Guardian Dragon |
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| HP | 5,270 / 1,730 | 6,851 / 2,249 (NG+) |
| Weakness | Magic, Dark |
| Resistance | Fire |
| Immune | None |
| Respawns | YES |
Guardian Dragon is a boss in Dark Souls 2.
Guardian Dragon Information
Guardian Dragon is a boss in Dark Souls 2, a red wyvern trapped in a large cage at the top of Aldia's Keep, which must be defeated to proceed to the Dragon Aerie. Different from the previous game, cutting it's tail does not reward the player with any item whatsoever, only preventing it from using the Tail Whip attack. This boss is encountered multiple times later as an enemy, usually protecting items and crystal lizards in rock nests.
Location
Drops
- Guardian Dragon Soul, Fire Tempest (non-boss wyverns)
- Souls Awarded: 37,000 (Standard Game) 74,000 (NG+) 120,250 (NG+6) 129,500 (NG+7)
Strategy Tips
- This fight is best with a light armour and preferably a reasonable physical defence shield. Players of all builds should stay close (IE past his head) to the boss and attack during recovery animations. The bosses physical attacks deal reasonable damage but are slow and easy to block or dodge by backing off. Try to stay at the front or sides of the boss when it is on the ground as his head bite is less powerful than the tail. If the boss flies into the air or on to a wall Immediately run as far behind it as possible making sure no be nowhere near the middle of the arena. This should avoid any fire based attack. just be sure to back off from the dragon or raise a shield as it lands to avoid being flattened.
This boss is not very resistant to any form of attack however Lightning may slightly speed up the fight. In addition the bosses tail can be cut off eliminating its tail sweep attack.
Its fire breath can be blocked with Gyrm Greatshield, but it'll stagger the player.
Using a lightning shortbow +10 (just upgrade the one found in Iron Keep) with 20STR/22DEX using iron arrows hits for ~111 per shot, using dark, magic or lightning arrows hits for 208-250; this can be a very effective means of whittling his health down while he's hanging onto the wall doing his fire attack. Simply dodge the fire, lock on, and you should be able to get 4-5 shots off before he drops back down.
Alternatively, impaling it with Drakewing Ultra Greatsword two handed strong attack at melee range buffed with Dark Pine Resin will inflict up to 1500 damage. -
Stay Between the Legs Strategy:
Note: Staying under 70% equip load is highly recommended for this strategy to work.
I've found the easiest strategy for this boss as well as the 3 drakes after him is to stay underneath them and go for the legs, similar to the Rat Authority fight or Sif from DaS1. Hanging out by one of the legs will generally bait his stomp attack, which can easily be completely avoided by simply staying directly underneath and running to the other leg, which you can then hit a few times and rinse/repeat. Note: make sure to stay directly under when using this strategy; the stomp attack has a pretty wide tracking arc and can easily one hit you if you try backing off or going behind him. If you just stay right under his crotch and run to the inside of his other leg, though, he can't bring the stomp further in and will miss you while you get 3-4 good hits in on the other leg. The Guardian Dragon has very little resistance to lightning as well as poison/toxin, even 4-5 regular poison throwing knives is enough to build his poison meter all the way up. Since he's lying down as you come in, it's a good opportunity to hit him with poison knives/arrows or dark fog/toxic mist depending on your build, to start of at an immediate advantage.
Using the stay-between-his-legs strategy, two-handing a +2 mundane Santier's Spear with 19 as the lowest stat (SL112 at the time) and gold pine resin did about 1000 damage for every three R1 presses. If you start off with poison and then hug his legs, the fight should be over very quickly with only dodging needed.
Video Strategies:
(Co-op)
Move Set
- Stomp
- Fire Breath
- Rain of Fire
- Bite Attack
- Tail Whip
Notes
- Good to have some distance weapon and shield with max resistance to fire
- The tail can be cut off, preventing the whipping attack.
- There is a short window at the beginning of the fight where it is getting up. It is possible to kill the dragon before he can attack by using this window to fire off a few high-damage spells. (I hit him with 4 Great Resonant Souls, and ended the fight before he could attack)
- A bow (in my case Dragonrider Bow +4) with poison arrow will do most of the work, the rest is avoiding fire. Take necessary precaution (flash sweat/flame quartz) but mostly just avoid fire, run behind, shoot additional poison arrow and watch as this majestic beast falls before you
- Staying directly underneath and hugging his legs will easily bait his stomp attack, which can be completely avoided by attacking the inside of the other leg while he stomps. Good for 2H melee, casters or other builds not relying on a shield.
- He's extremely weak to Dark Hail since he's a large target.
- There are no NPC summons for this encounter.
SOTFS: Sellsword Luet, under the stairs near the third mirror (under the dragon bones) that spawns an enemy
Anonymous
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If you think this fire breath is unfair, wait til you fight the Ancient Dragon.
