The Let's Play Archive

The Last Remnant

by Stabbey_the_Clown

Part 88: Chapter LXXIX - It, which was once sealed within the Brimuslabus - The Fallen...


It, which was once sealed within the Brimuslabus - The Fallen...


Previously:




Chapter XVII: Talk about an epic failure!



Yeah, kinda hard to miss those.
Town legend says there was some terrible monster running wild, but the Imperator took the Remnant and sealed it in that very spot.
Huh…
‘Course, that was hundreds of years ago… If’n there’s any truth to it, I sure ain’t the one to tell. Only half-believe it myself, actually.


Chapter LX: There weren’t any floating around in yours



What’s going on?
Departing Man: Didn't you know? The legendary beast what was sealed around here's woken up! There ain't nothin' left for this town, sure as I'm standin' here - so I'm hoofing it out. Dunno where I'm headin', but it can't be worse.

Staring Child: Mister, what're we gonna do? The Brimuslabus is gone, and Mama says some real scary monster's come out! Mr. Wyngale'll be able to do somethin' about it... right?

I'll be a monkey's uncle. That story 'bout the demon and the Imperator was the honest truth after all. Damnation, 'til now we been able to drive of everyone tryin' to get their hands on the Brimuslabus. How in blazes did this happen? Welp, ain't nothin' to be done about it now. I was raised here by my pappy and him by his pappy before that. I'm stayin' here 'til the end.




The Brimuslabus is gone... I pray that things will change for the better. It's hard to believe it's come to this... But I was born and raised in this town. Reckon I'll stay with it to the end. It's like all the stories said... The Brimuslabus was the guardian angel to us all...




I’ve stood here for hundreds of years, watching over the Remnant Brimslabus and what it seals.

Chapter XXX: I’m giddy as a schoolgirl!



Darned tooting I do! And I've sure got reason for it, you know! I've only made the biggest discovery of the century!


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Darned tooting we did! We're talking about the Arco Iris here... If all three of us can't see it together, what's the point?
Sibal...
But, seems like Maddox was right about it after all... I guess I just imagined seeing it. I was so certain I saw the Arco Iris... Ha, but there's nothing now, huh...
No... Certainly, you met the Remnant of Miracles, Sibal. Maddox... Sibal... The time we three were engrossed in the mystery of the Arco Iris is many years past. As time passed, we went our separate ways, doing different things and living different lives, perhaps never to meet again... And yet here we are, on an adventure, at that! It really brings back memories, doesn't it? Ahem. My point here is, just the fact that we're all here together again...
...That is the miracle given us by the Arco Iris?









Okay, it’s time. Go back to Baaluk and to the pub.




Wyngale is waiting here for us.




Err… what will?
It, which was once sealed within the Brimuslabus - The Fallen... Centuries ago, a monster suddenly appeared and threw the world in turmoil—nothing but chaos and fear. The ignorant civilians, seeing the magnitude of its power, began referring to it as a divine being... Heh. According to Him, the beast was created by the world to destroy Remnants. I care not why it exists—simply that it does.




I’m there!
I admire your spirit. You do not need to find meaning in this battle—merely pleasure.
I'm all about fun!
Come with me!

A guest union has joined the party.
Accepted quest: The Fallen

“Academy Visistone 49, 50” posted:

[The Fallen 1] A creature once feared as a wrathful god. Records of its existence date back hundreds of years.
[The Fallen 2] Some say it was created by the world itself as a way to rid itself of Remnants.
Most other quests just dump you into battle. This one gets an intro movie.


- Video: Meet The Fallen




This has the feel of a march to death. That is basically what it is, after all.






















Defeat the Fallen!

Music: Beat the Odds



- Video: The Fallen – Attempt 1


So, this fight. It’s basically the single hardest sidequest in the game. We’re facing against something which is powerful enough to be considered a deity. And it kinda lives up to that hype.

The Fallen’s base BR is 90 (or 45 higher than we are) and it has between 389,804 and 447,894 HP. It’s immune to Blacked Out and Poison, and while Silence and Paralyze can land on it, it doesn’t seem to affect what it can do, so those are essentially useless anyway.




I’m using about the same party configuration as I used in Nora’s quest, except Kate is the leader. I think I might also have changed the formations to batwings for extra defense.








I meant to do that!
That’s a strong one!








I won’t stop here…

Hand of God is one of its favorite attacks. It’s a single-union target for moderate damage. The Fallen has a base chance to cause Instakill with all its attacks, but that’s the least of your problems. It is a high enough chance to be a nuisance, but not high enough to be crippling (like Milton).




We have Wyngale here with us. He’s mostly just a warm body to help us create chances to flank, so it’s great when he is one of the first unions to attack.




