Have trouble defeating Zog the Eternal? Here's a guide on how to beat the Cursed Trickster orc boss, plus helpful tips and suggestions too!
One of the most interesting and challenging boss fights in Middle-earth: Shadow of War is the epic duel with the Cursed Mystic Trickster Zog the Eternal. This is a quick guide to give you pointers and suggestions on how to kill him. He can be quite a challenge for some builds.
- Mission: Fire from Ice
- Description: Zog is determined to raise the Balrog from the frozen lake of Seregost. He cannot be allowed to succeed.
- Reward for this mission: Dragon Song Skill Upgrade + XP + Mirian.
To better understand some of the Abilities mentioned and used in this guide, you might want to have your game opened or check my Shadow of War Skill Tree overview.
PHASE 1: THE TOTEMS
The first phase of the boss fight includes the objective to purify the 4 Necromancer Totems. I strongly suggest you do that first and quick because each one of them will kill some of Zog’s followers – the ones that are attached to the specified Totem.
To purify the totems, you need to stand in front of them close and hold the key (Default “E” on PC) for a short duration. Of course, while trying to do that, the undead orcs and Zog will be chasing you and trying to prevent you from doing it.
Try to gather them all up around one of the Totems, then Shadow Strike to a single orc or Sprint quickly to another Totem. The Undead army is moving slowly. Use that to your advantage. Get behind the Totem and channel it. This will prevent the archers and Zog from interrupting your channel.
Do the same for all 4 Totems first. Don’t bother killing any grunts as they will just respawn. Be mindful of Zog’s ranged spear attack. It clouds your minimap when you are hit and can make it harder for you, plus, it does quite a bit of damage too.
PHASE 2: DEFEATING ZOG
The second phase of the fight begins once you have purified all 4 Totems. All of Zog’s followers will drop dead immediately and you have only the boss to think about now. In my game he appeared as a lvl 44 Cursed Mystic Trickster in this mission.
His weak spots include Ranged Attacks, Executions and Stealth. He is also Flammable (heavily damaged by Fire). You should use any or all of these to your advantage. If you are missing some of the potential Skill Unlocks in your build, try to replace them with other moves that will do the job for you. For example, I had no way to do Fire on him easily in my first playthrough, so I had to use Executions and Stealth attacks.
Zog has the same abilities as before, unless he has adapted or otherwise changed thanks to the Nemesis system and your previous encounters with him. His ranged spear throw attack is very dangerous and deadly. He performs it all the time.
Try to stay close to him. Don’t climb him as he has the Vault Breaker ability. He tends to disappear and teleport often and soon after he does, he quickly throws a spear at you. Make sure to roll away when it happens. Zog is also capable of avoiding your default melee attacks.
His major weaknesses are Fire, Executions and Stealth. Those are the ones you should focus on. If you have Fire explosion added to your Mighty Shot attack (Firestorm: Mighty Shot causes a Fire explosion). The other option for you is to slowly build your Might up to do Executions on him.
My best advice is to use the Totems – climb them up from the side, opposite to Zog’s position, then jump down on him (counts as a Stealth Attack) and do a Ground Finisher. This ability can be very useful if combined with the Fury upgrade (Ground Executions enable you to unleash a flurry of blows by rapidly tapping the melee attack button before finishing an enemy, gaining Might on each hit).
When low on health, summon some of your Followers and/or a Beast to aid you and distract Zog for a moment. You can also Dominate them to refill your HP bar. Rolling away from his Spear Throw and properly using line of sight (by going around the Totems) is very important in staying alive in this fight.
Brace of Daggers can slow him down a bit too but isn’t something you can benefit from too much. Ranged attacks help too, but are far too weak on him to cause real damage. Shadow Strike can be used to shorten the distance to Zog when he teleports away from you.
Regarding the continuation of the story: STORY SPOILERS!
By the way, Zog appears one more time later in the story for a final epic duel. He will be higher level, but will have the same weaknesses, which you can exploit. The final mission involves a ton of Captains, guarging 6 Totems at the Minas Morgul Arena.
You can easily avoid fighting most, even all of them, by using Line of Sight and quickly capturing/purifying the totems before the captains realize what’s happening. The final epic duel with Zog is similar to the one I just described in this guide for Fire from Ice. He seems to adapt faster to your moves, but this is actually more of an assumption on my part rather than a confirmed fact.
This is my guide on how to defeat Zog the Eternal in Shadow of War. I hope you find my suggestions and tips useful. Let me know if you found any other useful tactics and strategies and how did your fight with him go! I’ll be eager to read your thoughts, questions, suggestions in the comments section below.
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