Dragonheir: Better than Before

[Part of the Cursed story line.] 

With the holy river restored its time to destroy the source of the corruption down here in the Underdark which leads through many team based fights that need much swapping of line ups and many attempts before I manage to get through to the corrupted boss, an big ugly drider mama (level 165) who enjoys summoning adds. Fortunately the trick with her is rather easy, just turn off auto combat and make sure to use the ultimates on the adds before they get too overwhelming! The winning team was Fire Main / Garius / Voresh / Heksandra / Sigrid. Yes, I finally got the blonde archer on my roster and she is a freaking powerhouse if paired with a debuffer like Voresh who debuffs everything as her ultimate hits ALL debuffed enemies, and prevents them from healing!

It turns out destroying this creature is the last step in restoring my memories - I am also a child of Tiamat! Aka The child of chaos who tried to kill her so long ago but failed so she ripped my soul into two pieces (and the reason why this belongs in my "Cursed" journal). Obviously the next step is to reclaim my other half from the death lands but he isn't very happy to see me. To my great surprise this level 170 boss is the FINAL one (you mean there's an end!? yep!) and his phase two is not easy at all since he has a move that captures one of your team mates and if you don't destroy the hand before time runs out its insta-kill time for that person!

It takes me a few goes before eventually finding the winning team (but that's ok because he has some pretty nice boss music) of Fire MC / Horrus / Heksandra / Sigrid / Journ, all fire based heroes to get the "inspirational" damage bonus which is required for this boss. In addition, Journ - the legendary gnome inflicted with crystal disease, also debuffs with his AoE flamethrower and ultimate mine field abilities. Upon completing myself (and the game really), I run into Tiamat who this time - lets me go to continue adventures since "I've changed". The end! I know there's a season two coming / available but I just felt this was such a decent and unexpected end to this story so I'm stopping here. Thumbs up Dragonheir! You turned out to be a much better game than I originally thought you'd be.

One last arena flex because I doubt I'll reach this rank again. Big step from 15+k!

Dragonheir: Elemental 100

[Part of the Cursed story line.] 

I failed to mention last time that there's a new camp mechanic where you can send up to three heroes for training, and they just gain XP per second which certainly helps in the grinding. You still need to grind for the materials to unlock higher levels though, and since the underground enemies are starting to get really tough I decided its time to farm for those big crystals in the three elemental zones - the level 100 version of them to at least gain 1 of the big elemental crystals per run (but supplementing with little ones at a 10:1 ratio).

Frost Lady Glacia (100) is easily handled by Fire main (100 back) / Heksandra (90 back) / Garius (90 mid) / Horrus (90 front) / and Eli (83 back). The double heals from Heksandra and Garius plus Horrus taunt and damage reduction are pretty good, and ranger Eli is an ok damage dealer but probably needs to be switched out for a better substitute at some point. The Lightning Dragon (100) I can handle with Fire main (100 back) / Voresh (90 back) / Ripekas (90 back) / Horrus (90 front) / Lucien (90 front). Lucien (the legendary elf) is not a strong a tank as Horrus or Garius, but his abilities to start everyone with a shield and freezing flank are pretty handy.

She seems like something that came from Elden Ring.

That just leaves the Lady of Flame (100) and honestly, I didn't have a team that could beat her reliably until I maxed out Garius (100). With him backed by Voresh (90) / Zhar'loth (90) / Ripekas (90) / Lucien (90) I could finally make some headway here. If you are wondering why you'd want to level up more than just your main party, this section of the quest answers that by introducing TEAM battles. Much like the team arena, I now need to send more than one squad into each battle and heroes can't be deployed more than once - and if one team fails their fight, your entire squad fails!

Since this zone is asking for two squads my line ups are Fire main (100)/ Zhar'loth (97) / Voresh (96) / Garius (100)/ Lucien (90) and Horrus (90) / Ripekas (99) / Sutha (95) / Heksandra (90) / Usha (90). Sutha the legendary orc berserker hits decently hard and fast, but she's nowhere as tanky as she looks. However, since I got a duplicate Sutha I wanted to try her out. You see, when you pull duplicate heroes of the lower tiers you just get some item refinement currency instead but for a duplicate legendary hero, they get a boost which seems to improve them by 8% each time (up to five times if you get that many duplicates). Alternatively, you can use dupes to buy legendary rank artifacts from the shop!

