"Neverwinter" - Soloing Epic Dungeons Quiz

Answer: All classes are just as viable an option as one another

All classes are viable options, albeit at fluctuating difficulty levels, to solo an epic dungeon. Some classes will have an easier or harder time on very specific ones, however. For example, Oathbound Paladins should have little trouble soloing Valindra's Tower, while Guardian Fighters should make their way through Kessell's Retreat without issue.

However, while Guardian Fighters and Oathbound Paladins can solo Epic Cragmire Crypts with moderate difficulty, soloing this dungeon as a Hunter Ranger or Control Wizard will be exponentially more difficult due to the specific mechanics behind soloing these dungeons.

Answer: Drunken Rage

It's easy to be confused at the differences between Drunken Rage and Flurry of Blows. Both involve Traven violently and rapidly swinging his sword against the player. However, the key difference to make Drunken Rage significantly more threatening is that it has an extremely high Armor Penetration and an even higher Critical Severity rate than Flurry of Blows has. In fact, players who are not Guardian Fighters or Oathbound Paladins with their shields up will often fail to survive Drunken Rage, and since Traven will appear right in front of the player, and be able to follow them even if they dash away, this very attack makes soloing this dungeon a daunting task. Even Guardian Fighters or Oathbound Paladins with their shields up will take a lot of damage from this attack, and since Traven has a never-ending stream of help from his Blackdagger Bandit cronies, it can make this attack nearly overwhelming for anyone when combined with this support. To make matters even more complicated, after using Drunken Rage once, Traven will back off for a short while before randomly using the attack a second time. Catching the player off guard with such a mighty attack can definitely overwhelm them.

For what I'd recommend to anyone trying to solo this fight, as someone who has soloed it myself, is to pack Fighter's Recovery if you're a Guardian Fighter. Surviving Drunken Rage is difficult with your shield alone, but if you can manage to time your Fighter's Recovery to the point where he shows up to use the attack, you can easily survive the blow with plenty of health to spare. Fighter's Recovery, as a whole, is this class' saving grace in this fight; Traven hits very, very, veeeerrrryyyy hard, and he's also extremely bulky. Sustaining this fight eithout Fighter's Recovery is unreasonably difficult.

Answer: A hard hitting companion

While all of these things are heavily recommended to bring to this fight, you could theoretically do without Scrolls of Life or Greater Stones of Health (if you're interested in masochism) but it doesn't matter what you bring here if you come without a hard hitting companion. A hard hitting companion is necessary to free you from Valindra's death choke. If Valindra kills you with the death choke, you cannot revive yourself with a Mass Scroll of Life, and will thus be forced to start the fight over. Since you are soloing this fight, a hard hitting companion is compulsory in order to free you from this choke before it kills you.

As a Guardian Fighter who soloed this dungeon, I would recommend the Blacksmith for this task, at least for my fellow Guardian Fighters. The Blacksmith definitely hits Valindra hard enough to free a player from the death choke, being able to drive her off in about two or three hits consistently. The Blacksmith has practical applications outside of this one task for Guardian Fighters, providing a useful Active Bonus and being a powerful Striker with which to improve the Guardian Fighter's offensive presence.

Answer: Lostmauth shoots the player with a deadly laser beam

This laser beam is very deadly and deals tons of damage. Guardian Fighters or Oathbound Paladins with their shields up should be able to take this attack with little problem, but other classes will be in trouble, as the blow is impossible to dodge with maneuvers such as a dash, teleport, or vanishing spell of sorts.

Answer: Imperial Rage Drakes

Imperial Rage Drakes are simply glorified versions of normal Rage Drakes. They are minimally bulkier and hit a little bit harder. They should not prove to be too difficult to take down, though trying to do this and simultaneously contending with Garakas' attacks can prove to be tricky.

Answer: Syndryth's healing options

Managing Syndryth's healing options, of which there are two, is extremely important, as it is otherwise imposssible to win this fight, as these healing options will outheal any damage the player, regardless of their class, skill, or equipment, could possibly throw at her. There are two healing options Syndryth has. The first is fairly easy to deal with: the player must ensure that any Spiders, whether they be Spiderlings or Blade Spiders, are eliminated as quickly as possible; Syndryth will otherwise lure them into one of the webs she makes, the web will kill the Spider and heal Syndryth on the spot. The second healing option is a lot more intense and difficult to deal with. After transforming into a Drider, Syndryth will begin to receive support from Lolth, the Demon Queen. Lolth will do two things: Lolth will occasionally fire a deadly poisonous laser beam at you, and Lolth will fire a healing beam at Syndryth which heals her for a gargantuan amount of health. This beam can be blocked, but doing so is easier said than done; the player must step in the way of the beam to intercept it. Unfortunately, doing so will subject the player to a massive amount of damage; the heal beam applies an extremely nasty Damage-over-Time to the player which shaves off a clean fifteen percent of their health every second for four seconds. Combine that with the fact that the player would be stepping in front of Syndryth, ensnaring themselves in her webs, to block the beam, and it is very easy for the player to get overwhelmed trying to stop Syndryth from getting healed. Unfortunately, it is all too necessary for the player to make this maneuver; you cannot allow Syndryth to receive this heal beam with any kind of consistency, or else she will essentially live forever.

