Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks How to defeat Radeka?

I have a level 7 party with source ability unlocked on my human ranger but the radeka the witch fight party wipes me every time I attempt it, no matter what tactics I use. The flying beetles just shower me with ‘coagulated spit’ half my party gets diseased and decomposing so they do less damage but I can’t first aid them because the damage from decomposing kills them... all the mobs are level 6 but they still wipe the floor with me. Any help / ideas? (Besides ‘get good’)

dome of protection makes a big difference if you have it

Radeka is one of the fights where you feel the difference between a mage team and a physical team : Radeka is immune to fire (the best element early on), and is highly resistant to other magic schools.

With a full physical team (ranger / 2h / rogue / summoner necro), the fight is simple : you assassinate Radeka on first or second turn. Then the real fight begins --> kill the god fucking beetles of doom.

To be fair, your topic is kinda meh : you ask for help but you don't inform us about your team comp ?

No information about your team comp or your difficulty setting.

Here's some basic tips to help you in life:

1. When someone is in dialogue, you can buff them and they won't expire.
2. Barrels and other debris can be moved; easy to cheese with.
3. Craft skillbooks by combining elements; powerful abilities that can be unlocked before even leaving the fort.

Sounds like poor party composition to me. At level 7, you should have almost no problems at all. If you haven't yet, go save Gareth at the castle and then talk to 'Leya' at Amadia's sanctuary; she removes your collars.

Sorry about that, I’ve got an aerotheurge ranger (avatar), a cleric tank (red prince), a summoner (Lohse), and a rogue (Sebille). Only my avatar has their collar removed. The thing that really gets me is the combo of decaying and diseased that reduces damage dealt and prevents healing, not sure what to do about that. Nobody is really doing fire damage so that’s not a problem. Most of my ranged damage comes from my ranger though he can only fire two shots a turn with no movement or support casting. Otherwise my ranged damage comes from dimensional bolt and staff of magus on Lohse, and throwing knife on Sebille. I do however have power infusion and far sight infusion on Lohse too though I prefer to use the incarnate for flanking in melee. My big damage is definitely my ranger and the red prince war cleric, both doing around 41-56 damage, though the red prince, even with 200 hp and 100+ physical armour gets wrecked by the beetles. Besides that, what are good placement tactics for this because I’ve tried camping the tunnel entrance and using the incarnate to start the fight, and I’ve tried sticking together as a group in the valley in the middle.

I’m playing on classic difficulty currently, my party composition is posted above, any advice about changes to make would certainly be appreciated.

Yeah, a cleric tank seems kind of iffy. You need damage, tanking doesn't really do anything in this game. Try to get a fire incarnate to kill the weaker dudes with fireball. Also tip: You can right click examine enemies to check their resistances. Sebille should have more damage in the form of backlash, rupture tendons, piercing stab, multiattack. She should be able to nearly kill a beetle on her first turn.

It seems you don't have any good elemental aoe, or physical cc+aoe, which are pretty necessary. A physical dude can have whirlwind, battle stomp, bouncing shield for lots of damage. Air is a bit weak early on and geo+pyro is really where the damage is(best early skills being impalement+fireball).

When you talk to her, have the rest of your team back off to the high ground where you come in from. Spread out a bit.

Buff(and try to get a fire incarnate before the fight starts), retreat the character talking(you can teleport a character in dialogue without starting a fight), start the fight, and let the enemies come to you. Focus the beetles.

The rest of the enemies just group up on the ramp and you can aoe them to death pretty quick(although it seems you don't have geo or pyro, so maybe melee aoe?). wait for your teleport to go off cooldown after retreating your character, and teleport one of the beetles down on the ramp to start the fight, or start with an attack on one of them.

Proper positioning helps a lot, too. The way I did it was similar to what omegazen described:

1. On the way in, I grabbed the oil barrels.
2. Just before you get to the area she's in, there's a narrow choke point: I put the barrels there.
3. I sent my tankiest character in to talk to her and kept the other 3 back.
4. When the fight triggered, I just ran my tank back as far as possible on his turns, leading all the other characters to follow. He took some hits, but was able to shrug it off.
5. Once he'd passed the oil barrels, I had my archer shoot the barrels to slow everybody else. The bugs won't be slowed, but they still get bunched up with everyone else.
6. Once most of them had bunched up, I set the oil on fire, thus making them run through it to get to my party. I believe only Radeka is immune to fire, and she'd leapt to a high vantage point and then couldn't follow when my tank ran out of the area.
7. Everybody else got funneled through the choke point, where it was easy to pick them off one by one, even though my team was doing physical damage and the fire was dealing them magic damage.

My characters stayed back out of the fire and forced everyone to come to them. Only the bugs have ranged attacks, which archers are perfectly equipped to deal with. Once everyone else was dead, it was easy to move the party forward and take Radeka out.

A little tip, you can blow up barrels directly with fire and have them deal bonus explosion damage instead of just popping them to slow. Tons of damage, probably kills most things straight up.

Thanks for all the advice! I only say the red prince is tanking because he has enough health and armour to survive in melee (unlike Sebille a lot of the time) though he is also a big hitter in terms of damage too.

To someone who doesn’t know, where would I find skillbook recipes? Of the Sebille skills listed above, I only have backlash and I don’t have bouncing shield or whirlwind on red prince (though my power infusion incarnate does have whirlwind)

I also don’t actually have a shield on the red prince because I can’t find any good enough one handed weapons to make it worth it so an npc that trades one would be very useful to know.

