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Hi.
So we have a Bravely Default game.
And we have an unsuspecting victim; a shiny Shiningbolt who knows not what he does or how he will do.
This here shall be my log for Bravely Default as I trudge my way through the game. Once I hit the middle of Chapter 2 and the game finally forced me to use a team that isn't just the same class using whatever skills they had on them, I felt like talking about the playthrough.
I love ranting, so this will be fun for me, at least. Not sure about you, but you're reading this, so that's kind of cool.
Anyway, I'm playing this blind and it's on hard mode, hence the title.
...But what about the Challenge aspect? Well, here's what I got:
THE CHALLENGE
No inventory items can be used.
This includes using items through class skills.
I must level up all classes available to 3 before I can go up to 5, then 7, then 10, then whatever the top level is.
No autosave.
No resets.
(Unless it saves time)
Keep grinding to a minimum.
I usually just fight every random encounter I can, which has been working pretty well.
No Abilink or Friend Summons.
The ones I have are actually good enough to kill level 99 bosses from the Village. lol
Encounter Rate can only be default or higher.
Why? Because if everyone besides one party member dies in a boss battle, I have no items, and I have to backtrack through a dungeon without autosave, there's a lot of tension.
And that's it! One important thing to note is Norende was maxed out before I even entered the Villa in Intro. Oh, and I also played the demo and beat the bosses in it.
One last thing. I always skip scenes that don't involve the main characters. I really don't like it when I can see the main villain and his group AND learn about their plans when I have no reason to. I want to be as blind as the main characters.
Intro:
Spoiler!
The intro was neat, I guess. I barely remember it since it's been a few months
I'm going to separate my walls of text by dungeon/boss fight to make it more organized.
Two things to note: I didn't think to remove autosave until Chapter 2 and I didn't stop using items until the start of Chapter 1.
Norende Ravine: Simple
Gameplay/Strategy
Going by memory here. I know for sure that I ran from every battle until I met Agnes so she and Tiz's experience would be exactly the same. I also think I just spammed Brave to kill the enemies in my way. It was pretty easy and I was totally thinking about how great the game would be for speedruns if you could rush down enemies the way I did. Heck, I watched the beginning (up until the end of the first few battles here in Norende Ravine) of a speedrun to find some ways to speed up playing. I learned that it's faster to go to brave and press A and the right button on the d-pad together if you want to brave 3 times. Barras and Holly were easy enough to beat with a similar strategy as well. I think I used Default 3 times, then braved 3 times. I may have used items too? I probably did at some point.
Chances are Norende Ravine will be more important later in the game.
Story
As for what was happening with the story, it took a few tries for me to even see the very first scene of the game correctly. You know. Where you have to put your DS somewhere and she shows up, begging for help? Yeah. She'd always appear offscreen for some reason, so it looked my table or chair was telling me I was the savior it was looking for. Major mood killer.
Agnes seems fine so far. Serious, devoted to setting things right after seeing Norende reduced to a giant hole in the ground, understandably bad with directions, etc. Tiz...is also pretty serious, which means there's no comic relief to be found yet! That's okay though. Honestly, comic relief isn't necessary with the current mood and setting. I'd say being desperate to help Agnes despite just being a villager a few days before makes sense as well. He literally had nothing else to do.
Also, I switched the language to Japanese as I do with almost every game I play. Gotta use every chance I have to understand more Japanese, after all.
Ruins of Centro Keep: Simple
Story
Well, before this dungeon, Ringabel joins, claiming he has amnesia and stuff. Our two serious characters believe he's not to be trusted, and for good reason. He holds in his giant, invisible pocket something called D's Journal, which he used to stalk them and learn about what they are going to do since it tells the future. Highly suspicious. And creepy. Even more interesting is you can take a look at it yourself. I think the one and only time I looked at it, it seemed to be a nice, vague guide to what happens later. I have and will avoid it due to possible spoilers.
Next, probably immediately after or something, this dude named Ominas shows up. He's a black mage who likes to stutter and say all sorts of violent things. I have a habit of reading text with st-st-stuttering by skipping all of the unneeded stuff and getting straight to the words. Mr. Black Mage sure was weird, setting fire to the random building with no residents, apparently. And the mgmgmr from the blonde girl in red who was with him is going to take some time to get used to. It's nice to have someone who's part of the enemy realize that burning Random Building A isn't exactly the most noble of actions, though. Hooray for morals.
Gameplay/Strategy
The dungeon itself was simple, probably because I was still using items. Same with the boss. Wish I remembered what I did, but we can all assume it was defaulting on the first turn to see how the fight works, then spamming the regular attack for damage.
Story
After we beat this guy, I'm pretty sure Edea, our blonde girl in red, joins, so now we've got our entire party!
Edea is very adamant about her moral values, it seems. She doesn't hide her feelings and speaks loudly and clearly to those she talks to. Having traits like those make her look pretty trustworthy in my book, but Tiz and Agnes think otherwise. Ringabel likes her though! His book even called her a maiden, if I remember correctly! So now we have four party members, two of which trust only each other, one being super weird with that book of his, and the other defecting from her own family's country because of a lacky's actions. She also doesn't trust Ringabel, by the way. That's pretty chaotic, but hopefully they will all get along someday.
