Dragon: Combat Basics and Optimization

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This guide was taken over from Tirwa's original at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zjG2s6us9PI7c7DputNNJ4ykLvcR52dThEDsjX1RBt0/edit

Hello! If you’re here, then you’re likely interested in wanting to get the most out of your character in Adventure. Let’s get started. First, a few disclaimers.

• I’m not very good with this whole document thing, so formatting may not be great.
• I am a Dragon Main currently, and while I do know a bit about bipeds, I am NOT an active player of one anywhere near endgame. The general advice here applies to both races, but specifics may vary WILDLY for Bipeds.
• I do not promise that I am 100% correct about everything, and I heavily advise you to always check that what I am saying is true before assuming it is. Being curious about stuff is key to a lot of things in Istaria anyways.
• I currently am NOT at full endgame, and my advice for such scenarios may NOT be accurate.
• Additionally, I HIGHLY recommend that you keep these websites made and maintained by other members of the community in your pocket; they are EXTREMELY helpful for all aspects of the game, not just Combat.

https://istariareference.com/ Has a bunch of info, though I personally only use the map mostly; Lexica often links to here for where to find things on the map. Amazing for everything.

https://istaraschosen.com/ Another website with a more well rounded set of guides, Information is fairly up to date from my knowledge; and also has the community Builds page, which lets you see other players builds that they’ve submitted to the site.

For the most part, this guide will assume that in Chapter 1, you are a brand new player, in Chapter 2 that you have familiarized yourself with the basics and are hitting your first roadblock alone, such as a boss fight, in Chapter 3 that you are a Dragon looking to min-max your character to survive the hardest fights in the game, regardless of what it takes, and Chapter 4 (placeholder for a while, sorry) for Biped Endgame

Please bear this in mind as you read. Let’s begin.

The Foundation - Tooltips

So you’ve started Istaria, finished the tutorial zone (Skalkaar/Spirit Isle) and maybe you’re a bit confused. I will go ahead and assume that your User Interface is set up to your liking, and you know how to put abilities on your bars.

Firstly, let’s go over how to read the various tooltips on adventuring abilities and gear, so we can understand WHAT we’re doing. We will use Bite from Dragons as our first example. All examples will be max level abilities, so please do not be surprised if your low level abilities do not show as high of a value; the thing we care about is just understanding how to read these.

First, “In Conquerer Stance”

When the Conquerer Stance effect is active, you will deal 10% more damage with this ability specifically.

Attack Type: Special

This is a generic term to indicate that you are using an ability basically. Keep this in mind as we go through the various descriptions.

+96 damage, Converts damage to Pierce

If your weapon would normally do Slash Damage, and you do not have any other effects that will change your attack type, this Ability will convert it to Pierce Damage for the ability usage. +96 damage means it will deal your weapon damage and add 96 to it.

Delay

This is how long it takes to USE the ability. This is another important one. The time is in seconds. (2.5 seconds for this) Recycle This is how long it takes for the ability to become available again. Important.

Base Range and Attribute

“Inherited from weapon” is just close range. Attribute tells you what the ability will scale (increase its damage) off of.

On Hit, Target Effect

This means that when the attack connects, the effect shown below will apply to the target. In this case it is a DoT (Damage over Time) effect for 15 seconds, dealing Pierce damage.

Next, we’ll go over this type of effect. We will refer to it as a Self Buff:

Range: Self Only (Melee)

Basically just a fancy way of telling you that this buff is ONLY for you.

Melee Martial Tooth and Claw Attacks and Bonus to Hit

“Melee Martial” is a fancy way of saying “Melee” for our current purposes. The difference is only relevant for Bipeds later; it has no significance to dragons. “Tooth and Claw Attacks” is your melee abilities as a dragon - Tooth and Claw (henceforth referred to as T&C) is the Weapon skill for Dragon Melee. We’ll get to what “Weapon skill” is later.

“Bonus to hit” is basically your accuracy. Literally makes you more likely to hit.

We’ve already covered what X% of normal damage is from Bite - it’s just that it’s an effect of this buff instead. These effects CAN stack together, so don’t worry about them overwriting each other (You’d do 120% of normal damage with Bite if you have this buff and Conquerer Stance active!)

Next up, this is a regular Buff. It can be applied to yourself OR other players by targeting them:

This one is a fair bit different; This is a “Spell” and it’s an important distinction. Spells and abilities are very different things; but we’ll go over that difference later.

Usable By DRAG

Tells you what school can actually cast it (Green text means your current school can. Red text means you can’t.

Range 30

The units in Istaria are a bit nebulous to pinpoint down, but how far you are from your target can always be seen when you target them. We’ll get to that later as well. This means you can apply the buff to a target from up to 30 away, any further and a notification in your chat will tell you how much closer you need to get.

“X% chance on hit” and “X% chance”

Both effectively mean “chance to apply when the effect is used on a target”. Shows you the chance to apply the effects, We know what Target Effect is already though.

Dispel

“Attempts to remove up to 1 hostile effect, Most effective at or below Tier 5” We’ll cover tiers later, I know it’s getting a bit dumb, but bear with me.

“Hostile Effects”

are basically Debuffs from other games; any negative effect applied to you by a monster is considered this, and when used, this spell has a chance to remove ONE of the effects applied to you - you cannot choose WHAT effect is taken off, it will prioritize newest to oldest effects, so if you have a lot of them applied to you, you would need to repeatedly cast this spell in an attempt to remove it all.

“Most effective at or below Tier 5”

PLACEHOLDER CAUSE IDK TBH - maybe it means it’s guaranteed to dispel all sub T5 effects, and has a lower chance to dispel T6?

Techniques

We will go over these later, again.

Requirements: Primal Skill 890, Current Adventure Level Minimum 89

This means that in order to LEARN the spell, your primal skill and adventure level must at LEAST be the aforementioned amounts.

Scribed

Tells you if you have learned this spell or not.

Effect: Promote Vitality

We already know that it’s simply increasing Strength and Dexterity, but there’s a requirement here; in order for a player to receive this buff, their adventure level must be 80 or higher. Otherwise, it will fail to apply even if casted on them by another player.

Next up, another spell:

Attack Type: Magical

This tells you that it’s a spell attack basically.

Damage Type: Primal

Because it’s a damaging spell, this is telling us what type of damage the spell will hit for. Also, again, important later. I know, but it’s called a foundation for a reason. We’re almost done here.

Range: Self Only (Melee) and Area: 5

In this case, because we have an AREA, this is telling us that when used, this spell will deal an Area of Effect (AOE) damage around ourselves in an area of 5 units. All enemies within this range will be hit by the spell, but any outside will not be hit. This effect is called a “PBAoE” or Point Blank Area of Effect.

Chance on Hit: Extra Damage, Damage Type: Pierce

When the spell hits, it has an X% chance to deal extra damage. This effect is known as a “Damage Kicker” in Istaria.

One more tooltip:

“2 extra attacks” “500% damage adjustment” “Automatically hits” “Prevents grazing and critical hits”

That’s a lot. To start with, “2 extra attacks” means that this ability will hit for a total of THREE times with all effects listed on the tooltip. “X% damage adjustment” means that it will deal 500% of your weapon damage (That’s a LOT of damage!). Automatically hits means it can NEVER MISS, and Prevents grazing and Critical Hits means what it says on the label.