For Guardian Fighters, the need to block Syndryth from healing is even more necessary, as Guardian Fighters are passive by nature and would be unable to even come close to keep up with the healing options Syndryth has. While taking a DPS loadout might seem like a good idea on paper, it is simply going to be extremely difficult to handle the reduced bulk when you consider how much damage the Guardian Fighter will be having to deal with to stop Syndryth's healing. That said, the Tank loadout is recommended. Thankfully, the added bulk and access to Fighter's Recovery arguably gives the Guardian Fighter the easiest time out of any class in the game in intercepting the heal beams and preventing them from getting to Syndryth. Unfortunately, killing Spiders before Syndryth can heal off of them will become difficult to do while also juggling actually hurting Syndryth yourself. Even with all the preparation, it is still easy to lose this fight if you do not come with the right companion for the job. Really, you could afford to go either way: bringing a hard hitting companion to hurt Syndryth and/or Spiders makes sense, but you would then want to bring a Llira's Bell, as it is essentially guaranteed that such a companion would go down many, many times in the fight, and it would make little sense to bring such a companion along if they were unable to actually do their job. Another companion decision that makes sense is bringing a Defender companion. Defender companions naturally have the bulk to stick around for the long haul, and they can be helpful in relieving you of having to Tank everything in the room by generating Threat to deviate some of Syndryth's minions away from you. However, choosing this option places more stress on the player to kill Spiders as they show up, and to shoulder the bulk of the load in hurting Syndryth, as Defender companions are typically quite passive and unable to hurt much of anything for any noticeable damage. That said, a sneaky option for a Defender, and one I used when I soloed this dungeon, would be the Dancing Shield. While the Dancing Shield, much like its fellow Defenders, hardly hits for much damage, it does reduce the Damage Resistance of its targets by a noticeable amount for a brief period of time, which could help the player to deal more damage to whatever the Dancing Shield is targeting, ideally Syndryth or a Spider.

Answer: Defender

Defender companions, such as the Laughing Skull, Frost Mimic, Yeti, or Stalwart Golden Lion, can be key for generating Threat and helping to divide the big force you're dealing with. They're generally going to be bulky enough to stall multiple units at a time, while you try to kill the leftover units.

When I soloed Epic Cragmire Crypts, I swapped out my companion for my Legendary Laughing Skull when I reached the Competing Adventurer Party. My Laughing Skull helped to tank Samulin Farcaster for pretty much the entire fight, while I battled the other four enemies. While only deviating one of the five enemies may not seem useful on paper, it ended up turning what should have been a daunting challenge into one I got past fairly easily. That being said, I also had the Llira's Bell equipped, and used it so that my Laughing Skull could keep up the fight against Samulin as long as possible. This is an incredibly helpful item to have equipped if you're going to try this strategy out.

Answer: They have a Power that allows them to skip massive amounts of the dungeon

A Trickster Rogue can use Teleport to bypass the entire Magic Brazier and Shadow Gate parts - parts that total about one third of the entire dungeon - instantly. That being said, they will still have a lot of difficulty against Traven himself; none of their stun or vanish powers will give them any defense whatsoever against Traven's Fire Bombs or Drunken Rage attacks, which are Traven's trademark attacks.

Answer: Yes

The Soulgreen's impact on the solo try is significantly lessened than when the player has a party with them; the Soulgreen will be absent completely when fighting Tal'Gath the Undying and Orcus, but it will still impact the player as they go to slay the Servitors of Orcus. Upon engaging the Servitor of Orcus, the Servitor will raise three Rotters to fight the player.

The Servitor will aid them in battle for ten seconds, before they proceed to turn around and cast some sort of magic which promptly sacrifices themselves to generate a Soulgreen explosion.

Interestingly enough, this explosion will not target the player, but rather, it will target their companion. There is no explanation as to why this happens, but what we do know is that this will always target the player's companion regardless as to how much Threat either the player or their companion has generated.

In any case, the explosion will kill even Defender companions in one hit, so it is recommended to have the Llira's Bell handy for when this occurs.

Answer: It will restart the fight

Attempting to close these Rifts inflicts a crucial and time consuming mistake on the player. While normally, the player would spawn inside the Rift to kill the Demons inside, closing off the Rift to prevent Orcus from gathering power from it, if a player is soloing this fight and tries to go through a Rift, they will spawn inside the Rift for an extremely brief portion of time before immediately being teleported outside the fight, forced to restart it as though they had been killed. While Cryptic Studios has yet to speak as to why this is, there is a practical explanation as to why this happens; when the player enters the Rift, there is nobody fighting Orcus while they are gone. With enemies in this game, whenever the player gets out of their range and disengages, the enemies will return to their original spawn point, heal off any damage the player may have done, and wait for the player to return. The player effectively spawns in an entirely different area from Orcus, which would sensibly explain the player being far enough away from Orcus, and because there's no other player fighting Orcus, the fight essentially ends when the player enters the Rift. With the fight having ended, Orcus returns to his original spawn point, heals himself fully, and the fight resets. With the fight having been reset, the Rifts themselves are removed. Because the player has disengaged from Orcus, they are not spawned back in Orcus' chambers, but rather right outside them. In any case, it will be mandatory for anyone looking to solo this fight to avoid using the Rifts for any reason, at all, ever.

Unfortunately for myself, I learned this lesson the hard way when I soloed this fight; this blemish prevented me from becoming the first player in the game's history to solo the dungeon, as I was ultimately about half an hour behind the player to do it, with the mistake costing me about an hour and a half's work on Orcus.