The dragon in Laetus Keep, Zaladrieam, drops one of the best swords in the game, the Blade of Wastes, and you can reach it almost immediately on a new save file, but killing it normally will take you over an hour of swinging. You can come back with the Triple Fang or the Moonlight Sword at a high level to kill the dragon, but by then you won't have anything left worth using the Blade of Wastes on.

If you want to kill the dragon early, there is a way. HOWEVER: DOING THIS WILL BREAK THE POWER CURVE OF THE GAME, so I do not recommend doing this on a first playthrough. If you do though, I won't tell anyone, I'm not your dad.

If you prefer a step by step video guide, I've uploaded this same guide as a YouTube short on my channel, available here.

For the text guide, read on.

As soon as you start a new game, go to the Tea Shop, and purchase a Chamomile tea. While you're at it, go next door to the item shop, and buy 1 Mana Vial.

Give the tea to Joe Vaeril (the old man with the Aquarius Key), leave the room and come back, pick the key up from him, and enter the Lyrian Aqueduct through the library.

The enemies in the Lyrian Aqueduct are going to be too powerful to be worth killing right now, but luckily we don't need to kill any of them. Just run past everything, following the following route to the Watermaster's Key.



Be careful of the Sahaguin in the room with the Watermaster's Key, keep strafing while the chest opening animation plays or he'll get you with a spell, but you should be able to survive a single hit anyway.

Use the Watermaster's Key to open the door that eventually leads to the Harp of Harmony.



Now keep going down this hall, watch for a Mana Vial on your way, you'll want to pick that up too. In the room before the Harp of Harmony, there's a hidden door, leading to a chest with a mana shroom.



On the western wall of this hidden room is another hidden door, leading to the Geyser Spell (it will say "Waterspout learned" when you pick up the spell, but the spell is called Geyser in your spell list). That Geyser spell is what we're here for, you can now leave the Aqueduct and head to Laetus Keep.

Now we're ready to start heading to Zaladrieam, using the following path.



On your way to Zaladrieam, stop by two of the offshoot caves holding Mana Vials. We need 3 Mana Vials total, and if you've been following this guide you'll now have 4, making one of these skippable.



Zaladrieam is weak to water damage, and so even at level 1 you can kill him with 8 hits of Geyser. You start the game with 50 MP, which is enough to cast Geyser twice, so you'll need to use Mana Vials to refill your MP three times, which is why we needed those vials. Hit the dragon 8 times, and you'll get the Blade of Wastes. I was able to do this entire process in about 11 minutes from the start of a fresh save file, much faster than swinging at a dragon for an hour!

Enjoy being overpowered for the rest of the game!

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