v0.31 Talk:Hydra

I easily killed one of these with a brand new dwarf adventurer. It was slow, and never hit me. They are tough and can take a lot of beating; I killed it by crushing its ribs into its lungs and it slowly suffocated. Took awhile, because I kept hitting the heads and necks to little effect. Any confirmation on its difficulty? Tallyho 06:11, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

It should be harder, as multiple heads can attack in one turn, if you were watching One F Jef's live stream, you would have seen how much damage it can do in only one turn. --Tarran

I'm hearing reports of other megabeasts like dragons also being very easy to defeat in adventurer mode. I expect there is a bug involved. -- Tallyho 03:11, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

It's because adventurers tend to have higher skills then the average idiot that the megabeasts wander into during world gen. It's suicide to go against a dragon without a shield but if you have one and the requisite shield skill even mildly raised then you're usually pretty well off. Try fighting a dragon without a shield some time and you'll see what I mean.

Just caught one of these buggers in a cage trap; thought it was worth mentioning (since it's the only "announcement monster" that can be caught this way that I know of).

I just watched a simple non-elite Goblin Spearman kill one on his own. I'm fairly new to the game, but that seems pretty weak for sure. He just couldn't chomp past iron armor. Trying him out with my own guys on a reload, my new, unskilled (novice combat skills) dorf had a similarly easy time of it and chopped him in half. Hydra on weight-loss program perhaps?

Maybe they are like dragons and take a long time to mature and are thus weak when they show up on quick worldgens?

One of these just destroyed my fortress. Just absolutely wrecked me. I had a small, trained militia (5 Dwarfs), with shields and weapons. I thought they might be enough to take it. Once they were all dead, I started sending waves of forty untrained recruits at a time. They got absolutely massacred. By the time it had taken out my entire population (80+), its status page was a wall of red text. But that didn't stop it from slaughtering all my animals once it was done with my Dwarfs. So... I don't know what you guys are talking about as far as difficulty is concerned. I guess that must just be in adventurer mode. I'm going right now to reclaim that fort with seven big, beefy warDwarfs. I'll let you know how it goes.--Thorvindr 04:43, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Okay. so I went in with seven swords-dwarfs all armored up (or at least I thought they were). Yeah. It ambushed me. I didn't see it on the unit list right away, so I assumed it was gone. That was foolish. So I went about reclaiming the fort, didn't setup a militia unit, didn't equip any of their gear, got ambushed and finally saw some Dwarfs get ripped in half.--Thorvindr 00:40, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Third time's a charm. I won't say my second team made short work of the Hydra, but they killed it. I lost three Dwarfs to the beast, and another two have so far gone insane. So I've got two Dwarfs left. I'm gonna set them to plopping down coffins so that my next expedition will be able to bury the dead (around a hundred). So, yes: a few skilled WarDwarfs can take out a Hydra.--Thorvindr 04:08, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Bad Combat Advice

Why does the current article encourage adventurers to attack the hydra's head with slashing/blunt weapons? This is doubly bad combat advice because it gets both the weapon and targeted area wrong. The easiest way to kill a hydra is to stab it in the upper body with a pike, which has a very small contact area and ridiculous penetration depth. Even if the pike is only held in one hand, it is almost guaranteed to damage the lungs if you can connect with it. This generates a mortal wound that, unlike bleeding, the hydra cannot recover from in combat. As long as the lungs are more than bruised, you can then let the hydra suffocate to death in time. Vyn 16:57, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to wiki-editing, Vyn. Feel free to make whatever changes you see fit. Bognor 06:39, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Done. Vyn 21:44, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Nice work :-) Bognor 15:43, 28 June 2011 (UTC)