Necrodrakon

Necrodrakon is one of the four available Dream Realm bosses you will encounter in AFK Journey. In this guide we will go over the boss mechanics and the best characters and teams to use against him.

Boss Mechanics

The boss will start by designating the player’s closest character as the “tank” and will start by attacking that character, but will switch target to the next closest character if the tank moves out of range. In early to late game, your best bet for the tank role in this boss will be

Thoran and surprisingly

Temesia. This is because Necrodrakon has two scary abilities that punish characters who just stand around in one place:

In-between attacks, Necrodrakon will cast a “Crest” on every character. This crest is a bomb that will explode if the character doesn’t move for 15s, dealing high damage and also debuffing that character’s ATK and energy gain,
Necrodrakon will also cast an Area Denial Attack on the biggest concentration of heroes (which depending on your team can be your frontline, or your backline). So you really don’t want to bring more than 2 backline heroes to this fight, or else they will have to deal with this attack for the entire fight. Though as long as your chosen heroes move around a bunch they will have no trouble dealing with this attack.

Other than these, Necrodrakon will also cast a big AOE attack, dealing heavy damage to all heroes, a total of 3 times during the fight. But there is a small issue. This stage is where

Smokey & Meerky and to a lesser extent other healers hits their first big wall, because of Necrodrakon last attack:

A ranged interrupt attack which targets the 2 healthiest heroes, which naturally will often include your healer.

So your healer will be constantly interrupted, forcing us to go with a different healing strategy, one focused on heroes with life leech or shield abilities. Example:

Of course, we can still fall back to using

Smokey & Meerky but he won’t be as effective here as he is on Skyclops and King Croaker.

Action Summary

Necrodrakon takes about 38-39 actions in the span of 90 seconds (the full length of the battle - if you survive through all of it that is). Here's a list of all possible actions:

Basic Melee Attack,
Basic Ranged Attack,
Area Denial attack (9x – targets area with the most characters),
Teamwide AOE Attack (3x),
Teamwide Crest Cast (5x),
Ranged Interrupt Attack (7x – targets 2 healthiest characters).

Team Roles

For this boss, you will need:

Tank
DPS Carry
Debuffer

Do try to keep faction bonuses in mind when putting together a team, with at least 3 characters of the same faction. You get more value the more support roles you can condense into a single character. For example,

Shakir can act as the Tank and Buffer!

Characters who move around a lot are extra useful for this boss!

Tank

Best in slot

Temesia (her ability to constantly move allows her to evade crests entirely, while also not taking as much damage from Necrodrakon’s mire attacks as a stationary tank would – doubles as dps carry - [Mythic+] and EX+5 required)

Viable alternatives

Thoran (doubles as debuffer, has life drain, is stationary but tanky enough to survive)
Kruger (doubles as debuffer, has a shield and life drain, is stationary but debuff is too good not to use)
Seth (doubles as debuffer and dps carry, has life drain, moves around the battlefield)
Shakir (doubles as buffer, has life drain, moves around the battlefield - [Mythic+] and EX+10 required)
Korin (moves around the battlefield – doubles as dps carry)
Brutus (doubles as debuffer, stationary, not as good as the other options here)

Honorable mentions

They contribute very little to team damage but will hold the line.

Debuffer

Anyone who inflicts debuffs that decrease enemy defenses or increase enemy damage taken. There are other debuffs too, but we’ll focus on those that directly contribute to team damage output the most.

Best in slot

Reinier (+25% Damage Taken at [Mythic+])
Kruger (40% Phys DEF, +40% Phys Damage Taken)
Thoran (+17% Damage Taken)

Viable alternatives

Lyca (up to -37% Phys DEF)
Koko (+10% Damage Taken)

Honorable mentions

Not 100% uptime, low debuff value/not the best option or poor faction bonus synergy.

Eironn (-40% Magic DEF - top tier debuff, but the current pool of single target magic DPS carries is not good enough to make him worth running)
Brutus (-30% Phys DEF - you already use Kruger for this)
Carolina (-15% Magic DEF)
Walker (-10% Phys DEF, -10 Crit Resist)
Cassadee (-20% Magic DEF at [Supreme+])
Fay (-10% Phys or Magic DEF depending on enemy damage type)
Kafra (-15% Phys DEF)
Seth (-15% Phys DEF at 67% boss health, -30% Phys DEF at 34% boss health)
Temesia (-6% Phys DEF)

Buffer

Anyone who provides buffs that increase team damage output. We’ll focus on offensive buffs, defensive buffs are less important if you can already stay alive.

Best in slot

Shakir (25 Haste, [30% ATK at EX +10], uptime tied to ultimate – doubles as tank; moves around a lot, might be challenging to keep his aura where you want due to lack of manual play - [Mythic+] and EX+10 required)

Viable alternatives

Smokey & Meerky (20% ATK, 30 Haste – not as good as usual against this boss, because he gets interrupted, which hurts his buff and heal uptime, but you can still run him)
Lyca (40 ATK SPD, teamwide 50% uptime - decent with Odie to help build up his damage)
Rowan (320 Energy, uptime tied to ultimate – doubles as healer - decent with carries such as Odie or Marilee who deal damage with their ultimate, not so good with Cecia)
Cassadee (Her buff acts as a Follow-up attack, high single target uptime, teamwide uptime tied to ultimate)
Damian (40 Haste at Mythic+ – doubles as healer)
Koko (10% ATK to team, 10% ATK to single ally)

Honorable mentions

Fay (14% ATK, 15 ATK SPD, uptime tied to ultimate, unreliable targeting – doubles as healer)
Hewynn (30 Haste at [Supreme+] - uptime tied to healing skill; doubles as healer)
Parisa (30 ATK SPD, +30% Normal Attack Damage, single target)
Reinier (4% ATK)

DPS Carry

Best in slot

Anyone who has great sustained single target damage output and has movement skills.

Marilee (she has movement skills and also top tier damage; the perfect dps carry for this boss)

Viable alternatives

Korin (movement + decent damage)
Rhys (movement + decent damage)
Temesia (movement + decent damage)
Vala (movement + decent damage)
Odie (no movement, but damage makes up for it)
Cecia (no movement, but damage makes up for it)

Honorable mentions

These characters are stationary but can still be used if you happen to have them at high investment and have no better options.

Healer (optional)

Best in slot

None! Run the Awakening Spell (Healing Artifact) for your healing needs and focus on damage instead. Any healer you run here won’t be able to do much thanks to interrupts, so you are better off relying on your characters’ life drain abilities and the healing artifact.

Viable alternatives

Smokey & Meerky (if you have to run a healer here, smokey is still good, but he will get interrupted)
Hewynn
Damian
Rowan
Koko

What’s the meta team?

Realistically speaking, your meta team will depend on your specific box, and your account focus, so use your highest rarity DPS carry characters, along with whoever can best boost their damage. Try running Dual/Triple carry, as currently there is no way to boost a Hypercarry’s damage high enough to make it worth running only one. Keep faction bonus in mind but don’t run suboptimal characters just to force it.

Still, below you can find a few example teams.