Gameplay/Strategy
In light of the above, I tend to have my party reflect how they felt about each other at that moment. Tiz and Agnes are always the same class with the same class skills, same amount of experience, etc.. Edea and Ringabel usually match classes too, but may have different class skills. If I get a new class, everyone becomes that class. If I get two new classes, Ringabel becomes one, and everyone else the other.
Lontano Villa: Simple
Gameplay/Strategy
I was standing outside of this dungeon when I maxed out my village the second time.
...Yes, second time. Allow me to explain. On my very first run of Bravely Default, I maxed out Norende before I even got Edea. I was super happy because I wanted to do that before getting very far into the game. I thought it would be fun and interesting to have...whatever it is the village gave me. I'm not even sure now. I got to see all of the different skits it gave me to keep me motivated to continue building all at the same time. That meant having all 4 characters was the requirement to see them. One of the people I have added on Bravely Default actually has a friend summon with 595K power, so I decided to test it out on one of the level 99 bosses you can fight through Norende. After destroying it completely in one shot, my whole party leveled up from, like, 6 to 33 and I think they got 999 job points, a lot of money, and an item to go with all of that. It was crazy. It was supposed to just be a test, but autosave forced me to have a super overpowered party. I didn't want to play that way on my first playthrough, so I deleted it and maxed Norende a second time for this playthrough. It took weeks.
If I remember correctly, this dungeon was the first one that tried to be more confusing. It had multiple pathways, a few chests here and there, and enemies that actually survived a lot of hits, even with Brave spam. I think this was when I finally realized I was playing Hard Mode. What I probably did here was buy the Bastet Gloves that you get from the Adventurer's shop through Norende and destroyed everything in my path, including the knight boss, Heinkel once I reached him. Bad move on my part, really. Actually, I bet I did this to the Black Mage boss too, now that I think about it. Don't worry. I turned this into a challenge for myself right after this part of the game.
Story
Uh...The knight was once part of Norende and he killed that one guy that only Edea and the guy's father were willing to visit after death! That's terrible, but we killed him back so we're the good guys now! We even stole his fighting style and whatever his drop item was!
I'll be editing this post and later ones as I go through the game.
Last edited by Shiningbolt; 06-29-2015 at 07:46 PM.
The moment I realized I was playing an RPG on Hard Mode. I was still doing things I hadn't quite banned yet, so this isn't very exciting to be honest.
Chapter 1:
Spoiler!
But we didn't stop there. We also stole their airship, so we can even FLY now. In the beginning of the game. It's too good to be true, really. A chance to see the whole world so quickly never comes in new age RPGs. I really like the music that plays when you're on the airship. Much more than the overworld theme, even. It's more of a "You can explore the world now! Check out all of the things you can see and imagine what will come next!" rather than the actual overworld theme's "You are a beginner! There's a whole world to explore and you are marching through the unknown, defiant, but cautious of its mysteries!" Too proud and strong for me, personally.
Interlude
It was around this point of the game that I suddenly stopped for a few months before finally continuing again. It was odd, considering how PUMPED I was to keep going after getting the airship and hearing new music. It happened for a few reasons. One, a friend of mine was messing with me and made up some spoilers and revealed random things about the game that I didn't want to know yet. And two, this area was in the demo. Seeing that city with the clock and hearing music that never hit it off with me killed it for me. I'm playing Bravely Default now because I have plenty of time and I like beating the games I purchase.
Story
The theme of this chapter seems to be "Everyone who is a higher up is corrupt!" because everyone at the top is at the bottom when it comes to moral value. Neat.
The king wears dark clothing. It's a sure sign that he's evil. The Merchant who sells water not only wears dark clothes, but also has unattractive facial features. Why video games use this formula for "bad" characters, I will never know. Completely unfitting since we're in the middle of the desert, too. Well whatever. Apparently Agnes is from the middle of the desert and primarily, maybe even only, hung out with her lady friends at the Crystal Palace to the south of Ancheim. Her life was a peaceful one until the DARKNESS CONSUMED ALL, including the crystal inside the palace. The intro to the game was probably the moment her entire life flipped on its head. Now she has to go outside, be social, and make friends if she wants to restore her crystal and go on to restore the others as well.
The Temple of Wind: WHY ARE THE GOLEMS SO STRONG!?
Gameplay/Strategy
Good gravy did this game up its game. Everything is so much harder to fight now, ESPECIALLY THOSE GOLEMS. I was at the very start of this dungeon when I picked up this game again after a few months. So, you know, I was expecting a nice little stroll through another easy dungeon. I could get back into the game and learn stuff! It would be fun! But no. The first enemy I fought was one of those golem enemies, and it wrecked everyone all by itself. Every single attack it did would do a ton of damage and it could even hit everyone in the party for about half their health in just one turn! It was the most horriblest thing ever (I didn't actually die, but it FELT like I did!). The good thing is it taught me a valuable lesson. I have to learn enemy weaknesses. Someone in my party had Miscellany from the Freelancer class, so I used it. Golems are weak to water, so I switched everyone to either a Black or White Mage and spammed Blizzard. Golems were the only real threat, honestly. Nothing else did too much damage. However, I couldn't finish every battle I got into because MP was scarce and the item ban was in full effect.
Later on, I decided to switch to Monk instead, use the Bastet Claws again, and spam the Monk skills I got through Abilink for massive damage...Oh wait, darn it.