Another point is whether it’s worth even talking to start the fight, as I can summon an incarnate, run it up, wait till the cool down ends and right click attack radeka for 25 dmg to start the fight too.

Thanks for the tip but in this case, getting everyone bunched up was the point of slowing them down. Once they were all nicely clumped together, then I lit 'em up!



Check the wiki for where to buy skill books. Also, you should go back and explore more around Fort Joy. I found a nice 1-handed sword near where you first wash up on the beach, but it requires the Gloves of Teleportation or someone who has the skill. Be very thorough! Someone in your party should level up Lucky Charm--you'll get quite a few nice drops, even at low levels.

Like I said, craft cleanse wounds. Warfare + Hydro book = Cleanse Wounds.

Cures decaying touch and heals for a ton. Helps your frontline. Remember to kite the zombies. Fossil Strike is great for it, slows them all down.

fortify also clears decay/disease and is very useful to have all the way through the game

the easiest part of the fight (especially if you have a rogue) is killing the witch with physical damage. if you have knockdown spells you can take her out before she can use any abilities. she'll always run up on a specific ledge so position a physical damage dealer up there beforehand

there is unfortunately no easy way to deal with the additional enemies she summons; you have an avatar as your main which i assume is a custom character, so that means you have access to dome of protection. don't be afraid to clump a few of your characters together under the dome, it helps a lot against the coagulated spit barrage each turn

play with knockdown and cc, the zombies have very little armor

Yeah if you don't have a shield that's ok , it's not absolutely necessary. You can get other stuff like crippling blow and battle stomp and stick to a 2H if you want. And definitely have fortify, magic armor, and a couple peace of minds. Your Ranger probably has the huntsman heal already, which is a great one. I'm sure you already know, but it's pretty helpful to before starting a fight to have Encourage+Rest(set your bedroll to 1 to do it fast), and maybe a couple other buffs already on your people.

Multiattack comes automatically from dual wielding dagger, no skillbook necessary.

For Skillbooks:

Hilde(next to Griff) has Scoundrel books for Sebille (another skill she should have too is Adrenaline)

Kalis the Lizard soldier in the elf cave has warfare skillbooks.

http://divinityoriginalsin2.wiki.fextralife.com/Fort+Joy+Ghetto <--- This has all the vendors listed in fort joy


And yeah I suppose you don't even need to talk to her. I would start with your highest damage off the bat on a beetle honestly. Since you probably want a fire incarnate you can't attack her because she's immune, and actually it's probably best to wait to summon the incarnate until after the fight starts, since it gets a turn immediately.

i also find blood incarnates are good in this fight. mosquito swarm is great for taking out the witch early

A full physical damage team against Radeka on classic difficulty ? Oh.

Git gud ?

But seriously, here is a tip : you can animation cancel the auto attacks of your ranger, by pressing the "sneak" button real fast. Exemple : my button for "sneak" is "C", my auto attack is "1", so I need to press 1, click on the target then fast C, then fast 1 on the target again.
If you time it well, you can fire 2-3 arrows before the fight begins, the enemy will probably lose all his armor. Then you can just go on Radeka and y'know... cc and kill her.

Prepare the fight scene by launching fossil strike where the zombies will get. You can nearly 1 shot combo the zombie+beetle+human zombie (where Radeka is at the start) with fireball+2 oil spells.

When Radeka is dead, and the zombies cced/slowed or nearly dead, focus on the beetles, they are the main danger : the rogue can solo 1 beetle easy / the ranger too / the warrior too.

Get cc spells on everyone : stromp + charge on rogue, warrior, knockdown arrows for the ranger.

So here is a list of priority :
1) Prepare the fight by putting oil where zombies will spawn.
2) Train your atto attack cancel so you can open the fight with 2-3 arrows in the head of Radeka.
3) CC and kill Radeka, in 2 turns max if possible.
4) If your mage is strong enough, you can combo kill the 3 mobs, where Radeka is before the fight.
5) Your dps should be focused on beetles : they launch coagulated stuff but that's NOT classic necromancy : it deals magic damages. So kill them fast.

The easiest thing to do is to force them to come to you. Engage from range with 1 character and run back into the tunnel and force them to come to you in waves rather than all at once. This makes it a lot easier. Position your team around the corner in the tunnel so they dont get hit right away and you can get a cheesy 1st attack for free if you want.

I also noted that you still have not saved Gereth which should have happened before this particular fight. You seem to have skipped this somehow. Saving Gareth and talking to NPCs will get the collars removed from everyone. The dragon area should be nearly the last thing you do before you leave the island.

Radeka is a fun fight, the hardest in Act 1, I always start it with my party unprepared and ambushed, like the first time (where I lost miserably). It's the only fight where I had a dead party member in Act 1 in the release (on Classic).

In my opinion leave Radeka alone first. She is astonishingly weak after she called all her minions in. The only dangerous contribution from her during the fight is usually shackling one party member which means his death of course (it was always my main she shackled). I first kill the pesky beetles, most dangerous for me because of usually low magical armor in the group, then the raised scholar, then Radeka and the rest of the zombies. You should have items on level 5 to 6 for armor. No source skills are needed in Act 1.

My main tip for this fight is to use teleport to move Radeka near your melee guys (which hopefully also have attacks of opportunity). Even if she tries to flee, she would not be in the high ground defended position, as she is usually in.