Part 51: Optional Bosses

Last time, we conquered Gunner's Heaven and took down two optional bosses there. Well, why stop there?


Update 51: You can't fight porn

There are quite a few hidden bosses in this game. Today I'm going to tackle all of the remaining ones that can be found outside the Abyss. (except Arioch, because screw that guy)
I'll do them in order of lowest to highest leveled.

MUSIC SELECTION FOR THIS UPDATE:
Gunmetal Action
Blood, Tears, and the Dried-Up Wasteland
Wild Bunch
Whirlwind Blowing
There's Only One Family Named Shrodinger
Crossfire Sequence
Black as Sin, Red as Blood
Higher than can be Carried by Wings



There is a book on the upper level of the Ark of Destiny's library.


Specifically it's Hebrew, and is used to activate golems.


Hey everyone let's go to Mimir's Well!



The console where we can type in TOMORROW to access the room that housed Hyades. If we type in "emeth" instead we got something else.

OPTIONAL BOSS BATTLE: LOLITHIA, THE ICE QUEEN



Dang Avril, you really scrubbed up well for future games.

At level 48 and only 22000 HP, she's not really a threat, I could end it in one turn with a Finest Arts.
Her fire weakness is heavily exploitable - I Extended a Fire Attachment as soon as I could, and let Billy and Doc cut loose.



That said, the fire damage will be reduced by her casting Freezing Zone straight away.



She has a physical attack in Avalanche, and can send a target to sleep with Cold Sleep.



She can also hit everyone with Cocytus. But given the level gap and her simplistic attacks, it's not too difficult to persever, especially if you have Ice wards.
Appropriately, the reward she drops is an Ice Ring (Ice Ward PS) She also gets Billy and Boone a level up each (lv60)

VIDEO: The Ice Queen

That's one optional boss down. Who's next?



There's a strangely colored Memory Figure in the Ark of Destiny's basement.



You can hit it with a changecrest to turn it into a Missanga (Luck Boost PS) I gave it to Doc.
After that leave the room and come back; and it will have returned. Play the Kramer Dolls for it and...


OPTIONAL BOSS BATTLE: BOMBUR



Fighting a save point? Sure, why not? Two levels higher than Lolithia, (50) but three times as much HP, no weakness and no easily blocked damage.



Desperation is a physical attack, while Numb Light does no damage but inflicts Amnesia and is therefore pretty much the least threatening thing any of these bosses will do.
In an extra level of crazy, Numb Light can be copied and used against Bombur. Which is stupid because Amnesia on an enemy serves no mechanical purpose whatsoever.



Both visually and in terms of damage, Wheel Laser is his best move, but it's still not quite brutal at this point.

VIDEO: Bombur



Poor little guy.
He drops a Prism Stick which gives SOS FP Boost. Not great, I'm still not keen on SOS-style PS, but pretty good. Pearl and Doc got two levels, and Boone and Billy got one apiece.



On to Ka Dingel, the tower where we finally confronted the still-human Janus at the end of Chapter 1. We fought Trask midway up the tower, now we get to meet his big brother.
Play the Kramer Dolls in front of the Holographic Archive, and he will appear.

OPTIONAL BOSS BATTLE: POWER TRASK



The "heat and freeze" mechanics of the old trask are forgotten. Now you just blast him.



His physical attack looks anemic, but Doc is blocking here.



He'll counter all attacks with Bio-Missiles, dealing somewhere in the region of 800 damage.



He can also set up Contaminated Crust like Fafnir did, which deals 10% of max HP every turn.



Since he resists all kinds of elemental damage, Dark Lucied can be extremely effective.



Unfortunately Billy got poisoned on the way up, and I never healed it because seriously, it's Billy.



Hold on, what are you do-



Oh, I see. Sneaky.
Synchonizer is an ability that often seems a bit too fiddly to see proper use, but when it works it works well. In this case, it has synchronized Billy and Power Trask's statuses - as long as Billy remains poisoned, Power Trask will be too. And since poison always kills in five turns (20% max HP damage per turn) you can pretty much turtle (ha!) up now, occasionally heal Billy, and wait him out. The poison will eventually kill him.

VIDEO: Power Trask

The reward includes a Golden Dawn, which gives the Lifebringer PS - makes VIT more efficient. I'm not using the one I already have, so I'm not worried about using this one. Billy and Boone gain two levels, while Pearl and Doc get one each.

Right, where next?



Ah yes, the Dissection Facility Maya was taken to when she was initially kidnapped. There's a little secret behind these blocks.



The chests contain a Big Grab Bag and a Nectar. As for the Hologram...

OPTIONAL BOSS BATTLE: HEIMDAL GAZZO



Not too hard with the right defenses.



Eyeball is his sole source of non-dark damage, and he won't use it often. On the other hand, he'll counter every attack with Screaming Mad.



