Vana'diel Bestiary: Black Dragon  

I always enjoy this fight, mainly because it's one NM fight that is both enjoyable, sometimes challenging (Depending on how many people you have), and always available.

I have completed this fight no less than 14 times. The fewest people I have successfully completed it with is 2, Myself as PLD, and a SAM. There was actually supposed to be a BLM and a WHM come in with us, but they hadn't done the Mission properly and so couldn't join in. Here's how we managed;

I (PLD) ran in first, was aggroed by the Dragon and Provoked the Eye. I used Invincible right now, as I was taking hits from both the Eye and the Dragon, and with the SAM putting in some respectable hits, the Eye fell just after Invincible wore off. I provoked the Dragon, and chainspelled with Cure while the SAM used his 2-hour. 3 Tachi: Enpi's later, the dragon was at half-health and I had plenty of MP left, so we just beat him down, using Weapon Skills whenever possible.

In the end, we were both quite low on health, so we had to share hate, both ended up with HP around 100, so not bad at all. ^_^

I find this very sad but I fought this for Sandy Rank2-3 "Journey Abroad" with three people..including me. The following was the party
Blm30/Whm15
War30/Mnk15
War19/Mnk8 (me at the time)

We had a level 27 Samurai but when he entered the battlefield he like went afk and sat there until Searcher was dead and the Dragon had maybe 50hp left...It is not difficult..Sleep the dragon focus on Searcher and then after killing him 2hr on the Dragon...not very hard people...lets get it together.

Did this with 25 Rdm/Blm (me) and my friend 25 Drk/war. My friend died but i was able to finish off the dragon, he was rank 5 anyway so it didn't make much of a difference.

Just gotta say... woot woot.

I (hume WAR|DRK) was helping Zoddtheimmortal (galka WAR|PLD) and Denz (taru WHM|BLM). We were trying to find more people to help, but when none showed, we decided to put our money on death or glory... in that order--we thought.

The three of us pretty much pwnd him. ^^

Just an FYI for anyone who is researching this. The dragon will CURSE you if you use any WS. Lvl 25 WHM can not cast cursna, and you will probably die because of it. I heard holy water can cure curse, but i dont know for sure. I do know for sure by not using WS (weapon skills), that he will not cast curse. I am about 18/19 on this thing (died the very first time), and have tested that theory many times. With a 3 person party (all lvl 25) consisting of WHM BLM and Tank, you should have no trouble, although 4 is better. Dont forget to have BLM to sleep the dragon while you kill the eye, and dont use WS!!!!!!!

Let me first say that I’m trying to tell this as a story to make it more interesting, but I’m by no means a writer or for that matter very good with grammar. So please excuse the grammatical errors and enjoy the story.

Hello, this is Scrappy from the Valefor Server. When I first started this game I was an Elvaan Warrior/Monk, Procont. I made a Taru mule and loved playing as a little mage so I quit playing my Elvaan. Well after many levels playing WHM and BLM I decided to play my Elvaan some to get a release. After playing WHM for so long I loved playing Monk!!!

Fast-forward a few weeks, I took Monk from ~10 to 27 in this time and the party invites had stopped. Now Procont being my mule he was only Rank 2 and not many people knew him by name, so I understand this could be some of the problem. Only one of those things I could actually control and that was rank. So I set off on the long journey of the final rank 2 mission. I’m a resident of San d’Oria so I headed to Bastok first to get my sand. This didn’t take too long because I knew where to go and what to do. So now I’m off to Windurst to complete the final leg in this journey.

Upon arriving in Windurst I began to search for friends or linkshell members in the area that might be able to help defeat the dragon. Well due to the time of night, none were on or anywhere to be found near Windurst. After receiving the Dark Key I decided I would give it a shot solo.

I had read online about some people trying and succeeding in the battle as a RDM. Well needless to say I wasn’t about to try and level RDM up to 25 just to try this, so that left me 2 options a level 24 warrior or a 27 monk. Well as you all know monks have the best 2-hour ability in the game, for the early levels anyway.

Battle preparation included buying 5 potions, 2 X-potions, and an Icarus Wing. I had never used any of the items before and had no idea of the cast times so I really didn’t know what to expect. I headed out to Giddeus to the Burning Circle.

Right before I got to the Burning Circle area I ran into a nice Taru WHM farming and asked “ (Please) (Protect) and (Shell) (Can I have It?)”. Well this little Taru gave me Protect II and Shell I. I really wish I could remember his name, I think it was Doran.

So I head in to the Burning Circle and there I am standing there solo looking down the passage at the eyeball and dragon. I used my Icarus Wing to get 100% TP, ate a Meat Kabob and began boosting. After about 6-7 boosts I began to charge in toward the arena. As I was running in I hit Dodge and Focus and began to attack the eyeball first. As soon as I engaged him I used Combo and took half his life. I did normal attacks until he was dead, at this time I was down to ~200hp out of ~510. I popped a X-potion and a couple of potions and then hit my Hundred Fists macro. The plan was to get the dragon to ¼ life and use a high TP combo to finish him off. Well as he got close to ¼ life he used some special move where he jumps up in the air an hit me for 150 damage, the problem was I only had 110hp left. So that battle was over, but before I left I looked up and I had ~200%tp. If only I had not been so nervous and used it I think I would have won!!!

Well here I am back in San d’Oria, forgot to set home point and still nothing to do so I begin to head back to Windurst. I stopped by the auction house again and restocked the potions and wing. This time I remembered something that would have helped me a ton. Persikos au Lait, hp regen drink, this would have kept me alive long enough to get off the final combo and win the match.

