Dreadhorn and keying

[Treten]

Hi guys,

I am having a crazy hard time keying and killing Dreadhorn. Irk and the other changlings seem to be impossible after a few hits the transform into me and I cant hit them anymore. And when I do get a key to Dreadhorn he stomps me into the ground.

My skills are
120 swords
120 parry
120 bushido
120 chiv
120 tact
120 anat

Im using 100% Life leach 2 handed wep for the extra parry with Consecrate Weapon, Divine furry, Honor and Enemy of One. My suit has max DCI, HCI, 20 SSI max LMC, total 180 stam 117 hp.

Any advice in killing them? Thanks

 

[Marisa Kirisame]

Lighting strike?
Or bring a friend to kill it for you.

 

[Tuan]

A few months ago, I got it into my mind that I was going to do a DH run, but like you, I had a ton of trouble keying. 1 on 1 I wasn't having any major trouble with Irk - the problem was that I found it really hard to get Irk alone.

In fact, I never managed to actually collect all the keys. I don't want to say I "gave up" - but I have delayed my keying. The tactic that I did settle on, which I am certain will eventually work, is to honor myself, so that I can get Irk 1 on 1 and not worry about other things ganging up on me. Should be able to collect all the keys before the honor wears off.

Failing that, carry a 1H weapon and some confusion blast and invis pots.

 

[A-tron]

A few months ago, I got it into my mind that I was going to do a DH run, but like you, I had a ton of trouble keying. 1 on 1 I wasn't having any major trouble with Irk - the problem was that I found it really hard to get Irk alone.

In fact, I never managed to actually collect all the keys. I don't want to say I "gave up" - but I have delayed my keying. The tactic that I did settle on, which I am certain will eventually work, is to honor myself, so that I can get Irk 1 on 1 and not worry about other things ganging up on me. Should be able to collect all the keys before the honor wears off.

Failing that, carry a 1H weapon and some confusion blast and invis pots.

I have been refining my technique for keying DH for quite a while now. If you have a bard/mage Peace, Disco, Provo if you feel like. Briar, Cotton, no brainer, Gnaw EV whatever easy, Spiders you can provo on each other or EV. Irk, drop EV's and Provo, Peace drop like flies. Area peace macro on yourself will save your life if overwhelmed. I usually try to shoot for five sets of keys and it usually takes about two hours. GL, get a crimmy!!!

 

[Pirate Roberts]

@Treten, try a weapon with Armor Ignore?

 

[Klapauc]

As others have said, for killing irk and co self honor and confusion blast pots are your best friends. If that still doesnt work out well, consider dropping anatomy on a soulstone and buy 40 necro, 40 spiritspeak. Go into wraith form , if they copy you they used to become vulnerable to undead slayer. Could use curse weapon as well if you can use protection or put 2 fc on your gear.

If you have not killed dreadhorn before on a dexxer and start with your current template you will probably get stomped. Best advice is to practice at paragon balrons at ilshenar chaos shrine, if you can kill them reliable without dying you are probably ready for dreadhorn.
Also make sure your 117 hp are not a typo. Thats way to low.
Template you did choose isnt easy to play if you dont have experience playing samurai builds before.Especially if you dont run resist and everything you need to do to stay alive does need mana.

 

[CorwinXX]

Get 100% elemental damage weapon. Double Axe is OK. If it is 100% fire damage one with Arachnid slayer then you needn't to switch weapon to fight spiders.
Walk carefully. Try don't to fight two of mini-bosses at the same time.
Although if you don't panic then you will be able to fight two bosses. Kill weaker one first. Try to honor it and don't use EOO.

p.s. I made a video where I fight 1vs2 in various combinations. I hadn't parry. I had healing but didn't use it.
I also fought 1 vs 3 one time but I used 1 bandage... to don't die.

So I have two video and can upload them if someone is interesting. First - how you should do (accurately). Second - where I specially looked for 1vs2 fights.

 

[Treten]

Thx for the advice guys. soloed him 4 times today. Honering and fighting one at a time did the trick.

 

[Tuan]

This is so stupid I had a laugh at my own expense, and I figure you all might like to too.

I finally managed to collect the keys for DH, but I didn't read what to do fully. I drop them on the statue, and then I thought I would teleport immediately. Then I thought that I would dble click the statue again. It told me the the DH was already summoned, so I assumed that someone else was fighting at the moment.