Dragonheir: Season of Darkness

[Part of the Cursed story line.] 

A new "season" update has showered gifts on players with something like 100+ hero dice which net me a few more legendary ranked heroes who I immediately take my new superstars to the arena and... still get thrashed because obviously I'm not great at team composition LOL. Now also available to me is the "champion arena" which is more PvP that the other arenas where you just face preset teams of other players but don't really interact with them in any way. In the champion arena mode which opens only every few hours, you are head to head in picking your line up for battle. Again, I got thrashed there too. :P

For the new arena, you start at rank 15K+ but most of the opponents are just
NPC squads until around the 200 mark.

At least I make progress against the orc invasion, basically stopping it in its tracks and then defeating the obviously evil high mage who orchestrated everything and turns into a purple dragon (that's new to me)! He's a son of Tiamat so he's kinda strong and my lev 100 fire main actually has to tank while back row Garius (90) / Ripekas (90) / Zhar'loth (90) / and Voresh (90) clinch the win. With his defeat this boss has also turned into another available weekly challenge pinata.

The adventure then leads to what I suppose is the Underdark, where we find the isolated city of Terminus inhabited by rot stricken deep elves and one of their number offers to accompany us back to the main city (breaking quarantine) via the long route - the first section of which is most exciting as it involves an undying spider that continuously pursues you once you reach its territory. You can beat it up, but it gets up after 10 seconds and the chase is on again! Ironically we ultimately escape by sending the spider falling down a deep chasm, because spiders aren't good at falling or climbing? Erm...

Dragonheir: Legendary Luck

[Part of the Cursed story line.] 

As grinding sucks I've also tried sneak in some exploration into the new lands which has revealed some rather adult themes. Let's just say I know how to make drugs now and I'm peddling them to the populace? WHAT? Yeah, that's a thing. Anyway, thanks to an unplanned maintenance I was gifted 100 hero dice by the system and managed to roll up Usha the knight (permanent this time) and Zhar'loth a fear inducing monster caster who replaces the under performing Gitouna.

I've also only now realized some heroes have a captain skill that you can pick from at the start of battle! By default it's always been Garius' +% defense but Zhar'loth brings a +%damage which is now my go to. Alas there's no avoiding the grinding and getting to level 100 is really a pain, but my main gets there while the other regulars are on 90. This helps me find and assist a missing princess (and her army) smash back the orc invaders and also unlocks the TEAM arena.

Team arena is almost exactly like regular arena except you put forward three teams to fight each other consecutively and characters can't be re-deployed between them. Again, finding people lower level to fight seems to be the way to go but its much harder to field three teams of heroes fully equipped with fully upgraded gear! And, once again this lets people with multiple legendary heroes absolutely trounce their opposition. Just to give you an idea, some of these guys have abilities to resurrect fallen team mates and/or self revive.

Good news though, using the camp horn feature (a free hero summon 4x daily or something) which has so far done nothing for me has today given me the Legendary Ghost Troll Ripekas who will be taking Usha's position in the rotation as he is a beast of a DPS. I just have to level him up first. Of course all new heroes start at level 1.

There's a server wide message every time someone pulls this off.

Dragonheir: Fey Dragon

[Part of the Cursed story line.]

What's there to do when you run out of "stamina" to grind you might ask? Well, you can try your hand at Fey Meander which is basically fight 6 groups of this level bad guys, go to next level and do it again with a tough poison boss maiden every 5 levels - or you can challenge NPCs in town to fight which is pretty neat (and recommended). Lastly you can try do the main quest which this time saw me beating a green dragon! Woo! And you can repeat this fight every week. Typical. 

Gitouna, Garius and Usha doing some dragon hunting!

