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How does the Elder Dragon's magics affect each other?


Slowpokeking.8720

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Kralkatorrik showed he could use other dragon's magic, but it also caused him a lot of pain. So it makes me wonder how does the Elder Dragons' magic works against each other?

Primordus and Jormag's magic are against each other for sure.

I guess Zhaitan's magic didn't work too well on Mordremoth, too. Even worse than Kralkatorrik, which is why Zhaitan's death didn't awake Mordremoth and he didn't get too much benefit from Zhaitan's power.

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I thought he in fact did get a lot of benefit from zhaitan power, allowing him to manufacture a lot more minions and quickly from corpses. After all, he gained a large and renewable army in a short period of time that weren’t just from turned sylvari and twisted vines.

Zhaitans power was also split - Tequatl for sure took a blast, so it’s possible that whilst mordy took enough to utilise the death sphere, it wasn’t enough to fully awaken and only the concentrated blast of a key line was enough to get from near awake, to full awake and highly active fast.

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I also think Primordus' fire might cause huge damage to Mordremoth as well.

@Randulf.7614 said:I thought he in fact did get a lot of benefit from zhaitan power, allowing him to manufacture a lot more minions and quickly from corpses. After all, he gained a large and renewable army in a short period of time that weren’t just from turned sylvari and twisted vines.

Zhaitans power was also split - Tequatl for sure took a blast, so it’s possible that whilst mordy took enough to utilise the death sphere, it wasn’t enough to fully awaken and only the concentrated blast of a key line was enough to get from near awake, to full awake and highly active fast.

It's not really death magic, from Logan's example we can see it's not necessary to make clones from the dead.

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@Slowpokeking.8720 said:I also think Primordus' fire might cause huge damage to Mordremoth as well.

@Randulf.7614 said:I thought he in fact did get a lot of benefit from zhaitan power, allowing him to manufacture a lot more minions and quickly from corpses. After all, he gained a large and renewable army in a short period of time that weren’t just from turned sylvari and twisted vines.

Zhaitans power was also split - Tequatl for sure took a blast, so it’s possible that whilst mordy took enough to utilise the death sphere, it wasn’t enough to fully awaken and only the concentrated blast of a key line was enough to get from near awake, to full awake and highly active fast.

It's not really death magic, from Logan's example we can see it's not necessary to make clones from the dead.

It was specifically stated that the method he used for minions from corpses was due to death magic as per confirmation by the devs and that info was then added to the wiki entry. It might even be clarified in ls3 but I can’t quite remember. They did admit it was poorly communicated in HoT, but that depends on how much you believe they planned ahead and I’m cynical on that these days

So mordy used both his and zhaitans powers to create minions, just in different ways.

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Mordremoth' clone ability is not granted by Zhaitan for sure.

In Bitter Harvest, it's clear to see that Zojja and Logan were both not dead but the tree could still make clone from them.The Sylvari were very possibly created based on human corpses by the Pale Tree, which is wayy before Zhaitan's death.
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@Randulf.7614 said:

@Slowpokeking.8720 said:I also think Primordus' fire might cause huge damage to Mordremoth as well.

@Randulf.7614 said:I thought he in fact did get a lot of benefit from zhaitan power, allowing him to manufacture a lot more minions and quickly from corpses. After all, he gained a large and renewable army in a short period of time that weren’t just from turned sylvari and twisted vines.

Zhaitans power was also split - Tequatl for sure took a blast, so it’s possible that whilst mordy took enough to utilise the death sphere, it wasn’t enough to fully awaken and only the concentrated blast of a key line was enough to get from near awake, to full awake and highly active fast.

It's not really death magic, from Logan's example we can see it's not necessary to make clones from the dead.

It was specifically stated that the method he used for minions from corpses was due to death magic as per confirmation by the devs and that info was then added to the wiki entry. It might even be clarified in ls3 but I can’t quite remember. They did admit it was poorly communicated in HoT, but that depends on how much you believe they planned ahead and I’m cynical on that these days

So mordy used both his and zhaitans powers to create minions, just in different ways.

But it's not the case.

You can play Bitter Harvest and it made clear that Mordremoth doesn't necessarily need the subject to be dead to create clones. Logan and Zojja are both alive yet the tree could still produce clones from them. It's not necromancy for sure.

Also it's not some new ability. The Sylavari themselves were very possibly created based on human corpses since the Pale Tree's seed were put into a massive grave. But that was way before Zhaitan's death.

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A dev quote to help clarify my reply. It is corpses I refer to - using Logan as your example is of course Mordremoth natural ability as he was a living template

But using say a dead itzl as a template for minions was power gainedd from zhaitan

__Andrew Gray.5816 said:

  1. After Zhaitan's death, the other elder dragons gained the ability to make minions out of the dead. Prior to that, only living hosts were viable for the other Elder Dragons.
  2. The ability for corpses to be viable candidates is the ability Mordremoth gained from Zhaitan. Without Zhaitan's power, only the living could be placed in Blighting Pods, making "taking people alive" the only way to create clones. I believe living hosts still create stronger clones, however, hence the drive to still capture victims alive when possible.__
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@"Randulf.7614" said:A dev quote to help clarify my reply. It is corpses I refer to - using Logan as your example is of course Mordremoth natural ability as he was a living template

But using say a dead itzl as a template for minions was power gainedd from zhaitan

__Andrew Gray.5816 said:

  1. After Zhaitan's death, the other elder dragons gained the ability to make minions out of the dead. Prior to that, only living hosts were viable for the other Elder Dragons.
  2. The ability for corpses to be viable candidates is the ability Mordremoth gained from Zhaitan. Without Zhaitan's power, only the living could be placed in Blighting Pods, making "taking people alive" the only way to create clones. I believe living hosts still create stronger clones, however, hence the drive to still capture victims alive when possible.__

The Pale Tree could make the Sylvari out of a massive grave way before Zhaitan's death. Treahane could use death magic to rise minions as well. Also in GW1, Glint has the Facet of Darkness.

