Ur-Dragon Assassin strategies

This page describes strategies specific to the Assassin class for effectively fighting the Ur-Dragon, both online and offline.

If you have an original strategy to contribute, please add to this section

Overview
The Assassin class is a powerful offensive vocation with strong strength growth: Ur-Dragon assassin strategies generally rely on leveraging high strength and attack power for maximum damage.

In the original version of Dragon's Dogma the skill Invisibility, and the augments Bloodlust and Autonomy were more effective than in the later release Dark Arisen, so some strategies using these skills may not be as effective in the later version. The fighter augment Exhilaration often also used by some Assassins was also reduced in power in the later release.

NDenizen's strategy
NOTE: Invisibility has been nerfed to 40 seconds duration and both Bloodlust and Autonomy have been nerfed significantly downwards in Dark Arisen!

In the original version of Dragon's Dogma a lone Assassin is probably the most effective vocation to choose when wanting to make a significant effect on the online Ur-Dragon. (This is not the case in Dark Arisen due to the significant upgrades in weaponry, as well as reduction in the effectiveness of Assassin skills augments.)

Pawns should not be used.

Preparation

 * Primary Weapon: Daggers (Heaven's Key for the holy elemental damage)
 * Secondary Weapon: Bow
 * Dagger Skills: Invisibility, Hundred Kisses, Gale Harness
 * Bow Skills: Any
 * Items: +10 Liquid Vims, 36 Conqueror's Periapts, 36 Demon's Periapts, 1 Maker's Finger, some Staminal Drenches.
 * Recommended Weapons: Heaven's Key, Fey Whisper
 * Recommended Equipment: Dragonroar, Chainmail Bracers, Golden Belt, Assailant's Bracers, Gleaming Bangles, Holy Cuisses, Baleful Nails.
 * Recommended Augments: Bloodlust, Autonomy, Exhilaration, Equanimity, Clout, Acuity

Get rid of your main pawn (to trigger Autonomy), then sleep til nightfall (to trigger Bloodlust). Before entering the Chamber of Lament, throw yourself off buildings until your health is in the red (to trigger Exhilaration) - try retain as much health as possible whilst still remaining on the brink of death. If you are using a Heaven's Key, you will need to put your health permanently in the red so the weapon healing can't heal you out of 'red' health - this can be achieved by reducing your gray life bar to within the 'red' health zone. (eg by repeatedly inflicting fall damage and then by having a Mage heal - to erode the gray health bar to the level necessary for the augment Exhilaration.)

The Strategy
After these preparations, enter the Chamber of Lament with Daggers and Bow equipped and kill the three corrupt pawns, taking care not to take any more unnecessary damage along the way - use Invisibility if you have to. When the pawns are dead, wait for the Ur-Dragon to descend. Just before he lands, activate Gale Harness. Once he has landed, equip the Maker's Finger and shoot it at the Ur-Dragon. When it hits, the Ur-Dragon should be momentarily stunned. Activate Invisibility, then climb on to the Ur-Dragon and locate a heart before it starts moving again. Go to your menu and use Liquid Vim, 4 Conqueror's Periapts and 4 Demon's Periapts.

Once these are active, begin using Hundred Kisses, whilst making sure you're drawing purple blood. Avoid climbing near the mouth area if possible, or the Ur-Dragon will grab you or breathe fire on you causing massive amounts of damage and setting you ablaze. Continue using Hundred Kisses nonstop, pausing only to go into your item menu to renew your Liquid Vims and Periapts. You need to use a Liquid Vim every 45 seconds, and you need to use four Periapts of both types every minute. Continue this approach, checking back and forth between your health bar and your screen to make sure you're drawing purple blood and your items are still in effect. If the Ur-Dragon takes off to perch in the distance, there's little you can do except try and use your bow to do some more damage, but if fortunate, you should be able to remain on the Ur-Dragon for the whole 8 minutes. This strategy is a good way of making a great deal of damage against the Ur-Dragon, but more importantly it keeps you safely out of harm as long as you have stamina.

If the Dragon does roost on its perch, using Mighty Bend with Blast Arrows will bring him down immediately if you hit an area with a glowing heart.

Final Considerations
The Dagger skill "Invisibility" will make you invincible to practically everything the Ur-Dragon throws at you, including magick attacks, hence why it's the main point of this strategy. If nothing else, make sure you can be Invisible at all times - if you don't want to stockpile Liquid Vims, Stamina restoration items can also work. Health Restoration and Status Cures can be used in case you make a mistake and need to be healed. The Maker's Finger is not absolutely necessary, but it will add a decent amount of damage on top off your dagger attacks, and it opens a nice window of opportunity at the beginning of the battle that will save time and effort in locating a vulnerable heart. Armor is not important, you could go naked and it would make little difference, but equipment that boosts Attack and Magick or your stamina limit is a good choice. The armor recommended above have such bonuses. All armor and weapons you use against the Ur-Dragon should be Dragonforged for maximum efficiency.

