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Barbarian - Endless Damage Chain and Beating the Green Dragon


Seraphias
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Hey folks, There's a lot of love for the Assassin but not so much for the Barbarian so I thought I'd share how I've been going around playing him. I wasn't sure how effective this was until I faced the Green Dragon but managed to take him out at level 42 in two damage chains (~700 and ~300) in 34 turns total with 242 HP left so I recon it's a decent enough way to use them. Would love to hear what others have found/how they use theirs.

 

Quote from what I wrote over on TA:

 

This is how to beat the Dragon as a Barbarian below level 50 (personally I was level 42) and is also how to perform one of the Barbarian's long/endless (with some luck) damage combo chains making the game much easier.

 

Firstly, stats wise. I had 407 HP, a natural 84 defence, +8/7/6/6 (I think) on red/yellow/blue/green gems and 8 damage on skulls from leveling and equipment. (There is a necklace that adds +5 to all stats when upgraded to epic and Scalemail items have a lot of defence). Ideally you want Daemonic items as these add to skulls damage, +2 at epic level (I only had one of these, the fight can be made much easier with several). You want a one handed sword (personally mine was about 20 to use and 30 damage but I never used it once in the fight) and an Epic large healing potion (costing around 10 skulls for 19 healing points) just as backup in case your combo fails or you have a 'dead' turn you don't want to waste. When a combo ends you should have masses of action points if needed.

 

For skills pick Barbaric Roar, Tribal Mark, Enrage, Luck and Warcry. When the battle starts try and get 3 green as soon as possible if you don't have +3 starting green from stats. Cast luck and now when you match yellow gems you get an extra turn (hugely useful for keeping the combo going). After this set about getting yellow and blue mana, you only need 4 red to start the chain really so you can pretty much ignore this and purple is entirely useless to you unless it's as a 4 grouping for an extra turn.

 

The Combo: Cast Enrage followed by Tribal Mark when there are at least 16 reds on the board (this will get you a further +4 skulls damage bonus). It can take a few castings of enrage but you should have little problem keeping the chain going. After this collect mana again if needs be and just cast Enrage followed by Warcry. Simply repeat over and over. Make sure the dragon's defence is always down with Barbaric Roar (It only costs 3 yellow and doesn't end your turn). In between casts of Enrage match up all non-red 4-5 gems as well as any yellows (as these don't end your turn) and of course any groupings of 4-5 skulls.

 

Enrage very rarely covers +5 skulls so once you get a few up with Warcry there is little space and you should get a 4 in a row 95% of the time. Also when the +5 skulls explode they should keep you topped up enough in blue mana that you need not worry about it. Always use Warcry if you have 9 or more yellow mana (red should always be maxxed unless you've just cast warcry). If you have 8 or less then Use enrage again to try and get a good board to boost it up.

 

The only way this combo can end really is if you get unlucky with an enrage that fails to connect 4 reds or (more likely) you run out of yellow/blue after a few bad turns. If this happens (it probably will a few times in the long battle) try and match up the red 4 in a rows hoping for a lucky cascade or simply take the biggest matching damage group and return to step one or use your healing potion/sword if there is nothing better available.

 

In many cases you can hit the dragon for 90+ damage on one good cascade and you can even stop him using his poison breath if you get this going quick. Personally I kept him locked in for around 700 damage before my combo failed and only needed a second to finish him off, leaving me with 242 HP left when he died.

Edited by Seraphias
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Aye there's a third tab for spells. Without spoiling anything, you'll get it through the course of the storyline around the time you reach the end of the third dungeon. This still works fairly well up until that point, though the chain fails far more often. It should get you through the various enemies and the Ogre (I was first forced to come up with it to beat the Ogre and the Luck Spell just finally made it into a continuous chain)

Edited by Seraphias
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I think results may vary for this method. I considered trying the Luck method but rarely got yellow mana during the battle (trust me, I spent 202 turns trying to keep yellow mana high for Warcry heh). I also didn't have much luck with Enrage getting 4+ combos. I'd say it worked about 50% of the time for me which leave a wide margin for the CPU to build up numerous 4+ combos from all the red scattered around the board. I went for the play it safe method which is found in the other Green Dragon thread. ;) This method appears to definitely pay off when it does work though.

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Just as an update to this, I've been experimenting and if you replace Tribal Mark with Brutality it becomes much more effective/quicker. It requires a few extra turns early on to get going (you need to collect a fair amount of blue before commencing the chain) but after this you do massively more damage.

Edited by Seraphias
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  • 5 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

For whatever reason, I didn't understand the stat distribution as written, but it's the most critical part of the chain method. I couldn't beat the dragon for quite some time, until I went to the Chapel and redistributed my stats like so:

 

Level 50

Strength 25

Agility 21

Intelligence 15

Stamina 19

Morale 20

 

That includes a Legendary Daemonic Pendant that boosts all my stats by +4 and gives a +1 damage bonus to skulls.

 

Using this method, I beat the dragon taking a laughably mere 50 points of damage. It's a nice "up yours" to a game that went on far too long.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 years later...

I leveled up twice off the victory... and leveled up three times off death exp. I'm now level 38, and the fucker is dead.

 

The strategy is sound... but jesus it takes a LOT of luck for shit to line up right. I got him to 300 or so a couple of times, and sub-200 twice before finally winning, but probably restarted 10 times after losing 150-200 of my own health and that bastard still sitting over 900.

 

Still, I did win, but this fight was ridiculous. Over all Puzzle Quest 2 did one thing more than any other... guarantee I will never play Puzzle Quest 3.

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  • 1 year later...

That method didn't work for me, because there is too much potential for breaking the chain. I did get to beat the dragon with the following however:

 

A powerful, fully-upgraded Epic Runic Great Hammer (two hand, so no healing potion), an upgraded epic Daemonic Pendant giving me +5 in all stats and +2 in skull damage. I'm level 50, have 66 strength, 6 agility, 6 intelligence, 20 stamina, and 7 morale. 12 skull damage and 75 armor.

 

Spells:

- Barbaric roar to weaken the dragon's defenses.

- Destroyer, which is hard to build up, but when it does, gives me 2 strikes at a potential of 86 damage points if critical. Nice when defenses are down and they don't get deflected. This is what I used to finish him off.

- Enrage to regularly replenish red mana and create nice potential berzerk rage attacks.

- Warcry, to create even more potent berserk rage attacks.

- and... berzerk rage, which is just devastating if defenses are down, the board is saturated with red gems, and there are a few +5 skulls around.

 

Note that the achievement unlocks not when you kill the dragon but when you complete the quest by returning to Bram One Eye.

Edited by BoudinFatal
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