“Hoard Cost”

This is a dragon specific effect, and applies to many of their powerful abilities. When you open up your Equipment or Character menu (in the General Tab) as a dragon, you will see your Hoard Size and a number. This number is how much Hoard you have, and everytime you use one of these abilities, it will consume that much value from your Hoard. Not really that notable, but we’ll go more in depth on Hoard later.

Now, about remembering Recycle and Delay; let me introduce you to Alacrity and Recycle Modifiers. “Alacrity” directly affects how long it takes for you to use ANY ability/spell that has a Delay, while Recycle Modifiers affect how long it takes to be able to use the ability again.

A higher Alacrity stat means you take LESS time to use abilities, while a negative one will INCREASE the time it takes. This ALSO applies to monsters, and this is why it’s important. The same goes for Recycle Modifier, but instead; a +x% means it will take LONGER to recycle (be usable again) and a -x% means it will take LESS time. The effect of Gold Rage is therefore to dramatically increase the time between an enemies attacks, AND make their abilities take longer to be used again, while also doing a MASSIVE amount of damage. Now THAT’S a good ability! While this section has not covered EVERY POSSIBLE tooltip line, It should give you a solid understanding of how effects apply based off how it reads. Next up..

The Foundation - Statistics and Weapon Skills

Don’t worry, this one won’t take an ungodly amount of time to read. Maybe.

To start, let’s first view our statistic and skills. Press C (default keybinding) and open up your Character Tab. Here is mine:

From top to bottom, the information presented here that is relevant to us is: Training Points (top left, blue number), Death Points (Skull and crossbones), our actual Statistics, our Adventure Schools current level, progress to next level, and our Adventure Rating, the same thing, but for Craft Schools, and then (Dragon Only) our hoard level, and it’s bonuses. For Training Points; while mine says 0, you will gain Training Points (TP) everytime you level, and the number on the page will adjust to show this; let’s open up the TP menu and check it out:

That’s a lot of statistics AND skills. To apply your TP, simply click and hold the right arrow on whichever statistic/skill you would like to apply them to, and hold until you’ve applied the amount you want to. Click the LEFT arrow to remove TP. If you have spent all your TP or are removing saved TPs, then you will need to use the “Buy Back Points” to remove them. This is a value that will regenerate to 1/4th your maximum TP overtime, and caps out at that point. You CAN buy a potion to speed up getting back Buy Back Points should you need to overhaul your TPs, but that is a late game thing; and new players will not be able to afford it.

You may be wondering, can you screw up your TP investment? No, not really. If you mouse over the Statistic/Skill names, it will tell you what they do, Go ahead and mouse over all of them, and read what they do. Remember to read your abilities to see what they scale off of! I will not provide any TP recommendations for this stage, please experiment and decide what feels good to you; there is no wrong setup for TPs as long as you’re happy.

Different Statistic/Skills require different amounts of TPs per point gained, and you can see that on the TP cost. With how many TPs you are given, you can gain the maximum amount of points from 2 Statistic/Skills, any more and you will not be able to max them. Bear this in mind, as each TP is only worth a single point of the stat, and some stats need an enormous amount to see any real gains. Now, about that Statistics/Skills thing..

Remember that I was saying Statistics/Skills, despite the TP window saying Statistics? This is why. We will now go over what “Weapon Skill” is and how Statistics and Weapon Skill works together. While there is the OBVIOUS fact that the Skill is required to learn things, there’s another thing. Weapon skills are effectively the primary damage Attribute (Power/Strength) AND the primary accuracy Attribute (Focus/Dexterity) COMBINED into one stat. This is CRITICAL (PLACEHOLDER HERE, I think Weaponskills give a 3rd of the value you would have gained from the Damage and Accuracy attributes per point? Someone needs to correct me on this.)

While dragons have this very simple (Spell users simply need Power and Primal, while Melee users need Strength and T&C), Bipeds are NOT so lucky - while the damaging & accuracy attribute is shared for Physical/Magical abilities, Weapon skills are NOT. Bipeds have a BUNCH of different weapon skills, and combined with their other complexities makes TPs on them a bit annoying. That’s it for explaining how Statistics and Weapon Skills work; let’s go ahead and move onto the next thing.

The Foundation - The Martial-Magical split, and Damage Types

Also a short one, I will now explain why there was a “Martial” keyword in the “Ancestral Determination” Tooltip. As of the Combat Overhaul (CO) for Istaria (relevant in case you hear about Pre-CO), all damage is now split into 2 main types and 2 sub-types, and then furthermore all damage has a “type”, condensed into four total categories.

Main Types: Martial(Physical) and Magical(Spells)

Sub-Types: Melee and Ranged

This makes for a total of 4 combinations. Martial-Melee, Martial-Range, Magical-Melee, and Magical-Ranged. While this isn’t super relevant in the early game, it becomes an IMPORTANT distinction in the late-game, and so we will talk about it now.

Martial-Melee is exactly what you think it is, It’s fighting the target point blank with physical damage.

Martial-Ranged is Biped and Monster only; It’s stuff like shooting your target with a bow.

Magical-Melee is Magical attacks that are done in melee.

Magical-Ranged is most spellcaster damage.

Now for the damage types. You may have noticed earlier on “Bite” and “Gust” with the Damage Type keyword. As of the CO, outside of some exceptions that we will not worry about here, these damage types are mitigated (reduced) by four statistics: Physical, Arcane, Mystical, and Ethereal Resistance. There are also Wards for each of the four condensed types, which increase your chance to dodge attacks from them. Let’s go back to our Character Menu.

In our “Statistics” Tab (Yes, I know. Get used to weird stuff like this, it’s Istaria.) we will find some more in depth statistics, Most of this is self explanatory, but a quick overview: The Martial and Magical tab is mostly relevant for your Alacrity, as it’s separated into two types, one for Martial and one for Magical.

Alacrity -> Effect

Shows you how much Delay Reduction you have. In this case a value of 120 Alacrity has given me -12% delay on all magical type abilities/spells.

Penetration -> Effect

Shows you how much you will ignore your targets mitigation (unsure if this is total or resist or armor based only.), In this case 5% of it will be ignored.

Mitigation and Effect

are as it says on the tin; Incoming Physical Type Damage for example will be reduced by 44%.

But you may be asking, what damage types are in each category? Well, we can mouse-over the names shown here, but I’ll put it here as well.

Physical: Slash, Crush, and Pierce.

Arcane: Flame, Ice, Energy, Primal, Nature, Blight

Mystical: Life, Spirit, and Mind

Ethereal: Ethereal

So for example, if you took Ice Damage, regardless of if it is Magical or Melee; your Arcane Resist and Mitigation would reduce it by X%, I am unsure of the actual damage formula, but Resistance does directly contribute to damage reduction, so if you are looking to take less damage, you must do both Armor and Resistance.

You will most commonly see Physical and Arcane damage, followed by Mystical, and then Ethereal being the rarest, but also the deadliest when it appears, as it ignores a good solid half of your armor mitigation!

