The dragon at 5-5?
For me, I wait until he turns around after smashing his tail on the ground, then I bonk him on the nose with X+A when he turns around to face me. Then I cartwheel towards him and through his flame breathe until its safe to retreat and wait for him to beat his tail again.
The above is my strategy, but I have been unable to beat his thus far. Unfortunately he keeps flickering until he disappears altogether and inevitably my head gets bitten off. I can only hope the devs will fix this flicker glitch soon.

ok. lol. Just beat the Dragon at lvl 12 doing the above strat. Took about 15 mins... then the game crashed. c++ runtime error or something. Not happy >:(

EDIT: This time I beat him without any crash happening. I wont spoil anything, but he has some nice loot worth fighting for ;)

Just tried this fight for the first time. Frustrating that it seems you can only attack him when his head is in a certain position. The dragon also flickers for me.

I guess the devs wanted at least one fight where you had to hit and run, as opposed to jump in and spam. I haven't beaten the dragon yet, but I also haven't played through the whole game. I'm not sure if I want to focus on beating the dragon, or if I should play through the rest of the game.

Did you notice that the rocks that fall when he beats his tail seem to block his flame breath?

Just killed the flame breathing SOB and got Sheyna a sweet sword in the process. :)

The fallen stones will block the dragon's breath, but melt afterwards. I found it easier to rush in just as the beast was about to let rip the fire breath and use a low attack, then quickly get behind the rock before it was too late. It was hard as balls and used up all my lives when I miscalculated the distance but I managed to pull it off.

Yeah, I didnt use the rocks to hide behind when I fought him. Instead I'd hide under his jaw when he breathed fire so it didnt hit me, then rush away from him just as he'd finish with his death breath. This would cause him to use his tail smash, then I'd bop him on the nose when he turned back around. I just kept repeating this until death.
The sword you get from him is pretty cool too.

I still haven't managed to do this. The problem seems to be that 1.) I can't entirely avoid the damage from the fire breath while cartwheeling away because you get hit between cartwheels, and 2.) if you cartwheel towards the dragon you can hit him a few times by cartwheeling whenever he attacks, but eventually he bites your head off. Sin

Reading the last post here, does the firebreath not hit you if you're ducking, or something? It sounds like the key is to cartwheel away during the firebreath to trigger the tail animation, but how do you stand up and get turned around without taking damage?

I'm not sure if the fact I'm using a keyboard might be making this more difficult, since the controls are somewhat unresponsive for me (although I was able to defeat all the other bosses in the game).

Originally posted by WoundedRonin:

I still haven't managed to do this. The problem seems to be that 1.) I can't entirely avoid the damage from the fire breath while cartwheeling away because you get hit between cartwheels, and 2.) if you cartwheel towards the dragon you can hit him a few times by cartwheeling whenever he attacks, but eventually he bites your head off. Sin

Reading the last post here, does the firebreath not hit you if you're ducking, or something? It sounds like the key is to cartwheel away during the firebreath to trigger the tail animation, but how do you stand up and get turned around without taking damage?

I'm not sure if the fact I'm using a keyboard might be making this more difficult, since the controls are somewhat unresponsive for me (although I was able to defeat all the other bosses in the game).

Yeah, I use a pad so the controls might be easier for me.
Like I said, I could stand under the dragons jaw when he breathed fire to avoid his breath and then cartwheel away from him, so he'd do his tail smash. When I'd hit him on his nose after he turned back around (post tail smash), I think I used the overhead attack that comes from pressing both attack buttons at the same time.

Seems impossible at first, once I figured out I usually don't even die once. I used Sheyna. Stay mid range from the dragon and pay attention to his head. He will move his head up and down. You do a jump strike when he starts to lower his head and then roll to left. He will move his head up and then lower it again. Repeat 3-4 times, he will get annoyed. If he does his breath, you rolled to left. If you are lucky the boulder will block it. If he does tail strike (dumbest move), you roll left and wait for him to turn around. His head will be high again, but he will lower it immediately. Couple hits and you get your sword.

plenty of tactics, can't be bothered to read to see if someone already said this...

