Harvester (strategy)

This page contains detailed tips on how to fight the Harvester of Dragon Age: Origins - The Golems of Amgarrak.

Phase One

 * The Reaper's Cudgel - The Harvester detaches one of its many limbs, and strikes out in a broad arc in front of it. Targets are knocked down and take critical damage unless they pass a physical resistance check. Targets that pass a physical resistance check are knocked back and take normal damage. (Activated, Range: Personal, Cooldown: 40s)
 * Bile Burst - The Harvester's putrefying organs burst with a jet of corrosive bile, which inflicts massive nature damage on targets in the area of effect. (Activated, Range: Touch, Cooldown: 30s)
 * Vile Disembowelment - The Harvester draws writhing entrails from its belly and hurls them outward, causing nature and physical damage on foes within the area of effect. The thrown entrails then transform into a walking corpse that attacks the Harvester's enemies. (Activated, Range: Medium, Cooldown: 30s)
 * Harvester Fury - The Harvester gains an increase to attack rate and movement speed for a short time. (Activated, Range: Personal, Cooldown: 60s)
 * Ground Slam - The Harvester slams the ground, damaging its targets and knocking them back unless they pass a physical resistance check. (Activated, Range: Personal, Cooldown: 30s)

Phase Two

 * Harvester Pounce - The Harvester leaps to a target point. (Activated, Range: Medium, Cooldown: 0.5s)
 * Aura of Undeath - An aura of vile, pulsating magic surrounds the Harvester. Corpses within the area of effect rise to attack nearby foes. (Sustained, Range: Personal, Cooldown: 0s)

Preparation
Since release of The Golems of Amgarrak DLC, the Harvester is commonly known to be one of the most - if not the most - difficult fight in the Dragon Age series.

At higher difficulty levels, the source of your character will play a key role in determining your options for this final battle: If you wish to fight the Harvester on Hard or Nightmare, the following preparations are recommended:
 * Creating a new Level 20 character is the most challenging, since you will not benefit from the attribute, skill and ability points from Tomes and the Fade essences, as well as not being able to import top-quality equipment, potions, poisons, recipes, runes, etc. This almost certainly constrains your class choice to Mage with Spirit Healer and Arcane Warrior specializations.
 * When importing a main character, don't forget to strip the rest of your party in order to import their gear as well. Also, if importing from Awakening, include a couple of Manual of Focus in your inventory.  They will carry over and allow you to set up the Dace brothers as you prefer (for example, turn Jerrik from a melee rogue to an archer or maximize Constitution for Brogan).
 * Importing from Origins probably produces enough of an edge to make Rogue a viable option, though threat management will be very challenging, and should the Runic Golem fall you will be without Revival options.
 * Importing from Awakening makes a non-Mage choice much more solid, opening up the possibility of success with a near-invulnerable Warrior tank (who should have the full Spirit Warrior tree), as well as further improving the odds for a Mage or a Rogue, who will have an abundance of ability points and top-tier equipment.
 * Threat management is central to success, regardless of other factors, and should play a key role in the choice of abilities/spells for your character, whatever their source or class.
 * Tactics should be carefully reset for each party member before the battle, and disabling tactics entirely for the Runic Golem (manual control only) may be a good idea if you want to keep it alive. Alternatively, you can only disable the attacks that cause friendly fire.
 * Jerrik's Bronto, Snug, will be useful (and easily revived as long as Jerrik doesn't fall) as a secondary threat manager to keep corpses off your other characters. His superior speed allows him to run around the room and avoid taking damage while Taunt cools down.
 * If using Brogan and/or Jerrik for melee damage, keep their weapons coated with poison. As the skeletons are immune to nature damage, you may want to use fire or spirit damage, and have the golem turn on Flaming Weapons.
 * The Runic Golem should be fully upgraded, and ensure you have fully completed Amgarrak's Secrets, otherwise you'll miss out on the XP for the final level-up of your party.
 * Ranged attack can be highly effective, using the Accuracy talent. Even a single rogue with a good bow and most of his points in dexterity will make this battle easier. Pull threat with your main character while the rogue shoots the Harvester to death. In many scenarios it is possible to equip both Jerrik and Brogan with good bows and Accuracy, with which they will score regular critical hits of 100-120 and 80-100 (at Level 23), respectively, in both phases of the battle without drawing much threat (apart from proximity).
 * If using an Arcane Warrior as the major tank, spells such as Death Cloud, the hexes and Walking Bomb all draw major threat, as well as being useful in their own right. Mind Blast is obligatory to clear the threat table should you get surrounded by skeletons. An Awakening Mage should also equip with Hale runes to close a key vulnerability gap, particularly since many corpses favor Riposte to stun, which can be easily fatal if surrounded.
 * Party members likely to come under attack from the Harvester itself should be pre-dosed with Greater Nature Salve.
 * As an Awakening's* rogue with very high dex (70 base works from experience, untested with lower) as well as momentum (to keep agro up), evasion, Duelist stance and keen defense as well as the duel weapon specialization, it is possible to have your rogue tank the Harvester as you take almost no hits throughout the entire fight, with Brogan using threaten to pick up the skeletons. (Works on Hard difficulty, untested on Nightmare)
 * Don't be too frustrated if it takes a while to earn the achievement. The encounter contains elements of luck which have nothing to do with your skill as a player (e.g. number and type of the skeletons that spawn).
 * *An Awakening character is not necessarily required (at least in hard mode), however, you must have done most or all of the quests in the Origins story to be of a high enough level to get away with this (just did it with a level 25 Duelist/Bard/Assassin with 102 base dex with the recommended skill setup)

Phase One
The battle will start as the Harvester enters a large golem-like body made of flesh. For the duration of this phase, remember that damage is key. There is no limit to the amount of times you will have to press the switch or the amount of minions the Harvester will summon, so the quicker you take him down the easier it will be. Jerrik needs to focus fire on the Harvester at all times.