Now, we have discussed how to read tooltips, established how to spend TPs and learnt what our statistics and weaponskills do, and we now know how to check our Mitigation and Alacrity. We now have a solid foundation to actually begin delving into combat with. Next up; we will discuss the difference between Spellcasters and Melee attackers, as well as why Spells are important regardless of your choice in playstyle.

The Foundation - Spells and You

So, about Spells VS Abilities; the biggest difference is:

Abilities are learnt naturally by leveling up, and cannot have extra effects applied to them directly (applying Techniques, which we will refer to as Teching from here) They CAN receive benefits and modifiers from outside sources, like Buffs, and can even have their damage type changed by X Attack abilities or special crystals made by high level dragons!

For example, you could have a Slash Damage ability, but you receive the buff “Flame Attack”. You will now hit harder (because the buff increases damage) and you will now deal Flame Damage, this also means you are now bypassing the enemies Physical Resist, and instead hitting the Arcane Resist, which armor is less effective on! That’s a nice damage increase.

Sadly, for most cases outside of certain biped classes and one dragon ability that only affects your auto-attacks, you CANNOT get your hands on Ethereal Damage; It’s rare for a reason. All other damage types are free game though.

But how do we obtain spells if they aren’t learnt? Well, you craft them. Did I mention spellcasters have to put in a lot more work to obtain their full toolkit compared to Melee? You’re about to learn.

Firstly, since it’s crafting and this is a combat guide; I will not tell you HOW to craft, (insert placeholder here, link to the crafting guide if I get around to making it i guess)

I will however tell you that if you wish to provide the materials FOR a crafter, you must obtain Essence and Stone; these are used to make the Spell Shards and Essence Orbs needed to create the spells. Alternatively you can ask the crafter to use their own materials.

In the early stages of the game, where we are currently; it is fine to simply get spells crafted for you with no techniques (We will refer to this as Unteched from here onwards), as the effects aren’t very impactful at this point. However, once you hit around T3 to early T5 (we’ll go over what that means in a moment) you will want to start getting spell techs, as this is when the early game ends and the midgame begins, you will start to see much deadlier monsters and begin requiring help at some points if you are not prepared.

In order to learn (Scribe) a spell, you must meet the skill and level requirements; for Dragons this will happen as they level up naturally, but Bipeds have a WIDE range of skills and require multiple schools to obtain the Skills needed. We will talk about multi-schooling later, as it’s not super relevant right now.

If you are a melee, then it is enough to only obtain the buffing and healing spells (such as Promote Vitality and Flame Attack), but if you are a spellcaster, you should be obtaining all of these AND the damaging spells for your setup. Again; dragons have it simple, Bipeds get a mess. Sorry. I will now provide a list of the damaging and utility spells for dragon spellcasters, but not for bipeds as I do not have the experience to do so, plus the list would be.. Very long.

Repeater Spells: This is the equivalent of an Auto-attack for melee users, hence the term Repeater Prime Bolt, Improved Prime Bolt, Drain Bolt Prime Bolt and Improved version are crafted; Drain Bolt is acquired from a quest you will be led to as part of the early game. Improved Prime Bolt does the most damage and should be your go-to; the others are simply there, although you CAN argue that Drain Bolt is worth using at times for the life leech effect it has, particularly in difficult solo fights where you’re struggling to keep up DPS output. Some DPS is better than none! Most techs do not work on Bolts, and I do not recommend using Primal Range, but do put on Accuracy!

Single Target Spells: These are the spells with recycle, similar to martial abilities such as Bite and Smash, that make up the bulk of your damage. You will always want to use these over a Bolt when available. Primal Strike: Equivalent of Silver Strike for dragon casters, shares a recycle) Primal Spark Primal Lightning: Low levels will not be able to obtain this without a high level crafter; generally less valuable than other spells, but still more damage than a bolt Primal Burst: Equivalent of Gold Rage in damage; does NOT share a recycle with Gold Rage so both can be used together freely.

AoE Spells: Spells with recycle that hit in an area, the main distinction from Melee and Caster dragons is that Caster dragons have the majority of the AoE.

Gust: PBAoE Barrage: PBAoE Tempest: Targeted AoE; will originate from the enemy it was cast on. Weaker than all the other spells, but still worth using. Blast: Targeted AoE

Utility Spells: These spells provide Crowd Control (referred to as CC) effects or lowering an enemies resistances/wards to your damage types. Primal Chains: Bind an enemy for X amount of time - enemy will be immune to bind after it has worn off; will not break from damage. Unrelenting Winds: Decreases Enemy Arcane Resistance, Targeted AoE Grazing Winds: Decreases Enemy Physical and Arcane Ward, Targeted AoE

Now, about teching spells; Crafters can learn Techniques, and then while crafting a spell; apply them to it. This requires Essence Orbs and materials from monsters, requiring more depending on the Tier of Technique. Again, tiers in a moment. We’re almost done with this part.

Tier I Techniques: 1 material from 1 type of monster

Tier II Techniques: 2 material from 1 type of monster

Tier III Techniques: 1 material from 1 type of monster, 1 material from another type.

Tier IV Techniques: 2 material from 1 type of monster, 1 material from another.

Tier V Techniques: 2 materials from 2 different types of monsters.

At Tiers 1 and 2, you can only apply one technique per spell, at Tiers 3 and 4 you can apply 2 techniques per spell, and at Tier 5 you can apply 3 techniques per spell.

Typically you will technique your spells like this (Dragons, idk about peds sorry) [Damage Type] [Tier] (e.g Primal Damage I) [Damage Kicker of your Choice] [Tier] (e.g Pierce, Romp, or Gale II) [Accuracy] [Tier] - It is worth noting that there are alternatives to Accuracy, so keep reading! For bipeds you should put on the tech of your Damage Type that causes the spell to have a chance to reduce the enemies resistance to your damage type, such as Cinder for flame spells; which will apply an effect that causes the enemy to take X% more damage from ALL damage of that type guaranteed. However, bipeds also get some extra techniques, and you don’t need the resist down on every spell - as long as you’re able to apply it once every 10-13s, it’s fine (You don’t want it to fall off!) you may look into the other special techniques for your damage type. For example, Flame has Burning Damage, which conflicts with Cinder on a single spell, but guarantees the spell teched with it will apply a DoT effect. Other Damage Types have even more unique techs (Energy has several!) so be sure to look into the techniques available.

Dragons will receive their Cinder equivalent in a future update; at which point you would do the same as peds- not needed on every spell, but enough to keep uptime on the effect.

As for Buff and Healing spells; they too need to be techniqued later on; and it is ESPECIALLY important on these- both melee and spellcasters need these teched!

For Buffs, you will want to always apply Cleanse and then Fortify with it in later tiers; this will give you the ability to Dispel those negative effects we talked about in the tooltips section. Fortify will give the buff a chance to give you extra armor - less damage taken is always good, and if you’re cleansing you might as well.

For Healing Spells, you will want Cleanse and then Heal Increase, followed by Heal Recycle - the names are self explanatory here, Heal Recycle reduces the cooldown of the heal, and it’s maximum tier is III.

