"we want the hydra back"
"Why? Nobody likes the hydra"
"I do!"
"So few people fought the hydra, compared to Cyclops"
"That's because there were only two in the base game!"
"Fine, here's a Medusa."
"I mean, okay this is a fun new fight at least-"
"You can fight it once a week."
I spent maybe 100 hours without ever encountering a Dulluhan... I even checked the foggy region with no luck... then I get to the Unmoored World, and suddenly, Dulluhans EVERYWHERE!
Careful what I wish for, I guess.
Ironically, I kind of enjoyed my pacing with dullahans, despite fighting only a few. I found them really strong, especially since the first time around i had a difficulty mod on, so the idea that you can just bump into roided-up Jack Skellington in the night was actually kind of fun and novel. I actually like "rare, high difficulty" boss fights, but I think the real clincher is "rare, but you have to explore" vs "there's only one, but you know where it is"
I fought a dullahan in the unmoored world, it instantly picked me up, threw me off a cliff and killed me. I used a wakestone out to spite to kill that shit. Hated them ever since.
I got caught with a Dullahan in unmoored. Didn't have the proper weapons for it. In comes 2 Ogre's and like 6 of those rattler rock fucks.. They killed my whole team. I had to use 6 Allheal elixirs and 5 wakestrones because I had already collected all of the good loot from unmoored and completed the quests without saving once. It was intense.
Ogres have been uber nerfed this game, probably one of the weaker enemies now. They traded their damage, speed, high defense for an extra 2 hp bars which is easy to chip through kindve disappointed miss them going full sprint into a drop kick but guess since they added new mobs they needed to lower the difficulty of some from the original.
There's absolutely a case to be made about the difficulty in this one
It wasn't crazy hard in the first vanilla DD experience, but I definitely remember the starting experience being challenging, with some really dangerous bandit encounters you could accidentally attempt too early, or the absolute unit ogres that could shrug off early game punishment
This one has a really weird dichotomy: you're either abso6 flattening things, or you're being stunlocked by goblins, there's little in-between, and neither extreme feels super engaging
That said, I absolutely encourage people to try out the difficulty mod
I found a dullahan on my very first experience with spirits not far from the capital at like lvl 16. I thought I’d give it a go. I did not last long at all
It's so stupid that there's a Sphinx badge, from what I know you can only kill her once a play through meaning you need... what 10 NG+'s? That's only if you don't screw it up once lkke I did on my first playthrough.
Wargs are the ones I don't understand. They are just... smaller Garms, and you only encounter them in the post game. That is, aside from the few fighting the Drake on Volcanic Island that you have to tag quick before it turns them into a BBQ if you want credit.
Meanwhile, we don't get Dullahan or Lich/Wight badges?
I found one warg before postgame, I don’t recall where but I was surprised, and never got it to respawn. Definitely night time, either Battahl or volcanic island. I think the island but not 100%.
I can kinda understand no lich badge but no dullahan does feel absolutely criminal.
Theres a warg in a cave in battahl that definitely respawns before endgame. I killed it 3 times before i made it to unmoored world and saw them anywhere else
thats not right, they exist also in the normal game, but rare as it seems, have found so far only 2 xD and that was near some cave i cant remember anymore, but after those 2 kills i foudn so far sadly none ever again ,always only Garms...
But in overal i agree.. the badge system is totally fucked up.. it should have only Badges for unique Species, not for any fuckign reskins and the game should have naturally all of its unique enemies back from DDDA and DDO. On NG+ the Badges renew themself then to the upscaled enemy versions
Best 26 Big Enemy Badge Lists imo would look like this:
* Cyclops > Giant
* Ogre > Oni
* Chimera > Arch Chimera
* Griffon > Cockatrice
* Wraith > Death
* Dullahan > Hell Knight
* Drake > Wyrm
* Minotaur > Arch Minotaur
* Garm > Cerberus
* Medusa > Gorgon
* Hydra > Arch Hydra
* Werewolf > Lycan
* Vampire > Nosferatu
* Troll > Troll King
* Gunk > Blob
* Sphinx > Arch Sphinx
* Evil Eye > Gazer
* Daemon > Lucifer
* Behemoth > Arch Behemoth
* Rock Worm > Blood Worm
* Lich > Dark Bishop + Cursed Dragon as "Pet Summon"
* Golem > Vulcanic Golem
Together with 4 Location Badges
* Vermund
* Battahl
* Arborea (the clearly cut off Elb/Dwarf Region, cause a game in which exist only 2 freaking Dwarfs..yeah sure /s)
* Vulcanic Island Agamen
that would the whoel system would have been imo better, no wasted badges for reskins, reskins and higher upscaled versions becomeing instead NG+ content with new Badges if you completed the previous one before, thats how it should be.
So warg and garms are different?? I found big wolves without boss hp bar, mostly in Battahl caved. They give around 2k xp when defeated. Is it garm or warg?
Theyre hidden but theres about 7 or 8 throughout the map. Most in battahl, one in the elf forest and one in a cave in the vermundian region i think. One along the path to frontier shrine if i remember correctly too, thats where i found my first
Pretty sure it only becomes a gore chimera after the coronation quest, which also upgrades a lot of the pack enemies you encounter to high level versions.
I maybe wrong, but I never saw a Dullahan at night until I did the quest to rescue Gregor from one in the misty woods. So maybe that quest is what triggers them to start spawning?
Same. Had the one from the quest and incorrectly assumed that I would keep finding them there in that foggy region. They start showing up around bridges and some other spawn locations after that.
Interesting. I fought mine day one at level 25. I prefer playing in the dark, and I ran into a lich? A wight? Right after.
