Talk:Hydra Transmutation

Training level 1 hydra transmutation on a giant in the kitchen dungeon, using Taunt to bring the ingredients within range of the hydra. When ingredients are affected by taunt, they don't necessarily run in straight away. I'm getting the impression that not all ingredients behave equally. In particular, pieces of meat seem very likely to just freeze in place when hit by taunt, which usually results in some of them being stuck out on the rim of the hotplate, outside the range of my Hydra. So I've been choosing missions that don't involve that ingredient.

Has anyone else noticed this? I'm not sure enough of the observation to add it to the page yet.

Sounds like a quirk of AI for the meats specifically. Whatever it may be, it doesn't seem like it belongs on the Hydra page. Perhaps under the Taunt page.

This is definitely an AI thing. Most enemies from my recollection take a half second before they decide what to do when Taunted, some even complete whatever attack they were previously going to do first. Kitchen monsters seem to have particular cycles of caution and attack. All of this probably doesn't involve Hydra though (since Taunt isn't particularly consistent at getting large groups of enemies together). I would recommend Stampede, Act 6: Crisis, Death Mark, or certain pet moves. Lullaby and Dance of Death are also useful here, and likewise for Crisis Escape. Rank 1 Raincasting in combination with Crisis Escape means you won't really ever get targeted, which I believe to be the ideal way to do anything in the Kitchen Dungeon. Also note that since most on-summon pet damage will hurt/kill the Kitchen monsters, you can use pets like Bone Dragons to kill far off enemies and summon new ones in the center of the room.

The short of it is: Taunt will get in your way; instead use moves that reduce AI issues like Raincasting.

As an additional note, at higher ranks, Hydra kills quickly enough that if you just get Glewyas to die first via aggro manipulation of the kitchen utensil, you don't even need aggro management tools. Just put the hydra down in the center and the food will die before it can walk out of range - plus with Glewyas dead, the food will naturally aggro onto you.

That's not matching my experience.

Yes; I was encouraging an early death for Glewyas, and was then placing the hydra in the centre of the room. But when food respawns, it respawns already moving, so they can move outside the hydra's radius of damage before the next tick of damage happens. So if I do nothing I usually end up with 2 or 3 mobs outside the damage range when I can only afford to have one out there. This why I'm standing on top of the hydra trying to find ways to attract them back to me.

Am I missing something? I've been back through the cylinder list to see whether I overlooked an upgrade that would increase the hydra radius, but I couldn't see anything.

Also, just noticed the hydra page claims that at level 1 the training counts were 6 awfuls and 7 strongs, so I've updated that to the current requirements of 7 awfuls and 8 strongs. Not sure when that changed, but maybe some of those who posted replies managed to complete Rank 1 when the counts were at the lower level, which would have made it significantly easier.

Thanks for suggestion of Stampede, Act 6 Crisis and Death Mark. While I've now finished the training for my giant, I'll try the latter two for my human and elf.

I'm not following your suggestion re Crisis Escape and Raincast. If I lose agro I'm getting too many mobs wandering outside the damage radius of my hydra, so I'm not progressing the hydra training requirements.

The strategy involves using Raincast, dropping aggro (with Crisis) whenever you might get it (rank 1 Raincast doesn't entirely prevent aggro), and then using Hydra. If enemies walk outside of the circle I kill them with things like on-summon pet damage (for example, bone dragons deal damage to a flight-line when they get summoned that can hit even enemies far from you) and dance of death. Those two examples might kill enemies that are within hydra range, so you might need to micro manage a little. All of these will stun the enemies when they get hit and prevent movement for a second (you can include Shock for stuns that will likely not kill the dungeon monsters).

Doesn't count for Training Requirements for alchemic damage & kills for the Alchemy Mastery skill. Probably an oversight..

Try reading the Alchemy Mastery page.

Never mind, swear to God it was on there.

Where did "A hydra that comes from the ground spitting venom out of its mouth" come from? It still says "Lethal Venom from the Underground" for me.

Well, peering at the history of the page, came from a user who's responsible for the Episode 4 bullet, but really wasn't eloquent enough for the wiki.

Read: No basis. I don't think there'd be any issue with changing it back.

Yep says the same for me, why did they change it?

I've done a few tests and from: rF-r9: ~600 Range r9-r5: ~650 Range r5-r2: ~700 Range r1: ~800 Range

So I'm training for the master title when I noticed I get training from only 6 awful enemies, as well as with only 7 strongs. Could anyone else test and confirm?