Onto the final step of the combat system before we can play the game!

Equipment & Teching It, And Tiers.

Equipment is what will make up a majority of the stats on your build, and so we will now go over how to do so. All gear in this game is created by crafters- however you may buy unteched equipment up to Tier 4 from Imperial Requisition Officers found in some places (idr where lmao placeholder); While not great, it will get the job done.

In order to obtain teched equipment, someone MUST craft it; be yourself or another person. The material used to make equipment varies, and once again I will focus on Dragons; biped gearing is different and will be a placeholder for now as I dont actually know how it goes.

Dragons have access to 7 types of scales; these being Strength, Power, Focus, Dexterity, Armor and Health; along with Repaired Scales, which do not belong to any single type and instead have their own unique stats per scale until Tier 6 (aka Endgame), at which point they will converge into being for casters or melees. Additionally, “Claws” make up the dragon weapons.

Every scale type will give the most of its primary stat, and then some armor - for Armor scales these simply give pure armor, and Health Scales do not give as much armor as other types. For example, a full damage oriented Spellcaster / Melee wears Power / Strength scales, while a defensive one might wear Armor or Health, or a mix of the two.

For techniques, you can go wild here - the only restriction is that if the Scale already has that statistic on it, you may not technique it for that (so you cannot tech +Power onto a Power Scale, but you could do Primal instead)

Additionally, Chest, Head, and Foreleg scales, alongside the Claws all have the ability to be socketed; Chest and Foreleg use Armor, Head uses Jewelry, Claws use Weapon; generally you will ALWAYS put sockets where available, except for the Claw in T5-T6, as there is a strong technique worth using over a socket at that point. You can buy sockets from any Quartermaster in the respective cities, so do not ask a crafter to put sockets on the items- simply buy the socket techs from the vendors, and then click and drag them onto the items you’d like to apply them to; repeat multiple times to apply more sockets.

Sockets can hold Crystals of various types, which while some are found from various quests and can be very strong; MOST come from Undead, and will always give stat boosts higher than using Techs for the same stat in that tier, usually matching the stat of teching it a tier higher. (so a T1 gem would be equivalent to teching a T2 statistic onto an item)

However, Crystals do have one big limitation - you may not use two crystals affecting the same statistics on a piece, and some crystals come with TWO stats on them; for example if I use the Saris Stone of Friendship, which offers HP and Ethereal resist, I cannot add HP or Ethereal Resist crystals to the item, I must add other statistics..

It isn’t particularly worth stressing over these until T6, but they are still strong bonuses and come with a variety of effects.

As a note, Weapons are the exception to the drop rule - unique weapon crystals are fairly abundant and are MUCH stronger than any dropped crystal - a typical endgame claw will use that tech I mentioned for its damage type (Sharper / Deadly V) and two sockets using unique crystals.

There are also additionally Technique Kits, which are special rewards from quests typically (although some may be crafted, such as the aforementioned claw techs) that you can click and drag onto an item with unused technique slots to apply to. Finally, as for what the tiers mean.

Tier specifications

Tier Level	Levels	Skills
Tier I	1 - 19	1 - 199
Tier II	20 - 39	200 - 399
Tier III	40 - 59	400 - 599
Tier IV	60 - 79	600 - 799
Tier V	80 - 99	800 - 999
Tier VI	100+	1000+

Dangerous Foes and how to defeat them.

The obvious answer is to bring friends, but you’ve gotta learn to carry your own weight at some point; so let’s learn how to deal with dangerous situations now. As always, this is dragon focused - sorry peds, I can’t help you for now, I’ll get around to my own ped someday, except I probably wouldn’t be very helpful at the low levels, as I leveled my crafters first. Anyways…

We will first start with the assumption that you are fighting a single target, and then how to deal with a group - We will cover how to do so as a Hatchling and Adult - ancients will be covered in the late game.

To start with, very early into the game you receive an ability called “Refreshing Breeze”, and there is ALSO a questline in New Trismus about the Old Wolf; These two are going to make up the bread and butter of your ability to survive danger, so listen up. Refreshing Breeze at all tiers is basically your sustain ability - without it on, you WILL die to the nastier enemies. It has a 45s recycle, and a 40s duration. Those 5 seconds where it’s down is a time of vulnerability we CAN’T have in real fights, so to fix that we will acquire a Weapon Crystal called The Wolf’s Blessing from that questline. You may also obtain this with Tokens of Gratitude. This will have the side-effect of making everything recycle faster, so that’s nice.

When you do the quests, you will be presented with a choice to slay or save the old wolf - you must Save him, as killing him will force you to obtain the crystal via Tokens of Gratitude. Don’t worry, they’re not hard to get; and not all hope is lost if you didn’t get it. This crystal provides a -10% recycle effect, a small amount of alacrity, and 10% more damage against Animals. That’s great, but that Recycle effect is quite frankly, insane. There are VERY few sources of -recycle% for a majority of the game and this one is RIGHT here in the earliest part of the game. Get it. It is amazing. Slap that crystal into your weapon and keep it through all the upgrades you’ll be doing, it is THAT good.

With the crystal, you will now have 100% uptime on Refreshing Breeze as long as you stop the action you’re doing whenever it comes up, and queue it immediately. Speaking of, Ability Queuing and Stopping Actions.

This is a quick screenshot taken in-game, let’s go over what we’re looking at:

You may have noticed where your HP, EXP and Capacity is displayed there are two squares - The TOP one represents your current action, while the bottom one represents your queued action - which will be executed after the current one. Additionally, on the menu with the basic actions there is a “Stop Action” button. Pressing this button will stop both the current action if it was being casted AND the queued action. In a serious fight, you cannot afford to have downtime on the important things, or you may have to suddenly stop and heal yourself; this is what that button is for.

Additionally, some abilities may be used instantly but effectively have a cast time that will lock you in unlike actual spells; the abilities guilty of this are Galewind and Primal Lightning for dragons; which means that in a tight situation, these have a MUCH lower priority to use for damage than other actions. We want to use fast abilities; because if something goes wrong and we’re stuck in Galewind, we are going to die. Istaria combat may be slow, but sometimes it is in fact THAT fast.

Another very important tool we get early on, as bad as it may look is Protective; it increases your armor by a large amount but cuts your damage to 25%. Sounds awful right? Well, not when it can easily give you +5-10% mitigation that could be the difference between being able to survive a chain of hits and being able to heal back up versus the damage overtaking your ability to heal.

This ability is a self-buff, and it will show up where you find your buffs; apply it when you need to recover HP and focus on applying debuffs, and remove it via right clicking it and selecting “Remove” before resuming your attacks. This can and WILL save your life on monsters that like to burst out a large amount of damage at the start of a fight.

There is also a stance called “Soldier Stance” that will reduce incoming Martial damage by 5% when active, but will increase its effect to 10%! when an enemy is under the effect of Menacing Presence, This has the side-effect of forcing enemies to hit you if you’re in a group, so be mindful of that; but it’s still another large mitigation boost. There is no good spell equivalent, so use a DPS stance instead for spellcasters.