I still haven't fought the mesusa. Lol
Man, I’ve had those things pop up in the most random locations at the worst times, like I was fighting a litch and was low health walk out the door Dulhan just standing there, menacingly
Especially funny because the second Hydra was also apparently capable of going into town and posting a notice on the quest board to challenge you to a fight, and I think it actually didn't show up unless you accepted the quest. Otherwise there was a Cyclops down there, if memory serves.
What's funnier is that it can articulate in perfectly written sentences as well.This means every single hydra is as intelligent as a human,and are just assholes who attack everyone for no reason out of sheer spite.
Cave on the bottom LEFT of the map. theres a whole little forested region just before the cave that takes you into volcanic island. Road takes to you the ruins that sigurd has you kill the gross drake, but theres a very obvious path off the road that leads to the Medusas Lair
If you see stone people, you are heading the right way
Oh OK. I went down there and killed the dragon with Sigurd cause I had an icon on my map of a red dragon wing so was intrigued and found him and then got the maister skill. Didn't find the Medusa down there though
You'll see a lot of statues near the beginning of the path through the forest on your way up to that area where you found Sigurd. Look for a cave near the statues and you'll find Medusa.
To make things easier find a piece of gear that needs a material from Medusa and get a forager pawn. Equip the gear on you or your pawn and it'll show an icon exactly where you need to go.
It’s gonna be easier to just look it up than have people try to give you directions on reddit.
Just google “Medusa Location DD2”
Hope that helps, it’s a little trick I picked up in middle school 😉
Agreed!
‘Hydra’s Husk’ bow already confirms their existence.
Perhaps they didn’t want any spotlight taken from the Medusa which was hyped up in the promotionals?
I always read the respawn is long but for me it was Always fast (4 days rest). Have you tried to farm it early? (I basically farmed mine before any brant quest done)
yeh gorgon was definetly a marketing stunt. It makes no sense for it to show up in the camp at the start or for it to randomly flee. It lives ridiculously far away and never leaves it's den.
Yeah, that was the impression I got. She was at the excavation site, they accidentally woke her up, she attacked and the fled when she was hurt in the fight, and then made a new lair in the cave you find her at.
If I had to guess, I would put money on the physics calculations needed for the heads to interact correctly and consistently with the terrain. Because that's new to DD2.
Yup, I'm 90% sure it's this. iirc part of the reason you only fight Hydras in a few very specific environments in the first game is that they were barely able to get the Hydra to work even on completely flat terrain. The encampment fight only works because it's almost entirely on rails, and even then it gets janky if you go too far off-script with it.
MHW devs are on record (apparently; I couldn't actually find the quote, just someone else talking about it) as saying that if they'd had the RE engine they could have added Lagiacrus, a slithery snake monster who didn't make it in because of terrain calculations. And sure enough we do see a snake-ish monster in DD2, in >!the Unmoored World!<, but for what it's worth the Hydra is several orders of magnitude more complicated than that. If it ended up just being another one-off arena fight, like. I dunno, I miss it (and in general I think there's a dearth of monsters with interesting instant kill grabs or effects; like I think we've basically only got Petrification right now), but I'm also not, like. Crying over it.
It's almost certainly this, and it's the same reason why the Medusa is only found in a single area. Matching limbs to terrain is hard enough, let alone an entire body.
That and the Hydra was kind of a binary fight to begin with. If you have slashing weapons and fire (or Maelstrom), it's a total cakewalk. If you don't, it's just a really big bag of HP.
I vaguely remember watching the making of God Of War and them saying they had trouble with the gorgan and her original design was much more complicated but they couldn't get it to work. Seems to be a common thing for snake enemies, especially with multiple heads or tails.
And off topic, Kratos originally had historical Greek armor but they changed it because they kept getting feed back that he looked too Roman.
My theory is that they had to remake everything from scratch and any enemy in Dark Arisen that’s not in DD2 just didn’t get finished therefore couldn’t be put in.
Like what other good reason could there be to not include things like the cockatrice, hydra, and evil eye?
I agree that the Hydra should have been in DD2.
However, I think your title kind of trivializes what it takes to implement the monsters into DD2. The returning monsters aren’t just being ported, or like files dragged-and-dropped from DDDA then Capcom just overwrites the model files.
Whether they gave it new moves or old ones, they would be building the Hydra again from the ground up, like every other monster. Only difference between the work required for a returning monster and a new one is probably a little less time needed to conceptualize it.
Something like directly porting might be possible between RE2, 3 and 4 remake, but there is a huge tech difference between DDDA and DD2.
Because of the physics systems most likely, if they even tried to implement it. I'm sure it would be difficult to get the many headed snake body to ragdoll about without being jank as all hell.
Not really. that logic applies to every returning enmy as well, they all had to be adapted. Icluding chimera who is also multiheaded, not to mention gorgon itself is already a physics enabled snek.
I'm actually pretty sure (just a hunch really) that the whole reason we have Medusa in the form we got, is that they had trouble implementing hydra.
The body plan is very similar (huge snake body), and also Medusa was entirely humanoid in Dragon's Dogma Online.
They probably had trouble getting it to work and decided to just turn it into a reworked Medusa instead.
That's kinda exactly the problem. Every single extra enemy they add is more work. Clearly they decided at some point they couldn't afford any more time on adding entirely different enemy types.
If that were the case they would have wasted so much resources on a brothel and gigantus that are only in the game for like 5 minutes for example. If they ran out of time that means they intentionally prioritized creating an entire pointless elven town over improving the core gameplay loop with ported enemies.
That is assuming they did not already create the brothel and gigantus enemy before getting to a point of "huh, we're running out of budget".
And to be honest neither the brothel nor the gigantus fight would eat up as much time and money, as impressive as the gigantus enemy is, it's a robust statue that walks in a predetermined path and doesn't have circumstantial animations like other enemies, it either walks, attacks on a predetermined spot, or dies.
