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Author Topic: Hydra hunting tips, please.  (Read 3828 times)

LeverOperator

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Hydra hunting tips, please.
« on: October 01, 2021, 08:21:48 am »

Made a Nice fortress run in a place, i don't realize the hydra until late.
Now have done few adventure runs unsucefully to kill the damn reptile.
Last one manage to hit  over 80 bolts, i tink it may slow the damn thing a little, fool of me.
Some one can give me an idea of the resistence of that thing?
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Quantum Drop

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Re: Hydra hunting tips, please.
« Reply #1 on: October 01, 2021, 11:40:57 am »

Made a Nice fortress run in a place, i don't realize the hydra until late.
Now have done few adventure runs unsucefully to kill the damn reptile.
Last one manage to hit  over 80 bolts, i tink it may slow the damn thing a little, fool of me.
Some one can give me an idea of the resistence of that thing?
As a general rule, you'll want to train your dodge, shield, throwing, and at least one weapon skill to around great or higher (I prefer legendary, myself) before you try and take the hydra on; the powerplay guide on the wiki has some great advice on how to do this. My personal advice would be to bring a iron pike (or better), a shitload of metal bolts (or arrows, preferably iron for either), and take advantage of the shield trick.

You'll want to try and hit the Hydra by throwing bolts at it from a distance for as long as you can stay hidden or out of reach, then set your combat preferences to dodge as it gets closer. Aim for the upper body as much as possible with the pike's stabbing attack - if you're lucky, you'll land a hit on its heart or lungs and cause it to bleed/suffocate to death; if not, keep dodging and stabbing at its chest until it goes down. The shields should help you block some of its strikes if they slip past your dodging.
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I am ambushed by humans, and for a change, they do not drop dead immediately. I bash the master with my ladle, and he is propelled away. While in mid-air, he dies of old age.

Amaranth

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Re: Hydra hunting tips, please.
« Reply #2 on: October 01, 2021, 06:41:43 pm »

Vampire so you don't tire. Elephant man.
Something not kobold sized.
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George_Chickens

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Re: Hydra hunting tips, please.
« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2021, 01:44:11 pm »

Sever the legs. and bring friends.
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Ghosts are stored in the balls?[/quote]
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rico6822

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Re: Hydra hunting tips, please.
« Reply #4 on: October 17, 2021, 05:59:29 am »

If you use pike on upper body by piercing hard enough you should damage a lung and hydra will suffer severe skill penalty, eventually suffocating. As far as I know pikes and spears take little metal to craft so you can use steel or adamantine. Movement speed debuff will also allow dwarfs to run away from it. Also think about crippling a leg.

Hydra cannot get tired and does not feel pain. It heals wounds 100 faster than average creature even reversing permanent injuries however missing body parts remain missing. Full healing occurs after a month for sure.

You can simply kill hydra by very quickly trapping it in magma trap that has fortress' entrance in range. In side effect you won't be able to salvage anything from corpse like meat or bones.

If you play as adventurer using a special grinding trick http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=164906.msg8296757#msg8296757 You can rise your dodger so high that you can simply try to cut heads of as stuck in weapons reduce dodge rate. Do this while being prone to prevent charge attacks. I killed a hydra this way on my first try with iron halberd severing only 1 head but wounding all heads and some body parts. It died to bleeding. Maybe I just got ridiculously lucky. Just in case train your dodger for 2 in-game days straight. I only did this for like 12 in-game hours.

I also found some interesting A.I. behaviour that makes hydra use less heads to attack. If you wound a head but the rest remain intact wounded head won't get used. Do this until there is only 1 uninjured. Injuring all will resume using them all at once.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2021, 06:04:26 am by rico6822 »
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Does anybody know how to become an elephant man in adventure mode? I literally did all advanced world settings possible to increase chances.

NRDL

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Re: Hydra hunting tips, please.
« Reply #5 on: October 17, 2021, 06:33:59 am »

Vampire so you don't tire. Elephant man.
Something not kobold sized.

This is  my go to when boxing Hydras. These guys still need to breathe, so landing blows and scratches on their torso will eventually cripple their lungs. They suffocate if you run around in circles long enough.
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NRDL will roll a die and decide how sadistic and insane he's feeling well you do.

Eric Blank

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Re: Hydra hunting tips, please.
« Reply #6 on: October 17, 2021, 06:45:03 pm »

Definitely go for legs, get the thing on the floor, then attack the upper or lower torso. If you puncture both lungs, it will suffocate. If you puncture the heart or spill the guts, it will bleed out. Those are the easiest ways to take one down. You gotta have a shield with high skill, high dodging, wear decent armor, and get your endurance up so you can last long enough for it to suffocate (bigger creatures take longer)
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Amaranth

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Re: Hydra hunting tips, please.
« Reply #7 on: October 17, 2021, 07:34:04 pm »

My undead lord killed a hydra with competent dodge and chest swinging full force with a steel mace. I was using a figure 8 movement strategy for full force blows while on the move. It worked flawlessly but do note I had the suffocation gesticulation and that seems to slow most mortals while I retain my full movement speeds.
Or cut the heads off.
The issues are with its multiple attacks, but as always if you are easily tired and have soft fleshy bits held together with love and parental guidance you will die.

Light a fire around it if you are fast enough and hope it burns. Lead it to a river and hope it freezes.
Build a FOB near its Lair and you could possibly trap it and use your building as some tactical advantage.
Remember even chickens can work for you.
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peasant cretin

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Re: Hydra hunting tips, please.
« Reply #8 on: November 06, 2021, 11:21:48 am »

The hydra is a LEVEL 6 monster, and if you are soloing it you'd want to have say level 15 dodger, these days. Before v43.xx when there was no force transfer effect, you could get away with say level 8-9 dodger.

The hydra is BIG and will charge you, maybe knocking you down, and maybe stunning you. Stun debuffs by 50%, and will take your level 15 dodger and make it a level 7, closing the stat gap in its favor.

The hydra has NOEXERT in the raws, so it will never get tired. It's preferable to have superior endurance to manage this.

The hydra has ATTACK_FLAG_INDEPENDENT_MULTIATTACK in the raws, making it the only multi-attacking AI in the vanilla game. That's 7 bite attacks that you have to defend against.

Of the possible 3 positions in DF combat: adjacent tile, same tile, and separated-by-1-tile (kite mode), only kiting solves these all problems. To kite, you wait (press comma key) until the hydra is on an adjacent tile, and then you multi-attack by spamming the combo (quick attack + dodge away) stabbing with either spear or sword. Kiting limits the number of bite attacks as dodging away results in a tile of separation between you and the hydra. Not all the attacks prepared will have the time to land. A shield block will only defend against 1 attack, but dodge allows you to defend against them all.

The optimal order of attacks not just for the hydra, but every breathing biped/quadruped is leg(s) > lower body > upper body.

You need to damage 2 legs on a quadruped to ground it so it can't charge you.

Then move your multi-attack spam up to the lower body until you cause nausea. Nausea debuffs by 50% bringing the hydra down from level 6 to level 3.

Lastly you spam the upper body to damage the lungs as many mentioned.

The hydra usually dies from cumulative blood loss or suffocation and you're just trying to find the way to bring this about in the safest (for you) and most efficient way possible.

Hope this helps.
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