Heaven's Key is the best choice of dagger since it is powerful, and Ur is weak to holy magic - it is obtainable from the offline Ur-Dragon. An alternative choice is Dragon's Pain found in the Everfall, in which case the Magick-related augments and items should be replaced with ones based solely on Strength.

Most of the augments you choose are based around increasing damage output:
 * Bloodlust, Autonomy - the foundation of this build. They increase damage output immensely (70% each). Be sure to rest til nightfall before challenging the Ur-Dragon, and obviously don't bring pawns.
 * Exhiliration - when low on health, this will boost your strength even more (1.5%). You really shouldn't take any damage with Invisibility, so you can reduce your health to critical before entering the Chamber of Lament and remain relatively safe. Just be sure your Invisibility never runs out.
 * Equanimity - the same as Exhilaration, but with Magick. Only use with Heaven's Key
 * Clout, Ferocity, Vehemence - For extra strength.
 * Acuity, Attunement - For extra magick. Only use with Heaven's Key.
 * Entrancement, Sinew, Efficacy, Potential - if you plan on using Stamina restoration items instead of Vim, these will increase the amount you can carry, or extend the limits of your stamina. Keep in mind you can use Sinew to fill up on items, remove it afterwards and you'll still keep them, you'll just be overencumbered.

With the right combination, your damage output will change significantly, often multiplying your basic attack stats by an average of 11x, not counting the invisible attack boosts from the Periapts. This combined with Invisibility allows you to make a decent attack on the online Ur-Dragon and do visible damage, all the while unable to be killed.

azimsalimi;s strategy
Note: Also suitable for Dragon's Dogma, NOT Dark Arisen!

In addition to the above strategy which I am currently using, I would like to add a few. First, I'm using Female assassin with the above specs but I wish to share some of my stats for comparison purposes to other players. My level is 149 (my PSN ID is azimsalimi, if you wish to add or use my pawn - Coto Hikaru), my build is emphasized specifically to maximize my attack strength, so currently my attack strength is 803 (i.e. the strength in the bracket under Offense status. Magick 258, HP 2945, ST 3885. My augment used for this build is Bloodlust, Autonomy, Exhiliration, Clout, Equanimity, Acuity. My equipments are all dragon-forged and am using Heaven's Key, Fey Whisper, Dragonroar, Maiden Camisole, Golden Belt, Assailant's Bracers, Silk Lingerie, Striker's Greaves, and Baleful Nails. All of these are focused on raising strength and I think is cool looking.

So, with all these, my current Strength is 6225 and Magick is 3479 for Primary (Heaven's Key). This stats are after activating Bloodlust, Autonomy, Exhiliration, and Equanimity.

How do I go about a Ur Dragon Online run: (I'm in the post Dragon in the quest of Fathom Deep)

1) Make sure you buy Mushroom Potage (max is 999), Conqueror's Periapt (999) and Demon's Periapt (999).

2) Make sure you have Mithridate (i.e. to cure poison) can be bought at a shop in Gran Soren next to armor shop and Rotten foodstuff such as Small Rotten Fish (i.e. to inflict poison) can be bought at Cassardis from an old lady that sell vegetables.

3) About the funding to buy all these, you could fight Ur Dragon offline to gather experience as well as 20 Wakestones. For 100 wakestones, you can sell them for about 40k gold each while equipping Suasion augment to your character and main pawn. It should generate 4 million gold for each 100 wakestones.

4) What I would bring (after testing its suitability to my character - Chelsea) include 45 Mushroom Pottages (you will use 40 pottages in one run; extra 5 is for safety), 1 Mithridate (to cure poison), 1 Small Rotten Fish (to inflict poison), 36 Conqueror's Periapt and 36 Demon's Periapt. By the way, Mushroom Pottages and Periapts can be bought at Fournival (in post Dragon, he should be behind the ale house with Black Cat owner during noon—about 20 minits wait if you rest till morning).

5) Before you start, ensure you are alone by releasing you 2 pawns and killing your main pawn (at this stage, I just run to the hole and pick up Coto Hikaru (my pawn) and threw her into the abyss hole. Being alone activates Autonomy.

6) To activate Bloodlust, Rest until nightfall. Now, at night time, quickly activate Gale Harness and run off the highest edge of cliff (i.e. above the Medeline's camp). 3 fall from there should give you a significant injury to cause your character to fall into critical state (red screen). Mine have around 400 health left. Now, to sustain the injury from being cured by Heaven's Key, eat the Small Rotten Fish to inflict poison to yourself while running towards the Chamber of Lament. Let your health drop from poison to the lowest possible (mine was 13 health) then eat the Mithridate to cure the poison (leaving your health to be as low as possible). This way, while Heaven's Key will cure your health, it won't be fast enough to bring you out of critical state until the fight with Online Ur Dragon is over.