So after I realized I was using Abilink, I decided to ban that too. I'm pretty sure I didn't use Abilink at any point before this because I was using Mages or Freelancer before I got here. They don't really benefit as much from that as the Monk.
I was just left with the status effect heal and the double damage move that only works half of the time after that. The Bastet Claws were still more than good enough though. I think I did 200 damage per hit on regular attacks to kill golems. This also meant any other enemy would die just as simply to my regular attacks. Only one or two of my party members were Monks at the time, if I remember correctly. The others definitely did magic damage or healed.
Story
Oh no! The crystal has been darkified! At least I think the game is saying that. It seems more like the power was stolen from it more than it being nullified by darkness. Agnes needs to wear specific clothing to undark the crystal and restore wind to Ancheim and any other neighboring, windless locations. Unfortunately, the specific clothing, known as the vestal garb, has been tattered beyond repair. Looks like we have to find the guy who makes them if we want to restore the crystals. Well alright. That sounds, uh, reasonable? I'm not sure what's so special that she can't wear it as a scarf or something and still give it a shot. Oh well. If the game wants to be longer, it's going to be longer no matter what it takes. As an aside, the crystal is HUGE. I definitely wasn't expecting anything like that. Also, the music is very nice and fitting. You feel like something caused a bad thing to happen and you're witnessing the effect the bad thing had on the crystal. Ominous.
Forgot to mention. Ancheim's been in a real mess lately. Due to the lack of wind, there's less power, which means man power has to make up for it. People work far more hours per week just to keep everything running. And since they have to work so hard, they need more water to function properly. That's where the Merchant's water company comes into play. They raise the price of water due to demand so they can earn more money as a result. It's pretty petty to take advantage of people like this for a pretty penny. The heat from the desert as well as stress have been getting to everyone's heads and the king uses that sweltering heat to turn them against Agnes. He wants full control over everyone and the biggest and last obstacle in his way is Agnes herself. It's a very interesting strategy. Most bad guys would go for the murdering strategy, but this is surprisingly intelligent. Kudos to him for avoiding that route.
Harena Ruins: Am I supposed to be here yet?
Story
Speaking of the whole merchant and king thing, it looks like Harena Ruins is the second stop to fixing our corrupted, wealthy leaders. The first would be the oasis to the west of Ancheim. In order to start this sidequest, as I found out it was through searching the web (I'm probably not going to do this again, so I hope luck will let me get the other optional classes!), I have to inspect a well next to the Merchantry. A bandit tells me the water is owned by Profiteur Merchantry. Then you go inside and talk to Chairman Profiteur himself and he says to go to an oasis that's "west, west, and even more west" from the city. What he actually means is it's literally seconds away if you leave Ancheim and go west. About 20 bandits are hanging around the oasis, stealing from anyone who tries to take a drink. After our main characters give them a piece of their mind, the ring leader and everyone else leaves. Despite water being right there to drink, the leader of the bandits still complains that he's thirsty a few times. I don't get it. After that, I think I had to go back to the Merchant, then go west again to the bandits' hideout: Harena Ruins.
Gameplay/Strategy
Okay. This is even worse than the last dungeon. The enemies have more health, do more damage, and are more annoying in general. The traps in Harena Ruins aren't too bad, thankfully. Even if I don't have items, I can still cure Blind using Blindna. At this point in the game, everyone reached level 3 for Black Mage and White Mage. Very convenient. Now that the enemies are just too strong to consistently beat without wasting a lot of resources, I started killing anything I've never seen before and running from every other battle. I abused weaknesses and spamed Brave to beat anything I saw. The most difficult enemy was the largest one that does a lot of damage again. Finally, there was a skit that could only be viewed if I got hit by one of the traps. I realized I had to walk into them on purpose later if I wanted to see any other trap-related skits in the future.
The boss: The Jackal and Khint took almost an hour to beat. The max damage I was doing was about 280 damage per hit using Bastet Gloves and the double damage move. I had to be lucky if I wanted to survive just a single turn and heal my party while doing damage. If Brave and Default didn't exist, I'm sure that would have been impossible. I may have used Knights and Monks for this fight. I'm not completely sure. About halfway through, a friend of mine I was talking to said that Khint, the guy who did the most damage and could silence my party, leaves during the battle. He did just a few minutes later. The fight was trivial after that. The Jackal braved 3 times and attacked so he was open for anything I felt like using. After I won, I got the best class ever: The Thief.
The Profiteur and Khint
Of course, I didn't stop there. I also decided to confront the water merchant since The Jackal forgot to burn evidence that led straight to him. Apparently violence solves everything, so now the Profiteur and Khint want to have a go with me. Unlike the last fight, Khint plays second fiddle to the Profiteur who can do a consistent 300 damage to anyone he chooses. He also likes to use Brave and attack twice sometimes. Very hard to deal with. I know I had a very specific strategy for beating him. Something like using Knights and Monks because everyone would have more than 600 HP. I lucked out because The Profiteur decided it would be better to spam his evasion up buff that literally doesn't help him almost every turn and never bothered to kill anyone in my party. Khint, being even more hungry for money than even the merchant himself, leaves midbattle because he's not getting paid enough to die just yet.
As a reward, I got the Merchant class! Because I got the Thief class earlier, I decided to split my party into two Merchants and two Thieves for the next dungeon. Agnes and Tiz were the Merchants.