What I didn't do, was notice that I had some decaying essence of wind, until I got the message that they had decayed.

So then I thought, well, while I am here I will kill some more Irks, and while I was doing that, a Guile decayed, and spawned right next to me and got me.

 

[Tuan]

What is the drop rate on these keys? Today I was trying to collect some sets of keys to try this again, and it took me a few minutes to collect keys from gnaw, mostly just waiting time. I got the spiders no problem... though I got 4 silk before my first eye, then 4 eyes before my next silk - which must be a statistical anomaly.

F'n Irk though... I think I've killed him 23 times without a brain.

That can't be normal, can it?

 

[BeaIank]

Irk is a pain to drop keys.
Usually it takes 20 to 30 kills to get a brain, then you get two or three more in a row then another 30 kills for the next ones.
It takes me around 2 to 2 hours and a half to gather enough keys for 7 dreadhorn runs due to that.

Edit: Also, the spider keys you mention in your post is pretty much the norm.
You get a ton of one and almost none of the other, always.

 

[Tuan]

Ok, thanks for the info @BeaIank

I wish that either A) honor self lasted longer, or at the very least the B) there was a timer for it in my buff bar. Last night I was using my wall clock timer, and honor ran out when I was in a bad spot...

 

[Klapauc]

The need to frequently farm honor up again is what makes dreadhorn and a few other peerless so time consuming. Got lucky with 2 crimmys out of 15 runs lately, the loot on the boss is not really worth the hassle otherwise. Otherwise i would probably build a char for key farming, something like a stealther in wraith form and healing+ anatomy.

 

[BeaIank]

Ok, thanks for the info @BeaIank

I wish that either A) honor self lasted longer, or at the very least the B) there was a timer for it in my buff bar. Last night I was using my wall clock timer, and honor ran out when I was in a bad spot...

You don't always need to have honour up there to key them.
I seldom use honour self to gather the keys.

This is the char I use:
http://search.uo.com/#/char_info/PvrTqKDdryE

Make sure you have healing, plenty of bandages, a 100% energy, fire or cold bladed staff with max hll, hml, hit stam leech imbued. HLA also helps.
Leave the 100% HML physical bladed staff back home because sometimes Irk, Guile or Spite spawn with 100% physical resistance. And if you got Irk and Spite or Guile and Spite on top of you with that weapon, you will be at a bad spot because Spite keeps draining your mana.
You should be able to easily survive having two of them on top of you as long as you have EoO and Honour on the one you're currently attacking, AIing it as often as possible and keeping that healing running. Focus fully on it until it is dead then honour and EoO the next one.
If the three of them get on top of you, run and make sure you have an invis pot to break aggro. It is possible to survive the three on top of you but it is not easy.

 

[Tuan]

I noticed the brutal mana draining of Spite last night... and he had 100 or damn near it physical resist. Took me a while to kill him, lots of running around, since I had no way to heal other than VE... theoretically close wounds, but not with 0 mana.

So, it looks like I need to swap in healing and make an elemental weapon.

 

[BeaIank]

If you are using VE, just a 100% elemental weapon might be enough. Might.
With EoO and honour, you will be hitting them for 60 to 80 damage without AI, so you will likely leech enough life back with VE.
I don't even have a sampire, so I use healing instead. I never liked much the idea of a vampire fighter, so I never bothered with it in all my dexxers.

 

[Tuan]

I don't have a sampire either, I'm a vampiric paladin.

 

[BeaIank]

Since they don't have a slayer, I strongly recommend having bushido there.

 

[Tuan]

Yeah, might be helpful.

I made and energy sword, hml hsl hll hla that works pretty well. My AIs do 90-120 which I find acceptable, with the VE and 75% hll I leech quite a lot of HP. I've had a few missteps leading to a few deaths, but some were my own fault (not having a weapon loaded on my last weapon macro... and I needed that weapon), one was lag related.

The problem I'm running into at this particular moment is time constraints. I only want 1 brain, but at 58 consecutive irks without getting one, I'm running out of time to play today, and since I will leave tomorrow for 2 weeks, it means I'll have 100% wasted the 90 minutes spent last night to gather 5 sets of the rest of the keys.

