The update on July 29 contained a single phrase: 'Antharas Raid.' It signaled that the dragons, the ultimate bosses and most formidable beings in the Lineage universe, had been adjusted to make them defeatable.
However, even two weeks later, there is still no news of a successful raid in Korea. Multiple YouTubers, including 'Aden Is Now' on the Gillian server and 'Liberteen' on Gunter, set out to raid Antharas alongside their allies. Hundreds of players poured all their effort into confronting the dragon, but its scales proved too tough to pierce.
It is a widely accepted consensus in Lineage that boss monsters have minimum stat thresholds required to defeat them. A prime example is the Death Knight; during the early days of service when player gear was weak, opinions widely circulated that defeating it was impossible because no matter how many players gathered or how long they attacked, they could not deal any damage in the first place.
Given that the dragon remains undefeated even after so many players gathered to attempt it, speculation is growing that despite the difficulty nerf patch, current player stats still fall short of the minimum threshold needed for the raid. Unless top-tier players on a global world scale join forces on a single server, the dragons are unlikely to fall anytime soon.
Interestingly, dragons had already been defeated on Taiwanese servers around July 11, well before the dragon difficulty nerf was applied. Videos uploaded by Taiwanese YouTubers show Mages transformed into Black Elders crowding the screen, positioning themselves to instantly spam spells and exceed the dragons' health regeneration to secure the kill.
After Antharas and Fafurion were felled in this manner, the NPC server crashed, and a hotfix subsequently adjusted the dragons' stats. Defeating them through focused magic nuking is no longer possible, and it is presumed that the conditions to inflict actual damage were raised or stats like HP were drastically increased.
Taking this alongside the Death Knight example, conventional methods currently fall short of overcoming boss survival mechanics such as Armor Class (AC), damage reduction, and HP regeneration. Players will need to gather weapons with higher attack power and high-rank spells capable of dealing massive burst damage all at once. However, on Korean servers, server transfers have just concluded and player strength remains split across multiple servers, making it unlikely that a 'First Dragon Slayer in Korea' will emerge anytime soon.
One encouraging sign is the announcement of the 'Dragon Slayer' PC Cafe Fafurion All-Out War event. Scheduled for September 12 and 13 in Gwangju, Jeollanam-do, this second PC cafe event will focus on raiding Fafurion instead of Antharas. With various on-site events such as weapon enhancement, Fafurion raids, and quizzes taking place, this continuous push for dragon raids is raising expectations that a breakthrough may soon open up for boss raids on live servers as well.