Vestment Cave: Pretty Fun!
Story
Thanks to the water being decayed or something and our inability to find airports of any kind anywhere else, it was pretty easy to find this guy's house.
Looks like our old man, the Yulyana Sage, loves his women's clothing. And his women. Especially the young ones like our 15 year-olds Agnes and Edea (unless Edea is 14 or something? I forget). I was never really a fan of these kinds of characters unless they had more to offer beyond that, so we'll see if he gets more interesting as time passes. He can't simply give us our vestment garb so we can be on our merry way to saving Ancheim. We have to go to another dungeon, the Vestment Cave, to get the Rainbow Thread he needs to make it. The funny thing is he says to go West to get there, but if you actually go west and enter the cave, Agnes is like "We've no business here. Let us be on our way". You see, the cave you actually need to go to is southwest from Yulyana's house. I wanted to explore, so I decided to try going east instead to see what I could find and actually went the right way instead. Take that, game!
Gameplay/Strategy
While the enemies here in the Vestment Cave were probably really tough, two Thieves spamming regular attacks with their bow is more than enough to take care a huge portion of the random encounters here. I got a lot of experience and even managed to max out my bow specials with Ringabel and Edea (two of the enemies are weak to bow regular attacks) Agnes also got the first special for her lance, so that was pretty neat. And with those 3 specials in tow, the boss was cake.
My strategy was pretty simple. Wait for an opening, then use all three specials at once. If you use the level 1 bow special twice, you get a ridiculous ONE THOUSAND PERCENT CRITICAL BONUS TO ALL OF YOUR ATTACKS. Since the Thieves used bows, they got to attack first, allowing Agnes a chance to get a critical hit with her lance special. Those 3 specials by themselves did 3.3K damage. Then on the next turn, I just brave and spam the regular attack for bows for another 2K damage each since every attack gets a critical hit. The weapons I used were Mythril, by the way. I know you can buy something called the Angel Bow for a cheap price from the Adventurer, but that is ridiculously overpowered and unnecessary considering how powerful bows already are.
Orthos: Easy as Pie
I used 4 Black Mages. Hit the two Orthos heads with their weaknesses on the first three turns, default on the last one. Heal on the turn after you default, attack the next two turns, default on the next one, rinse and repeat. Every 4 turns, the heads use their multi hit moves, so you default that and everything is easy from there. They don't do anything special.
Story
Everyone's all happy and stuff because we spent a very long time mashing the X button to restore the wind crystal. I kind of like how long it took considering how powerful they're supposed to be. I guess the only unhappy guy here is the king who wanted to turn everyone against Agnes. Guess we'll just have to pay him a visit in the middle of the night where he apparently sleeps. And rules over people. And plots evil plans.
Grand Mill Works: Not even worth my time
Gameplay/Strategy
What I did here was run from every battle after I killed the new enemies once. They give very little experience and just waste resources. The dungeon itself was a neat concept though, albeit just a little tedious to explore. I remember this taking a few tries. I also remember going back to Yulyana to get the best equipment I could defensively and offensively. That would be Mythril gauntlets, whatever armor was available, and mythril weapons. I'm pretty sure I got rid of Khint first, then finished off the king.
Story
Airship's flying ability got axed, but it doesn't matter because it wasn't capable of anything useful past getting to Yulyana, whom we don't need anything from anymore. Not until we restore the water, anyway! I am incredibly sure that once the water's back, I still won't be able to fly for awhile, but there will be a way to use the ship to go somewhere new, do more dungeons, etc.
Last edited by Shiningbolt; 06-27-2015 at 07:25 PM.
This is where my strategies get more complicated. My party at the beginning of this chapter had reached level 3 for every class except the Time Mage and Spell Fencer. As part of the rules, I'm forced to use them. How did I manage to do anything like this? Well, it wasn't that bad, honestly.
Chapter 2:
Spoiler!
From here on, I'm going to change the way I write my log slightly. First off, I'm going to make my comments about the story more vague to avoid spoiling people. Second, I'm actually in Chapter 2, so now I can give character levels, stats, and actual strategies for areas. I definitely won't update with as much text as I have been so far, but you'll probably see more of me complaining about this or that and wondering what I should do or where to go.
tl;dr This is actually going to be blind now.
The Miasma Woods: Am I Underleveled?
No, seriously. First battle here was with two mushrooms that I literally could not kill because they kept reproducing into more every time I hit them. They also have 900 HP and the best I can do is 200 each? Needless to say, I did what I always do when I can't beat the enemies in the dungeon; if I've never seen it before I kill it. If I have, I run away. Sometimes it's better to just hit the next town or city, buy equipment, and go from there. Other enemies included a Scorpion of some kind that does a lot of damage and one other thing I can't quite remember. They were all jerks. Poison trap wasn't a jerk though. I can heal those just fine with Poisona. No boss at the end, surprisingly. I really liked that.
Story
On the story side of things, the game decided to unlock the Miasma Woods for me now that it's the only way to get from the Ancheim area to anywhere else in the world. They gave a good enough reason to let the main characters through, I guess.
Then after that dungeon and some more walking, we hit Florem, a new city with pretty boring background music and an odd and quite selfish population. Considering what it's become, I'm surprised the city isn't larger and more densely populated. The people here are really obsessed with themselves and seemingly nothing else. It makes me wonder if this will become a trend with each chapter's main city.