So I head back to Windurst with 5 potions, 2 X-potions, an Icarus Wing and a Persikos au Lait in my inventory. It took me about 30 minutes to get back but I still had to wait for my 2-hour to reset and for the medicated effect to wear off, medicated effect took 2 hours also.

Well after doing some real life things I come back and check it and see that I’m not ready to go into battle again!!

I head back to the Burning circle arena and enter. This time I saw no one around so I went in with no buffs at all. Again there I am looking down the passage at a dragon and eyeball solo.

I ate another Meat Kabob, use my Icarus Wing, boost 6-7 times, use the Persikos au Lait and begin my charge down the passage. Again as I’m running in I hit Focus and Dodge. This time the dragon draws me in and I end up facing the wrong way and not even attacking the eyeball. I was thinking oh great I’m going to die because of the camera angle.

I finally get turned around and begin to pound on the eye. This battle I saved the TP until the eye was at ½ life and used Combo to kill it. After the eye was dead I hit both X-potion and was almost at full health. I hit my Hundred Fists macro and began to pound away on the dragon. I countered a couple of it’s attacks and I was at ~200% TP again and he was at 1/3 life. He used a move similar to the Rams in La Theine Plateau that lowers your max HP/MP; I think it was called Black Cloud. It lowered me to 110hp and I hit my combo macro in a panic. Effects go off and the dragon falls to the ground!!!!

I was so excited I didn’t know what to do, I looked at my friends list and only saw one friend online that knew Procont. So I had to send him a message, “I KILLED RANK 3 DARGON SOLO!!!!!!!!” (or something close to that anyway).

I pop my instant warp scroll and head back to the castle to get my Rank 3!!!


Useless information that people may want to know.

1) I was hitting each the eye and dragon for ~30 a fist
2) They were hitting me for ~30 per attack with the dragon being a little higher.
3) Potions were 400gil, X-potions were 1000gil, Icarus Wing was 3000gil and Persikos au Lait was 3000gil
4) Yes I would do it again!!!

Now for equipment

Weapon – Republic Knuckles
Head – Emperor Hairpin
Neck – Spike Necklace
Earrings – Beetle Earring +1
Body – Federation Gi
Hands – Federation Tekko
Rings – Courage Ring
Back – Nomad’s Mantle
Waist – Purple Belt
Legs – Republic Subligar
Feet – Federation Kyahan

Thank you for your time and again I’m sorry for being so long with my story. I hope you enjoyed it!!!

I'm going to attempt to solo this thing along with the Eye. ;)

Can it be done...we'll see. :)

I'm betting a well prepared RDM at lvl 25 can do it. Anyone think I'm wrong? :)

Second time around that we fought this guy, proved interesting to say the least. PT was...
22 WHM/RDM
25 WAR/MNK (41 War)
25 SAM/WAR (39 Sam)
25 MNK/WAR (32 Mnk)
25 WHM/BLM
25 WHM/BLM

Don't ask why we had so many whm we were trying to get them all to complete mission 2-3. So anyway I thought peice of cake we formed a battle plan and went from there. Took out the eye, which took about 30 seconds. Then went for the dragon. Hundred Fists ... I did Tachi: Enpi x4 creating two distortion skillchains. By the time I had finished the fourth it had perhaps 15% life. Of course I knew I was going to draw aggro but with 3 whm I shoudl be fine! Well, strangely it did some sort of AOE attack and killed everyone but the war, who defeated it. I was truely perplexed b/c I had about 250 hp left and should have been fine. Not to mention when I checked the log it didn't mention ANYTHING that damaged me, I just died. Very strange. But the whm all completed their quests, and I lost 400 xp and about 3000 gil from transactions getting lvl 25 gear :(

Does anyone know what happened? The warrior didn't take any damage, but from checking the log I didn't see anything on there.

sry accident!

Edited, Sun Sep 5 18:42:36 2004

Before you start pounding your fist at the dragon keep in mind that one of the dragon's special will CURSE the tank. I've fought him 2-3 times and got cursed twice as tank. I suggest buying 1 HOLY WATER from Windurst (1k) or from bastok (500 gil) for your tank. Either way you will need get rid of the curse, so get CURSNA from a high lvl whm or get the holy water.

This is only theory but i think it will break the time records. My recommendation is 4 mnks,whm, and blm. let the blm sleep the dragon. start kicking the eyeball's butt. Let 1 mnk use 2hr power and pound the crap out of it, while the rest continue to attack. Once the eyeball is dead, go for the dragon. let the other 3 mnk rip loose thier 2hr power and it should be fairly easy. Whm and blm do their usual spells. Recommeneded party of lvl25.

We killed this with 4 people of 23-25..
BLM, WHM, BRD, PLD
First killed the eye then the pld died against the Dragon, BRD tank, BLM nuke, BLM get aggro, he tank use Manafont and he is dead.

I did this with a JP pt at lvl 25 warrior hehe, was very easy and no1 died luckily.I only had to voke once or twice because the whm casted CureII couple of times but other then that wasnt too bad. ^^

Me (a lvl 25 war), 2 other 25 war's, a capped whm, a capped pally, and a capped mnk wasted these guys in 3 minutes.
this is how we did it:
1. blm sleep the dragon.
2. everyone concentrate on the searcher.
3. one of our warriors used Mighty Strikes on the Searcher, we killed it right after.
4. everyone turned their attenion on the dragon ... 2 remaining war's Mighty Striked and we shortly after massacred the dragon.

no deaths ... twas very easy.