 

[BeaIank]

The drop rate of these keys is ridiculous. I hope you get enough brains soon to do your runs.

 

[Tuan]

Went back in and the very next Irk had a brain.

I then proceeded to last 4 minutes against DH, in which time I reduced him into the 70s.

Seems this guy was made specifically to ensure the continued existence of sampire types. Without bushido, my damage tops out at 100 (less when he -1billion stats me), and VE healing just can't keep up.

I may be a nearly day 1 vet, but I sure wish I'd done a lot of this stuff in groups back in the day. Never having seen this guy before, and simply deciding "I'm going to solo that" has been frustrating. I assumed I'd die to DH... I didn't plan in it taking so long to key him.

 

[Ender]

Yeah, without Fey Slayer you're not gonna hit the damage cap without bushido. And since it's not imbuable and all the Fey Slayer weapons are pretty garbage...

 

[BeaIank]

He is soloable, but I prefer to do it in a group, or at least dual account him. Every weekend for the last 6 or so weeks I have killed him at least 7 times per weekend.
I always run a bard with provo songs to diminish the effect of his -20 stats ability, help with healing with that 20 HP every 4 seconds and add damage with the 15% modifier.
Disco doesn't seem to affect his resists too much, but it helps a bit.

My dexxer on this fight has 115 healing and 80 anatomy to take care of the poison, and I use a physical maul with 50% hit fatigue, hit life leech, hit mana leech and hit stamina leech, 120 chiv and 110 bushido.

 

[Tuan]

I think the key is bushido. I was hitting him nearly every swing, and doing 150 damage vs 100 is a big difference for leeches.

 

[Klapauc]

I dont know your temp, but i would guess if you got no bushido, then use a doublestrike weapon with 100hml/max imbued life leech. That should be enough to keep you alive together with ve.
But the first one of any boss is in most cases the hardest and may give you a deathrobe, dreadhorn isnt really that hard, there are enough mobs in open world that are much much worse on melee char.
I believe with the gear that is normal these days, any solid warrior build can solo a dreadhorn, it isnt really a sampire thing.

 

[Tuan]

I normally don't imbue life leech at all on my weapons, and I mostly AI. For DH, I believe AI is more damage than DS when he's not discord. It's close anyway that it depends on luck of the spawned resist, at least according to both UOG and Hunters Guide.

I think that I should make a new weapon specific for him: 100 HML, 81 HLL, 50 HSL, HLA, and DI.

My suit is pretty old, not refined etc., so perhaps that is part of my problem. I've been meaning to make a new one, and this has actually spurred me on to taking action.

 

[Klapauc]

Trick with leeches is, doublestrike really works better then ai, even when doing lower damage. The simple reason is, you get 2x more chances at rng in the same time. With ai, its perfectly possible to do 3 hits in a row and to leech absolutly zero of anything. Even worse with misses in between. Doesnt happen with doublestrike, as you get 6 hits in in the same time, and the chance that hld is up all the time is much higher. Did quite a few things with only all 70, no swampy , dual short axes with only life leech on them on a gargoyle warrior and to my surprise it simply works without ve or healing.

 

[Tuan]

You make a valid point that DS makes regression to the mean work in your favor.

Hmm. Unfortunately I don't think I have a 120 mace, but since I run 1h + shield, I'd much rather go with a maul (I will have 35SSI on suit) than a scimitar...

 

[CorwinXX]

I do up to 330 damage per DS with a double axe (no Discordance on this char) .

 

[CorwinXX]

Nothing special - standard wraith char.
Double Axe does more damage than Bladed Staff. At 53 res damage would be equal... and Dreadhorn has 40-55 physical res.
And since Dreadhorn is easy I can replace parrying with LJ for this battle (well really I used LJ most of time because there are very few tough monsters).

p.s. And if it has high phys res I can use corpse skin and fire damage.

 

[Tuan]

I will try again in 2 weeks when I am home, and after I made some new armor. Moving from 5 SSI on suit and all 70s to 30(35 with town bonus)SSI and 75s should help.

 

[TimberWolf]

There is a one handed fey scimitar that might help you out.....I use it on lord oaks and his over protective floooossy.... I think it is called the defiler ....

*edit* yes katana...I stand corrected

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

The Defiler is a Katana.

 

[Ender]

It just doesn't have good mods on it