Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks The Definitive Guide to the Blue Dude

Okay. So, for context as to why I am writing a guide on this fight and this fight specifically, I've beaten this game 6 times and counting, yet this is the only fight I've gotten stuck on in any of them (barring the 2v2 playthrough I'm doing). My main playthrough, a duo with the Red Prince and Lhose, could not get past this for the longest time. It took me ten hours of practice (I have spent 25 hours practicing this specific fight total) to get through it on that particular playthrough. To sum up my reasons, I think that this singular fight is the hardest fight in the game. Let's start out with the reasons this fight is so dang hard.

Reason #1: The boss. Let's take a look at his stats:

[img]http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...E534B1A3A0CA73F1D9393489AE3D70A7F862CFD/[/img]

288-294 damage. I don't know your personal stats, but by this point in the game, my red prince had less than 200 hp and less than 100 armor, so that's a one shot if he gets hit. Yikes! But wait! Those are just base stats. In practice, thy should be different.

[img]http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...63D587EEA86635900E63714C41BB90D9FB50BE8/[/img]

That's more like it. He uses Oath of Desecration liberally, adding 40% more damage to his attacks. This means that he will definitely one shot squishies, and he's still not done; the Decomposing Swashbuckler that spawns to the north of the boss knows Rage, and knows how to use it. During the opening of the fight, he will usually rage himself, sometimes the boss, and for the remainder of the fight, he will usually rage the boss, sometimes himself. This means 100% critical rate, which adds 50% more damage to the boss' 387-395 damage. So this paints a pretty clear picture: in this fight, if you must eliminate the boss in an expedient fashion in order to win. He is what we call a HVT - a High Value Target, because eliminating him essentially eliminates the majority of the threat present in this fight. The swashbuckler still knows rage, and can still use it to kill you. The other one knows battering ram, and can use it to CC you. So they are not insignificant threats; but neither one can do over 600 damage in 2 AP. So let's take a further look at our HVT. What are his skills?

Aside from oath of desecration, he also uses Void Shard. Now, I've fought him with all rangers, all mages, all warriors, all (one) rogue, and various mixed compositions in varying numbers. This ability never really messed up any of them. It's some damage dealing pew pew that hurts a bit, especially when Oath is up on him. It misses quite often, though, and has never done much more than a hundred damage, so while it can be lethal, I personally have never died to it. It's not very threatening for this reason, and he usually uses it when he's at range. So it's a great idea to keep this boss at great range. However, this boss has one more ability: Phoenix Dive. This particular variant on phoenix dive does not involve fire; instead, it curses nearby enemies, and makes them "suffocate", which reduces magic armor every turn. The curse is the nasty part, though. Being cursed not only gives you a penalty to all resistances and to hit, but also curses any surface you come in contact with. It is blocked by magic armor, though, and strips none, so even the 4 MA Migo's Ring will protect you from this status. Suffocating may eat through it, but that takes time, and ideally, the boss will do this move only once, tops.
I've noticed that some time usually passes before he uses this ability, so keeping him at distance works for a while. But as soon as he does it, he's on you, and he likes to save AP, so this dive often comes with a strong 300-700 damage physical attack afterwards. Be extra careful at medium range; this boss can move, contrary to commonly held beliefs, and he will do it if it means killing you.

So now that we've looked at the boss' abilities (he has others, such as Shackles of Pain, but these are the three that are of any concern), let's look at the other reason this fight is so darn hard.

Reason #2: The Arena.

[img]http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...8BC0438A608B908D632DA7D42E99007FF96F1C8/[/img]

This is the entrance to the arena. Next to an oil barrel (there is a pyromancer in this fight), and surrounded by vantage points. You can get up on one of the vantage points to the south or north, but I wouldn't reccomend it; this place is a deathtrap with or without height advantage. I have beaten it once from this direction, and once only. The main concern I have with it is that the boss is far away. This means that our aforementioned strategy of focusing the HVT will not work very well, unless you play a full memory generalist build, and have 3-5 teleports. So the solution is to come from the other direction:

[img]http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...46AB59A57F4A93FF57E4D2B44BF4660F40DFF2D/[/img]

The reason this is rarely done is simple: it's hard to find out how to get here. The ladder up to the north area is here:

[img]http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...75D72F4F6AACB1271654D178EA2BA6138575818/[/img]

And it looks like this:

[img]http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...0CE7D853CF18AFFA1C3EFD51771C473662EB06F/[/img]

So, now that you're in, the fight is simple: engage by phoenix diving/tactically retreating/cloak and daggering to the high ground where the boss is, from the correct direction, and start to burn his armor/magic armor. Then, eliminate him from the fight immediately, in the first turn or so. This does not necessarily mean killing him, though a raged warrior with the Sundering Cleaver can easily do so. You can eliminate him by CC'ing him until he cannot act, like so:

[img]http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...1384B13A736BDFF6E77D77C7F8D49B4D6125A98/[/img]

Here, I used Hail Storm, Electric Discharge and Winter Blast (3 skills, 3 memory) to CC a group, which I stacked up using teleports from both my Red Prince and Lohse. This allowed me to deal with everyone at once, though CC'ing the boss is the important part; as long as someone takes care of that, then you are left with 3 players to fight an Aerotheurge, Pyromancer, Marksman, and two warriors. The warriors have no magical armor, and the mages no physical armor, so this should be simple. If you're still having trouble, try withdrawing to the ledge where the boss stands, and fighting there. This will break line of sight (LOS) with the combatants in the pit area, forcing them to waste turns and AP running up, all while you are able to potion, heal, save AP, and deal damage to the boss to free up your CC bitch mage.

