The Final Ascent - Act 3 Story Quest

The Final Ascent is the last Story Quest in Dungeon Siege 2 and begins immediately after you complete the Zaramoth's Horns Story Quest. For the first part of this quest you will need to continue your ascent to the top of Zaramoth's Horns. There is only a little bit further for us to climb to reach the top, however, every step of the way will have loads of enemies.

All of Zaramoth's Horns is good for gear farming but this last part in particular has a lot of elite enemies which always drop a blue item or better. When you finally reach the top of the area there will no longer be any more enemies and you'll have to approach the final room with Valdis in it.

Prior to entering Valdis' room I strongly recommend you return to Kalrathia and stock up on Health and Mana Potions for everyone. This is going to be a very long fight on Mercenary and on Veteran/Elite it'll be a lot more difficult since Valdis will have some abilities that are likely to one-shot you. If you're really struggling with this boss I recommend leveling up, being higher level in Dungeon Siege 2 makes everything super easy.

Valdis is the final boss of the game and the fight will happen in 3 phases. I've broken down each phase below in a succinct manner but I will also explain each here in more detail. During Phase 1 you will need to hit Valdis with a total of 3 Eyes of Zaramoth. I find the easiest way to do this is to position your group in front of an eye and then wait for Valdis to come over and start attacking.

When Valdis attacks there is a long animation that he can't move during giving you the perfect opportunity to take advantage of him. Typically I use a Ranged attacker to hit the eye once Valdis gets ontop of my group. Once I see the eye start to activate I will run away and let Valdis get hit.

After hitting Valdis with an Eye of Zaramoth once he'll summon a group of Qatall Soldiers to assist him. I'd recommend you take them all out while dodging Valdis' attacks then focus back on Valdis. Stay in 'Mirror Mode' with your group for most of the fight but switch to 'Rampage' when the adds come out and you're fighting them. Make sure to spam 'Mirror Mode' when you need everyone to stop what they're doing and listen to you to MOVE.

Phase 1: Hit Valdis 3 times with the Eyes of Zaramoth around the room to knock him down/strip his shield

Phase 2: Bring Valdis under 1000 Hit Points and wait for him to go immune

Phase 3: Hit Valdis one last time with the Eye of Zaramoth to defeat him

During Phase 2 the room will half fill with lava and you're going to be fighting Valdis like he is a normal boss. He's a spellcaster now and most of his attacks aren't anything annoying to deal with (on Mercenary). When he summons Qatall Minions switch to 'Rampage' when fighting them and switch back to 'Mirror Mode' to DPS Valdis.

The most annoying part of this entire fight happens during Phase 2 because Valdis will have an insane amount of regeneration. To make things worse, he'll increase his regeneration when he clones himself and creates two mirror images in the middle of the arena (pictured below).

Since Dungeon Siege 2 is an older game it has no internal cooldown for stuff like this. You could have Valdis spam his mirror images and keep regenerating and dragging the fight out forever, along with him constantly summoning adds that flood the arena. I've personally had a fight last almost an hour before against him because I got unlucky RNG during this part.

If you plan to play Dungeon Siege 2 on Veteran and Elite difficulties, some of Valdis' spell attacks will one shot you, along with the otherwise annoying fight mechanics. Once you've lowered Valdis' health to 1 he'll go immune and the final Eye of Zaramoth will appear.

All you need to do to finish the fight in phase 3 is to use the final Eye of Zaramoth to hit Valdis. He'll collapse and there will be a cutscene after which you'll find the Azunite Scholar's portal in the center of the area. Enter it and you'll get another cutscene after which the primary story will be complete.

Save and return to the main menu then select Single Player to begin the Broken World campaign. If you don't have the expansion installed then you'll want to pick the next difficulty for the regular campaign.