Part 62: Feinne's Notes: System of a Down

Unkillable: It Is A Song By Britney Spears Edition

Alioth is definitely a test of how well you've been preparing this day. If you've been setting up powerful demons and staying where you should be in levels there's nothing on the map that's terribly scary. If you haven't, you're probably going to get rolled here. Alioth itself is the main threat, though Cu Chulainn can also be scary with his Pierce. You should absolutely crack that Pierce, by the way, as well as the Nulls (and Ziodyne if you didn't get it from Botis) because holy shit are those useful. The big problem is conceptually trying to engage Alioth before deploying the Neutralizer. The Neurotoxin attack is no fun at all and his range will let him stack out some crazy damage on you. Even worse, you can't cross heal from outside his range with another party. So, make sure any party that is going to get within range of Alioth can handle healing itself back up just in case. This isn't really a hard map, Megrez was way more annoying to fight. It's really a nice breather of a Septentrione in between the two most annoying ones (because holy crap is the next one irritating). Defying the advice I gave earlier, you can use a party as a decoy by sitting them out in Alioth's range but not close enough to attack back if someone's in danger (especially effective if the new party is able to cross heal the old one into relative safety). Alioth, as with any AI party, will tend to attack things that can't attack him back all other things being equal. He's still pretty fragile despite 1800 HP so you shouldn't really have to weather too many of his turns anyways.

We're going to start getting into ~Fun Maps~ soon, where exploiting how the AI does things becomes increasingly important. We're also going to be getting the King of Race Skills as we move forward, I hope you're all looking forward to it.