Greater Wild Dragon


 * "Where's Merlin when you need him? Let's get this thing!"
 * "I wonder if even magic could take down a monster like that."
 * "Check your contract. Exterminating dragons is part of the job!"
 * —EDF soldiers, upon confronting the Greater Wild Dragon.

The Greater Wild Dragonundefined is a boss-type enemy that appears in Earth Defense Force 2025 and Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair. The creature's appearance differs greatly from the its lesser cousin: it is purple instead of green, has four legs and a larger wingspan, and boasts unique, powerful attacks. It is the only boss-type enemy to not have a Mutant variant.

History
Earth Defense Force soldiers meet the Greater Wild Dragon towards the end of the second Ravager invasion of Earth in 2025, during the mission Divine. Scouts are the first to see and report of the large dragon. After the soldiers defeat a small group of dragons, HQ relays information that a giant dragon is on the way. HQ believes it would be difficult to escape on foot, and advises that the squad immobilize it by aiming at its wings.

After the large dragon is destroyed, the Tactics Officer informs everyone that the Brain has defeated Fleet 8 and has escaped.

Gameplay
The Greater Wild Dragon is far more deadly than regular dragons and can be very difficult to kill. It can fly for an unlimited amount of time and will destroy any building it touches while doing so without even slowing down, and attacks by spraying horizontal or vertical streams of flames that damage characters rapidly and slow them down similar to a Queen Ant's acid spray, making it difficult to escape. Also like a Queen Ant's acid, the flames will flow around obstructions, which in the dense town setting of Divine can result in the flames hitting characters from multiple directions at the same time. The flames leave behind a reddish mist that fades to black smoke, that continues to do damage over time after the fire effect has faded until the smoke has completely vanished.

Powerful enough weapons can temporarily stun the creature, potentially keeping it stunlocked until players have to reload; when playing co-op with other players, having one player continuously fire while the other reloads is an effective strategy to keep the dragon pinned down with firepower until it is defeated.

While HQ recommends hitting the creature's wings, it does not appear to have location-specific damage and only drops to the ground from taking normal damage or if it feels like doing so itself. If it does land, it will only use a sweeping horizontal flame attack until it takes off again.

When the Greater Wild Dragon is fought the first time, there are only 6 other Dragons in its arrival wave, and just ten arrive when its health hits 50%; this gives some problems since it is just this side of entirely possible for none of these to drop a health item. It is thus necessary to ration the ones dropped by the initial group of 23 normal Dragons.

In 4.1 the Greater Wild Dragon arrives with a 30 normal dragons, with a second wave of 40 arriving when it is half-dead. If the difficulty is Hard or higher, there will be another Greater Wild Dragon in this second wave. Even better, if the difficulty is Inferno this wave will have two Greater Wild Dragons!

A Greater Wild Dragon also appears along with the three "boss" giant insects in the online-only mission Legion of Monsters (online mission 89 in EDF 2025, 93 in 4.1).

Mission appearances
(Earth Defense Force 2025)
 * Mission 80: Divine
 * Online mission 89: Legion of Monsters
 * DLC packs