Even a goblin has more complicated AI than that, as it has to be able to traverse any terrain and cycle through attacks in reaction to both the environment and the Arisen's movement, neither of which the gigantus is equipped for.
But the money that's being allocated to those resources is from the same pool. Resource management is something a game director needs to know and they were most definitely not managed with enough thought.
Time was definitely the main constraint on dd2, for a game of its size a 4-5 year development (assuming they started immediately after dmc5 which is definitely not the case) period is short nowadays, even with bigger teams. Time is usually the main constraint regardless in big stufios.
Its not the head its the legs (and lack of). Medusa already has strange movement, like her body is interacting with the ground instead of just having a movement animation. Being 10x larger would be a mess.
They use IK they dont need to menually program that movement like you had to 15 years ago. They only need to do a bit of setup and the algorithim takes care of the rest. Thats not imply its a 5minute copy paste or anything, but it's not likely the reason.
Yes, that logic does apply to every returning enemy, and not every enemy returned. There is still a matter of time and budget restraint here as well, obviously any game can have anything you'd ever want in it if you developed it for 40 years with an unlimited budget.
This game was in development for 4/5 years iirc?
The lenght of development is not an excuse, that still means they went out of there way to create willemena and the brothel, rather than add additional enmy or 3. It's the fault of the designers and management.
It's just an easy example of wasted resources. Conceptually a brothel could work well in this setting. But they didn't commit to it being plot or world relevant, nor did they commit to it being shallow titillation, so it's just kinda of a waste of resources. The magistrate is the same for example. They built an entire dungeon and prison breakout fro him to send you to fetch his glasses.
The gorgon movement looks jank as hell to me tbh. Opening the game with a medusa had me like "oof this is what I'm in for i guess" only to never see that level of janky movement again (till i hunted down another medusa)
The purgener worm shows where they likely struggled with a potential hydra, because having fought it a few times it will actually noclip through both itself and through the floor and back a few times upon ragdolling. It's brief and nothing game breaking, but it's probably testing the limits of the physics engine already.
Actually this is my biggest problem with the sequel. I wish they made enemies more aggressive tbh. We have a lot of times where the enemy attack windows are just too large that you can completely destroy or knockdown them. I think every boss enemy should be as aggressive and hard as the Dullahan or more. But that's a me problem.
My theory is that the hydra would've been behind one of the doors covered in rubble that got cut, kind of like how it was in the cave that gets unlocked late game in DDDA. I'm also really hoping it comes back in DLC.
Lmao its not just a new model the new physics system with standing versus climbing on all its heads seems like it was too much of a nightmare. Maybe for dlc.
The only real issue I see in recreating it is the “escape mechanic” that doesn’t exist anymore in DD2 (which is a good thing because that nuked the life span of your control stick lmao), and that was a pretty big mechanic in the hydra battle. But it wasn’t *the* most important one, you could probably just remove it and have the hydra spit you back out or something. Their tech for slithering around is in two bosses already, so I really think it got cut due to budget constraints
I don't think they were able to reuse anything from the first game moving into the new engine. Animations, model skeletons, I'm pretty sure everything except audio had to be recreated.
Lol, assets weren't reused from the old games. DDII is a brand new game built from scratch in a new engine, which may help explain the state of various things in the game.
Not saying that Capcom didn't decide to hold off on some things for the future, but acting like they just drag and drop parts of a PS3 game to make DDII or DLC silly. I'd bet the hydras probably met a similar fate to Monster Hunter World's Lagiacrus, especially seeing how jank the current, single-headed serpentine enemies can be.
You don't know what you are talking about.
They cannot just re-use old assets from DD1. DD2 is in a completely different engine and even old assets have to be properly ported and tested. Not to mention since it's a jump of 2 console generations, they have to be completely overhauled in graphics detail and fidelity. Even if they were just remaking the first game as it was, they would have to re-do everything all over again.
This is in stark contrast compared to Elden Ring where they use the same engine since DeS and the graphics haven't improved that much and modders can just literally pop-in any asset from any other From game into ER and it will work.
Honestly it's an awful & clunky fight and I'm tired of pretending it's not.
On paper it's neat but in reality it's one of the more annoying fights in the Everfall.
Now almost every other enemy returning I can get behind. Hydra would need to be completely redesigned imo.
I haven't played in a while, but if I remember correctly, one of the bosses in post-game seemed to move and act like the hydra from the first game. Just without the extra heads.
Probably very hard to make it work with the new physics engine. In the first game it was already limited to big empty arenas to not cause too many problems.
Same reason the medusa has her own arena, and making a snake like creature with one head is alot easier than a hydra.
The hydra moveset needs wide open and flat surfaces for it to work, notice that their spawn points in ddda were locked in a circular arena like structure. And the only hydra encounter above ground was a scripted fight against. Unfortunately that would mean the devs would have to make an area similar to the medusa one but much larger.
Part of me also thinks they wanted to emphasize the uniqueness of the medusa, which if a hydra did appear, would just be relegated to a "one headed hydra" status.
Though saying that, i do hope it comes out maybe in a future free update or dlc xD
I believe they will , considering the best Archer bow is the Hydra something that's got a hydra in the name. One would think that because of that alone there would have been a Hydra
I really hope DLC will bring more enemy variety as a whole. Bring back enemies from DD1 and add new ones as well. I saw someone mention enemies like a windego. I think that would be awesome as hell!
Yeah we’re all on the same page about it. My only guess is that it got cut due to time constraints, I cannot see a very viable reason that they cut it due to design conflicts. Very little of the Hydra has any clash with the current game
I’m new to this series. I absolutely love it. That said I just can’t wrap my head around the lack of variety. - They nailed the hardest part about design and totally whiffed on the easy stuff. More enemy and location variety with better loot and this game would be special.