- Anonymous
just take a +5 crypt blacksword and delete him, took me 1.5 cycles before he died, or about 20 seconds in combat
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this boss exists just to stop you from easly farming dragn scales of the body
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Why are there so many comments on this? One of the easiest bosses in DS2, a game filled with easy bosses.
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This mfer just triple stomped me to death while my game was stuttering the **** out. Thanks.
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This wiki says their is no summon for this boss, however there is. The summon is back by the mirror knight chest by the bone dragon lobby.
- Anonymous
Easy just stay underneath him the whole time yeah hell use his stomp attacks but not fast or repeative just heal urself and keep attacking the foot
- Anonymous
What a joke. The only reason why this boss is difficult is the stunlock on the extendo range fire breath that you never really know where it ends, and the fact that it melts your stamina bar when you try to block it. If this stupid lizard just stayed on the ground and didn't spam it's flying attack it would be even less of a fight but at least not as aggravating
Faith builds are probably the best against this guy, because the reason you can use lightning
- Anonymous
Never died to it before even after multiple playthroughs. Lightning Claymore +10 with Sunlight Blade works well. Need patience. Whenever he jumps in the air just run around the outskirts of the arena. When he lands run and attack. Essentially, if he's on the ground, go to his legs and attack. If he's in the air, run around the arena, preferably on the outskirts. You need patience to beat him. He is underwhelming and poorly designed but a fairly easy boss actually.
- Anonymous
What a trash boss lol. They probably realised how easy the boss was and to compensate they gave him firebreath attacks that perma stunlock the player if they get hit. And should you try to heal after a single firebreath took down 90% of your HP you get another one thrown at you that stunlocks you again. Pathetic.
Beat him on the first try with zero hits received. Mage build. Dumb dragon was in the air the whole time shooting at Gwyn knows what.
- Anonymous
This fight goes one of two ways every single time: He either remains glued to the ground for most of the fight and only flies up when you have the stamina to sprint out of the way. Whenever he's on the ground he only stomps and bites making it super easy to avoid his attacks and even easier to kill him. Or he never stays on the ground for longer than 2 seconds and you proceed to get roasted with that obnoxious, arena-wide breath attack that can hit you multiple times (an attack they continuously added to half the dragon bosses in the souls series despite being cancer manifest. why, from?). Most of the time you'll get the first AI cycle, but Gwyn forbid you get stuck with the airborne oven.
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I've been trying to get past this *****ing boss for so long and every time I run in, It just flies up and kills me in 1 *****ing hit with it's fire attack.
- Anonymous
Isnt this the same dragon that protects the sunlight altar in ds1?
- Anonymous
The "stay in between his legs" technique works very well and is what I did. I pulled it off first try with melee and at 85.3% load.
- Anonymous
Or you can be a man and powerstance zweihanders. +10 reg and +10 lightning will cleave bout 1/3 of it's hit points per swing
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I keep hugging his legs, as close as I can possibly be, and I haven't gotten a single stomp attack. All he does is jump up and use a fire attack. Rebel's Greatshield is only 90 fire resist. Should I imbue a shield, or is there another one that is easy to get? (Also, with 100 fire resist shield, will fire breath still stagger you?)
- Anonymous
9 soul spears and a couple of extra great heavy soul arrows makes this boss pretty easy. I beat him with that within a minute of entering the arena.
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I’m not very good at this game (rather I’m impatient, don’t pay attention to the details and games love screwing me over whenever they can)
But I beat this third try
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"IT's not a bird it's actually a dragon".
"maybe we can sneak around it".
"OK"
(STEP)
"NOPE THAT DOESN'T WORK!!!!!"
Breaths fire.
11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 points if you know where that's from.
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Dragon in Heide Tower of Flame was more of a pain to be honest.
- Anonymous
Easiest way to defeat this boss is to stay underneath of him. Attack, recover, shield up. Repeat between attacks. When the dragon flies up same thing, always be underneath or behind the tail end of he dragon. You can easily not get hit even once with this strategy. His attacks are slow and if he hits you once with his foot, tail, or head while underneath it will not deplete your stamina completely so you will have time to recover until his next attack. Honestly up there with the easier bosses in terms of difficulty. Beat first run and didnt expect this boss at all.
- Anonymous
Poison doesn't work anymore, I hit him with 6 poison throwing knives and hit him over a dozen times with a +5 Poison claymore and he still didn't get poisoned
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Using dual-attacks with Mytha's Bent Blade and a Man Slayer, I constantly applied both poison and toxic on the boss. It makes for constant dps while the dragon is flying around.
- Anonymous
be careful not to die when hes up in the air breathing fire and u get a killing shot game glitched and I cant get the items he drops GL
- Anonymous
Huge damage with heavenly thunder especially if its on ground breathing fire and you get right under its chest area. Can spam 2 casts of heavenly thunder for huge easy damage since hitting its wings and tail counts towards its health.
I want to try tongue but hole
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