Queen of the Blackmarsh

The Queen of the Blackmarsh was once a large dragon, but after her death she returned to the realm of the living as a spectral dragon.

Background
A generation before the Dragon Age, she settled in the Blackmarsh, terrifying the local villagers. Not wishing any harm to come to their homes, the villagers enacted many futile pre-emptive strikes against her. When it seemed all hope was lost, the Orlesian Baroness that ruled those lands set out and presumably killed the Queen. However, some did not believe it, and rumors circulated that the Baroness was a witch.

Involved In
The Queen of the Blackmarsh appears in Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening as a boss creature. She can be awakened at the end of a quest in Blackmarsh by returning all of the scattered dragon bones to the skull on the hill toward the exit of the Blackmarsh. Once killed the Warden can retrieve the Eldest Dragonbone to start:

Skills and Capabilities

 * Around 2500 hit points
 * Lightning Breath, Lightning Bolts.
 * She possesses all electric spells
 * Enters a special non-combative phase where she summons eight Charged Wisps which must be destroyed or they heal her.
 * The Queen is immune to critical damage while in orb form. Critical hits inflicted deal normal damage.
 * Note: 100% Spell Resistance does not prevent her Breath or Bolt from dealing damage.

Strategy


The Queen of the Blackmarsh is a slightly difficult encounter if you do not understand the fight is broken up into two main phases. The first being the Queen acting as a basic dragon. In this form, she is resistant to lightning attacks, and has the basic tail knockback that affects anything behind her, a back leg kick that does decent damage to players close to her tail, but on her side, that also knocks them back, as well as a lightning breath attack that targets anything in front of her. The second phase involves several floating orbs of lightning arranged in a circle around the Queen, who has taken on an orb form herself that is still attackable, but is immune to critical hits/backstabs. While in this form, she will not cause any damage to the player and their party.

The lightning balls should be killed as quickly as possible, as when they reach the center of the circle, where the Queen is, they heal her for a decent amount (up to 350 each on Nightmare). The Queen enters the second phase three times: when she reaches 75%, 50%, and 25% health.

Charged Wisps can be frozen, stunned, and paralyzed. The Rain of Arrows ability may be a solid choice, but only once they are close enough together around the Queen. It is advisable to have all characters set to take a health poultice when health gets low, and to have any mages standing far enough away to avoid the dragon's attacks, but close enough to jump in and start killing the lightning balls when they appear.

Tanks might consider using the Stormchaser Armor Set, as it grants 80% Lightning Resistance and a decent amount of dexterity and armor. However, it is heavy armor, and therefore has less armor than conventional tank gear.

will greatly mitigate the Queen's damage.

Force Field Strategy
You can easily kill the Queen if you have enough sources of immobilization, such as a mage alternating the spells "Force Field" and "Paralyze." When she goes into her second form with the Charged Wisps, a well timed mass paralyze will immediately immobilize all of the wisps. Use this time to kill the wisps, leaving one wisp alive which you will immobilize. As long as the remaining wisp does not reach her she will remain in her lightning ball form forever, susceptible to damage but not dangerous to the party. Although it may take a while it is a guaranteed way to kill her, provided you can get past her first dragon form. As long as you don't run out of mana you can keep this up forever.

To get the Queen in to Orb State you can have the mages alternate force field on a main tanking character once that character has the Queen's attention. As long as the mages or archers don't cast spells and just use a standard attack she normally stays focused on the tank. Make sure your other characters keep a good distance away from her tail and lightning breath. It take a while to whittle her down this way but generally limits damage for lower level groups. Bring mana potions to make sure you don't run out.

Rushdown Strategy
For this strategy to work the party will need to have both very high damage on the dragon form as well as very high damage on the orb from of the Queen. The dragon form is highly susceptible to backstabs and one very good source of damage is a dual wield rogue with maximum or close to maximum swing speed and critical damage modifier. The orb form is most susceptible to archers and spirit warriors, both deal high damage per strike without hitting critically. Spirit Warriors that have Soulbrand also deal spirit damage, attack quickly, and ignore armor.

With enough damage it is possible to take the Queen to ~50% health before she enters the orb form for the first time. Once in orb form it is possible to simply attack the Queen and completely ignore the Charged Wisps and, with roughly 12,500 damage in the ~35 seconds the orb phase lasts, finish her off before any of the Charged Wisps reach the Queen in the center. Killing no Charged Wisps will result in less overall experience, however.

Curse of Mortality
As an alternative to killing the orbs, mages who possess Curse of Mortality may simply cast it on the Queen just as the Wisps begin to reach the centre. Should the Queen be unable to resist the spell, the Curse will effectively nullify the Wisps' healing abilities.

Archer Strategy
A team of 3 or 4 archers with high dexterity and Accuracy will make light work of the Queen. It's entirely possible to kill her in under 1 minute on Nightmare difficulty using this strategy. The Manual of Focus will be required to respec Sigrun and either Justice or Ogren into archers and one to tweak Nathaniel to focus on very high dexterity.

Rewards
In addition to the 950 experience received the first four items below are guaranteed.


 * Its possible and quite easy to achieve double experience by killing the dragon amidst a transformation sequence, the current form will count as a kill but not interrupt the process and then the next hit following the completed transformation will result in a second kill and more experience. Some characters may even share the queen as most powerful foe slain following the fight.