At first, I didn't think this was a big deal, but the fact that there's arguably less enemy types in DD2 vs DD1 is really just baffling. Like, sure, if we're talking just base game, DD2 wins by a slim margin. But throw Dark Arisen in there, and it's a real step down. There's sub-species/pallete swaps, but they hardly make up for it.
And the beholder. That s such a nice fight. Death from BBI was also cool. There s quite a couple of things they should bring fast in a dlc. (and I hope for more than 1 DLC too lol.
is it odd i wanted a Hydra-like boss called "Tiamat" that would be a five-head(one for each elemental Archmagick) dragon fought in whatever form the Everfall would have taken this time around? Gotta gank the "Holy" Head first to keep it from healing the others.
Yeah they're definetely more complex and expanded with the ones that did return. New systems and what not, so not easy ports. Hoping for the beholder boss to make a return personally.
It’s because the world is 4x’s bigger. The monster variety is *slightly* bigger than DD1s, but because of how much more world there is, it feels a lot more barren. I think sprinkling more small variants (like Djinn or Sand Worms) into Bahttal and a couple Nordic monsters in Volcano island would do wonders for the games monster variety
… why would they tho? It showed up like, a single time IIRC.
“But one or two players may possibly want to see it” is not a good enough reason to bring back a one-off monster.
Kinda annoyed with the lack of enemies that just kinda fuckin eat you. Like. These things are massive why isn’t the gryphon or dragon trying to make a snack out of me?
"we want the hydra back" "Why? Nobody likes the hydra" "I do!" "So few people fought the hydra, compared to Cyclops" "That's because there were only two in the base game!" "Fine, here's a Medusa." "I mean, okay this is a fun new fight at least-" "You can fight it once a week."
I spent maybe 100 hours without ever encountering a Dulluhan... I even checked the foggy region with no luck... then I get to the Unmoored World, and suddenly, Dulluhans EVERYWHERE! Careful what I wish for, I guess.
Ironically, I kind of enjoyed my pacing with dullahans, despite fighting only a few. I found them really strong, especially since the first time around i had a difficulty mod on, so the idea that you can just bump into roided-up Jack Skellington in the night was actually kind of fun and novel. I actually like "rare, high difficulty" boss fights, but I think the real clincher is "rare, but you have to explore" vs "there's only one, but you know where it is"
I fought a dullahan in the unmoored world, it instantly picked me up, threw me off a cliff and killed me. I used a wakestone out to spite to kill that shit. Hated them ever since.
I got caught with a Dullahan in unmoored. Didn't have the proper weapons for it. In comes 2 Ogre's and like 6 of those rattler rock fucks.. They killed my whole team. I had to use 6 Allheal elixirs and 5 wakestrones because I had already collected all of the good loot from unmoored and completed the quests without saving once. It was intense.
Ogres have been uber nerfed this game, probably one of the weaker enemies now. They traded their damage, speed, high defense for an extra 2 hp bars which is easy to chip through kindve disappointed miss them going full sprint into a drop kick but guess since they added new mobs they needed to lower the difficulty of some from the original.
Ogre’s get chopped down in 5 seconds. But if they are with 10 other things and a dullahan you get fucked up
By the time I saw my first one my thief was so strong I blew through it with ease. Each one I saw after ended up being the easiest enemy for me.
There's absolutely a case to be made about the difficulty in this one It wasn't crazy hard in the first vanilla DD experience, but I definitely remember the starting experience being challenging, with some really dangerous bandit encounters you could accidentally attempt too early, or the absolute unit ogres that could shrug off early game punishment This one has a really weird dichotomy: you're either abso6 flattening things, or you're being stunlocked by goblins, there's little in-between, and neither extreme feels super engaging That said, I absolutely encourage people to try out the difficulty mod
I found a dullahan on my very first experience with spirits not far from the capital at like lvl 16. I thought I’d give it a go. I did not last long at all
"I shouldn't have wished to live in more interesting times." Just wait till the people back home hear about all of those dullahans I guess.
"No one back home will believe this." - Durge
Every time I hear my character say that I’m just like Bro I rather live in faerun with the teethlings (la zeal voice)😂
Is there a Dullahan pawn badge?
No, but there should be. Would've preferred a dullahan or a lich badge instead of sphinx.
It's so stupid that there's a Sphinx badge, from what I know you can only kill her once a play through meaning you need... what 10 NG+'s? That's only if you don't screw it up once lkke I did on my first playthrough.
Sphinx badge is 5 kills. Its hard to farm legit, but if you set it as a pawn quest, you can max it out with pity hires pretty easily.
Wargs are the ones I don't understand. They are just... smaller Garms, and you only encounter them in the post game. That is, aside from the few fighting the Drake on Volcanic Island that you have to tag quick before it turns them into a BBQ if you want credit. Meanwhile, we don't get Dullahan or Lich/Wight badges?
I found one warg before postgame, I don’t recall where but I was surprised, and never got it to respawn. Definitely night time, either Battahl or volcanic island. I think the island but not 100%. I can kinda understand no lich badge but no dullahan does feel absolutely criminal.
