Dawn of the Dragons Raiding Guide

Dawn of the Dragons Raiding Guide by Stewie Doo

So, you’ve managed to slaughter the mindless hoard and you lean on your sword as you catch your breath. A warm gush of air heats the back of your neck and the ground around you darkens in shadow as you stand their motionless gathering the courage to turn around.

Your grip tightens around your weapon as you spin round, before you a huge Ogre with what looks like the remains of a soldiers arm flopping from his mouth.

He spits out the severed limb and lets out a gut wrenching roar in your direction.

You feint!

Luckily, thanks to the wonders of social networking, a Monster Fighter’s job is so much easier! With some cleverly dispatched carrier pigeons, you can get word out to fellow fighters throughout the land and you no longer need to fight these beasts alone.

Overview
Within each map location there are several. Each of these areas has a number of quests, and one Boss. The boss is a single combat version of a quest, and they must be defeated before you can progress to the next area. Once you have killed the boss, you gain that bosses Essence and unlock the ability to summon the creature for a group battle called a raid. These raids consist of a much stronger version of the boss and are designed to be taken down by groups of players.

Raid Categories
Raids are divided into five types (Small, Medium, Large Epic and Colossal).
The first area of each map location unlocks a Small Raid Boss, the second area a Medium Raid boss, the third area a Large Raid Boss and where a map location has four areas you can unlock an Epic Raid Boss.

Summoning

Before a Raid boss can be fought, he must be summoned, this is done in the summoning screen which is accessed by pressing the Raid button.

On the right is the Summoning section, which shows the Bosses that you can summon and their current Status, if any (more on this later). If you have unlocked more than five Raid Bosses, then you can use the arrow buttons to scroll up and down the list.

Summoning a Raid boss requires runes, there are five different runes one for each type of raid (Small, Medium, Large, Epic and Colossal) and they can be purchased in the Bazaar. You can select a summoning difficulty from a drop-down, the difficulty level increases the runes required to 2 for Hard, 5 for Legendary and 10 for Nightmare(Normal required 1 rune). Once you have the correct amount of runes, and providing the Raid Boss is available to be summoned, then by pressing the Summon Button, you start the raid and it will appear in your raid list on the left hand side of the screen. Raids, have a set time in which they must be completed, and it’s at this point that the timer starts.

Fighting

On the left hand side is the list of Raids that you are currently taking part in. It shows you if they are active, if so, how much time there is left to complete them and how much health they have left. By pressing the Engage button on an active Raid, you enter the raid battle screen.

The battle screen is where the raid actions are taken and it’s areas are as follows:

(1) Name and Magic: The Raid Boss name is displayed in the top left of the screen and directly below it is the slots showing which magic has been cast (more about this later).

(2) Health and Timer: Displayed across the top of the screen, centralised, are two bars. The Red bar shows the bosses current health, and the blue bar shows the time remaining to complete the raid. If either reaches zero, then the raid finishes, you win if you remove all the health, you fail if you do not cause sufficient damage prior to the time running out.

(3) Participants and Damage: This list shows a subset of the people who are taking part in the raid, and the amount of damage that has been dealt by each. Once the number of participants reaches a certain number, you can see the full list by clicking on the ‘View Full List’ at the base of the scroll. This will enlarge the scroll, and also provide you with two arrows that can be used to navigate the list.

(4) Attack Buttons: There are two types of attacks that you can perform, a Single Attack or a large Attack. A single attack uses up one point of stamina per click where as a large attack uses up five, but also inflicts significantly more damage. The large attack is the equivalent of clicking the single attack 5 times (although threads exists discussing the pros and cons of each).

(5) Magic: The spell that you currently have equipped in your profile screen is displayed here, and by clicking on it, you can cast the spell on the raid boss, providing there are any free spell slots left, and the same spell has not already been cast on it. Each raid type has a different number of spell slots available (more on this later). Once a spell has been cast, it will remain there for the duration of the battle unless removed by the Raid summoner. Spells are removed by double clicking them (currently summoners can only remove their own, this is being fixed).

(6) Damage and Chat: The window in the bottom centre of the screen displays a history of the last few attacks and magic cast upon the creature. It shows the damage caused by other members of the party, and the damage they received, it also shows the experience and gold you receive for your strikes. By pressing the small speech bubble icon in the top right of this window, it changes in to Chat mode, where the party members can discuss the current battle. The crossed swords where the speech bubble was, returns the window to combat information.

(7) Rallying Cry: Raid are designed to be group battles, and this button is how you let your friends know about your fight. By pressing the button, a Facebook notification screen appears which has a direct link to the raid. Once you have confirmed this screen, it will appear on your wall where your friends can click on the link and join you in battle.

You can also copy the link once the pop-up appears and post it on the Forums in the correct request threads. This allows you to get the assistance of people who might not be in your fiends list, but are available to assist. This is also helpful if you dont have many friends playing the game……or simply if you dont have many friends 

(8) Loot and Close: By pressing the Loot button, a screen will appear showing you the possible loot drops for the boss you are fighting (more about this window later). You can also return back to the Raid Summoning screen by clicking on the Close button.