Mount Fragmentum: This is Impossible...
My party at this point was 3 Time Mages and Ringabel as a Spell Fencer. I really like the Spell Fencer class. They do damage, have HP and defense, an aptitude for shields, and don't require very much MP to get going. They have to setup, but Bravely Default is just about the only RPG I've ever played that makes setting up easy.
That said, only Ringabel was a Spell Fencer and his damage, as well as everyone else's wasn't enough to fight off the white cat enemies here. What's worse is they can cause SILENCE, literally the worst status effect to have for me since I can't cure it.
Even WORSE are the bears. They don't die, they're weak to earth, which is very inconvenient, and they do tons of damage. Every time someone dies, I'm forced to run back to town and heal to try again.
EVEN. WORSE is the boss in this area! The Land Turtle! There's just no way for me to beat it. I don't do enough damage with anything and it one shots everyone!
I was about to try grinding to level up when I decided to check the internet again (this is the last time I'm going to do this, as I also banned the using guides to help me from this point on) and learned about a sidequest I could do! Great! I needed money, I needed experience, I needed equipment, and I needed options. I would have all of that with a different dungeon to run through. So off I went to:
The Florem Gardens: THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS SIDEQUEST!
Once my three Time Mages and Spell Fencer reached level 3, they switched roles and I was suddenly able to do a lot of damage with fire enchant on all of the enemies here. They gave A LOT of experience and job points, making my life a lot easier very quickly. At some point, I also decided to try the Knight class's Two-Handed support ability for my Spell Fencer and omg, it was the best idea I've had since I started playing. I went from doing 300 damage with Fire enchant to 500-700! Per regular attack! The game jumped from difficult to really easy in seconds. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows though. The trap here inflicts silence on everyone. As soon as my party gets silenced, they're completely useless and I have to run alllllll the way back to Florem to heal and come back. Still, it was great for earning experience. Once everyone reached level 3 for their classes, I was free to choose whichever class I wanted until it reached level 5. I decided to start with Merchant and Thief since I don't really like the Merchant class and the Thief class is awesome, but not as broken as the Spell Fencer has been so far.
I tried to fight the boss and it seemed pretty easy until they started summoning. I probably could have beaten her if I tried, but I decided to just go back to Mount Fragmentum for revenge.
Mount Fragmentum's Boss: Land Turtle
It was complete carnage. Spell Fencers with the Two Handed support and Blizzara enchant made this once impossible fight into a joke. While leveling up at the Florem Gardens, I managed to get the main party to level 5 Black Mage. I was hoping for Level 3 Black Magic, but I got Damage Dispersion instead. At first I was disappointed, but then I realized this would be perfect for the boss if it liked one-shotting everyone so much. Damage Dispersion lets you distribute the damage from an attack to the rest of the party. The character that gets hit takes the biggest portion, but the rest that's spread around can easily be healed by a full party Cure. No one died and they all did upwards of 700 damage per hit. I could easily spam Brave and heal when necessary. Time magic gave me Regen to help me wait for the turtle to use its spin attack. Everything went swimmingly. Revenge is sweet.
Story
Back to the Sage Yulyana already! I actually thought he was going to die right after the airship's air crystal thing was destroyed, but nope. He's still around. Ironically, going out of my way to meet him again was a pointless venture in the end. It really makes the Land Turtle boss fight a really questionable event as well. Maybe the game just wanted me to be familiar with Mount Fragmentum for a later point in time? That's all I can think of. After that and some events, we did a thing and then we were rewarded for doing that thing by being told to go to a hidden village of some kind! I always skip scenes that don't involve the main characters, so I have no idea who the enemy is or what happened to the character we're supposed to be looking for. It's great.
Twilight Ruins: How?
Okay. It took like 8 hours or more of typing, but I finally caught up to myself. This dungeon is the first to force me to use an actual party instead of all of the same class. Prepare for a mountain of text for this dungeon alone. Don't worry. I'll keep it organized.
The Enemies
These enemies are a major pain in every way imaginable for someone like me who can't use items. There are three enemies here: Imps, Minotaurs, and Aqua Lanterns. We'll look at them in order from lowest threat to highest, but make no mistake. Nothing here isn't threatening.
First, we have the Aqua Lantern. They hit unbelievably hard for about for about 500 per hit with their regular attack and the same 500 when they use Blizzara magic. They're weak to Thunder, which would be manageable enough if they did have a high amount of health. When I tried to do this dungeon with just 4 time mages, it took about 12 hits of Thunder to kill one of them. One. From previous experience, these wisp-like ball enemies sometimes appear in groups of 4. I am not looking forward to it.
Next, there's the Minotaur. They have more HP than anything else in this area, hit with their double damage attack for over 1000 damage, are weak to Earth, which is inconvenient, and can sometimes appear in groups of two. They're just massive tanks that you really don't want to fight for a long time. You will, though, because it took my Time Mages 6 hits of Quara (level 2 Earth Magic; 500-650 damage) to kill them.