Buy the falcion sword before goin in, it has the highest power for sheyna (you can kill the riders with one blow) it will significantly reduce the number of times you have to hit the dragon.

Approach, he will start the tail smash, stay clear then move in. The dragon telephones his fire breath with a roar and an upward head movement (as if taking momentum)
strike as the roar is just to be finished. It will keep trying to breathe fire, so keep hitting. High attack is safest, H+L if you're feeling confident. Take a step forward when he gets too far back.

It's not too fullfiling of a fight, like this, but usually all bosses have a rince and repeat tactic to them.

Bosses are really a bit like Dark Souls - first you rage when they kill you so easily and it seems impossible (Damn Basilisk and Nekron!) - and then you figure our timing and patterns ^^ And I mean that as praise of course!

Just managed to kill the damned beast....hard and frustrating as hell.
More i kept doing the previous areas to stack up on gold to buy consumables to help in the fight , and in the end my Sheyna was 19 when she killed the dragon.
The hardest part has been being pushed back to the entrance time and again.....i exited the dragon cave on occasion cause of the pushing effect of the flame breath, so had to do all over again.
I was hoping the Legendary Sword had some special power (like elemental damage, damage or magic resistance and so on) but it is pretty good all the same.
But it is possible to fight him again , even with the legendary sword in your inventory ? I went back to his cave after its death and it was still there.

Originally posted by davinger197178:

The hardest part has been being pushed back to the entrance time and again.....i exited the dragon cave on occasion cause of the pushing effect of the flame breath, so had to do all over again.

That is the reason I have given up for now.

I used this tactic to fight the dragon: Keep far enough away from it so that it does that 'lower and sway' move with its head. As soon as you see it start to do that, run forward with the flying slash attack (double tap forward and high + low attack) to hit him on the head. Then back off and wait for him to do the head sway move again and attack the same way. If you get near enough to the dragon it will thump its tail on the ground and bring down a stone. After this move it will breath fire as soon as you are close enough to it so you will have to go behind the fallen stone, which blocks the dragon flame.

So the thing is to keep the dragon far enough away from you so that it will continue to lower and sway its head so you can strike it, and eventually you will beat it. I noticed that if you keep the dragon's collar off screen it will do the head sway move more often.

After many many tries and many many deaths, I found two things that work, most of the time.

a) As everyone else has said, wait until he's raising and lowering his head, and when he lowers it go for a flying slash attack (run and H+L). Immediately get away to avoid his retaliation, wait, and try again. This is slow and reasonably safe, but you can get pushed to the extreme left of the stage, run out of room, and even get pushed off the stage.

b) If you're feeling confident and lucky, you can do the flying slash at the beginning of the fight. The dragon will almost certainly go for a tail swipe. As he's turning around from the tail swipe, roll *towards* the dragon and get *right* up next to him. You're next to the body and under the neck and head. Go for a Forward+H+L attack.

This hits the dragon quite hard, but for some reason you fall over. It seems that whenever you touch the dragon's body you fall backwards. Anyway, once you get up, wait a split second and see what the dragon is about to do. If it's a tail swipe, roll away as fast as you can, though you'll probably take damage. If it's a bite or fire breath, you can roll past it and get right up next to him again, and go for Forward+H+L again.

This works most of the time. What seems to happen is that at the far right of the stage, the dragon doesn't stagger backwards and so can go into a bite or fire breath a lot faster. At this point you will probably die. Try to roll to the left before you get this far to the right.

This was done with Sheyna, with both her basic sword and the axe. I went with method b) until I was on my last life, to whittle down the dragon's health, then went mainly for (a) to stay safe, and won the fight with only 6 hp left! That was 6 more than his!

This sh*t is impossible. None of these approaches work. Such a stupid boss which is so, SO broken. Ruined the whole game in one go. It's like a bad April Fools joke on the gamers.