Drakes and dragon fire

Under the open sky of the Cursed Forest and the Hollow Ruins, Drakes and Elder Drakes don't stay on the ground. In the Crypt and the Catacombs they fight on their feet. Drakelings never fly. Their health is in the bestiary.

#How a flight goes

1. Take-off. After a few seconds of a fight on the ground it crouches and launches itself up on heavy wingbeats.
2. Circling. It climbs above the trees, nine to fourteen metres up, and circles you, banking into its turns. No blade reaches it there.
3. Fire from above. Every few seconds it slows to a hover, leans over you and pours fire down, sweeping it across the ground.
4. Landing. After a while, sooner if you've hurt it badly in the air, it comes down near you, legs reaching for the ground, and fights on foot for a few seconds. That's the blade's chance.

#Bringing one down

• Arrows, musket balls and spells reach it in the air. Raise your weapon and the camera can look almost straight up; lock on and it looks up at the drake for you. See shooting at things in the air.
• Break its poise in the air and it falls out of the sky and lies stunned on the ground.
• Kill it up there and it falls.
• With only a blade, stay alive until it lands, then hit it while it's on its feet.

#Dragon fire

• The breath is a held stream of flame from the jaws, 13 metres long on the ground and 22 from the air, and it goes wherever the head turns. A shield blocks it.
• Burning ground. Wherever it strikes the ground, a rock or a tree, the fire catches and burns for eight to twelve seconds, then leaves a scorch mark. Standing in it burns you every half second.
• Smoke and snorts. A drake at rest now and then snorts smoke; the big ones lick flame.

#The Drake Matriarch

A boss that guards her eggs in a nest in about two Cursed Forests in five, as far from the Broodmother's lair as the forest allows. She's bigger than an Elder Drake, deep crimson and ember-lit.

• She wakes with a roar and a boss bar when you come within about 17 metres of her nest.
• She bites, claws, lashes her tail and breathes a long fire, and flies like the other drakes.
• She won't leave her nest. Lead her more than about 26 metres from it and she gives up the chase and flies home.
• Below half health she shrieks and the two eggs nearest her hatch into drakelings. After that she's faster and takes to the air again sooner.
• Her reward: her own loot table with a good chance of a Vault Key, plus Drake Scales, Ember Hearts and Ember Ash, her head on your trophy wall and a callout: MATRIARCH SLAIN.

Her nest is described on the Cursed Forest.