Finally, the spell Primal Chains, Primal Spark, and Tail Whip are all incredibly good defensive tools; Primal Chains can be used to take a monster out of the fight entirely as long as you back away from them afterwards, Tail Whip is a Targeted AoE long stun (7 seconds, which is short in istaria time.) while Primal Spark is a Short Single Target stun (3 seconds).

However, there is a catch - Every time after a player OR monster has suffered and recovered from a CC effect, these being Stuns, Roots, and Mezzes, they will gain immunity to that effect for a certain amount of time; so you cannot “stunlock” an enemy or keep them rooted/mezzed permanently.

Stuns will never be broken by dealing damage, Roots may depending on the root - and Mezzes last for a long time but fade upon a certain amount of hits being taken - usually 1 to 3.

Until you hit endgame, almost nothing will be immune to these options, and simply keeping up Refreshing Breeze while using your healing spells (you did get them, right? You can stack Spell Breezes with Refreshing Breeze by the way.) should keep you alive.

Afterwards, you will gain 3 more major tools in total for reducing incoming damage before adulthood; these being Gold Rage, Staggering Howl, and Snarl - The first two reduce Alacrity and apply a -recycle% modifier, while Snarl reduces the enemies chance to hit. Gold rage will NOT have 100% uptime until you are at endgame, but Staggering Howl will with the aforementioned crystal.

These tools will be vital to finishing the Rite of Passage if you wish to undertake it alone, or dangerous monsters in general, so get used to them.

Once you have finished your Rite of Passage and become an adult, you will gain one new ability immediately that is the core piece of almost every truly hard solo done by Dragons, and then two more as you level up and complete Sidequests at Kelakhan.

The first ability - the one you get immediately, is Shield of Gold - This will drain a decent amount of hoard depending on the damage you are taking, but in exchange it can reduce up to 50% damage PER DAMAGING HIT TAKEN, up to a maximum of 500 - this means if you had Shield up and took 500 damage, you would have taken 1000 damage without it. That’s a lot; Endgame HP values are usually in the 4-5k range. It has a 2 minute cooldown and a 1 minute duration, meaning that with no recycle modifiers, it has an uptime of 50%. It’s also amazing for just pulling a bunch of mobs and killing them without caring.

The second one will come at level 40 - this being Breath of Ice; however, it has a downside.

It will apply a Targeted AoE debuff that will reduce the enemies Martial Alacrity by 100 (a good chunk), BUT it will also increase their flame damage taken by 25% for 3 hits. This means that if you use Breath of Ice and then Breath of Fire, the DoT from it would remove the Breath of Ice Effect, and the alacrity reduction with it. This means that in serious fights, you will forego a significant damage source for increased survivability, but sadly there’s no way around this; -100 Alacrity combined with your other ways of reducing it is too strong to ignore.

The third one will come at level 80 - This is Breath of Lightning, and it’s your ONLY WAY to remove buffs on enemies. It can dispel up to THREE buffs in one usage while also lowering their Focus and Dexterity. It’s also a Targeted AoE; this is extremely good ANYWHERE an enemy can buff themselves.

Bear in mind however, that just like there are undispellable debuffs; there are undispellable buffs. That’s all for the Dragon Solo Advice, in short; serious fights will flow like this almost everytime

Pull the enemy -> debuff them, and they will use all of their abilities on you in sequence, this is the “Burst” phase where you will take extremely high damage depending on the enemy, followed by a recovery period where you are fighting to simply get your HP back up to a safe level; Once you have stabilized your HP, go to town on the enemy; should your HP drop, repeat the previous cycle until you are stable again. Repeat this sequence until the enemy dies.

But what if you’re fighting a group and you can’t get around it? Or the enemy is just THAT strong? Well… then it’s time for the secret weapon - no not buffs and consumables from the other race. BAUBLES.

Baubles are POWERFUL consumable items you may purchase from pawn brokers - they are tiered like other content in the game - and limited by level, but still. They also cost money.

You can use up to 5 baubles at once, one from each category, which goes Offensive, Defensive, Utility, Statistic, and Damage Kicker.

The Offensive Bauble will directly increase your damage - pick the one that matches your main damage type, There is Ranged Magical, Martial Melee, and Martial Ranged. Combined with the Utility Bauble, these offer a hefty damage increase. (idk where magical melee is i never saw it??)

The Defensive one is our true weapon; It will give you a % based mitigation (up to 19% at Tier 6) for a specific damage category (e.g Holy Armament is Melee Martial), These are MUST GET for any truly difficult fight.

Utility will provide you +Alacrity, and quite a lot of it too; just make sure you get the right one for your type.

Statistic can be used to increase any Statistic, including Armor and Health - my personal go to is Armor since it’s yet more mitigation.

Damage Kicker is the same as Damage Kicker techniques - it’s a chance on hit to cause extra damage. Pick whatever flavor you like.

That’s all for handling dangerous monsters - should that not work, well…

The Depths of Combat (Dragon) - Obtaining the Chest Scale and Resolve.

Finally, for our last chapter; we will go DEEP into the combat, at the endgame. You may be an adult or an ancient, either works - you can get to ancient entirely alone as an adult, so fret not if you feel like you can’t get there; you can with the knowledge from chapter 2 and a LOT of panicking. That being said, please get help for your Ancient Rite of Passage. It’s so much less painful. We will start with the path to obtain two critical items for surviving endgame on your own (and in groups, honestly.); these being the Ceremonial Chest Scale and the ability Hero’s Resolve. Both are going to be painful to get solo, and varying levels of difficulty depending on your group size and helpers in a group. However, they are fully worth the time and effort. We will start with Hero’s Resolve as it’s the easier of the two to obtain overall and you’ll want it to fight the monster required to get the chest scale.

Additionally, I WILL assume that you want to optimize here. Feel free to pick and choose what suits you though - this is my personal experience. I will also now be using lexica links here.

Hero's Resolve is obtained from a questline that is Delgarath Militia; the first quest is this: Delgarath Militia: Scout the Surrounding Area

Most of this questline is easy, but there are 2-3 roadblocks. The first one is on the Provisions step, where you will need to obtain a fair few crafted items - some from Drop Only formulas. I suggest asking in the Marketplace chat in game if you yourself are not a crafter at this point if anyone can provide the items for you.

Afterwards, the next roadblock will be the step For the Empire. This step requires you to collect two notable items; an Enraged Aegror Bunion and a Abomination Task-Master Spleen, both of which are random drops from their respective monsters.

The issue however is that (to my knowledge) both Enraged Aegrors and Abomination Task-Masters ALWAYS come in a pack of four mobs, and they are both EXTREMELY tanky. These packs of monsters hit INCREDIBLY hard, and will apply an insane amount of debuffs to you on top of it that will easily kill any unprepared player alone. I HIGHLY recommend getting help for this step, but if you wish to solo it then we will need to go ahead and get into the build used for this part of the entry into Endgame.

