Dragons are always scary enemies to fight in aFinal Fantasygame. Square Enix is well aware of how to make a dragon tough to fight, and that’s only exacerbated when they make dragons fully-fledged bosses.Final Fantasy 16is no exception, and you’ll fight a few dragons before your time with the game is ended.
RELATED:Final Fantasy 16: How To Beat The Akashic Dragon
While the Akashic Dragon that you fought in Drake’s Head was a fire-elemental dragon, the White Dragon that you’ll encounter in the Crystalline Dominion is an icy beast. It also has far more threatening moves, so you’ll want to be on top form when you take this fight on.
How To Beat The White Dragon
The first thing to note about this fight is that, as you’d expect, the White Dragon is a very large target. This makesskills with multiple hitsthat might sometimes miss smaller enemies far more valuable. These include attacks likeWicked Wheel and Scarlet Cyclone, which are also greatStagger-inducers.
Another point to mention is thatthe dragon’s head is its weak spot. You should try to aim for this at all times, even though it’s where the ice comes from!
Speaking of ice, the table below listsall of the White Dragon’s attacks, along with some recommendations on how to avoid damage or exploit them.
Description
Ice Shards
The dragon spits out four balls of ice in a sweeping motion that stick to the ground where they land. After a short while, they’ll explode in a small radius.
There is also an aerial version of this attack.
Dodge out of the way of any ice balls that might hit you, but also make sure you move away from any ice patches about to explore.
Homing Laser
The dragon launches many lasers from both of its sides, which arc into the air before tracking your location.
These lasers are relatively slow, so you should be able to anticipate their landing patterns and avoid the attack entirely with a well-timed Precision Dodge.
Spinning Dive
The dragon rises into the air and then performs a lunge at you, spinning as it goes.
This attack has an obvious telegraph - the dragon spins in midair before lunging. This is a gap closer and also quite easy to dodge, making it a prime candidate for a Precision Counter.
Wing Swipe
The dragon digs its wing into the ground and then performs a swiping attack, turning around in a complete circle. Unlike the Akashic Dragon’s version of this move, the White Dragon’s is larger thanks to icicles that burst at the edge of its wing radius.
To keep up your offensive momentum, the best way to deal with this attack is to dodge through it. It’s a very easy attack to get Precision Dodges from, and the attack is long and non-threatening enough to let you get a full Precision Counter and combo off.
Head Swipe
The dragon will lean to one side and the make a swiping attack with its head, aiming to bash you from the side.
As with the previous attack, it is best to dodge into this to get an easy Precision Counter. It’s not as forgiving in terms of cooldown as Wing Swipe, but you’re able to still exploit its ease to get some easy damage in.
Smash
The dragon rears up on its hind legs and then smashes down at you. This attack creates a large burst of icicles on impact
Dodge away from the dragon to avoid this attack. It has an obvious windup, so you should be able to get the timing down quite quickly. Just be wary of the icicles that follow the impact.
Emanation
The dragon conjures multiple large ice crystals which will then float to different parts of the battlefield. They will all then start firing out lasers. The crystals in the air will fire quick lasers directly at you, and the ones on your level will fire slow-moving lasers that aim to catch you as you move around.
This is a very tricky attack to dodge, as the placement of the crystals feels quite random, and you’re having to avoid both horizontal and sweeping lasers. Focus on dodging the lasers fired from the aerial crystals, as getting caught by them may stun you long enough that you then get caught by the horizontal lasers.
After the laser portion of this attack, the crystals will form a circle, freezing the ground within them and then exploding with ice. Avoid this by getting out of the circle as it forms.
Frozen Breath
The boss rears up and starts breathing ice breath directly below it. This will freeze the ground in a very large circular radius around the dragon. After a while, the circle explodes with icicles from the ground.
As soon as you see this attack starting move away from the dragon and outside the circle of frost.
Heavenly Host
The dragon conjures multiple orbs of light that will start moving forward in your direction, and then follow that up with a Homing Laser attack.
Stay back, away from the orbs, and then dodge the Homing Laser as you normally would. After this, run around the floating orbs.
Ice Star
The dragon conjures a star of light on the ground. After a few moments, damaging pillars of light will emanate from the center.
Get into one of the safe ‘slices’ that isn’t in the path of these spokes of light. These pillars will travel further than the light spokes on the ground.
Dragon Dance
Just like the Akashic Dragon’s version of this attack, the White Dragon will simply chain together a number of its attacks in quick succession.
It will begin with Emanation, which will overlap with Heavenly Host (Homing Lasers included).
What follows is multiple Ice Stars that fall around Clive, followed by a final Spinning Dive.
Two of the crystals from Emanation will stick around until the end of the attack.
It will be tricky to keep track of everything happening on the screen at once but do your best to dodge each attack as it comes and keep your finger on the Potion button, just in case.
The White Dragon has a lot of attacks to learn, and many of them are on the trickier side. It will useEmanationafter being Staggered for the first time, andDragon Danceafter being Staggered for the second time. It will start using its stronger attacks, likeIce Star, only once low on health.
Of note areEmanation and Ice Star, which use attack types that you really wouldn’t be used to yet and can be quite random in their patterns.
Emanation is particularly nasty, as getting caught in multiple lasers in a row can spell a very quick death and Game Over.
In terms of offense,you can use many of the same strategies that you used against the Akashic Dragon.
UsingPhoenix Shiftto teleport up to the dragons head, especially when far away, is a great technique to use, and safer to use here than in the Akashic Dragon fight - the White Dragon’sattacks are far more ground-centricthan the taller attacks in the previous boss fight.
1,500
200
3,200
