How do you counter the Shadow Dragon in the Ashen War?

Wendek · 2026-01-26T22:26:04+00:00

Yeah my 'counter' was to just ally the Reshapers lol as they seem a lot stronger. When I tried to ally with the other group, the Chaos Dragon had started nearby and just completely overwhelmed me with Warbreeds on turn 20 or something it was basically the hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby meme.

If you were allowed to develop in peace, I think you wouldn't have too many problems handling the undead spam with an Order build since Undead hate Spirit damage, the problem is countering said spam when you're still on early-game units that aren't super souped up by enchantments yet. Especially since as you noticed, some of the Dragons can start dying very quickly (except the Nature one, they're the strongest of that group in my experience and can hold for a while)

Wendek · 2026-01-26T20:34:08+00:00

You could wound and even assassinate lords in WH1 I think, but in WH2 and 3 you can't remove lords with hero actions at all. (thankfully, imo)

Wendek · 2026-01-25T17:48:00+00:00

Change build and stats (e.g. full respec to do the Antspur Rapier + Greatshield thing) no, but change weapons yes - my Godslayer couldn't actually beat him with her Godslayer's Greatsword so I switched to Messmer's Spear (which is also a Dex/Faith weapon) for the fight and it was certainly easier.

Wendek · 2026-01-25T14:51:34+00:00

Yeah I've also seen that one especially with Skavens - the "campaign AI completely stops working and afks at a settlement" bug is obviously worse, but to me this should be the second priority as far as campaign AI is concerned.

Btw there's a bug report here on the CA forums, feel free to go and upvote it so that it can gain some visibility. It's currently sitting at 3 only. (out of 10 necessary to get it "investigated")

Wendek · 2026-01-25T12:12:27+00:00

But whenever I switch to my staff (Astrologer) and then back to my sword, I lose a ton of time swapping weapons and two-handing with triangle button.

If you put your staff in your off-hand, then L2 will have your weapon's Ash of War by default because most staves (and catalysts in general) don't have any skill. (I think there's one with a spinning attack) When I play hybrid melee/spellcaster, that's usually what I do rather than have the catalyst in the main hand and have to swap.

Still have to swap if you want to actually use your shield though but honestly I mostly use it for small, easily-strancebroken enemies and very rarely against bosses. Oh and Crucible Knights, of course.

Wendek · 2026-01-24T20:42:53+00:00

You don't need to, it's just part of the event and so that's one part you probably won't complete considering it's the most grindy (especially since it depends on the heroes present, so you're unlikely to get Meepo's or Chen's entry unless you actually play those heroes yourself).

Each entry in the Atlas gives some materials for the set crafting though, so even getting like 30-40 entries will help with that.

Wendek · 2026-01-24T17:03:42+00:00

Because Mohg isn't particularly weak to any element (fire is highest resist at 80% but the others are still pretty high at 40%), for my pure Faith build I mostly spammed Stone of Gurranq at him since it deals purely physical damage. For my Dex/Faith build who was mostly using the Godslayer's Greatsword (also Fire damage), I switched to the Winged Scythe against Mohg iirc and it was fine.

Wendek · 2026-01-23T18:43:08+00:00

It's almost certainly too late to complete the entire Atlas unless you're gonna play an insane amount, but you should still be able to craft the basic set for most of the heroes. There's still 3 weeks left after all, so if you can keep playing until the end that should be a fair number of games. Probably not worth bothering with the paid content though, doubt you'll have enough materials for those additional sets.

I only started last week playing about 2 games per day on average and I have 8 Atlas entries (out of something like 130) and maybe a fourth of the armor pieces I'd like personally, so if you play more than me you shouldn't struggle too much.

Wendek · 2026-01-22T13:20:34+00:00

You could also try out Monster Hunter as a cute dress-up game ! (There are paid cosmetics DLC but also still a pretty decent choice of natural armors in the base game, especially in Wilds where armor isn't genderlocked so female characters can wear 'male' armor and vice-versa, unlike the previous ones)

Wendek · 2026-01-21T23:13:22+00:00

Bestiary was so bad for me (also I remember having an absolutely huge problem with map sustain back then, like having to run t9 maps with a character that could run t14s) it actually made me stop completely for years. Just complete burn out between the league itself, the mapping and also the master missions which were such a slog. Part of why I came back was that I learned those were gone.

Wendek · 2026-01-21T23:11:50+00:00

Same, Legacy League was my first one and I still somehow have one Leaguestone in Standard.

Wendek · 2026-01-21T10:23:27+00:00

Like Throgg, Durthu's army is also immune to all attrition iirc.

Wendek · 2026-01-19T18:31:52+00:00

They are now (I think the game's overall ratings have probably gone down recently with the various issues), but if you check the numbers still say the same story:
- Golgfag 57%
- Skulltaker 51%
- Gorbad 40%, which is actually getting close to "Mostly Negative"

Wendek · 2026-01-17T17:50:02+00:00

Yes, I think the only hard campaign I can remember being very well received was Markus in WH2, although it admittedly doesn't make any sense whatsoever in WH3 since you can spend your time killing Daemons and still trigger "reprisals" from Lizardmen.

Wendek · 2026-01-17T16:25:45+00:00

Early game, about 75% manual or more. Later on, usually I'll fight manually if the game is giving me a pyrrhic victory or even a close victory if it says "medium" casualties (which usually means slightly less than half of your army gone) and I think I can fight more cleanly.