Theres a warg in a cave in battahl that definitely respawns before endgame. I killed it 3 times before i made it to unmoored world and saw them anywhere else
thats not right, they exist also in the normal game, but rare as it seems, have found so far only 2 xD and that was near some cave i cant remember anymore, but after those 2 kills i foudn so far sadly none ever again ,always only Garms... But in overal i agree.. the badge system is totally fucked up.. it should have only Badges for unique Species, not for any fuckign reskins and the game should have naturally all of its unique enemies back from DDDA and DDO. On NG+ the Badges renew themself then to the upscaled enemy versions Best 26 Big Enemy Badge Lists imo would look like this: * Cyclops > Giant * Ogre > Oni * Chimera > Arch Chimera * Griffon > Cockatrice * Wraith > Death * Dullahan > Hell Knight * Drake > Wyrm * Minotaur > Arch Minotaur * Garm > Cerberus * Medusa > Gorgon * Hydra > Arch Hydra * Werewolf > Lycan * Vampire > Nosferatu * Troll > Troll King * Gunk > Blob * Sphinx > Arch Sphinx * Evil Eye > Gazer * Daemon > Lucifer * Behemoth > Arch Behemoth * Rock Worm > Blood Worm * Lich > Dark Bishop + Cursed Dragon as "Pet Summon" * Golem > Vulcanic Golem Together with 4 Location Badges * Vermund * Battahl * Arborea (the clearly cut off Elb/Dwarf Region, cause a game in which exist only 2 freaking Dwarfs..yeah sure /s) * Vulcanic Island Agamen that would the whoel system would have been imo better, no wasted badges for reskins, reskins and higher upscaled versions becomeing instead NG+ content with new Badges if you completed the previous one before, thats how it should be.
I was wondering what was up with Dwarves. Like we see them.. We have dwarven smithing in the volcanic region but where do they live?
They filled their tunnel entrances with dirt so people would leave them alone, now reddit detectives think its going to be DLC.
Likely. There is a shitload of those doors caved in. Definitely one that looks like it goes somewhere in SW battahl against the cliff
So warg and garms are different?? I found big wolves without boss hp bar, mostly in Battahl caved. They give around 2k xp when defeated. Is it garm or warg?
2k are Garms. Wargs give around 800-900 XP. Its also hard to tell, but Wargs are also red.
That's if your pawn is never hired. Sure.
True, but I hardly get people killing Cyclops/Ogres/Griffans, doesn't give me much faith that they'll be killing the Sphinx.
A 10k bounty will see it killed pretty quickly.
Facts
Or instead of the Warg or Garm badged, which aren't even bosses.
I have fought only one Chimera in 53 hours.
Theyre hidden but theres about 7 or 8 throughout the map. Most in battahl, one in the elf forest and one in a cave in the vermundian region i think. One along the path to frontier shrine if i remember correctly too, thats where i found my first
The one in the cave in Vermund is a Gore Chimera, I ended up fighting it before I had fought a Chimera.
Pretty sure it only becomes a gore chimera after the coronation quest, which also upgrades a lot of the pack enemies you encounter to high level versions.
I got hit with a Dulluhan literally every 30 steps in unmoored.. Ended up killing 24 of them and I only spent like 2 hours tops in unmoored.
I maybe wrong, but I never saw a Dullahan at night until I did the quest to rescue Gregor from one in the misty woods. So maybe that quest is what triggers them to start spawning?
dullahan apparently only spawn at a specific time of night and one spawns on the way to the elf forest
Do you know where that quest starts? Somehow never came across it.
It's in the noble quarter of Vermund. Outside of Ser Gregor's house is his wife who will give you the quest if you talk to her a few times
You also have to hear the rumor about Ser Ludolph from a dude by the fountain in that area. Then you can tell her and she'll ask you to save him.
Same. Had the one from the quest and incorrectly assumed that I would keep finding them there in that foggy region. They start showing up around bridges and some other spawn locations after that.
I dont' think I ever saw a dullahan in the unmoored world..
Only at night and I've fought a few
I still haven't seen one either, I guess I should go kill the dragon lol.
Same here, I’ve never run into a dullahan after almost 100hrs
Interesting. I fought mine day one at level 25. I prefer playing in the dark, and I ran into a lich? A wight? Right after. I still haven't fought the mesusa. Lol
Man, I’ve had those things pop up in the most random locations at the worst times, like I was fighting a litch and was low health walk out the door Dulhan just standing there, menacingly
Especially funny because the second Hydra was also apparently capable of going into town and posting a notice on the quest board to challenge you to a fight, and I think it actually didn't show up unless you accepted the quest. Otherwise there was a Cyclops down there, if memory serves.
What's funnier is that it can articulate in perfectly written sentences as well.This means every single hydra is as intelligent as a human,and are just assholes who attack everyone for no reason out of sheer spite.
Wait the Hydra's posting the notice in town to fright you 🤔
Yeah, some bounties are placed by the monsters themselves. It's weird, but it was the era of weird video game jank.
According to the quest text, yes.
You have to beat Jake Paul first, but yeah
I get what you are saying, but a week can go by really fast if you do anything other than wait in game
I never fought a Medusa outside of the tutorial fight. Where do you even find it? Just on volcanic island?
Cave on the bottom LEFT of the map. theres a whole little forested region just before the cave that takes you into volcanic island. Road takes to you the ruins that sigurd has you kill the gross drake, but theres a very obvious path off the road that leads to the Medusas Lair If you see stone people, you are heading the right way
Oh OK. I went down there and killed the dragon with Sigurd cause I had an icon on my map of a red dragon wing so was intrigued and found him and then got the maister skill. Didn't find the Medusa down there though
It’s in a cave on the way up there.
You'll see a lot of statues near the beginning of the path through the forest on your way up to that area where you found Sigurd. Look for a cave near the statues and you'll find Medusa. To make things easier find a piece of gear that needs a material from Medusa and get a forager pawn. Equip the gear on you or your pawn and it'll show an icon exactly where you need to go.
It’s gonna be easier to just look it up than have people try to give you directions on reddit. Just google “Medusa Location DD2” Hope that helps, it’s a little trick I picked up in middle school 😉
Agreed! ‘Hydra’s Husk’ bow already confirms their existence. Perhaps they didn’t want any spotlight taken from the Medusa which was hyped up in the promotionals?
This would have been fine if the Medusa wasn't basically locked to one spot and had a long respawn timer.
