Part 18: An easy boss fight?

Part 12: An easy boss fight?

Let's stop screwing around and get back to normal size already.




This is kind of a weird place to get existential, but whatever.



Leaving the Desktop Kingdom for the Floor World. How an entire civilization lives on the floor without getting literally stepped on is beyond me.




Being a rodent in a devil's mansion turns you into a devil too, I guess.



We'll be picking up this running ring soon enough. With the addition of the quick ring and the chirrup sandals, there are now five ways to increase movement – almost half of your total army. Come to think of it, this actually helps a lot, especially with the last few characters who have doo doo for movement.



Yeah, the next fight takes place in a rat hole. Guess what the next boss is?



Go figure.






The layout of this map is mercifully easy. Each cluster of three enemies is a rat and two bubbling oozes. The nice thing is that the oozes hit relatively lightly and have much shorter movement ranges than the rats. After cleaning out the first clump of enemies, the top and bottom clumps trigger at the same time, but the oozes take much longer to get to you than the rats. Effectively, the second cluster is actually two rats, and then a third and fourth cluster of two oozes each. Very easy compared to previous boss fights, all things considered.



Apparently I forgot to caravan-repair my protect ring before going into this fight, which is annoying. It would have made tanking the rats a lot easier, since, well.



Kiwi.



First order of business is to create a defensive wall. The spotted terrain provides 30% bonus, so it's a pretty natural formation. This is technically breakable since the oozes have a special attack much like the kraken head's bubble breath, but the AI never used it in this fight.




Did I remember to mention that I now have Slow 2? It knocks off 13-14 defense on each of those targets. Slow 2 is a beautiful, beautiful thing. If only I had another healer so Sarah could more liberally burn her MP on it.



Also nice: The oozes are weak to fire, so Kiwi and Kazin get a lot of mileage in this fight. The first set of enemies crumples in two turns because Slow 2 is just so baller.



Enemies also fork over full EXP on death, unlike the chess fight where they were giving about 25 a piece. If the hack still had Egress, this would be a pretty good place to grind up on levels and money.




After the first group is killed, the top and bottom groups trigger. Notice how the rat is already far removed from the oozes, and that's only one turn. I could swear that this fight was designed to be easy after the previous three bosses.



I'm reluctant to move any further forward than this, lest the bottom oozes catch up to me and I have a bad situation on my hands. As a result, Slade dies because he can't take hits even with the protect ring, but I'll take it.



This is what's really important anyway.






At this point, I suspect that the game detected that I was having too easy of a time and activated “RNG hates you” mode. One ooze dodged twice, the rat landed a critical on May, and an ooze got a double attack on Bowie. This ended with me down an archer (who are surprisingly useful in this fight, given the low defenses of the enemies) and Bowie at 1 HP. Then again, on any other boss, this would have probably caused me to lose the fight rather than just making sure I had to pay attention to my next few moves.



Just in the nick of time.




Of course it didn't, RNG. I don't even know why I tried, despite the enemy being below half HP.



You know, there's something supremely satisfying about killing an enemy with Blaze 1. Before you go shitting yourself over the damage, that was a critical hit. Don't ask me what critical rates are on magic because I have absolutely no idea.



I'm beginning to think that I should have left Rick as a paladin. It would have been cheaper, and his higher defense benefits more from terrain effect. Rick is going to be struggling for a while as I wait for his early defense growths to really go into overdrive.



I believe I predicted that this would happen in an earlier update. Like I said, trying to cast while silenced still wastes your MP, just as an extra kick to the balls. That said, the oozes proc silence in place of being able to land criticals. Too bad, because the oozes' attack power is so low that a critical isn't particularly deadly.



Of course it wears off right after I attempt to cast while silenced. Worth noting that the rats near the boss will get aggressive before the boss itself does. There's absolutely no reason to engage Mitt Romney before you've eliminated all his cronies.



Yeah, I could attempt this again on the rat with 13 HP, but:




Smart decisions! Oh yeah, Kazin learned Freeze 2, by the way.



I lost Rick to the rats, but it's still nine against one. Victory is guaranteed at this point; it's a question of how many die in the process.



Because Mitt Romney kind of hits really hard.



Wishful thinking was the only reason I even attempted this.



Well, this ought to solve things quickly.



Yeah, you can guess how this ends. I still lost three more characters just trying to take down Mitt Romney, meaning I lost half my army on this fight. And this is the easiest boss fight in the game.

Battle Report!

Level 5 2 HP/1 MP/1 ATT/3 DEF/1 AGI
Level 10 2 HP/1 MP/1 ATT/1 DEF/1 AGI
Level 4 2 HP/1 ATT/2 DEF/2 AGI
Level 4 3 HP/3 MP/2 ATT/2 DEF/5 AGI
Level 4 1 HP/2 MP/2 ATT/2 DEF/2 AGI
Level 6 4 HP/4 ATT/4 DEF/3 AGI
Level 4 2 HP/1 ATT/3 DEF/1 AGI
Level 5 1 HP/1 ATT/2 DEF/2 AGI




Peter, you can fly. Just fly up to his eye level, god damn.




If it's that easy for him to return people to normal size, why does he keep a collection of miniature people doomed to an eternity of sitting on a desk? This insight may be the single implication that Creed is still an evil asshole.



Yeah, we're going to go consult some spooky head that lives in Creed's basement to find out about Zeon. I'll spoil this now: The floating head doesn't tell us anything useful.



See, there's a possession arrow that tells you which team gets the ball when... oh, wrong game.



Yeah, this thing is creepy as shit.



Luckily, it's replaced by our buddy Zeon who seems awfully square. Also, a sepia tone.



Oh, the princess is alive. This would be relevant if anyone other than the fat piece of shit king cared.




Good. Get a replacement that doesn't have a gaping maw.



Our only indication of where to go next. Also, we're forced to pick from the four characters we saw around in Desktop Kingdom and Floor World. Right now, Randolf is leading with 8 votes to Tyrin's 6. Karna has 3 and Eric has 1. I'll leave voting for the characters open for another day or so. I'll summarize that in order of usefulness, it's Karna > Tyrin > Randolf >>>>> Eric. But for now, have Karna's quote when you turn her down..





Truly the peak of first grader put-downs.

Also, the audience doesn't need to worry. I've gotten all the way to the final boss with Randolf, and as I've mentioned, there's only one fight left that's going to give me trouble if I pass over Karna. Even then, I think the fight in question is less difficult than the kraken fight.

NEXT TIME: Things happen! Nobody cares!