The biggest threat here is the Imp by far. They have a FULL PARTY SILENCE MOVE that they can just use whenever they want and it seems to have a very high success rate. Not cool. They have tons of HP, do a huge amount of damage in the form of Drain Magic that steals you health and adds to their own, are weak to Earth, which is inconvenient as always, have a move that causes fear (you can't Brave or Default under this status), and appear in groups of three like they're goblins from Final Fantasy 1 or something. What. The. Heck.
With these three enemies combined, I had to find a way to survive the damage I would be taking, do damage back, heal, and use as few resources as possible considering I would have to fight a boss by the end of this. What did I come up with? A miracle.
Strategy
The strategy was made just for the Imps, but if you find a way to beat the imps, it probably works against the Minotaurs at the very least.
First, and most important, give everyone a White Cape. It gives immunity to silence.
Tiz and Agnes are Thieves with Sword Magic as their Job Command. Both have Damage Dispersion. Their role is to abuse weaknesses with bows (the imps are weak to the Birch Bow you get in this dungeon!) and enchant their weapons for more damage if they have to. Damage Dispersion prevents them from getting killed in one hit by Minotaurs and lowers the damage Drain does.
Edea and Ringabel are Knights with a sword and shield. Their Job Command is White Magic and their support abilities are Physical Defense Up 10% and AUTO-ASPIR BLADE. Auto-Aspir Blade, the level 5 Spell Fencer support, is the greatest thing ever. Instead of doing HP damage, you steal MP with your attacks instead. Knights seem to be pretty decent at healing characters, can tank hits easily, and can cover my thieves.
On the first turn, Tiz and Agnes attack while Edea and Ringabel use Default. Now I can heal twice with both of them on the second turn. Regular attacks restore my healers' MP so I never run out. Damage Dispersion is trivial and can be taken care of with a party wide Cure, if not two. Tiz and Agnes do a very good amount of damage with their Bows because Bows are amazing. They also get their specials, which I can use in a pinch or during the boss fight once I get there. What I like the most about this strategy is that it uses abilities from a lot of classes I leveled up all at once. That and it actually works.
Had another random stroke of genius. I decided to try stealing from the bosses here and they BOTH had something! Now I have an accessory that gives +10 intelligence and another that gives +10 Magic Defense. The first one sounds pretty useful, I guess.
Story
For those who don't know, if a completely capable character, especially one who is similar to a playable character, says they will join you, they won't actually join you. The moment I read the words "I will go with you", I started a 5 second countdown. I was a little off, though. It was more like 12 seconds. The people who made this game only want you to use the 4 characters you got and will use any means to keep it that way. I was not surprised at all.
Summoner Mephilla (Florem Gardens)
Strategy
White Mage rushdown.
I equipped everyone with the Peace Ring for immunity to confuse. Everyone was a level 3 or 4 White Mage, had Time Magic as sub, and used two rods for as much Magic Attack as possible. Ringabel had the 1st three levels on his rod special available. Edea had level 1.
Every 3 turns, Mephilla uses a powerful earth based magic attack, EXCEPT on turn 6, where she summons a Legion Archer and Legion Impaler. She'll use the Earth Attack on turn 7 instead and won't use it again until turn 10 and the cycle continues.
Turn 1. Cast Regen on everyone. Turn 2, Default/Heal because her physical attacks hit White Mages pretty hard. Turn 3. Default to block the summon.
4 - Heal and attack with Quara. I think I could attack her with it 3 or 4 times here. It does a really nice 700 damage each. NOTHING else can do this, so take that Zach! Best move comes from the Time Mage for me.
5 - Default/Quara/Heal. I need as many moves as I can get before turn 7.
6 - Default/Quara/Heal. This is when she summons.
7 - Default. You're going to be attacked by the Impaler, Archer, and full party Earth Magic. After this turn, everyone had 2 or 3 BP.
8 - Ringabel uses the level 2 Rod Special. It gives 135% Magic Attack and lowers all enemies' Magic Defense and Magic Attack to 85%. After that, he spams Quara on the Archer. Edea uses her level 1 rod Special, then spams Quara on the Archer. Tiz does the same thing to the Impaler. Agnes heals.
The Archer has 3000 HP and the Impaler has maybe 1500? She dies very quickly and is less threatening in general.
9 - Not only is this not Mephilla's Magic Attack turn, but also everyone is now buffed to 150% Magic Attack and she has 85% Magic Defense. I Brave 3 times with everyone and spam Quara. Each hit does 800 damage at the very least.
With that finished, I'm now forced to use the Summoner class until everyone reaches level 3.
Twisted Treetop and its boss: Artemia
Tanked.
Edea and Ringabel were Monks. Tiz and Agnes were Knights. My Knights tanked with Default, used White Magic, and even did decent damage thanks to Two-Handed. Ringabel had Thievery as sub so he could steal the Artisan Gloves. He also used regular attacks for damage. Edea had Sword Magic so she could enchant for more damage.
Artemia is weak to Fire and she has two lackies, one of which is a Legion Mage that can Silence people. The other is a non threatening Legion Impaler like last time. On the first turn, I just kill both of them by braving three times with Ringabel and Edea. Edea enchants with Thundara to do more damage to the Impaler. Everyone else focuses on the Mage.
After that, I just Default until Artemia has either 2 BP or -1 BP, enchant with Fira with Edea, and do as much damage as I can. My knights can easily heal off everything.
On an unrelated note, the summoner class and skillset is broken. If I had this for Twilight Ruins, nothing would survive since I get a powerful Multi Hit Earth Attack. I got to level 3 extremely quickly.