This is my build used to get all the way to Ancient entirely alone; go ahead and take a read through it. The TP into health is especially important:

https://istaraschosen.com/resources/builds/view/JKNdQOQR

Once you’re done with that and obtained the build or you’ve secured a group to kill off the enemies, make sure you pull them WITHOUT any extra mobs, it’s bad enough you have to fight 4 of them at once. Use the tips from chapter 2 to take them down to the best of your ability - if you’re alone, don’t be afraid to bring baubles and use Soldier Stance. If you are an Adult, you WILL have to deal with the fact that they like to apply Blighted Atrophy and you need to dispel it as fast as you can, unfortunately. For ancients; I suggest having a Head Scale with Sigil of Ascent V so you do NOT have to deal with it.

If you’re wondering why I don’t recommend just nuking down the ones that have the items you need, it’s because they have far too much HP to do so currently. You’ll get the damage to do so AFTER you’ve gotten Hero’s Resolve (Ancients may be able to nuke them with Primal Cast Breath of Flame Burst)

After you’ve gotten past this step, it’s mostly smooth sailing - your finale will be to deal with a giant leek- I mean Major Anchor, just outside of Delgarath. For this, we are going to begin using a combo you will use before just about every single epic fight pull. Swap to Soldier Stance (to reduce the martial damage) -> Quickening Breeze -> Refreshing Breeze -> Shield of Gold -> Pull

As a dragon, you have plenty of AoE and the anchor itself isn’t any actual threat - it’s the monsters that come with it, but this one in particular is a pushover. Simply socket Arcane crystals into your armor-resist set at this point, do the pre-pull buffs and run ONTO the anchor. Press Primal Cast and drop your finest nukes onto everything with the anchor as the target; for ancient this is Breath of Flame Burst, for a caster adult this is a teched Blast V, and for a melee adult this is Breath of Lightning; Ancients will delete everything instantly, adults will need to follow up with more breath usages & spells to take everything down (Breath of Ice and Fire afterwards)

Once everything is dead, they will generally respawn in packs of 1-3 and therefore aren’t a threat. Simply stay on top of the anchor the entire time and keep it targeted, do not swap off of the anchor unless a monster has a tiny amount of HP and all your AoE is gone. This strategy will work for both solo and groups; once the anchor is dead, you will now have Hero’s Resolve.

This ability is a 5 minute recycle that gives you a self-buff for 1 minute that basically skyrockets your damage, offering a +25% damage boost to ALL attacks AND causes every attack to do one extra hit. Every. Single. One. Even spells and breaths. This is your “burst” button basically, and with The Wolf’s Blessing crystal not only will the recycle be lower, but if Primal Burst and Gold Rage were ready prior to using Hero’s Resolve, you will be able to get TWO of each within the window! That’s a LOT of damage, and in the opener of a fight you should always aim for this - however in extended fights you will simply press it off cooldown and not force alignment, as you would potentially lose a usage of the two, or even letting the debuff from Gold Rage drop off.

Now that we’ve obtained Hero’s Resolve, let’s look at obtaining the Ceremonial Chest Scale - this behemoth of a defensive piece will grant you much more armor than ANY other chest scale in the game, along with a sizable amount of Ethereal and Arcane resistance, AND it’s unique effect is that once you have taken a single Special Attack Hit, all incoming Special Attacks will do 25% less damage.

If you remember, “Special Attack” is basically all Martial Abilities. That means this is a FREE 25% mitigation on every single martial ability in the game. This thing is a STAPLE for endgame, as the amount of defensive power it provides cannot be matched on martial enemies, of which most endgame enemies are.

However, in order to obtain this scale you must complete the Imperial Outpost questline up to the point where it will then split into Imperial Outpost: Resupply and this Imperial Army: The Raids. Follow this questline until you reach The Berserkers, at which point you will be required to defeat a Lesser Epic named Daknor The Berserk. This is why we have that physical resist set, so let’s go over Daknor’s fight. This is also why we picked up Hero’s Resolve; it’s obtainable before fighting Daknor and needs the same gear to obtain alone.

To start with, Daknor will patrol around the entire Staging Grounds alongside THREE Kwellen Berserkers, all of which are deadly monsters in their own right alone, much less in a pack of three and then AGAIN with a Lesser Epic.

Additionally, Daknor is ALSO Social and Staging Grounds has a MASSIVE amount of undead in it, not to mention that he can potentially patrol next to Fafnir the Defiler, another Lesser Epic - although you can fight him near Fafnir just fine.

We do not want to get ANY monsters besides Daknor and his buddies, as the 4 of them is already an incredibly tight mitigation check solo - less so if you are in a group, but again; I will assume you are alone, and all advice here applies to group as well.

In order to defeat Daknor alone as Adult or Ancient; you’ll need to be using the build I gave earlier, and at a minimum you must bring a full set of T6 baubles (get all 5 in the set, you want as much damage as you can get for a reason we’ll go over in a moment), as well as the Crystalshaper T6 consumable crystals - bring the ones for Physical Resist, Mystical Resist, and Primal Damage, as this fight does not have any blight damage in it. The resist crystals in your gear should be Physical Resist

You will also need to bring the ability Inspire Peace VI obtained in the Fiery Rift from Aranatosh- which you will need Dragon Crafter and Lairshaper to a certain level to access; the Inspire Peace is NOT optional, so make a detour to get those and get Inspire Peace even if you aren’t leveling Crystalshaper or maxing out either school.

For the fight itself, you will want to do the same pre-pull things as the Major Anchor from Delgarath; and then pull Daknor. However, instead of not using Protective, we MUST start the fight with it on it - we will NOT survive otherwise. Get Snarl and Menacing Presence up as Daknor comes towards you - as soon as him and his friends arrive, you will likely end up stunlocked - We want all 4 of them to attack at once if we’re alone, so don’t think of binding any of them.

Istaria AI has a tendency to use all of its abilities as soon as possible - this means that at the start of any given fight, Monsters will effectively burst you with everything they have. We want to tank the entire burst from Daknor & Co so that they will NOT have it available once Shield of Gold falls off, because if they have it afterwards then we WILL die.

This means that we are following the priority from Chapter 2, Survive, Stabilize your HP - after the initial burst, use Tail Whip and Primal Chains on one of the berserkers and move the other 3 AWAY from him. Daknor himself cannot be affected by CC, so do not bother. After you have stabilized, remove Protective, press Primal Cast and Hero’s Resolve, and dump your entire burst onto one of the berserkers; it SHOULD go down. Ensure you are keeping debuffs up on Daknor this entire time (Including Gold Rage) and your regenerative effects, do NOT let them fall off. Keeping up your HP has a higher priority than anything else.

The reason we are tanking this entire burst of EVERY monster is so that we do NOT have to deal with the full burst WITHOUT shield of gold, and ALSO because Daknor has an ability called Berserker Barrage - this is a Magical Melee Spell that will do OVER FOUR THOUSAND DAMAGE to you if you are fully prepared with the solo build and consumables and every hit lands without Shield of Gold on. It is also MYSTIC damage; hence the resist. However, it’s the ONLY Mystic damage we have to worry about, whereas the majority of the sustained damage is Physical, hence why we’re bringing Inspire Peace.