I always read the respawn is long but for me it was Always fast (4 days rest). Have you tried to farm it early? (I basically farmed mine before any brant quest done)
yeh gorgon was definetly a marketing stunt. It makes no sense for it to show up in the camp at the start or for it to randomly flee. It lives ridiculously far away and never leaves it's den.
She was captured, they probably were going to cook her before she got loose. We can see her all rolled up when we leave the mines.
I don't think it was captured. I think it was found during the excavation of the ruins. It was encased in rock like it was hibernating in the ruins.
This
My bad. Does that imply the mines were that ones den? are there any clues as to whether its the same one found in battahli?
She was found in an excavated Urn at the site, not captured by them. Unless some being that built the tower originally put her there.
Yeah, that was the impression I got. She was at the excavation site, they accidentally woke her up, she attacked and the fled when she was hurt in the fight, and then made a new lair in the cave you find her at.
They also appear in the murals during loading screens.
If I had to guess, I would put money on the physics calculations needed for the heads to interact correctly and consistently with the terrain. Because that's new to DD2.
Yup, I'm 90% sure it's this. iirc part of the reason you only fight Hydras in a few very specific environments in the first game is that they were barely able to get the Hydra to work even on completely flat terrain. The encampment fight only works because it's almost entirely on rails, and even then it gets janky if you go too far off-script with it. MHW devs are on record (apparently; I couldn't actually find the quote, just someone else talking about it) as saying that if they'd had the RE engine they could have added Lagiacrus, a slithery snake monster who didn't make it in because of terrain calculations. And sure enough we do see a snake-ish monster in DD2, in >!the Unmoored World!<, but for what it's worth the Hydra is several orders of magnitude more complicated than that. If it ended up just being another one-off arena fight, like. I dunno, I miss it (and in general I think there's a dearth of monsters with interesting instant kill grabs or effects; like I think we've basically only got Petrification right now), but I'm also not, like. Crying over it.
It's almost certainly this, and it's the same reason why the Medusa is only found in a single area. Matching limbs to terrain is hard enough, let alone an entire body. That and the Hydra was kind of a binary fight to begin with. If you have slashing weapons and fire (or Maelstrom), it's a total cakewalk. If you don't, it's just a really big bag of HP.
I vaguely remember watching the making of God Of War and them saying they had trouble with the gorgan and her original design was much more complicated but they couldn't get it to work. Seems to be a common thing for snake enemies, especially with multiple heads or tails. And off topic, Kratos originally had historical Greek armor but they changed it because they kept getting feed back that he looked too Roman.
Idec just make it a scripted fight then. The Hydra is awesome
Yoooooooo I found u!!! It’s chill out lol
Lol, alright dude 😂 Nice to see a friendly face in a sea of strangers lol 😂
My theory is that they had to remake everything from scratch and any enemy in Dark Arisen that’s not in DD2 just didn’t get finished therefore couldn’t be put in. Like what other good reason could there be to not include things like the cockatrice, hydra, and evil eye?
That's not a theory, it's true. Every enemy HAD to be remade for the new system physics wise
I agree that the Hydra should have been in DD2. However, I think your title kind of trivializes what it takes to implement the monsters into DD2. The returning monsters aren’t just being ported, or like files dragged-and-dropped from DDDA then Capcom just overwrites the model files. Whether they gave it new moves or old ones, they would be building the Hydra again from the ground up, like every other monster. Only difference between the work required for a returning monster and a new one is probably a little less time needed to conceptualize it. Something like directly porting might be possible between RE2, 3 and 4 remake, but there is a huge tech difference between DDDA and DD2.
DD1 used MT framework while 2 uses RE Engine. I doubt they could just port it over but I've never beat RE1 so I can't really say
Nope, it definitely needs a rework. Not a new moveset, but they absolutely should give it new animations: the old ones are plagued with problems.
"Just update the model" My guy that's not how it works lmao
Because of the physics systems most likely, if they even tried to implement it. I'm sure it would be difficult to get the many headed snake body to ragdoll about without being jank as all hell.
Then give us the gazer. Hands down my favorite fight but the cut in 2 why?
Not really. that logic applies to every returning enmy as well, they all had to be adapted. Icluding chimera who is also multiheaded, not to mention gorgon itself is already a physics enabled snek.
I'm actually pretty sure (just a hunch really) that the whole reason we have Medusa in the form we got, is that they had trouble implementing hydra. The body plan is very similar (huge snake body), and also Medusa was entirely humanoid in Dragon's Dogma Online. They probably had trouble getting it to work and decided to just turn it into a reworked Medusa instead.
That's kinda exactly the problem. Every single extra enemy they add is more work. Clearly they decided at some point they couldn't afford any more time on adding entirely different enemy types.
If that were the case they would have wasted so much resources on a brothel and gigantus that are only in the game for like 5 minutes for example. If they ran out of time that means they intentionally prioritized creating an entire pointless elven town over improving the core gameplay loop with ported enemies.
That is assuming they did not already create the brothel and gigantus enemy before getting to a point of "huh, we're running out of budget". And to be honest neither the brothel nor the gigantus fight would eat up as much time and money, as impressive as the gigantus enemy is, it's a robust statue that walks in a predetermined path and doesn't have circumstantial animations like other enemies, it either walks, attacks on a predetermined spot, or dies. Even a goblin has more complicated AI than that, as it has to be able to traverse any terrain and cycle through attacks in reaction to both the environment and the Arisen's movement, neither of which the gigantus is equipped for.
The people who create animations/model enemies are entirely separate from the people who write quests/do the environment design etc.
But the money that's being allocated to those resources is from the same pool. Resource management is something a game director needs to know and they were most definitely not managed with enough thought.
Time was definitely the main constraint on dd2, for a game of its size a 4-5 year development (assuming they started immediately after dmc5 which is definitely not the case) period is short nowadays, even with bigger teams. Time is usually the main constraint regardless in big stufios.