Next is the Ranger class I just got. Since Bows by themselves are already ridiculous, I'll probably wreck everything very easily. All that's probably left in this chapter now is the boss at The Temple of Water.
Rusalka: What
Alrighty. Rusalka is weak to electricity, likes to use Charm if no one is attacking it, and about 5 turns in, uses this move called "Seep" which is like Dive in Pokemon. Except imagine it had 300 power instead of 80. On the attacking turn of "Seep", Rusalka splits into 4 of itself, each with their own turn to attack and the exact same damage as just one of them. That's all well and good, but I can't even survive the multi hitting move since it does upwards of 1,500 damage to everyone.
After some experimenting, I learned that Knights can tank it, but I'm not sure how I can heal or even do damage to the 4 Rusalkas after that. It's looking pretty hopeless so far.
Class Levels as of the start of Twilight Ruins
Spoiler!
Edea is level 27. Everyone else is level 26.
Tiz - Level 3: Freelancer, Monk, White Mage, Thief
Level 4: Knight, Merchant, Time Mage
Level 5: Black Mage, Spell Fencer
Agnes - Level 3: Freelancer, Monk, White Mage, Thief
Level 4: Knight, Merchant, Time Mage
Level 5: Black Mage, Spell Fencer
Edea - Level 3: Freelancer, Monk, White Mage, Knight, Merchant
Level 4: Time Mage, Thief
Level 5: Black Mage, Spell Fencer
Ringabel - Level 3: Freelancer, Monk, White Mage, Knight, Merchant
Level 4: Time Mage
Level 5: Black Mage, Spell Fencer, Thief
Last edited by Shiningbolt; 06-28-2015 at 09:28 PM.
I beat Rusalka! Also, I was told I missed a few classes...
Chapter 2 (continued):
Spoiler!
Rusalka
Freelancer carnage. No healing necessary.
Long story short, I discovered specials and used them to win.
Discovery
The story goes like this. After thinking I had to win by using knights somehow and trying to figure out how I could do that, be able to heal off near fatal damage, and still do damage to the boss split into 4, I looked at my specials list. Since the only status effects I could inflict were Silence, which doesn't work, Poison, and Sleep, I thought my options were really awful. I thought it would be great to lower its physical attack or buff mine, but I hadn't seen any possible way to buff myself and debuffs were all parts of specials. It felt weird that my options were as limited as they were. That is, until I pressed A to view my specials.
Turns out some of the stuff I was unlocking in Norende were effects I could put on my specials. I could literally do whatever I wanted. I could buff my entire party with whatever stat I wanted, debuff the boss however I wanted, give myself resistance to Charm, lower the boss's resistance to any status effect I could choose from, and get resistance to water when I thought I needed accessories or an Abate Water ability. I could extend the effects of these buffs and debuffs for an additional five turns. I could give my special attacks the Lightning element, increase the damage by 50%, give it a slayer effect against aquatics, and have it inflict a status effect of my choosing. I could apply this to multi-hitting specials...
The entire world opened up to me when I looked through my options and different specials. The boss fight would be trivial. It wasn't even a real concern for me anymore. I decided to level up my Freelancer class with this boss fight. It would be more challenging in a way, and also very flexible. I was going to steal from it, but you get Antarctic Wind when you do that. I'm wealthy enough as it is. I don't need 500 more pg.
Preparation
Agnes was my stat debuffer and Edea was my buffer. I set the debuffs from the level 2 rod special, Withering Ripple, to lower Physical Attack, poison resistance, and lightning resistance. Edea's Lux (level 2 Staff) was set to buff Physical Attack, Charm resistance, and Water resistance. Their Job Commands were Black Magic. Agnes used a Rod and shield. Edea used a Staff and Shield.
Tiz and Ringabel had the same stuff, but different roles. For Tiz, I used the level 3 sword special while Ringabel used level 2. Both had +50% power, Lightning element, Aquatic slayer, and Poison Touch. The level 3 special is single target. Level 2 is multi. Their Job Commands were Sword Magic. They had the Two-Handed ability.
To get the specials, I just went outside and ran from battles until I got the fight with two mushroom enemies. They do little damage, are easy enough to kill, and don't inflict status effects. You need to brave for the sword specials, use magic for rods, and heal for staves. I just Braved 3 times, made everyone heal, set it to auto, then ran from the battle when I ran out of MP the first time, and when I could use the specials I needed the second time.
Execution
On turn 1, I opened with the stat buffs and debuffs. Tiz and Ringabel enchanted for Lightning. On the next turn, I just attacked. Tiz used his level 3 Special to raise Physical Attack and do an amazing 9999 damage WHILE inflicting poison. Ringabel chimed in with a regular attack for about 1.3K and Agnes and Edea were on permanent Thunder duty. They did about 380 damage each. Next turn was a preemptive Default so I would have more turns to deal with 4 splits of the boss. When the boss used Seep on the 4th turn, I used Default. Instead of dying, everyone kind of just shrugged it off. The next turn, Ringabel wiped out the weaker splits of the boss in one move, then everyone else was free to attack. Then I tested the waters a bit and let Agnes use Examine. The boss went from 40K HP to 10K, so I decided "Eh, why not?" and let everyone Brave 3 times and rush down. It worked. Tiz and Ringabel alone were more than enough since they averaged 1.5K damage with their regular attacks.