Of course you can also try the arena, which gives you a choice of three other player parties to fight and up to 5 rerolls if none of them are to your liking. My best strategy here is the usual D&D one: only pick on people lower level than you for the best chance of success, but even then the parties with legendary heroes (whom I have none of currently) or parties with better composition will kick your ass. In particular Horrus the dwarf tank (who I did get but never used) is a menace if paired with Heksandra and/or Sigrid the blonde short bow archer girl (she prevents your from healing). Basically if I see her and Horrus I skip unless I've many levels higher! :P

Also note your ranking will drop naturally as other people beat your party too and you won't find out about it until you return to the arena. Anyway, with the dragon dead it seems I've finished another chapter and now can go to the adjoining land which is under an orc invasion... or not because the orcs are super high level which means its back to grinding for me!

Dragonheir: Mt. Trollabar

[Part of the Cursed story line.]

I too am surprised that I'm still here, as the story has had some interesting turns wherein I've been betrayed by hot Countess Catherine (who is a OK healer if she's in the party) but also gotten lucky with some hero dice to get Gitouna the dwarf crafter knifer who hits fast and Voresh the ice lich who has a wicked AoE, though it takes time to load up. I've also been loaned the female dual wielding knight Usha to get through a particular place and those three along with Garius and my fire main are my current party.

While smashing through some trolls I've come across the "second" daily type mission which involves fighting a Poseidon type ocean giant and is pretty cool. The "first" daily is harder to find, fighting some sort of death knight through a portal. You also get two garbage tasks daily which are easy and help get you more hero dice and there's also a ranked arena to fight other players parties which is just kicking my rear at the moment so I'm leaving that alone.

Voresh taking on Poseidon Malinus.

Oh, remember how we need specific elemental crystals to level up heroes? It gets worse when you hit the next tiers as the place that drops them makes it much worse for heroes of that element to be there. For example, if I send my fire themed heroes into the fire realm, they do 30% less damage and take 60% more damage meaning you shouldn't send your fire heroes in there. But but but... yep. That means you have to level up AT LEAST THREE TEAMS to be able to farm through each of the three elemental zones! Drow archer Adrie who slows down the bosses from using their ultimates is pretty handy here, but in the case that you can't or don't want to fight the high level variants you can just grind the easier ones and fuse the 2-3 low level crystals you get per run into a higher tier at the ratio of 10 lessers:1 greater. Waaaaaah!

Dragonheir: Elf-landia

[Part of the Cursed story line.]

I made it out of the death lands and into a forest of elves (and am still playing the game surprisingly)! While I've rolled up a fair number of heroes the standouts are Vasska who summons skelies, Isitarian who summons a baby dracolich, and tank/healer Garius who I'm pretty sure is also a skele underneath that armor. As you can only deploy 5 heroes max that means everyone else (other than Heksandra who is an awesome cleric) is benched while dealing with the "ghost elf" threat. That is, elves aren't ascending/being reborn and instead are just hanging around as angry ghosts. Awesome!

Yes, I'm surprised that there's actually a story in here too. Also, there's multiple game modes. Some fights are tower defense things where ranged area folk do better than say Garius. Others like the goblin camp just require super high DPS for your team to clear the waves of goblins in under a specific time to unlock better rewards and a harder mode so that you can do it all again! I found the grind! Lol. Seriously though, EXP which is used to level up your heroes is found in potions which is by design I suppose so that you can better direct which heroes you want to level. The rewards of the goblin camp are almost exclusively EXP potions so you'll need to go in there. Each run consumes "stamina" which is recovered every day or by eating special food items.

Vasska and Garius grinding up some fire crystals.
The fire boss lady is too lazy to stand up!

At particular levels though, EXP potions aren't enough. You need to go into one of three elemental realms to farm up the correct crystal for your heroes element. This also costs stamina, and sure the elemental realms drop crystals but they don't drop EXP potions. Oh! And there are grave sites which you can raid (again costs stamina) for gear. Each grave site drops one particular set of gear which you wear for a matching bonus. These ONLY drop gear and no EXP potions or crystals. I see a trend forming here...