Xanadu: How to train your dragon slayer

I have the best armor in the game, but thanks to Xanadu's item-experience system, I die in 1-2 hits. And I have the titular endgame weapon Dragon Slayer, but there are basic enemies that it doesn't even scratch. It's not even worth it to try fighting the Red Dragon God.

So of course I tried.

That tiny chunk of damage was from a vain Death spell.

 

First priority - get comfortable in that Battle Suit. I have to get myself beat up before it will reach its protection potential, but I can't die in the process.

Thankfully, there's a level 9 enemy that can do this for me - the Decaton. They can kill me almost instantly with their corrosion spells, but up close they prefer melee attacks which, when struck from behind, "only" do enough damage to kill me in a few seconds. And I have potions to spare.

Say hi to Nordom for me.

It takes a few, but I get my ultimate armor level up to 63, at which point they basically can't hurt me with melee, though magic is still a killer. Otyugh's are the next step, with a stronger melee ability and no magic, and after letting them punch me in the ass for what must be nearly twenty minutes (and drinking plenty of potions), my armor is at 113.

Adepts are real bastards and best fought with an hourglass or demon's ring.

  

Second priority is the Dragon Slayer. My penultimate weapon, the Vorpal Blade, is actually way more powerful than the Dragon Slayer. Even without any experience points, it's doing 240,000+ damage per hit, which one-shots almost any non-boss yet encountered. A green Dragon Slayer does about 5,000, if it even does anything at all - some enemies' defense stats are high enough to negate it. Tempting to use the Vorpal Blade, but I've got to train the Dragon Slayer, even if it means fights take forever. The skill points incidentally gained while armor training has improved this somewhat; the Dragon Slayer skill is at 107 already and damage has tripled, but this isn't that impressive against enemies with 150,000+ HP, which are common here.

After exploring the majority of the level, Dragon Slayer skill is over 200, but there are still a few enemies I can't fight with it; Garlerduhrs are immobile rock-like enemies who my blade just doesn't scratch, Volts are fragile but quick stingrays whose sting does 500,000 raw damage and OHKO's me even with my armor at its current level, and DarkStalkers are robed swordsmen with spinning blades who I also can't scratch, but they can shred my HP so fast that whatever armor level gained doesn't seem worth it. These enemies are avoided in the hopes that they can be useful to me later.

In one tower room, I encounter a pack of high strength "Varikya" enemies who I can just barely harm. By freezing them in place with an hourglass and hitting them for ultra-low damage, I eventually max out my Dragon Slayer skill.

Afterward, I switch to the Vorpal Weapon and easily clear out the level, but spare one enemy in each dungeon room except for those who are truly too dangerous to be left alive (namely Adepts and Volts) so that I might come back to them for more advanced armor training. In retrospect, I wish I had done this in earlier stages too.

As a side note, this stage has a LOT of locked doors, but after unlocking most of them (and also finding quite a few in the towers), I've still got 131 left. So even though buying more would be prohibitively expensive now, I'm not that worried about running out. There's only one more level to go.

Level 9 map:

Xanadu: Tickling the dragon

In contrast to level 7, level 8's layout is... kind of fun? Or maybe I'm just conflating fun with easy at this point. The world map layout is a gimmick, but at least it's a gimmick that doesn't make getting around a horrible time. I guess it's a little bit tricky to navigate if you're relying purely on the standard zoomed-in view, but with a map to reference, it's pretty straightforward.

Two things are a bit alarming, though. One, enemies just aren't dropping gold like they used to. I entered with $30k, and finished the overworld section with $50k. A full heal at this point will cost $20k, so I'd better hope my potion supply holds up. Two, I am chowing down on food at a truly stupid rate, at over 3,000 units per minute, which means I need to spend $18k for enough food to sustain each hour of gameplay.

The dungeon, which requires winged boots to reach one of its entrances, isn't quite the nigh-unmappable void that its predecessor was, but it does have some one-way walls, and one of its corners contains, cruelly, an endless loop that forces me to expend one of my wall-passing mantle items to escape from. I've only got one left now! But after selling the loot found within - my sequence-breaking gear is better, I have just over $160k, which is great because the food is starting to run low.

I wish I could buy more than 990 units at once.

 

So now that levels 1-8 are done, can I beat the Silver Dragon on level 9?

Yes, I can. But not with my puny Murasame blade. At melee range, it will just eat you. Thankfully, I've been training my Death spell throughout the level, and now it has 135 points of experience, and my rank of Necromancer gives me an intelligence of 145.

This is basically just enough to kill it.

With a strategic use of a single Black Onyx to warp close to the tower entrance, a single Demon's Ring for invulnerability, and two Hourglasses to freeze the minor enemies (as I would rather not kill them with anything but the Dragon Slayer), I locate the dragon, and Death it to, well, death.

Sure enough, its lair holds the last elemental crown, and all I need to use to escape with it is one more hourglass.

So, now that I have all four, can I snatch the Dragon Slayer and start training it?

Well, first, I visit the temple to see if I can level up. I do - my new Fighter rank is "Super-hero," and I also get a cryptic map.

Google translates this as a colloquialism roughly meaning "what's done is done." No idea if that's accurate, or if that kanji is even legible.

 

I don't get how the map is supposed to help me, and it's not clear at all how/if its corridors would map to a Xanadu dungeon layout, but I use another Black Onyx to warp to level 10, make my way to the tower while avoiding combat, and enter.

It takes me a few suicidal runs to explore, but level 10's tower is indeed full of top-end gear, including the Dragon Slayer. It's also full of bosses - nothing I haven't seen before, and most of them just die the moment I prick them with my Murasame, but all of the best stuff is guarded by silver dragons.

Such as this cache of eight battle suits.

 

The regular monsters can easily kill me in one hit, but hourglasses freeze them in place, letting me just walk past them. I have no shortage of them at this point. I just have to be quick to re-activate after killing any boss, because boss mode ends the power of any durationed item, and the boss lairs here often have normal enemies that attack immediately after killing their master.

Such as with this penultimate room

I take the most efficient path to the Dragon Slayer, killing quite a few Silver Dragons along the way, and pick up some other good things on this path - a Small Shield +7, several Battle Suits, and a "Vorpal Weapon" which may in fact be much more powerful than the Dragon Slayer.

But one prize must remain unclaimed. The Large Shield+7 is stashed in an enclosed Silver Dragon room, and you'd need one mantle to get in, and another mantle to get out. And I've only got one!

Take it and I'll be trapped with it forever.

 

If I can survive long enough to get my battle suit experience high enough to protect me worth a damn, then I should be golden! I hope.