Witherwood and its boss: Einheria
I won using 4 Merchants with specials set to +50% damage.
Ringabel and Edea were healers. Both had a rod and staff. Tiz and Agnes use Two-Handed with spears since the special just required physical attacks.
I switched to Merchant and changed weapons before entering the fight, so no specials were prepared beforehand, nor were they even slightly built up. I don't think I need to explain everything that happened this time, but I did find out something. If you equip a staff and rod and use healing magic, that counts as using magic for the rod specials and healing for the staff. Both the rod and staff special lists were usable and using the rod special didn't eliminate the staff one. Extremely helfpul.
Einheria doesn't do a lot of damage, doesn't have any helpers, and uses a move that send her down to -1BP by the next turn. I took my time winning while stealing her item.
The Valkyrie class is great so far. It's like the Ranger class, but with spears. I like that I can actually do physical damage with something other than bows now. Also, Spear Lore is perfect for Monks, which I finally decided to level up to 5 after I reached level 3 for the Valkyrie class.
DeRosa
Yeah...There's no way I could have found this on my own. I got a lot of help from a friend on how to get this. I used this fight to level up the Monk class. Edea stole his items and did a lot of damage with her special and Jump, Tiz was the healer and buffer, Ringabel and Agnes shared their role in the fight with Edea. Since they didn't have to steal, I just made them use their level 3 spear special for thousands of damage.
As for the whole revenge + Cura + Thundara gimmick he was doing, I just used Default a lot. He kept using Charm, but that didn't really matter to me on the first turn. I used Abate Lightning, Tiz's buff for Lightning and Charm resistance, and just did 7K damage with each spear special when I got the chance. The rest of the damage came from using Jump for about 2.7K damage thanks to the 200% Physical Attack buff. He died very quickly.
With all three bosses taken care of, I think I can finally go to the next city, which will hopefully start Chapter 3.
Red Mage seems like it will be EXTREMELY useful. Revenge by itself sounds fun, but the utility from Black and White Magic, especially when I still can't use level 3 magic yet, is just amazing. I'm a bit bothered that Red Mages are Jacks of all Trades with weapons and defenses like the Freelancer though. What makes the Freelancer different if the Red Mage is the same, but better?
Last thing. The game told me to go West from Florem and I tried that. Several times. Nothing happened. I tried entering the continent with lava flowing eternally from its sides. The Temple of Fire is next, after all. But no. One of the entrances is blocked off because people start firing explosives at the ship whenever I get too close.
...But there were two (technically 3) available ways to get into the continent and let me tell you; the moment I realized what happened when I tried to enter from this second entrance made me freeze in shock.
When you get to the shore, Ringabel suddenly says "Wait! Something isn't right..." Everyone looks at him and wonders what's up and he says something about beautiful nymphs not playing around the breach. Everyone else sighs...and that's it. I can't enter because women aren't hanging out at the beach. Nothing else was stopping me. My eyes could have popped out of my skull right then and there.
What did I learn? If Bravely Default tells you to go west, it's lying. All three times I've been told to go west, I actually had to do something else to proceed. That or it was really misleading.
Last edited by Shiningbolt; 06-29-2015 at 06:42 AM.
Starting this Chapter wasn't easy! I had to find a ship in the middle of the ocean without dying! What terrors await me and my team of Red Mages now!? Only playing more and typing it here will tell...
Chapter 3:
Spoiler!
With the Red Mage class in tow, our main cast finally shoved off into the wide, blue sea. I was completely lost as always. I already complained about the whole "head west" thing Bravely Default has been doing. As usual, some characters died while I tried to find out just where I needed to go. And as always, when someone dies, I look for the nearest inn since: I can't set the encounter rate to 0, I can't revive anyone, and I can't save while at sea. Everything bad is just typical now, I guess. Ah, the life of playing this game blind and on Hard mode.
I lucked out when I tried to head for Cadisla and found a ship cruising through the area on the way there. Finding this ship starts Chapter 3 for some reason. I guess I'll find out why soon.
Class Levels as of the start of this Chapter:
Spoiler!
Everyone is level 33. Everyone is a level 1 Red Mage.
The only differences are Tiz for level 4 Monk and Edea and Ringabel for level 4 Merchant.
Tiz - Level 5: Freelancer, White Mage, Black Mage, Knight, Thief, Merchant, Spell Fencer, Time Mage
Level 4: Monk
Level 3: Ranger, Summoner, Valkyrie
Agnes - Level 5: Freelancer, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Knight, Thief, Merchant, Spell Fencer, Time Mage,
Level 4: N/A
Level 3: Ranger, Summoner, Valkyrie
Edea - Level 5: Freelancer, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Knight, Thief, Spell Fencer, Time Mage
Level 4: Merchant
Level 3: Ranger, Summoner, Valkyrie
Ringabel - Level 5: Freelancer, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Knight, Thief, Spell Fencer, Time Mage
Level 4: Merchant
Level 3: Ranger, Summoner, Valkyrie
Last edited by Shiningbolt; 06-29-2015 at 08:28 PM.
That Excel Document tho. Yay for chapter 3, the third best chapter! Also Freelancer is significantly better than Red Mage by the end, so check your privilege.