How to beat the Cave Troll easily even as a new player? If you are a new Dark And Darker player, you should probably practice in standard runs first with extracting successfully. Beating the Cave Troll doesn’t matter if you can’t safely extract with a loot.
Contents ⤵️
Fighter Class
I’ll be showing the strategy from Fighter’s point of view since Fighters have a good balance of damage and movement speed.
But, you should note that this strategy works similarly for most classes.
Armor
The first step is to take off all your armor except your boots. Most of the trolls one shot you anyway, so you don’t want to be wearing any armor that slows you down.
Boots help by raising movement speed and you can buy super cheap boots from the Leathersmith for five Dark and Darker Gold. Non-metal gloves don’t slow you down, so you can wear them if you really want to. But it’s not needed.
Make your training runs as cheap as possible. I wouldn’t bother bringing potions or bandages or even a lockpick if you’re still learning the troll. You’re gonna make mistakes and get one-shotted and lose your gear.
Weapons
For weapons, I find the arming sword is best.
The falchion does more damage per swing. But with the arming sword, I’m able to get two headshot hits after the Cave Troll’s overhead attack, and that easily does more damage than one slower falchion hit.
Not to mention, the arming sword has a lower movement speed penalty. And since the arming sword is a starting fighter, anyway, this is perfect to make your initial training runs cheaper.
For learning the Cave Troll, I recommend you stick with the starting arming sword. You shouldn’t be worried about kill times until you’ve mastered avoiding the troll’s attacks and figuring out when and where your attack openings are.
Once you’re more comfortable dodging the troll’s attacks, you can buy the cheap harming sword from the Weaponsmith for more damage for 8 Dark and Darker Gold coins.
For this build though, you will need to buy the cheap Castillon Dagger for 6 gold and put it in your secondary weapon slot. This will give you a massive damage boost and I’ll explain how.
Perks
The beauty of this build is that we take advantage of having no heavy armor by using the Slayer perk.
We get a five weapon damage bonus, but we need to have a weapon in our secondary slot as well, hence the Castillon Dagger. We’ll also take Dual Wield to increase attack speed and combo attack to increase damage a bit during combos.
The last perk is whatever you want.
Skills
For our skills, we’ll take Sprint and Second Wind.
These are just great perks to take in general. And don’t forget that after beating the troll, you’ll still need to get past other players and mobs and extract alive.
If you get a bad circle, you might take zone damage while trying to finish off the troll. Players may try to ambush you and steal the troll loot after you beat him.
Second Wind is just an amazing skill in general for the 50% burst heal. Sprint is a great movement boost, which we’ll use sometimes in and out of the fight.
Cave Troll Boss Location
Now that we’re ready, we’ll enter the Goblin Caves.
Once inside, head for the mid left of the map and walk down a stone incline. Then, open a stone door. Close the door behind you and hug the wall to the left. Then, rush to the troll with your weapons sheathed.
This is important because sometimes the troll starts with a shout and you want to avoid being hit by the shouts. You have to get close, and to his right, your left, to avoid his shout.
In general, we’re going to stay on the Troll’s right side, our left, because this is the easier side to fight him from. He has 3 possible attacks he can use here.
Broad Swing
He can do a Broad Swing, which he’ll walk away from to dodge. And then, wait half a second. Then, turn around and slice his arm once
It’s very important that you wait that half second before attacking, otherwise he will do a follow-up attack and most likely one shot you.
I recommend slicing his arm for this while you’re new, even though it does less damage. Get the hang of the timing first, then you can go for his chest instead for more damage.
One-handed Slam
The second possible attack is a one-handed overhead slam.
Walk away and towards the trolls right while facing four to avoid both the slam and the splash damage. Once you hear the slam, immediately turn around, and slice the Troll’s head.
If you’re new, I recommend one hit on the head followed by a hit on the arm while you back out. Once you get more efficient with the timing, you can consistently get two hits on the head and this is great damage.
Two-handed Slam
The third possible attack is a two-handed overhead slam.
Immediately move away from the troll to avoid the slam and shockwave, but not too far. Because he frequently follows this up with a shout.
You want to get far enough away to avoid the slam, but have enough time to get back into position. So, you don’t get hit by a shout and can even attack him during the shout.
Troll Shout
What do you do if you get hit by the troll’s shout though?
Immediately, sheath your weapons, activate Sprint and run away from the troll. Once you hear his grunt, jump while facing and moving away from the troll. This is a difficult dodge, but it’s easier than trying to guess the 50-50 of whether you should crouch under his charge or jump over it.
It’s best to just never get hit by the shout in the first place. Once you defeat the troll, first make sure that both stone doors are still closed and listen to make sure nobody was waiting for you to finish to steal your loot.
Cave Troll Loot
Loot the troll, then open the large stone doors on the west middle side.
Once inside, pick up all the loot on the ground, and loot the chest you can. Sometimes, there will be locked chests in here and you’ll need to either have lockpicks or be a Rogue with a proper perk to unlock those.
Goblin Caves Alternate Extract
Don’t forget that you need to extract safely.
Thankfully, there’s an alternate extract not too far from the troll. Open the southeast stone door and walk up the incline, then turn right around the corner. Walk past the middle spike trap and head right. Then, open the door on the left. Enter the arch on your left, then you should see a stone staircase on your left, possibly blocked by a metal fence.
The metal fence opens automatically when the next white circle is very small. So, as long as someone hasn’t already taken the extract, causing rocks to block the path, it should be available to you.
Conclusion
After beating the troll, you’ll notice the loot isn’t really all that great.
A recent patch nerfed the troll loot. So, if you want to buy Dark and Darker gold, you might as well just visit IGGM.com. Either way, I hope this guide will help you beat the Cave Troll.