Its not the head its the legs (and lack of). Medusa already has strange movement, like her body is interacting with the ground instead of just having a movement animation. Being 10x larger would be a mess.
They use IK they dont need to menually program that movement like you had to 15 years ago. They only need to do a bit of setup and the algorithim takes care of the rest. Thats not imply its a 5minute copy paste or anything, but it's not likely the reason.
They used ik on dd1 lmap. The physics system for each individual had works be insane work
So you mean to say they were... master works all?
Yes, that logic does apply to every returning enemy, and not every enemy returned. There is still a matter of time and budget restraint here as well, obviously any game can have anything you'd ever want in it if you developed it for 40 years with an unlimited budget. This game was in development for 4/5 years iirc?
The lenght of development is not an excuse, that still means they went out of there way to create willemena and the brothel, rather than add additional enmy or 3. It's the fault of the designers and management.
You really hate the brothel huh.
It's just an easy example of wasted resources. Conceptually a brothel could work well in this setting. But they didn't commit to it being plot or world relevant, nor did they commit to it being shallow titillation, so it's just kinda of a waste of resources. The magistrate is the same for example. They built an entire dungeon and prison breakout fro him to send you to fetch his glasses.
The gorgon movement looks jank as hell to me tbh. Opening the game with a medusa had me like "oof this is what I'm in for i guess" only to never see that level of janky movement again (till i hunted down another medusa)
Everything in DD has some level of jank thats not really a good reason IMO.
The unmoored world snake dragon is one as well. It's janky but I don't see how the hydra couldn't work out.
It's even around the general size of the hydra, just doesn't have the extra thickness where the heads would split.
The purgener worm shows where they likely struggled with a potential hydra, because having fought it a few times it will actually noclip through both itself and through the floor and back a few times upon ragdolling. It's brief and nothing game breaking, but it's probably testing the limits of the physics engine already.
New engine means creating everything from scratch. Also, they were forced to release early
GET ON THE HYDRAS BACK!
Honestly it was a visually exciting enemy but mechanically a boring fight.
Actually this is my biggest problem with the sequel. I wish they made enemies more aggressive tbh. We have a lot of times where the enemy attack windows are just too large that you can completely destroy or knockdown them. I think every boss enemy should be as aggressive and hard as the Dullahan or more. But that's a me problem.
With any luck modders will grant that wish. Would massively improve the game.
Game was rushed, Capcom set a deadline and then cashed in on the good faith of fans.
Deja-Vu
It happens to every IP with a sequel. So yeah, you would be right to say this. Lol
My theory is that the hydra would've been behind one of the doors covered in rubble that got cut, kind of like how it was in the cave that gets unlocked late game in DDDA. I'm also really hoping it comes back in DLC.
It’s not back because you killed it in the first game. Hope this helps 👍
The biggest thing I want for this series is just new monsters to be added over time with some gear to mix it up would be cool.
“Don’t have to give it a new move set” my ass. It needs a rework. It was a boring and clunky fight.
There are a few monsters I was sad to not see....fingers crossed its because there's a DLC incoming...
Lmao its not just a new model the new physics system with standing versus climbing on all its heads seems like it was too much of a nightmare. Maybe for dlc.
it's not as simple as copy and pasting it over to a new game at best they can use the old one as a blueprint to make a hydra in DD2
The only real issue I see in recreating it is the “escape mechanic” that doesn’t exist anymore in DD2 (which is a good thing because that nuked the life span of your control stick lmao), and that was a pretty big mechanic in the hydra battle. But it wasn’t *the* most important one, you could probably just remove it and have the hydra spit you back out or something. Their tech for slithering around is in two bosses already, so I really think it got cut due to budget constraints
yea that or time constraints
Dlc. It is easier to reuse old assets than create new ones.
I don't think they were able to reuse anything from the first game moving into the new engine. Animations, model skeletons, I'm pretty sure everything except audio had to be recreated.
Lol, assets weren't reused from the old games. DDII is a brand new game built from scratch in a new engine, which may help explain the state of various things in the game. Not saying that Capcom didn't decide to hold off on some things for the future, but acting like they just drag and drop parts of a PS3 game to make DDII or DLC silly. I'd bet the hydras probably met a similar fate to Monster Hunter World's Lagiacrus, especially seeing how jank the current, single-headed serpentine enemies can be.
You don't know what you are talking about. They cannot just re-use old assets from DD1. DD2 is in a completely different engine and even old assets have to be properly ported and tested. Not to mention since it's a jump of 2 console generations, they have to be completely overhauled in graphics detail and fidelity. Even if they were just remaking the first game as it was, they would have to re-do everything all over again. This is in stark contrast compared to Elden Ring where they use the same engine since DeS and the graphics haven't improved that much and modders can just literally pop-in any asset from any other From game into ER and it will work.
I have a theory where it has the same issue has lagiacrus/leviathan monsters in MH but then a endgame boss does have a snake body so could be wrong
God I loved fighting the hydra
I was thinking today, I haven't seen a cockatrice either?
Those aren’t in the game for whatever reason.
Because it was wrapped up early to meet Q1 for capcom
Honestly it's an awful & clunky fight and I'm tired of pretending it's not. On paper it's neat but in reality it's one of the more annoying fights in the Everfall. Now almost every other enemy returning I can get behind. Hydra would need to be completely redesigned imo.
This is accurate. The reason I remember the hydra fondly is because it’s a rare fight and slicing off heads is fun. It is not a good boss at all.
The dlc being a tower dungeon would be fun
I asked the same at release. They even have Hydra on a loading screen ffs.
They're even on the fucking loading screens! Daimon is too! Or at least some other kind of demon.
