Part 71: A Ending (2)

At last I see the demon you are.



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For this fight, we're going to set things up differently. RDM is useless here; instead we want as much RST and elemental resistances, barring Holy, as possible. Swordsmen, Warriors and Lancers get the Flame Armor (50% resistance to Fire, 20% weakness to Ice). Cheripha, Lockswell/Fauxnel, Natalia and Ushio can use the Elfin Talfetta for 90% resistance to Earth, while all but Ushio can use Leather Boots for 10% resistance to Lightning and Wind Gloves for 20% resistance to it as well (at the cost of a weakness to Earth, which the Talfetta can cover.) Lockswell/Fauxnel can also use the Sylph Robe from the last battle for a 90% resistance to Darkness.



Here's how we've done it. Wylfred and Heugoe have the Flame Armor and Reduce Magic. Ushio has the Elfin Talfetta, Defiance, Reduce Magic and Omnicheck. Fauxnel has the Sylph Robe and Leather Boots, but he keeps the Ether Gloves. He also switches to Sacred Javelin.





Not my favourite track in the game, but good enough for setting the tone.

The demon-formely-known-as-Ailyth awaits us on the other side, but we'll leave her (?) for later. There are some enemies in our way. There are two ways to handle this fight, but I'll detail the harder route first.




There are five Pale Flames on the map, and they are all tough. They have the attack range of a Sorcerer, they cast spells, and they have high MAG and RST, as you might expect. They only have a movement of one, but facing five Sorcerers means they can easily combo with each other anyway.

What makes the Pale Flames difficult to deal with is that instead of casting magic once when they attack, they do it three times. And they can do Soul Crushes.

Yeah.

Each Pale Flame is of a certain element, and they'll be immune to that element, and take 50% increased damage from the opposing element. There's one for each element except Holy. So the one right in front of us is immune to Ice, takes increased damage from Fire, can cast Frigid Damsel three times, and has access to Tidal Wave.



Killing them isn't the easiest task, either. Only Caduceus equipped Sorcerers or a character with a Power Bangle seem to do any significant damage, and you'll really want to exploit long combo chains to get the most out of them. Heugoe, Darius, Cheripha and Natalia are all ideal for increasing the hit count to allow Wylfred/Lockswell/Fauxnel to pull off big numbers.



Sacred Javelin is the best spell to use here; none of the Flames are immune to it and the Darkness one takes extra damage from it.



With 10,000 HP, you really have to have a good grasp of knowing what you're doing (timing attacks, making use of leftover attacks to get four Soul Crushes) to kill them in a single round. No Sin quotas, fortunately.



The one upside is that you get a lot of experience for killing them.



As you can imagine, it's very difficult to withstand their attacks. If you fail to kill one, likely a character's going to die unless they're well protected. This is a single spell from the four Pale Flames on Wylfred with Reduce Magic and a resistance to the Fire Pale Flame. They'll cast two more spells each after this.



It can be very easy to have multiple characters dead in one enemy phase. Your best bet is hope they'll use menu spells.



The Magic Mail technique, which I taught Fauxnel, has a chance of blocking all magic. You can immediately see why this is a godsend for this fight.



Sadly, Soul Crushes pierce right through it. I've never seen if they can use more than one Soul Crush when they're attacking in tandem, though. Still, Fauxnel lives through this one, which is more than Wylfred could say.



He dies in the next attack, but at least that's one set of attacks that's not going to another character. When you're up against five brutal enemies anytime you live through an assault it's a potential Game Over averted.



Fortunately, there are a few ways to staunch the flurry of attacks. While the Flames are immune to Suspend Motion, Reflect Sorcery works perfectly well - reflected damage pierces elemental resistances. Fauxnel even starts with the spell, so there's no reason not to have it. It costs 60 AP, so you can't spam it, but it makes surviving the first few rounds easier.

You can actually use both Lockswell and Fauxnel here - you won't have more than one Caduceus unless it's a NG+, but double the Reflect Sorcery helps even if one of them is at low levels - chances are most characters aren't surviving assaults anyway til you're down to two or three Flames. It also means you can buff more characters with Reinforces, making killing Flames in a single round easier.



The Elfin Talfetta and Sylph Robe reduce their respective elements by 90%, which allow easy surviving of the wearer against the Earth and Darkness Flames if they're the only ones attacking them. Ushio knows both Defiance and Reduce Magic, which quarters magic damage and allow him to survive some attacks. The Omnicheck is also nice here since if you survive that's still four out of five spells that can inflict a status.





As with any map, it gets easier the more Flames go down - once there are three Flames left, you can't completely die in one round unless you screw up.



Man I love seeing that. No Soul Crushes this time either, so Fauxnel laughs in all their non-existent faces.



Trinity Fork and Grand Cross sieges are very useful here - getting Gold/Shining Gems greatly increases your damage output here.



It's possible it's my imagination, but it might be that the Pale Flames start to take more damage as more of them go down - they certainly seemed to die easier.





Three down. The Flames can drop Union Plumes or Goddess Tinctures, by the way.



Heugoe lives through this one thanks to Reduce Magic. The Flames' offense is greatly lowered but they can still easily kill a character.



Works for me.



The second issue is that once you get close enough, Garm decides she's going to join in, too.



I'll talk more about Garm later, but suffice to say she is very powerful.



For now, we just focus on finishing the last two Flames.







And the last one.



Now to handle the demon herself.



I mentioned that what we just did was the harder way. The easier way is to teach Wylfred the Stalk technique, which turns the user invisible for three rounds or unless they get hit by a menu spell. Using Stalk, Wylfred can sneak past all the Flames and reach Garm.



Ailyth! I shall cast you into oblivion myself!



You see, what's required to pass this battle is to hit Garm once with Wylfred. And it has to be Wylfred.



He barely survives her retaliation, too.

The Stalk option is there for anyone who has a lot of trouble with the Pale Flames (and assuming you got it as a Sin reward earlier on.) Beating all the Pale Flames gets you at least 100,000 experience, though, which I find quite valuable.

In any case, the battle ends after Wylfred hits Garm.

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Next time: Hel's hound. Hellhound.