Defeated by the Herald of the Underworld

The three of us (Gerry Alanguilan, Ysa Arce, and I) decided to take on the Herald of the Underworld seeing as Gerry and I are already Level 40 Dragon Knights and Ysa is already a Level 39 Spellweaver. We figure that we can take him between the three of us.

Two words: big mistake.

The Herald made short work of us. After battling it out for about 5-10 minutes (where we barely made a dent in the beast's health points) we decided to beat a hasty retreat and return to town.

Another day, Herald, Another day...

Jonasdiego: Level 40 Dragon Knight

After a mad dash to level-up I am now a Level 40 Dragon Knight!

I've yet to kill Sigrisimarr Frostclaw and the Herald of the Anderworld however (frankly, I don't have the motivation right now). Even at my current level I'd be hard-pressed to dispatch Frostclaw in a group, what more single-handedly (and let's not even talk about the Herald of the Anderwold).

I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. I definitely don't want to go on grinding, that's for sure.

I know that Gerry Alanguilan (in-game name: Komikero) has retired to Grimford (click here to read the details) and Ysa Arce (in-game name: Xvii) has declined to play the game further because of the Mana cap issue.

I'm probably going to stick around a bit and wait for the new stuff promised for the Level 40 players and see if they're going to be any good. I'll be checking in from time to time but I'm going to be playing less definitely.

Should evil rear its ugly head however, you can probably expect to see us around.

Fight on, heroes of Duria!

Jonasdiego: Level 39 Dragon Knight

Finally reached Level 39! One more level to go before I hit Level 40 (and that's probably going to take a few weeks to accomplish).

The good news is there are a few quests available which will hopefully speed up the process of building up enough XP points to get to the next level. Honestly though, I'm hoping they'd add more quests to do as grinding at this level is really becoming so tedious.

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I only got two quests to accomplish now:

1. Kill Sigrisimarr Frostclaw
2. Kill the Herald of the Anderworld

Tall orders!

Drakensangers 16

Komikero: All Consuming Evil

One of the more difficult lesser bosses in Drakensang-Online is the Level 39 All Consuming Evil, which is basically the highest level of the Bog Monster that players will encounter very early on in the game.

This version of All Consuming Evil is found in the difficult setting of Liar's Lair. Other players might find this guy easy, and from a certain point of view, they may be right. This monster is fairly easy to evade since it just slowly dodders clumsily around the area, but since it has an incredible amount of hit points, it takes a really long time to kill. It gets tedious after a while and you just might get killed if you get complacent and lazy.

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This monster packs a smashing attack that can give an incredible amount of damage. You may think you may still have enough life, but sometimes that may not be enough. One whack from this guy reduces my health down by almost 40%. Two more whacks and I'm dead. I have to circle around it, trying to regenerate health before I attack again.

The new skills come in pretty handy because a combination of the Paralyzing Onslaught, Iron Brow, Scream of Rage, and Ground Breaker can damage this guy quite a lot. Just watch out to avoid its smashing attacks.

Oh yeah, I've finally managed to reach Level 39! And with the new level, I get my final quest: KILL HERALD.

Tall order, man! Tall order!

Meeting the Herald of the Anderworld

I’ve got three words for you: Frikkin. Big. Monster.

The Herald of the Anderworld is a Level 40 character, massive, and it packs quite a punch too. My Dragon Knight is currently at Level 37 and has a little over 3,000 hit points yet the Herald only took about two blows to kill me (I suppose I should be thankful I lasted that long).

At my current level I still can’t defeat Khalys solo (though Gerry, in-game name: Komikero, came really close...read about it here) so I figure I’m going to have to be at least Level 50 before being able to stand toe to toe with the Herald of the Anderworld (maybe not even then).

So it’s back to the grind again for me.

In the meantime I just took out my excess energy at a bunch of hapless undead archers and guardians in Slifmoor.

Komikero: I Almost Took Out Khalys Solo

One of the big challenges of the game are the three huge bosses: Khalys, Sigrisimarr Frostclaw, and Herald of the Anderworld.

When my Dragon Knight was at Level 19, I encountered Khalys for the very first time. I died even before I saw her. She hit me with some kind of energy beam that followed me where I went. It killed me instantly. Khalys herself is a Level 26 Unique enemy but, even if I went back as a Level 26 Dragon Knight weeks later, I still couldn't beat her.

Even at Level 32, which is 6 levels above Khalys, I still couldn't beat her. And as with how the game is designed, I can no longer gain experience points when enemies I encounter are more than 5 levels below me. I find it ridiculous that even when I can no longer gain experience points if I beat her, I still can't beat her.

Worse, the stun skills simply won't work on big bosses like Khalys. "Paralyzing Onslaught" simply doesn't work on her at all, the skill that I use to stun enemies as I hack away at them keeping myself free from damage.

I started to think that perhaps I wasn't meant to beat her alone.

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Grouping up with other players would probably be my only option, but since it's hard to find the time that syncs with Jonas and Ysa's free time and not wanting to group with people I don't know, I just went on playing the rest of the game. Unlike Diablo where you absolutely need to kill the big boss before you can progress into the next area, in Drakensang-Online you can actually skip killing these big bosses and play the rest of the game, allowing you to level up and come back when you're strong enough.

And so that's what I did. When I hit Level 37, armed with polished gems that made my armor stronger and weapons more powerful, I returned to face Khalys once again.

Frustratingly, some of the new stun skills don't work on her as well. Along with "Paralyzing Onslaught", "Iron Brow" and "Ground Breaker" don't seem to affect her at all. So my technique of stunning enemies almost perpetually with a combo of those three skills simply will not work. I would just have to go toe to toe with her.

As it turns out, the new skill "Smash" proved to the most useful, as it gave me 200% weapon damage. Since my Extraordinary Duria Mace already gives me a maximum of 111 damage, helped along with a couple of "Essence of War" boosts, I find myself remarkably strong enough to really go toe to toe with Khalys. The perpetual presence of the Powerful Health Drops around the battle area help me sustain my health long enough to keep fighting.

It took a long time of going at it, but I managed to whittle down Khalys' health to around 5%. Unfortunately, I got careless and got a little overconfident. Just as I was about to beat her, I got killed.

I thought, no problem! I could just resurrect myself and keep on fighting. This is when I discovered something even more frustrating about fighting big bosses. Unlike lesser bosses, Khalys' health returned to 100% after my resurrection. Holy crap. I couldn't muster the energy and the will to go toe to toe again right at that moment for another 15 minutes of fighting so I just allowed her to kill me.

I'll just recover, psych myself up for it, and I'll try again next time. Now that I'm level 38, going on 39, I hope it gets easier.

I mean... there's still Sigrisimarr and Herald to go!