Loot

Loot is divided into four categories Common, Uncommon, Rare and Epic which signifies the likelihood of an item being dropped. There are many things that are taken in to account upon deciding the loot, but the drops are basically random, with varying degrees of probability based on the certain factors such as rarity, speed of kill, damage inflicted and if your name is Norman (this last one is not confirmed).

From this, you should deduce that the more damage you do, and the quicker the raid is completed, the more chance you have of looting better items. So, with this in mind, although it’s great to see if you can complete a raid on your own, this by no means guarantees that you will be getting all the great loot for yourself, as you will be limiting the chance of Epic drops by the extra time you have taken to kill the creature.

Once you have successfully completed the raid, it is time to collect your loot, you do this by clicking on the Loot button on the Raid Summoning Screen that corresponds to the completed raid. Once pressed the Loot screen with your goodies is displayed, it’s at this point you can start to swear at the screen, and try to recolour the grey flute on your monitor using an orange marker pen.

Timers and Cool-downs
The raid bosses recently got together to form a Union, and one of the things they voiced was their concerns over the amount of times they would have groups of adventurers banging on their doors looking for a fight! So, the Monster Union™ passed a law stating that once an adventurer had picked a fight within a certain raid type (Small, Medium, Large, Epic and Colossal) then they were unable to start another raid of the same type. So if you start a Chieftain Fight, then you will notice that your Ataxes fight is Locked too. Furthermore, once a fight has finished, a 72 hour cool down for that raid type begins, and once again this timer is for any Boss of the same raid type.
The locked and Cool-down statuses can be seen on the right hand side of the Raid Summoning Screen.
This only affects your ability to summon, it has no effect on your ability to join other raids.

The Raids
Detailed List Here: Dawn of the Dragons New Raid Loot Compendium

The following is the Name, Health, Raid timer and the unlocking location of each Raid Boss.
Raid difficulty increases the health by the following amounts. Hard 25%, Legendary 60% and Nightmare 100%.

Small – 10 People Max
Small Raids have 2 Magic slots.

Chieftain Horgrak – 150,000 Health – 168 hour – Burden’s Rest (Fields)
Ataxes – 2,000,000 Health – 120 hour – Faedark Valley (Elven Caravan)
Briareus the Butcher – 4,500,000 Health – 72 hour – Fallows (Rubicar River)
Bloodmane – 7,000,000 Health – 72 hours – Ryndor (Foothills)
Ironclad – 10,000,000 Health – 48 hours – VornStaag (The Black Carriage)

Medium – 50 People Max
Medium Raids have 3 Magic slots.

Mazalu – 5,000,000 Health – 168 hour – Burden’s Rest (Town Square)
Bloody Alice – 15,000,000 Health – 120 hour – Faedark Valley (Bloody Fingers’ Camp)
Scylla – 25,000,000 Health – 72 hour – Fallows (West Fallows)
Kerberos – 35,000,000 Health – 72 hour – Ryndor (The Tomb)
Zombie Horde- 45,000,000 Health – 60 hours – VornStaag (Cemetery)

Large – 100 People Max
Large Raids have 4 Magic slots.

General Grune – 20,000,000 Health – 168 hour – Burden’s Rest (The Keep)
The Lurking Horror – 35,000,000 Health – 120 hour – Faedark Valley (The Monster Cave)
Gravlock The Night Hunter – 50,000,000 Health – 72 hour – Fallows (East Fallows)
Hydra – 65,000,000 Health – 72 hour – Ryndor (Forbidden Forest)
Stein – 80,000,000 Health – 72 hours – VornStaag (VornStaag Dungeons)

Epic – 250 People Max
Epic Raids have 5 Magic slots.

Erebus The Black – 150,000,000 Health – 168 hour – Fallows (Dragon’s Camp)
Tainted Eberus – 250,000,000 Health – 168 hour – (Special Summons)
Sir Cai – 350,000,000 Health – 168 hour – Ryndor (Plains)
Bogstench – 450,000,000 Health – 96 hours – VornStaag (Castle VornStaag)

Colossal- 500 People Max
Colossal Raids have 6 Magic slots.

Lord Tyranthius – 600,000,000 Health – 168 hour – Ryndor (Camlann Hills)
Nalagarst – 700,000,000 Health – 96 hours – VornStaag (Dragon Graveyard)

Things to Remember
Legions are a VERY important aspect of Raids, the legions you have equipped, and the generals and troops that are in them greatly improve the damage that you do in a raid. For more information about Legions, please check out my guide Dawn of the Dragons Legions Guide
Raids are grouped by type (Small, Medium, Large, Epic and Colossal)
Raid cool-downs effect all raids of a certain type.
You can only summon one raid of each type at any time, and you must wait for the cool-down to finish before you can summon again.
Loot is affected by damage done.
Loot is affected by the speed the raid is completed (Groups are good….mkay).
Doing all the damage yourself does not guarantee you will get all the loot available.

Hope you find this guide helpful, and comments and questions are welcome.
Thanks go out to Felendis for providing the Raid information.