Here’s a pretty good look at the Fallen. Yes, it has a huge hole in the middle of its body.








Apocalypse is an AoE attack which hits unions in a line in front of it for moderate damage. There’s no way for you to affect your positioning in this fight, so it’ll probably hit most unions anyway.








At the end of each turn, The Fallen gets an extra attack. This is preset based on the turn number.

Turn 1 - Divine Retribution
Turn 2 - Blackout
Turn 3 - Whiteout
Turn 4 - Animalcule
Turn 5 - Rain of Blades
Turn 6 - Divine Retribution
Turn 7 - Life Spring (at the end of the turn) or Miracle (at the beginning of the turn)
Turn 8 - Divine Retribution
Turn 9 - Rain of Blades
Turn 10 - Armageddon

Note that it only lists 10 turns here. No, it doesn’t loop around to the beginning. That’s this fight’s big gimmick: If you do not win in 10 turns, it’s an automatic game over. Additionally, if you fail to take off about 2/3 of its HP by the end of Turn 7, it will cast Life Spring on itself to fully heal itself, which is basically an auto-loss. But don’t worry about that.










Because just surviving to Turn 7 is unlikely.




I won’t let bullies like you get in my way!

In many other fights, even if you struggle, as long as you can keep your healing going, you can win by attrition. But you can’t outlast this fight because of the hard turn limit. You need to balance damage and defense, just healing won’t help in the long term.






Not a surprise.




Cyclone is an Axe art, you throw your axe through an enemy, and it comes back like a boomerang, hitting twice.






This isn’t over yet!

I don’t agree, but I’ll play it out anyway. I have no choice but to waste this turn reviving my dead unions.






I… still… laugh…




I spent that turn to get everyone alive and healthy…




Bring it!
You still with us?




Emmy and Irina make for great leaders for this fight for their low-HP unique arts. I know I said that for the last fight too, but it didn’t work there because we were outnumbered.






Two of the attacks missed, which didn’t help. And now that she’s done the special, her high bonus to dodge chance is gone.






Mixed Message is great.




Steady there!

At the end of Turn 4, The Fallen casts Animalcule, which afflicts everyone with Silence, Poison, and Paralyze in addition to doing massive damage. It’s perhaps the hardest thing to deal with in the fight.

Music: Out of Control





This attempt is over.












I wasn’t expecting to win the first time. That was just a bit of a trial run to test. So, what now?

A lot of the time, the answer would be “go do other things, and come back later”. Here, that won’t work very well. This quest only became available after Darken Forest, and it will expire as soon as we enter Undelwalt, which is where we have to go next. If I don’t do it now, I’ll fail my 100% quest completion, and won’t be able to access the bonus dungeon.

Additionally, I would prefer to do it now to get a couple more party members I’d like in my final makeup. They start out at BR 64, and I am BR 55, so if I take too long, they’ll be underpowered compared to everyone else. Yes, I know that I do have some wiggle room, but I’ll give it a couple of tries before I decide I need to grind.

The recommended technique for handling the Fallen is to get someone to learn the Hexes art Cachexia. The Fallen does still require AP to be able to cast the end-of-turn arts, and Cachexia drains all AP from the target. That’s why I’ve been trying to get Kate to learn it, but we’re not that close. She still is only up to Dispirit IV, and that’s a couple tiers below Cachexia.

But there is something I can try.




Remember this guy? It’s a Rare Dragon which can respawn. Dragons have lots of HP and are great to grind on. That’s only one part, though.




The Mystic Seal formation is specifically aimed at grinding arts. It almost completely neutralizes your damage, and it increases your defense. You can take hits better, and you can hit things a lot more before they die, which means getting a lot more uses from your arts.




So the plan is for Kate to use Dispirit over and over again, while everyone else stands by or heals injured unions. Turbo mode comes in very handy here. Since you stop gaining XP after turn 30, a couple turns earlier, take your other unions off standby to have them go on a full attack.




It’s hard to get the timing for when to switch to full attacks perfect. Then you leave and re-enter Crookfen until Bai Ze respawns, and repeat as needed. It actually didn’t take all that much time.

Here’s the results of my grinding.

class changed to Master Ninja!
learned:
class changed to Legendary Cleric!
learned:
class changed to Master Ataraxian!
learned Cyclone!
learned:
learned:
learned Revitalize IV!
learned:
learned:
learned:
class changed to Expert Bishop!
learned:
learned: Permafrost IV!
learned:
learned:
learned Restorative Tincture IV!
learned:
learned:

BR Gained: Zero (0). Yep, I did all that and didn’t gain a single BR. I think dragging out the battles might have helped, as well as the deaths I had.