Death magic isn't unique, even the mortals could use it. Zhaitan's uniqueness was the ability to make Risen, his unique minions.

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The ability to create minions out of the dead.

Mordremoth makes many references to using the dead, via its champions, and its minions often say things like "even in death, you will serve the dragon!". It didn't technically /need/ this ability, but it made its army high-invulnerable, between being able to grow, infest, and resurrect minions, and even his champions died many times. In fact, this resiliance was only seen one other time in the game, in the Awakened, so much that we had to kill Joko's champion in freaking space to protect the corpse from resurrection, so definitely death magic here.

Also the ability to raise the dead.

This is seen multiple times, but only by specialised agents-the weaker dead are usually raised as thralls in order the bolster the army, Kralkatorrik used this when he was low on numbers during the assault of Amnoon. Mordremoth didn't use this ability, because he had blighting pods, which could create clones of his minions unlike the limited supply of Branded. So cloning was Modremoth's ability, not death magic.

They are two different things that are not related, Mordy could raise the dead, but only did so to clone them (replication), which is an inherit ability that it already had, he just needed Zhaitan's power to make it work on corpses.

If you take a good look at the generic minions that attack Central Tyria, Dry Top ,and the Silverwastes, most of them appear to be infested corpses, suggesting at this time his blighting trees were not yet functional, in fact we see in the game that several of them were still growing even at the time of HoT, in Auric Basin. So it seems prior to the Mordrem Guard he had very few, if any, living minions besides a few Sylvari.

So one could assume that Zhaitan's power let him start a campaign, but was not the game-changer. the Sylvari were, the fact that the Pale Tree basically unintentionally raised an army for him while he was asleep are what made him so dangerous in the end.

It is possible that his life magic wasn't very compatible with Zhaitan's death magic; Caladbolg did cleanse Orr afterall. Maybe because of this he tried to limit his use of it after the initial campaign in order to avoid torment.

Mordremoth, Primordus, and Jormag all seemed to be smarter than Kralkatorrik; they only used the magic made available to them as much as they needed to to gain an advantage; Jormag was especially slow about it, not introducing it to his minions at all and instead just trying to create a single, powerful champion. Its possible Kralkatorrik just become overwhelmed by the onslaught of magic he was presented with.

But consider Kralkatorrik also had the most to fear because of his visions, and may have been desparate. He claims that Elder Dragons fear nothing, but as far as we know that was only one side of him, and not how he felt completely.

By comparison Modremoth thought he was immortal, even Tyria itself, and would not feel a desparation to survive.

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@Slowpokeking.8720 said:Mordremoth' clone ability is not granted by Zhaitan for sure.

Mordremoth's ability to clone from corpses is what was granted by Zhaitan.

The Pale Tree could make the Sylvari out of a massive grave way before Zhaitan's death.That's false speculation. The Pale Tree wasn't creating clones either, and based sylvari off of humans she saw.

Death magic isn't unique, even the mortals could use it. Zhaitan's uniqueness was the ability to make Risen, his unique minions.Except that according to Taimi, the death magic mortals use is Zhaitan's death sphere too. It's just that Zhaitan was using a much more concentrated form that other Elder Dragons, for some reason, couldn't until Zhaitan's death.

It's one of the loopholes of Season 3 and 4.

@"Hannelore.8153" said:If you take a good look at the generic minions that attack Central Tyria, Dry Top ,and the Silverwastes, most of them appear to be infested corpses, suggesting at this time his blighting trees were not yet functional, in fact we see in the game that several of them were still growing even at the time of HoT, in Auric Basin. So it seems prior to the Mordrem Guard he had very few, if any, living minions besides a few Sylvari.

If you're referring to the wolves and trolls, they weren't "infested corpses" but rather living beings corrupted by Mordremoth. Scott McGough explained that in the rare few cases where Mordremoth corrupted animals instead of plants to make minions, and used the Mordrem Trolls as a specific example, then the animal's flesh would slowly turn into plant matter. In the wolves' case, this left the bone exposed in the middle of the process.

The teragriffs, husks, and thrashers were created more akin to sylvari - not clones, but "mockeries". Based off of something else, but not a nigh-perfect copy. Similar to destroyers, really.

The only time we see Mordremoth using Zhaitan's power was in the blighting trees that cloned corpses.

Mordremoth, Primordus, and Jormag all seemed to be smarter than Kralkatorrik; they only used the magic made available to them as much as they needed to to gain an advantage; Jormag was especially slow about it, not introducing it to his minions at all and instead just trying to create a single, powerful champion. Its possible Kralkatorrik just become overwhelmed by the onslaught of magic he was presented with.

Jormag wasn't slow. He just didn't get a lot of magic from Zhaitan and Mordremoth's deaths. Taimi suggests that the reason for this is distance - meaning that the DSD would similarly not be able to make a bunch of death/plant minions.

And I'd say Primordus and Mordremoth were just as "desperate" for more magic as Kralkatorrik. Primordus moved across the continent to get the most of Mordremoth's and Zhaitan's freed magic, after all, and Mordremoth had Scarlet direct a bunch of magic towards him.

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