As the Harvester will always first use Vile Disembowelment, you will want to avoid starting the fight with your party in its range. Start the fight by diverting the Harvester with your tank, making sure to sustain aggro (for those who are playing after Awakening, Air of Insolence is very useful to activate here). Start attacking the Harvester with your party, making sure to keep your golem at a good distance from the harvester whilst also being able to benefit your team with Cleansing Aura. The Harvester's skills are powerful and quick, so keep a close eye on your tank's health; it will drop abruptly multiple times during the fight (for Awakening players: if you find yourself in a position where your tank's health is dropping fast and he's on potion/heal spell cooldown, don't forget to use Carapace to reduce damage).

The mechanics of the fight is organized such that when the Harvester switches from the 'normal phase' to the 'red phase', a switch on the side of the room will appear. The purpose of this switch is to remove any buff the Harvester gains from switching to the 'red phase', whilst also eliminating any summoned skeletons. Do not always use this switch as soon as it appears! Sometimes the tank will take next to no physical damage whilst in the 'red phase', in which case you will want to use the switch. Sometimes there will be no significant alteration to his defense or attack, in which case, you should be saving the switch for incoming skeletons who may be overwhelming you. The rank of the skeleton he summons is generally random. If the skeleton he summons is Normal, it will be mostly harmless and can be ignored or offtanked by Snug. If it's an Elite skeleton, either take it down as swiftly as possible or immobilize it with an appropriate spell. If it's a Boss-ranked skeleton, you need to be very cautious; Boss-ranked skeletons hit as hard as the Harvester and will easily wipe your party if they are left to stray. Do not bother damaging the Boss skeletons; it is far more effective to focus fire on the Harvester whilst either kiting the orange skeleton with Jerrik's minion or keeping it in place with force field. Be wary that this fight is harder if the Boss skeletons make an appearance later into the fight when things are more chaotic; the idea is that you want to eliminate them by pressing the switch.

Whether you are playing on easy or nightmare mode, the best defense is offense; do not tarry the battle for long attacking the skeletons (although it is named corpse, it is supposed to be named a skeleton). It is your best bet to throw everything you have to the harvester itself. Skeletons will indeed bother you greatly, but if you are a powerful tanker or you are also a mage (preferably Arcane Warrior), then it will be possible draw all the attention on you or keep the party alive with healing magic from yourself and the runic golem. Never attack the skeletons unless there are so many of them that you can't keep your party alive or can't reach the Harvester. The Harvester will summon minions faster than you can kill them, so it is not a good idea to kill the skeletons unless you are sure you can deliver large amounts of damage with quick attack. Another method i have found to be useful if low on health poultices is to set the golems tactics to group heal when health is below 90 percent for any ally and to have whoever the tank may be taunt and run around the room to give more time to get a few more group heals off,this is especially useful if playing hard or nightmare difficulty.

Once you have defeated the first phase of the Harvester, he will eject from the corpse body and fight with his lizard-like body personally.
 * Using Mark of Death and Twin Strikes + Low Blow + Unending Flurry with an imported Rogue AND Jerrik can almost end the first phase instantly on Hard difficulty.

Phase Two
Again, in this part of the fight you will want focus fire on the Harvester at all times. Jerrik - with Feign Death and/or Distraction - will be able to keep aggro off him at all times whilst dealing heavy damage to the Harvester. Your golem should try to avoid garnering any attention from the skeletons so he can revive your party if necessary. You may find this fight easier if you are an archer as the Harvester's speed will not hinder your damage. If you are not a Spirit Healer mage, then unless you are a powerful tank you can supposed this battle is a lost battle if your runic golem dies (especially if you are playing on hard or nightmare). Make sure runic golem stays alive, as it will be the only source of healing in case you are not a mage.

This part of the fight is significantly harder because of the skeletons. First, the skeletons cannot be eliminated by a simple press of a switch(although it is possible to kill them if you saved the switch and push it right after you enter the second phase) ; they stick around for a long time and need to be killed or crowd controlled. If you find it easy to eliminate the skeletons then you might be able to afford some time to kill them one by one, although you should keep in mind they spawn rapidly and randomly. However, once again, the orange skeleton(s) will prove very difficult to handle and you should attempt to either soak up all their damage with your tank or crowd control them for as long as possible. The only way to keep the skeletons from spawning is to keep the Harvester busy; if you kill all the skeletons, then you won't have to fight them for a while as Harvester will need to go to the corpse piles and make more minions. So first kill the skeletons, and then make the Harvester busy (There is a bug here where all your attacks on skeletons will be "miss", unlike attacks on the Harvester).

Throughout the fight, the Harvester will travel around the entire room with great speed, usually traveling with its skeletons. In addition, the Harvester will switch phase from 'normal' to 'red', as it did in phase one. The difference this time is that the phasing doesn't affect the strength of the Harvester itself, but instead appears to improve the skeletons. Red-phased skeletons - who will glow red and look transparent - are significantly stronger and harder to hit. As soon as the Harvester switches phase, this is the time to control the skeletons or else you risk losing your entire party (for Awakening players: Carapace is invaluable at this part). Eventually, after the Harvester phases in and out of 'normal' and 'red' a sufficient amount of times, the skeletons will die instantly. If you managed to reach this point then you'll have a good shot at and will most likely defeat the Harvester.