I hope this helps! Using this strategy, I managed the fight with as few as 1 characters (a single rogue, abusing stealth). It is worth noting, that although the encounter does not normally start unless the boss sees you, it does initiate if you get too close to the boss without being seen. Useful knowledge for you rogue soloists out there. If you can get bless through the other method, before this fight, then simply blessing a character renders them virtually immune to the pyromancer and aerotheurge, as the surfaces they create will be made into blessed ones by the effects of bless, rendering them helpful instead of harmful. To use bless, though, you'll need your collar off, which can be achieved by helping the Seekers at the Seeker Encampment in the southern portion of the swamp east of Fort Joy. I don't know where the other area to get bless is, or I'd mention it here in this guide, as it trivializes the rest of the fight not involving the boss.

I hope this helps someone like me! Please leave feedback, even if you don't think it'll be helpful. It always helps me to know what people think!

Well he has about 460 effective health and IIRC is susceptible to teleport. Pump some initiative then you can easily kill him in one turn with the good ol flesh-sacrifice + adrenaline rogue. I think I wrecked the deepdweller on the first turn with two rogues before he even moved. His damage doesn't mean much if he never gets to hit anyone. Chasing down the various skeletons scattered about is the actually annoying part.

Also, the fight is much easier if you initiate combat from the high ground. Don't walk into an ambush if you know it's there!

The problem is getting to him. Rogues are horribly broken right now, as enemies don't search for stealthed enemies like they do in the enhanced edition, and not everyone has an elven rogue - or even a rogue. Especially not two, and especially especially not two with high initiative. This guide is meant to help players of all sorts of builds, be they rangers, warriors, rogues, mages or inbetween, with prioritization and execution. One shotting things is its own exercise; fighting the fight effectively with what you have is where the challenge truly lies.

The point is to focus him down ASAP because he's a glass cannon with lots of damage but very little health. Having rogues makes your life easier but nothing is stopping you from just wail on him with everyone in the party. Think about it. 460 effective health means if everyone in your party can output just 120 damage per turn then he is dead meat in one turn. This is also the reason to open the fight on high ground instead of walking in from the front door -> you want to open aggressively teleporting the guy right over. You don't want to fight through a bunch of minions and crap just to find out your line of sight is blocked. As for your critiques, well first of all you don't need stealth. You only need teleport. You also don't need the whole party to have high initiative. Technically you only need the mage to have high initiative. Say you are using Lhose. You open with Encourage, Teleport, Ice Hail (optional). Then everyone hits him/CC. With rogues he dies this turn. Without rogues he dies the next turn. Either way he never gets to move before he dies.

Any way you slice it, you're not going to be able to teleport from the first entrance to the boss fight, which is where 3/4 pubs I've played have come from. Also, most people don't think to focus the boss, since he seems harmless at first, another reason I wrote this. I don't see what your point is; from what I'm reading, you literally just restated what I had wrote, but in a way that is ambiguous and unhelpful. What exactly are you trying to say that has not already been said?

You wanted feedback so I gave you a way to literally kill the boss on first turn and make the rest of the fight a cakewalk without cheesing with barrels. I am sorry for providing feedback I guess. *shrug*

But... I didn't want you to restate what I just wrote...

Fine. You win. Rogue elves are awesome, teleportation works... under certain cicrumstances... *grumble*

You can also be a boss and walk through the front door and still win it.

Run up, teleport him near your party, gank him and use warlord to gank the nearby melee skeleton (or CC him and ignore him) and then kill the wizard to the right while ignoring the archer.

The big blue dude should be one shotted by the time you fight him if you're appropriately geared for that game plan. Levels don't really matter that much.

My party at the time was double castard, double melee (rogue/knight). Zero gimmicks other than teleport.

Alternatively, you could just phoenix dive and wreck him anyways.

With Rage + Sacrifice of Flesh there really isn't any need for tactics.

Well, you are on a different level from the average player, my friend. This guide was not written for people who take warlord, who use rage, who know about racial skills. This was written for the average pub. The last pub I played in, the preferred tactic (by popular consensus) for dealing with this boss was to have everyone cast a spell at it, and then have our necromancer shackle of pain it while we dealt with anything else. I can't stress this enough - from what I have seen, people simply do not know how to deal with this boss. Not to mention, I am well aware of your notion of "properly geared", and I find it totally improbable. I'm sure it's possible, but have you seen the average player? Have you played a four player pub, where you have but one character with which to beat the game, against all odds? I mean, they're doable with archers, easy with rogues and warriors, but I play a mage. I have to sit back and watch as my party runs facefirst into this boss fight, gets phoenix dived, one-shot, and then it's finally in range for me to CC, while the skeles overtake and violate the survivors. It's almost nightmarish. If this guide helps even one player, I'm glad I've written it. I am beyond a shadow of a doubt positive that that player will not be you, as I am sorry, but I do firmly believe that there is nothing I could teach you about this game. But please, I entreat you. Think of the pubs. Think of them. They need to learn this. The last player I played with was running zombie + necromancer on a mage, and his second character was the red prince with zombie and... I don't know how to say this, but... no levels. He literally didn't level him. He just... Had those plus signs on his portrait, and there was nothing I could do. No amount of reminding would stat him out. No amount of spamming his inventory with warrior skill books would get him Rage or Phoenix Dive. This is the kind of player I've played with for the past 5 days, during my pub runs. This is the kind of player that needs this guide. So please. Think of the newbies.