in its reach, so even if you don't confuse or dominated it, you can use him for killing the enemies.

My hate to this new campaign is due this encounter, almost all the new items, the special pet summon and the new monk are useless for this specific battle. What was in Obsidian's minds when were making the dragon stats?

P.d. I defeat the dragon in the nightmare difficult and without the special anti-dragon skill that you can gain when facing the Adra dragon, yet you truly need to be prepare many elements for this battle (not ego here, I definitively didn't maximized my party nor the options having a hardest time as result).

P.d.2 You can completed the quest with a high Might or Resolve stat, (Probably only resolve, I can't remember), the dragon lives but give you one of the 3 special items in his nest.

I have both of the new characters in my party. :-s

However since the devs set it up so you are surrounded at the start, it's not possible to clump them together for aoe spells.
The dragon, even on normal insta kills anything it's breath hits and even without him it's likely that my party would have trouble against these enemies. :-(

This is the only part of the new campaign that sucks for me too.

Technically not true, you find the dragon until you move to the north(-west) of the cave. Therefore, you can move your team to the east before sending the sacrifice to the dragon.



If you remember where the spectres are spawning you can even put a trap plus a seal (Remember, they are vulnerable to fire). Even with practice you could drop a Delayed fireball with Aloth :P


p.d. The dragons have a invisible attack, where is very hard to identify its reach. this is what made the Adra dragon fight so hard too.

I've never actually used traps.
Most of the time, if stuff is too hard, I just bait a few of them out with my fighter and a bow, then retreat to take those few out.

I've not seen the invisible attack; it's always the breath attack that wipes my party..... or comes close to wiping.

Well from what I picked up while quickly browsing through the pages, most people are doing it really wrong. So I'm not surprised why they are having problems. Don't know why no one is willing to figure things out, I thought this is why people like this kind of game in the first place.

The easiest way to beat the dragon is if you talk to her a lot and act like you want to free her. She then gives you an amulet to possess the body of a dragon hunter. But what I did was, that I told the dragon hunter of the dragons plan and as thanks, she taught me the skill "scale breaker" it's a debuff for all dragons. So armed with that I returned to an already weakened adra dragon. I used my new skill and then cast spells like wall of force. Pretty much everything, that would have the dragon hobbled. While the dragon is hobbled, she can't use her most powerful abilities. It's important to check how long spells will stay active. Whenever the dragon is about to stop being hobbled, the spell needs to be recast. the rest is pretty much standard combat behavior. People like Eder and Pallegina up front, doing their thing (I gave Pallegina powerful weapons like the blade of the endless paths) and the rest spread out. Kana obviously buffed everyone and Durance was kept apart to revive people if anyone would still run out of endurance.
I don't remember how long I had to keep this up, bug the dragon was constantly taking good damage and finally died.

Personally, I quite simply could not be arsed - when I got to the Adra Dragon fight and it wiped my whole lvl12 group in a single breath attack, I basically went "Nope" and killed it with cheats.

See, the way I play games like these is that first time around I play on normal difficulty, precisely so I don't have to repeat same fights more than two or three times - it's so I get immersed in the game more and get to enjoy the story. It's good when the game retains some challenge, which Pillars did, but too much will just frustrate me. Then, on subsequent playtroughs, I crank up difficulty to the max and do another run while actually approaching it more like a tactical strategy game mixed with an RPG - that's the point where I start figuring things out troughoutly.

My point is that the Adra dragon is an absolutely insane difficulty spike, especially for easy or normal difficulty. I guess that's what you get when your monsters don't scale with difficulty in any manner (actually, does that apply to bosses?) I would call it bad design, but I'm not sure a completely optional boss which exists for the very sake of being challenging can be called that.

Totally get what you are saying here. Normally I feel the exact same way, except this is a one time thing in this game. The adra dragon is supposed to be the most powerful foe in the game - that's also why she's optional. The adra dragon is the PoE equivalent of Kangaxx in BGII. You can finish the game without ever stepping foot in the endless paths, let alone complete all 15 levels.
If all enemies were like that I would be so frustrated, but with this just being the exception, it was really a great feeling to finally win against this beast.

You need to disable/confuse/debuff the Dragon. Several high level powers can do the job. Try opening with Mind Plague next time and kill it while it shows as an ally.