I can confirm.

One of my friends that has the title says you dont need to do all the reqs to get it. He said if you have the vates badge all you need to do is cap that 460.00xp and you get it. I'm ranking mine now to confirm.

Sage of the Night Badge actually changes the requirements and multiplies end result by 1.5x. It is not to be confused with the 2x training bonus from talents.

This:

• AP: 40
• Stat Improvement: Stamina +4
• Effects: Damage 90~99, Magic Def -35, Magic Protection -18, Effect Duration 30 sec

Method	Count	Exp	Total
Use the skill successfully.	8000	0.01	80
Apply it to 7 or more powerful enemies at once.	4000	0.03	120
Apply it to 6 or more very powerful enemies at once.	2000	0.08	160
Apply it to 3 or more boss-level enemies.	1000	0.1	100

---

Becomes this with the bonus from Sage of the Night Badge:

• AP: 40
• Stat Improvement: Stamina +4
• Effects: Damage 90~99, Magic Def -35, Magic Protection -18, Effect Duration 30 sec

Method	Count	Exp	Total
Use the skill successfully.	8000	0.015	120
Apply it to 7 or more powerful enemies at once.	4000	0.045	180
Apply it to 6 or more very powerful enemies at once.	2000	0.12	240
Apply it to 3 or more boss-level enemies.	1000	0.15	150

---

Note that the exp is changed. It acts much like the Skill EXP from Reforges.

Thank you but I am already aware of how the badges work and your post is kind of irrelevant to what I was saying in my previous post which was my friend saying for this particular skill you only needed to train the 460xp and didn't need to do every requirement. In any case he was wrong. I just passed 470xp and didn't get the title.

Hydra transmutation seems to deal more damage as the skill's duration continues. I'm only rB ATM, but I'll continue to watch the damage while i'm training it.

After extensive usage, it's clear that the way the damage increase works is that each tick the damage is applied, it is increased by 1 stack, up to 5 times, unless an enemy is damaged, this increase will not occur, if 1 enemy walks by, and takes 3 ticks and dies, the next enemy will take 4x the damage, no matter how long a period of time before the next enemy is caught in the cloud.

It seems that at rF the hydras have 3 ticks, because it hits 3 times from the start of the duration. Then at rE it somehow has 4 ticks and can hit 4 times on one enemy who stays there.

15 second duration and 3 ticks means 5 second per hit? but in the 16 second duration for rank E, it hits 4 times so it's much shorter. At rank 1 with a lot of masteries in Battle Alchemy, Hydra Transmutation is practically the strongest skill in the game in regards to total damage done without needing assistance, since it has a 60 second cooldown but 30 second duration at rank 1. It practically ignores def/prot and such so it can hurt monsters that can't be normally hurt with some powerful skills.

The problem is the stationary of the target and the range to use it, meaning it's only best when you have way to stunlock or freeze a enemy in one position for up to 30 seconds, which most huge bosses and strong bosses won't do.

I don't want to associate Uroboros with Hydra Transmutation. While the models are reused, I just call them hydras. Anyone agree, or is this just a thing going to my head?

I'm for Hydras.

I'm going to wait for a full consensus coming from the current wiki community...albeit the small number of active editors.

Either that or ask a bunch of people online...

The skill's own name says Hydra, so... yeah.

I'd like to call them mini Uroboros. "Hydra" doesn't strike me well enough.

But since the majority is going for Hydra, a trivial mention of Uroboros should be stated?

if it were up to me, I'd go with calling them Hydra (singular and plural, no S at the end), provided we mention their resemblance to four Uroboroi (and make sure we say four, not one like the common misconception).

So, I'm rank E here and my hydra is only hitting a max of 4 enemies. Apparently this number increases?

Are they in range? It has a very limited range to what I would say is comparable to r1 windmill but not sure.

It's hitting enemies farther away from the hydra than the closer enemies. I tossed the hydra in the big friday prison sword pit in metus at 2am and also tried a huge pile of monsters in shyllien, just 4 were showing numbers each time. I'm very sure they were in range.

I only just got mine (stupid guardcylindermasteryhnnng) and I have noticed that rF is only hitting 4....despite being in the center of a glitched sulfur spider center room...

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

15

The page says the skill gets 5Stamina at rank 2, but goes from 32, to 36. That's only four? So is the +5 Stamina wrong and gives four, or did the total get messed up? Same thing happens from rank 2 to 1. For now I'm leaving those two ranks blank on the Stats and Skills page.