Basically, the mystics users learned more mystics, and other people upgraded their healing (which is really helpful when going up against the Fallen!). Irina learned Second Chance, which is a full heal and status removal (INCLUDING KO), and Violet improved enough to learn Revitalize (and I can actually get her to learn Rejuvenating Water now if I want). Rush and Paris both learned Protection, which is a one-attack immunity versus physical attacks.

Gabriel claimed the Ruby Solitaire, Irina claimed the Dead Heart, Caedmon took the Emerald Solitaire, Torgal took the Sapphire Solitaire, and Gaou the Ivory Solitaire. Those should also help. While I’m wandering around…










We met Sibal a long time ago, but he only becomes recruitable after Koenigsdorf. So I’m picking him up now that I remembered. Even though you recruit him in Royotia, he can be found standing in Ghor.

Anyway, now that I have Cachexia, let’s try the Fallen again…




Since I don’t really have the health to make 4 unions vs 5 unions matter much anyway, I opted to go for 5 unions for both flexibility and the option to put Irina in as a Leader.

I spent some time configuring their organization, because in order to get Arcanas to appear as Battle Commands, you need your leader to know the Arcana, and you need at least two other units who know mystics in the union.. Those requirements are very loose, but the Duke of Ghor does not fit them, so I couldn’t have him as part of a 3-person unit led by Irina for instance. I also wanted to make sure that every union had someone who could revive and someone who could heal, but unfortunately, Emmy’s union has no revivers. I guess I could have swapped Darien for Glenys or Violet if I’d thought about it.




- Video: The Fallen – Attempt 2

Morale is important in most fights, but it’s even more critical here. High morale reduces the damage you take and increases the damage you deal. It’ll help a lot to get your morale up high as fast as you can, because inevitably, it’ll go down as The Fallen smashes you to bits. Also, the first turn of the battle is on Turbo speed because I forgot to take it off after finishing grinding.






Be careful!




Sometimes you get lucky breaks.




You’re all right now that I’m here!
You won’t have to do that again!
Hang in there, okay?




That was a fairly good first turn. Having those is important.




I get mostly healing options for the next turn, not a lot of offense.






I’m hanging in, but not doing a lot offensively.












Awww…

Too bad Rush didn’t have the AP to upgrade to a combat art, otherwise that critical chain would have been a lot better.




Sometimes the AI’s clever attempts to help actually don’t. Now, Emmy can’t use Hundred Flowers.




If you’re going to use Cachexia, you’ll want to make sure that the union casting it goes AFTER The Fallen moves. If it moves afterwards (gaining AP), there’s a good chance it will still be able to cast the end-of-turn spells regardless. I put Kate’s Pack into the Crossbow formation, which has a big penalty to speed, hopefully ensuring that she goes last.




Music: Out of Control





Cachexia worked – no end-of-turn attack. Too bad Kate refuses to cast it each turn, even though she had no such problems with Dispirit. Irina will bring Wyngale back, Paris will cast Protection, Rush will use his Ninja Skillz to Rear Assault, and Kate will flank. Unfortunately, we’re entering Turn 4, which means Animalcule at the end.






Hand of God isn’t always lethal. The higher morale you have, the less dangerous it is.




That’s pretty bad. Kate’s silenced, Rush is dead. Jager is the only one which came out okay. I have to use Emmy to heal, lacking anything else decent, and Kate has to revive with herbs because she can’t do squat else. Jager and Irina will clear ailments.






Irina only cleared the ailments from herself, which was useless. Loki did bring Rush back, but died to the poison.




Welp… That’s the end of Turn 5, and I have not done anywhere close to the amount of damage that I need to, I have two dead unions and the other three are at half-health, and I won’t be able to stop the end-of-turn attack.

This game has a handy “soft reset”, which lets you quit back to the game’s main menu. On PC it’s Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R. I’m going to use that now, because this run failed.






- Video: The Fallen – Attempt 3




This was the situation after Turn 1. NOPE!






- Video: The Fallen – Attempt 4


After the end-of-turn attack.




I’m pretty sure I’m going to reset, but I might as well give Irina a shot.






Great job Irina, you did 35,000 damage. Too bad everyone else is dead. *click*.

…That’s all for today.




New Arts Summary
class changed to Master Ninja!
learned:
class changed to Legendary Cleric!
learned:
class changed to Master Ataraxian!
learned Cyclone!
learned:
learned:
learned Revitalize IV!
learned:
learned:
learned:
class changed to Expert Bishop!
learned:
learned: Permafrost IV!
learned:
learned:
learned Restorative Tincture IV!
learned:
learned:



Video: Meet The Fallen
Video: The Fallen – Attempt 1
Video: The Fallen – Attempt 2
Video: The Fallen – Attempt 3
Video: The Fallen – Attempt 4

Next Time: I am finally free.