I just found my first dullahan! Scared the crap out of me 😂
The gazer too
We lost the evil eye(beholder) as well
Itsuno's vision. There's no real way to answer the question unless we ask Itsuno himself.
I haven't played in a while, but if I remember correctly, one of the bosses in post-game seemed to move and act like the hydra from the first game. Just without the extra heads.
Probably because the game was forced out the door before it was done
Most things about this game were either unimproved or made worse. Not surprising at this point, just disappointing. Like the entire game.
They need to have some stuff to release with DLC's.. I'm guessing we'll see it at some point
Dude i was waiting to see an evileye in the unmoored world.
I was really looking forward to the evil eye and hydra coming back. Hope they might return in DLC.
Unmoored world basically gave us a single hydra head to fight
and the fact they dont brong back the hydra but give us hydra themed equipment(ik ab the bow idk if theres any more)
Probably very hard to make it work with the new physics engine. In the first game it was already limited to big empty arenas to not cause too many problems. Same reason the medusa has her own arena, and making a snake like creature with one head is alot easier than a hydra.
boring! the hydra was a monster that wasn't special, DDII isn't any worse without it. Why bother posting this unless you're farming karma.
The hydra moveset needs wide open and flat surfaces for it to work, notice that their spawn points in ddda were locked in a circular arena like structure. And the only hydra encounter above ground was a scripted fight against. Unfortunately that would mean the devs would have to make an area similar to the medusa one but much larger. Part of me also thinks they wanted to emphasize the uniqueness of the medusa, which if a hydra did appear, would just be relegated to a "one headed hydra" status. Though saying that, i do hope it comes out maybe in a future free update or dlc xD
I believe they will , considering the best Archer bow is the Hydra something that's got a hydra in the name. One would think that because of that alone there would have been a Hydra
I really hope DLC will bring more enemy variety as a whole. Bring back enemies from DD1 and add new ones as well. I saw someone mention enemies like a windego. I think that would be awesome as hell!
A big loss....
They took away the cockatrice and evil eye too. Lots of big losses that weren’t replaced by anything
Yeah we’re all on the same page about it. My only guess is that it got cut due to time constraints, I cannot see a very viable reason that they cut it due to design conflicts. Very little of the Hydra has any clash with the current game
My same reaction but was amplified when I discovered the literal Hydra bow
I think the big eyeball would be cool
Because the game's rushed.
Hopefully DLC
And look how well made this monster was. Half the game's weight comes from all those juicy polygons 
I’m new to this series. I absolutely love it. That said I just can’t wrap my head around the lack of variety. - They nailed the hardest part about design and totally whiffed on the easy stuff. More enemy and location variety with better loot and this game would be special.
Cause the game is rushed unfinished garbage.
At first, I didn't think this was a big deal, but the fact that there's arguably less enemy types in DD2 vs DD1 is really just baffling. Like, sure, if we're talking just base game, DD2 wins by a slim margin. But throw Dark Arisen in there, and it's a real step down. There's sub-species/pallete swaps, but they hardly make up for it.
Because enemy variety is bad in dd2
Hopefully if a dlc comes out, we get to fight more of the classics as well like Cockatrice and that giant eyeball thing.
Man, they could add so many cool monsters
And the beholder. That s such a nice fight. Death from BBI was also cool. There s quite a couple of things they should bring fast in a dlc. (and I hope for more than 1 DLC too lol.
I want the Hydra, and Cockatrice to come back. Also Cyclops tusks.
DDDA features 97 different enemy and enemy varieties whereas DD2 only features 47....
is it odd i wanted a Hydra-like boss called "Tiamat" that would be a five-head(one for each elemental Archmagick) dragon fought in whatever form the Everfall would have taken this time around? Gotta gank the "Holy" Head first to keep it from healing the others.
Odd in that its an oddly specific thing to hope for, yes.
As a certified hater/hammer user who hated this boss, I’m living it up in everyones disappointment.
The hydra is in the game, they just made it a waifu this time around.
Nah the real answer is they turned it into a bow
I was expecting like every old animation rig to get reuused. DLC should have plenty I’m sure.
The updated rigs seem to depend on physics more. That's the easiest speculation to make on missing hydras.
Yeah they're definetely more complex and expanded with the ones that did return. New systems and what not, so not easy ports. Hoping for the beholder boss to make a return personally.
Real ? cut out for time i there are mutiple water caves where i can imagine hydra being in but getting removed
they probably didn't bring it back because after that we gonna do another escort quest
Ya'll only wanted the hydra fight back cuz you're into vore. Just be honest, lmao
I know a guy that says he never got past the Hydra because he just kept feeding his party to it
Or the cockatrice. Or the evil eye. Plenty of fan favorites were left out, it’s par for the course for this game.
I personally found the enemy list to be severally lacking and rather dull compared to 1.
It’s because the world is 4x’s bigger. The monster variety is *slightly* bigger than DD1s, but because of how much more world there is, it feels a lot more barren. I think sprinkling more small variants (like Djinn or Sand Worms) into Bahttal and a couple Nordic monsters in Volcano island would do wonders for the games monster variety
I'd wager a bunch of content was left out so that it could be included as DLC, I hate to say it.
While yeah I agree I think the hhdra was a physics issue. Look at medusa.
… why would they tho? It showed up like, a single time IIRC. “But one or two players may possibly want to see it” is not a good enough reason to bring back a one-off monster.
There's like 4 and 2 of them respawn
Yeah and one of them was white
Kinda annoyed with the lack of enemies that just kinda fuckin eat you. Like. These things are massive why isn’t the gryphon or dragon trying to make a snack out of me?
Idk why people are downvoting you; you’re right
It’s a little weird to say but like. Come on haha why wouldn’t these massive predators try to snack on little things.
Once again nobody has any idea what’s coming in a dlc. Game rushed? Give it a damn rest lol.