7) In the Chamber of Lament, kill the 3 pawns while activating Gale Harness (for speed) and Invisibility (to avoid taking any damage - remember, your health is at the lowest possible, as mine was 13 out of 2945). Fighting Ur Dragon Online in this method allows you to activate Autonomy, Bloodlust, Exhiliration, and Equanimity with total attack of around 9.5k (this is my stats). Fight using the above strategy of using Heaven's Key and attack the Dragon's Heart. Testing this to Gen 80 Ur Dragon enabled me to cause damage around 75% of his health (i.e. from 1 full bar). It's not the best damage but at the moment, this is the best that I can do.

8) The potages used for my fight is 40 and 9 Periapts which will act as a timer on when the fight will end. After you managed to fight the Ur Dragon, repeat the process.

By the way, I am currently trying to read the trend of Ur Dragon so that it can be easily tracked and all players can estimate when the grace period would come. It's kinda tricky so, until I can truly comprehend it, I will not write anything as mere speculations. So, hope that I can discover and pray that I can share them here.

Ok, based on my current observation of Ur Dragon, from Gen 78 to Gen 87, it seems that some Gen of Ur Dragon seemed stronger or weaker in relation to the rest. Before everyone who reads this starts cursing saying I do not know anything, YES, I admit, I'm a newbie in this area so, what I've written here is for Ultra-newbie. So, experts out there please don't get angry or better yet, correct me when I've made a mistake here.

How do I come to this assumption, 1) with all the stats of my attacks remains relatively constant (as explained in detail in the above section) I manage to cause damage to Ur Dragon in constant degree for each Gen of Ur Dragon. 2) In average, I managed to cause 50% of the health bar which I call as normal defense. When I managed to cause 70% up to 90% of damage, its considered as weak Gen of Ur Dragon. When I managed to only cause merely 20 to 30% of damage, its considered as strong Gen of Ur Dragon. 3) As example, Gen 78, I've managed to give constant 75% of damage. Gen 79, at 50%, Gen 80 and 81 around 30%, Gen 82 and 83 around 20%. Suddenly, Gen 84 is considered as super weak as I just missed him since other players managed to kill him within 3 hours (i was on my break). Gen 85 is quite weak as 75% of damage can be caused to him. Gen 86 at 50% and Gen 87 at 70%.

Hence, how to estimate the time of death for each Gen of Ur Dragon is simply based on his defense. Normal defense should take around 1.5 days. High defense took around 2 days or more. Low defense took about 6 to 12 hours and ultra weak like Gen 84 took only 3 hours. These are simply estimates where it all depends on the number of players playing or fighting him online.

With admiration and respect to everyone all over the world, I would generally say that most of the strong players are from Japan (based on my observation, this is not an absolute fact!). So, you should know that most strong players came when the Japanese time is in the evening and at night. About 80% or so of deathblows made to Ur Dragon are in this time. How do I know, I've check the global time for Japan which is similar to mine (i'm from Malaysia). Everytime it's evening and going to night time, Ur Dragon steadily decline in health and steadily killed in this duration. Hope this helps.

For more detailed strategies on fighting Ur Dragon Online and analysis, check out this User_blog:Azimsalimi/Ur_Dragon_Tactics.

Lone Wolf5451's strategy
NOTE: Written for Dragon's Dogma, NOT Dark Arisen!

You can either go alone or you can go with your main pawn. Here's how you can slay the Ur Dragon with a Pawn (Online or Offline):

1) Have your pawn(s) a Sorcerer. (Or any other class. I had mine a Sorcerer).

2) Enter the Chamber and kill all of the enemies.

3) You can either do the normal strategy part or you can do the Dire Gouge part.

4) Have your pawn(s) attack The Ur Dragon. If your pawn(s) dies, the Ur Dragon will focus your attacks on you. Have your pawn have some healing items. ( Warning: If you try to revive your pawn(s) there's a good chance of you getting hit or worse, death. Have your Main Pawn only is my suggestion.)

5) Keep doing what you are doing to the Ur Dragon until He dies. This saves you a lot of time. (I did it in 3 hours with a lvl 49 assassin and pawn Sorcerer. I did it with my main pawn only.)

Dire Gouge strategy
A similar build to above, though it forgoes the Dagger's Invincibility, hundred kisses, and gale harness for the Sword's Dire Gouge and Great Windmill skills, which is designed to do large amounts of damage to foes you climb on. Obviously the best choice for this approach would be Ascalon, which can be won from the offline Ur-Dragon. The next best option would be Carnation. You will need to be very cautious as you are not invincible and can take massive damage with no Pawns to help you.