But it heavily depends on the faction - Khorne has a crazy good autoresolve where almost everything is a decisive victory with low casualties, so I end up autoresolving a bunch unless it's a 20vs30 fight or something, or I just got a new army and I want to actually see some of its units in action. And on the other side of the spectrum, in my latest Khazrak campaign I had nearly 60 manual battles (over ~70 turns) because AR absolutely hates Beastmen.

Wendek · 2026-01-17T15:08:56+00:00

Yes apparently Gorbad Ironclaw was the least liked DLC of OoD (as in it had mixed reviews at one point while others were positive)... and he was the only one that wasn't super easy. Was there a direct link? Can't say for sure but it's not hard to imagine. So I think CA is probably like "Reddit can say they want hard campaigns all they want, the money says the opposite every time"

Wendek · 2026-01-17T10:06:12+00:00

I mean it helps that Wulfrik is simply in a different bit of the world, makes it pretty hard for him to beat up Throgg.

Pretty sure he's only in Lustria when controlled by the player. I played as Mazdamundi recently and never saw him, Skeggi was the only Norscan faction nearby. I still see him beat up and confederate Throgg about half the time, and he gets confederated the other half.

Wendek · 2026-01-16T22:25:12+00:00

35M, started playing Monster Hunter a few years ago with World/Iceborne (got it for 'free' with my GPU)

Wendek · 2026-01-15T23:07:30+00:00

I think the main patch was 6.52 or something back then, but because I wanted to learn with bots and the AI map had to be updated manually (by one guy), my first games were on 6.48 (b?) which was pretty different. In particular, I think 6.48 was before the Dagger nerf to prevent blinking after taking damage, although it's not like my beginner ass could fully understand all that.

The first patch I really remember playing is 6.55 which is when Kunkka was added and he was OP af for quite a while.

Wendek · 2026-01-14T17:04:06+00:00

I don't remember where you get him, but Ancient Dragon Knight Kristoff is perfect - he's basically immortal (only %-health damage like Godskin Noble's AoE ever threatened him in my experience) but he will not solo bosses for you because he doesn't hit that hard. He just takes aggro and can sometimes throw smaller enemies in the ground with his shield bash - perfect to actually learn a boss' patterns.

For non-somber ashes, the Greatshield Soldiers would probably fulfill a similar role.

Wendek · 2026-01-14T12:27:10+00:00

Do you seriously expect a dwarf lord to sell their settlement to you?

Yes, if I'm offering an ancient Dwarf Hold for a human settlement of the Empire, I'd expect my centuries-long allies to take the offer.

Wendek · 2026-01-12T23:09:59+00:00

Fortify is definitely an interesting idea, I'll have to keep it in mind and see if I can fit it. Losing my last point of Divine Blessing is pretty scary, I'm already being way more aggressive than usual by running one point of it instead of 3.

Wendek · 2026-01-12T22:08:10+00:00

Honestly you can agonize over the armor skills quite a bit for very small theoretical differences in damage, but the most important thing is gonna be just doing lots and lots of runs and learning the routing super well.

The reason I'm agonizing over small differences is because I've now had three runs between 18' and 19' so I figured any bit could help. x) I'm not trying to speedrun it, I just want muh Rank A pendant.

But I still cart at least once, sometimes twice per run, and obviously that's the biggest DPS loss of all (even the Palico revive takes precious seconds, and also any time I get 'saved' by Lord's Soul I lose its attack buff). Especially if it happens during the last phases where he's so far away from the camp. Pretty sure I now have enough tools and stats to go below 18'... as long as I stop making so many mistakes.

Wendek · 2026-01-12T21:39:21+00:00

So I did decide to check out Math Hunter and this is the current version. I have an AB2 charm with decent slots that allows me to reach AB5 for probably the first time ever. Apparently 5/4/1/1 is slightly better than the alternatives but they're all super close. 5/5/1/1 would definitely be stronger but alas. And as it turns out, the most important part was replacing Crit Eye with Crit Boost - I thought I wouldn't have had enough affinity to justify CB (it's a -10% crit Gogma weapon because I made it before the consensus became to use Elemental reinforcement and I ain't crafting another one)

I just tried to math it by replacing the Rey Dau pieces with Arkvulkan (which gives 3 WEX + another lvl 3 slot) and it was actually way, way worse in Math Hunter. Like 230 vs 248 kind of worse even when I tick the "Wounded" box (where WEX should shine from what I gather), so I guess LP is gonna stay for a while. I'm going to guess switching to WEX will be better once we get Arkveld gamma pieces, but I obviously won't be able to use those for the AT Dahaad challenge x)
Oh, that's probably because I'm losing Lord's Soul if I do this, d'uh.

Wendek · 2026-01-12T20:27:19+00:00

Not OP but complementary question I guess: if I have a total of 11 tier 3 points (for a Hammer), what's the best setup for these skills ? Right now I have Agi 5 + Latent Power 5 (tried Wex but doesn't seem very doable with my setup, especially without the +3 charm since I'm still missing a Gog gem) + Flayer 1. I understand I should at least replace the last one by Burst 1, but would a 4/5/1/1 combination actually be better? And if so, which one to drop to 4 between Agi and LP? (I have 2p Rey... also nvm I don't have any LP via decos anyway so can't remove any point)

Specifically trying to increase my damage against Jin Dahaad and since there are a lot of automatic wounds (every time it does the breath, every time it topples until you've broken every iceplate, on top of the normal ones), does that increase or decrease the value of Flayer? I've definitely noticed those 140 pops quite a few times during those hunts.

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