This spell will outright kill any non-tank / solo build players with the sheer amount of damage it does; you CANNOT afford to be caught off guard by this. Daknor also has a LONG lasting Mez called Area Spellbind; but it will get broken by his berserkers when they are alive for the most part, and anytime it catches you afterwards your defensive abilities and debuffs should last through it. As long as Berserker Barrage does NOT catch you at less than max HP without shield of gold, you CAN survive it.

After we have survived EVERYTHING including Berserker Barrage and killed the first berserker, we will simply use Tail Whip and Primal Chains to make it so we only have to fight Daknor and one berserker at a time - pick one berserker to slowly kill from here, and keep going until it dies, followed by the last one (use chains and stuns on the last one as well!) and then finally it will be a 1v1 against Daknor. At this point, you have effectively won the fight as long as you keep calm.

Later in the fight, Daknor brings out his SECOND barrage (about 4 minutes after he’s used it the first time if you have done your debuffs correctly), you will either need to predict it and use Shield of Gold in advance, or use Protective before the hit lands as you will see the cast bar (It will take around 4 seconds), followed by IMMEDIATELY healing. Pray that all hits do not connect - if even ONE misses you will be safe to heal up, but if all hits DO connect you will still be okay as long as you heal immediately. Continue fighting and maintaining everything. You will likely see 1 to 2 more barrages before Daknor finally goes down, but once he has gone down you have done it; the Ceremonial Chest Scale is effectively yours after a victory lap.

At this point we are now prepared to fully enter Endgame, If you were an ancient already then ignore this next part; adults looking for an AROP solo, here is your next step.

Rebuild your original set of armor, (except for the socketed pieces and the head scale) and tech it with Ethereal Resist instead. Additionally, prepare the corresponding T6 Crystalshaper Crystals, Primal will still work fine for the upcoming challenges, but we’ll want EVERY resist type now, and Ward doesn’t hurt either, ESPECIALLY Ethereal.

Work your way through the AROP from where you left off; once you have reached the Rift, the Guardians will be no problem - simply use your Physical set and socket the corresponding resist crystals into your armor for each Guardian (Mystic for Blood and Mind, Arcane for Heart and Bone). Each Guardian has one unique gimmick, as well as extra damage on every autoattack of their resist type.

Blood - Attempts to leech life and heal itself. Heart - Will revive itself after death a total of 3 times; once at 75% HP, once at 50% hp, and then one more time at 25% HP. Bone - Will apply a debuff called Brittle Bones that will set your armor to 0 - you must dispel this IMMEDIATELY. Mind - Has Area Spellbind - It’s a stun that’ll last for one hit basically.

Once you have found, and defeated every Guardian - the last remaining obstacle is Elial himself; Before we face him down, we need to pick up a few things. Get all the T6 baubles again, but this time you NEED to pick up Niatha’s Aegis - the one that grants +100 Ethereal Resist. Additionally, If you do not have at least THREE Void Crystal of Form; (preferably more and two sets of baubles just in case), go and farm those now. They will grant you +100 Ethereal Resist for 10 minutes, and Elial should be around a 20 minute long fight, maybe longer if you play it very safe.

Once you are prepared, put on all of your consumables and your full ethereal resist set with your Ceremonial Scale having replaced your original chest scale; ensure all your crystal sockets have Ethereal Resist for the resist crystals, and spawn Elial. DO NOT attack him immediately - he is passive and will IMMEDIATELY cast the ability “Improved Berserk Rage”. If you begin the fight while this is active, you are GUARANTEED TO DIE.

Elial’s Epic Gimmick is that he deals Ethereal Damage as a Berserker, similar to how Daknor is. However, instead of having one truly scary ability, EVERYTHING ELIAL DOES is HARD hitting, and devastating. He will also require you to be on top of dispels - he has the ability to remove 310 of your armor for a while, and we CANNOT afford that. By starting the fight right after Berserk Rage has worn off, we can take his deadly burst while he is debuffed from the after-effects, and ensure it will NEVER come back at the same time as the Rage.

Begin the fight the same way you did Daknor - Protective, both breezes, soldier stance and Shield of Gold - Snarl and Menacing Presence and get the debuffs up immediately, then HOLD OUT - He will still come VERY CLOSE to killing you in the beginning but you CAN MAKE IT. Once you have stabilized, take off protective and begin damaging him; keep a VERY close eye on your HP, and use Protective ANYTIME he does a large hit. Do NOT let your resist buffs or Fortify fall off either! From here, stay calm and slowly take him down; do NOT rush things and do NOT get greedy. He will eventually die. Once he has fallen, you have finished the Ancient Rite of Passage; Congratulations, you may now complete the victory lap and become an Ancient!

If you read this part as someone intending to not solo their rite; this advice still applies for the entire group to survive Elial and the Guardians, albeit it will not be as brutal trying to stay alive.

From this point onwards, it will be assumed that you are an Ancient Dragon, and you have your Hero’s Resolve and Ceremonial Chest Scale; so where do we go from here?

The Depths of Combat (Dragon) - The Endgame

Now that you are an ancient; there is one final upgrade to the majority of your gear available to you - Priceless scales. Tailored to whichever playstyle you’ve chosen and Ancient-Exclusive; a majority of these are STRAIGHT upgrades to your build, at the cost of only having TWO technique slots. They’re obtained by buying the formula Master Dragon Scale Repair from Queriata in Dralk, and then obtaining a certain amount of T6 Scale Hardener and a broken scale of the slot you wish to make, and finally crafting them.

I will assume that you are a solo build, but if you aren’t; take a look at all of them and decide what best suits you.

For us solo people; the scales you will want is everything besides Head, Wings and Chest. Ceremonial Chest Scale is just better in every way and the head and wings do NOT provide any armor, only HP; and while the offensive stats sound nice, they do NOT make up for the fact you are trading an entire technique slot and 75 armor from an armor scale for them. Instead, you will continue to use your original Wing Scales, and create two armor head scales - One with Sigil of Ascent V and two sockets, the other with three sockets. Use the Sigil of Ascent one for whenever you’re fighting monsters that increase Recycle, otherwise use the triple socketed one. Fill it in with the jewelry equivalents of your armor crystals.

Additionally, your Head Scale has become half your passives and a Weapon Crystal - go ahead and replace your original DPS crystal with this, Wolf’s Blessing is staying where it is.

Depending on what you are soloing, you may simply opt for a hybrid build, or a specialized build suited to your targets; for example, if you were go to after Surtheim you would want to build Arcane Resist, but for Physical Bosses such as Avatar of Pain, Project X, General Reklar Plaguebearer, and Falgut the Slaver, you should make a Physical set instead.

Or, if you wished to rematch against Elial in his empowered form; build an Ethereal Set. However, this version of Elial has an INCREDIBLY high mitigation check - you will most likely require Reklar’s equipment before facing him.

For Valkor the Impaler and Shaloth the Queen, you should build a Mystic set (SEMI PLACEHOLDER - I am unsure what you need exactly for Shaloth, but Valkor should be accurate? Someone with Valkor experience please correct me if i’m wrong.)

For most T6 monsters, a generic set is plenty - nothing should actually be a well and true proper threat beyond certain things like the Task-Masters, and you should be able to pull quite a few monsters with your new abilities and delete them all in one go with the Breath of Flame Burst. Additionally, the spell “Drulkar’s Wrath” has also become available to you through a questline found in Dralnok’s Doom, and I highly suggest getting it!

For a lot of these Greater Epics, at the very minimum get a friend - the only one that is actually “easy” is Son of Gigaroth. For the others; they may require gear from Reklar or a long drawn out fight, or even have a gimmick that requires a friend! They are all doable alone in theory; but how much equipment you need I do not know.

At this point, the endgame is yours to do with what you choose - use the lexica to check out what each Greater Epic offers as their equipment, and decide what you’d like to hunt.

Bear in mind that when defeating Greater Epics, they will only drop ONE component for their unique loot and it is shared amongst all players in the group; so if you need a component, let your party know! Please do not steal the loot if you are in a party, especially if someone else needs it.

Best of luck in the endgame! Remember, play safe, grind hard, have fun, and don’t die! But if you do die, do it with friends so they can revive you.

Gear Optimization - Solo / Tanking

Simply hitting endgame not enough for you? Want to take your damage, or survivability to the absolute maximum? Alright. To start with, I will assume that you are an Ancient; as this is the only way to get the maximum damage output possible on a Dragon.

If you’re a solo / tank focused build, then we’re going to want our health AND armor to be high. Maxing out your HP to be as high as possible is good in theory, but having all that HP won’t help if enemies simply shred through it, so we need both. Additionally, you’re going to want to have all T6 Resist socketable crystal types on hand for your Armor and Jewelry slots (3 for armor, 1 for jewelry, except for Ethereal where you will want 2 for armor, as Saris Stone of Friendship is a staple already and covers it)

To that end, it means that we will be using T5 Mithril-Marble Armor scales in our Head and Wing slots, as their Priceless equivalents ONLY give us an HP bonus and no armor; whereas running Mithril-Marble we can use our extra tech slot to have +100 HP, so it becomes +100 HP +75 armor versus +165 HP; and 75 armor is a good chunk!

However, everything else is going to be Priceless; while it IS a small armor loss on some pieces, the damaging stats and armor gain overall more than make up for it. Bear in mind that if we are truly going to be optimal chunky dragons, we need to make 4 sets total - You will only need to craft 1 head scale and 2 foreleg scales plus you’re using Ceremonial Chest Scale, but everything else must be recrafted. This means you will need 8 broken hindleg scales, 8 mithril-marble wing scales (although you should have holdovers from the previous part of the guide) and 4 of everything else; You can honestly skip Ethereal Resistance unless you really want to fight Elial.

The techs are pretty simple - maximum sockets on all socketable items, and then HP + Resist on everything else. We don’t run damage on this type of build as we just don’t have any room for it. Additionally, make an extra head scale; put Sigil of Ascent V and two sockets on it. It’ll come in handy for any Recycle modifier debuffs. Everything else gets HP/Resist techs, except for the wings, which get HP, Resist, and Weapon skill since Armor is not an option.

HOWEVER for the Wing Arcane Set specifically, to truly min-max you will want to get the Armor and Scale Tech Kit: Crest of the Blackhammer Clan, You can get one copy for free.. But the other copy requires you to spend 750 tokens of gratitude. Yeesh. However, it is a NOTICEABLE resist gain on top of being perfect for fighting undead, so it is worth getting to truly min max! (+100 arcane resist, 25% chance to take 20% less damage from undead over +56 arcane resist.).

There are two routes you can take here, and I highly suggest the first one; the second one is however the obvious min-maxing choice.

Only create 6 wing scales; put Health, Physical Resist, and Crest of the Blackhammer Clan on your wing scales - this will make it so the wing scales cover both Arcane and Physical, AND are good on undead. The BIG undead bosses (Falgut and Reklar) are Arcane/Physical, so this works perfectly for them.

OR, If you really want that tiny extra bit, then get FOUR crest of the blackhammer clans, and make the wings with HP, Resist (Crest counts as resist here), and weapon skill. But honestly, just do the first route. +25 weapon skill is not going to make or break any DPS checks.

Our sockets will just be T6 Resist Crystals + Armor - although you can trade the armor for HP if you really want, but it’s still a hefty amount of armor per crystal. For the headscale with 3 sockets, put in HP as the final slot. This should land you the following values (Placeholder until I get my full set lmao)

Additionally, put your TPs into HP and your weapon skill stat.

Gear Optimization | Glass Cannon

So you just wanna do big damage. Awesome, I can get behind that. A few things. This gearset requires less sets crafted, but a MUCH higher time investment, as you must obtain a LOT of tokens of gratitude.

Additionally, thanks to AmonGwareth being kind enough to answer my questions in the Istaria Discord, we know how the mitigation formula works, so we can calculate how much mitigation is required to survive any given attack. Armor and your Resistances are added together additively, this means having 50% armor mitigation and 20% physical resist = 70% mitigation, However, it’s not quite just a flat 70%.

The formula goes like this. Final Damage = (damage x attacker multiplier) (damage x defender multiplier) x (mitigation+resist values)

Anything that says x% of incoming is considered a multiplier, and they are separated by if they’re a debuff or a buff on you, so Inspire Peace is on Attacker multiplier, but Holy Armament of Istara is on the defender one; the game will loop through each multiplier until it gets through all of them, and then finally applies your actual mitigation. For example…

We take 8000 damage unmitigated, but we’ve got 50% mitigation, a 10% reduction on the attacker, and a 10%, plus 25% reduction on ourselves. My calculator doesn’t do the full formula well, so bear with me. First, the attacker 10% is applied. This brings it down to 7200. Next, we’ll apply our two multipliers. First it’s 6480 after 10%, and now it’s 4860 after the 25%. NOW; this number is what our mitigation is reducing! So now, 4860 -> 2430, and that’s our final damage taken.

No wonder Elial hits so hard.

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Changelog (at the bottom, sorry, the formatting is bad enough.) 6/23/2024 - First iteration, unfinished 6/24/2024 - Cleaned up the parts where I literally forgot some information and typos. Also added links to all other resource / guide websites that I am aware of. I don’t know why this wasn’t the first thing I did lmfao. Rewrote what is in chapter 3 AND completed it for now.

6/25/2024 - Updated the description of abilities like Gust and Barrage to specify that they are known as “PBAoE” type attacks. Fixed an inaccuracy about Accuracy and Bolt spells (thanks inana!) Added more details about the dragon Bolts. Added another subchapter to Chapter 3 that ACTUALLY talks about optimizing your gear in detail. Imagine having “optimization” in the title of your guide and not actually having an optimization section. Very big “bruh” moment. Also, added WHERE to get priceless scales, AND the damage taken formula thanks to AmonGwareth being willing to answer my questions. The gear section is a WIP, Spells will follow after I’m done with it, and then finally buffs.

To-Do Maybe add information about each Epic and their gimmicks in detail? It’d probably fit here, but I don’t know if people would be interested in that. Actually get around to playing a Biped or ask someone who is doing solo biped stuff at endgame to help provide information on bipeds. I also forgot masterable abilities for bipeds… they need their own advanced chapter honestly.