Phantom Hazard hits everyone for Dark Damage. With this and Screaming Mad being his primary sources of damage, you can very easily trivialise this boss with four dark wards.



For fun, give him a Dark weakness and copy Screaming Mad onto him to turn him into a blimp.



I did this one without Finest Arts, though by the end I wished I had used it.

VIDEO: Heimdal Gazzo

The reward is spectacular - the Gold License. This beautiful item halves the cost of all items in shops. Hardly a big deal for the vast majority of items, but how about that Ex File Key in the Black Market? The Gold License changes its price from a spirit-crushing 9,999,999 gella to a much more achievable 4,999,999. Hell, by the end of this update I'm brushing up on 3,700,000. Killing optional bosses pays well.
Also everyone got two levels.

Next, it's over to the Leyline Observatory.



In the bookshelf next to where you can read Duran's Diary, Boone finds something... salacious. Last time we were here it said it was too stimulating for younger readers though. How about now?

Migrant Level 18 or above confirmed. This book contains stimulating material. The author takes no responsibility for the content. Please enjoy at your own discretion. Do you agree to the above statement?

Yes
No

OPTIONAL BOSS BATTLE: TWELVE ADULT MAGS



Took me a while to figure out who that reminded me of, but I'm pretty sure it's a blonde

Twelve of these guys, by far the most outnumbered we are in any battle. And they're pretty mean.



700 HP from an Agony Effect would not be too bad if there wasn't 12 of them to do it.



But it's their use of Grav that really makes things tough. Sure, it only takes off half of current HP, but it really makes characters vulnerable to Agony Effect...



The only break they will give you is skipping turns with Melancholy Pose.



This is the best shot of the actual pages I can get, by the way. Looks pretty tame...

You can't stand up to these guys in a fair fight. There are too many of them and they're happy to make mincemeat of you in two rounds, tops. And since they're not all in the same group, your only choice is to summon.
Fortunately, turns out they have a fire weakness.



Giving Boone Firey Rage and Lust Jaw allows him to summon Moor Gault while using the Weakness PS - more than enough to instantly kill all of them.

VIDEO: Adult Mag



The rewards include... Adventure 10? What was a children's adventure book doing in among adult magazines?
... DURAN!

Each character also has a different reaction to the Adult Mag after they're defeated.

YEAHHHHH!! Woo-hoo! Awesome! This is like a high-class fancy dessert! I can't recommend this to Shane, yet... He'll become way too picky with his taste... He'd better start with something more simple, like a cookie... OHHH YEAHHHH!! Keep 'em comin'!
It's kinda sad how I unconsciously compare them to myself...
Oh, my... I used to get much more excited over things like this back when I was a student... I've become a mature adult, I suppose.
Oh, man... They're just human... Why do they need to make a book out of it?

Yeah, I figured you wouldn't get it.

Well, regardless of how we got it, we now have ten books we can take to Kaitlyn. If we go talk to Catherine we can grab one more...


While I was cleaning your room, I found this book from the bottom of all your research material. I think it's a book Kaitlyn's been wanting to read. Would you read it to her?

This gets us the final book, Adventure 11.



Read the entire story to Kaitlyn and she'll reward you.


Thanks! That was fun! Thank you for collecting all the books! I spent a lot of time with Daddy, too. Here, I want you to have this. Isn't it pretty? It's a token of my appreciation!

EX File Key gained!

EX File Keys: 8/15

How nice. Well, five bosses down, three to go. Taking the Nidhogg Pass returns us to the Yggdrasil area, where we can find Werner's old shack: Greenlodge.



There's a Holographic archive right next to it. Use the Kramer Dolls and the boss will approach.

OPTIONAL BOSS BATTLE: JOHN DEE



This guy throws about light, dark and non-elemental-flavored arcana...





He'll also give you a whack if you attack him with an ARM, and Erase any buffs you try to give yourselves - so don't even bother.
This does reveal some interesting things about buffs though. He can erase Replay - as I said before, replay is a buff that auto-removes itself when it activates. So Erasing it prevents the replay from firing.
However, he cannot erase elemental attachments for some reason. So weakening him and attaching the same element to your weapons works well, especially since you can Copy his abilities with Boone.



But since he has 170000 HP, you really need to use Finest Arts if you want to finish the fight in a decent amount of time.

I think part of my distaste for Finest Arts is just that it completely changes the tactics. As in, where once there might have been multiple tactics, now there is only Finest Arts. This would be fine if Finest Arts was a mechanically interesting or fun tactic, but it's not. It's just the same thing every turn. It's a shame later optional bosses are apparently balanced around it.

VIDEO: John Dee

The drops include the Ebony Shadow, which grants the Arcana Blocker PS. An interesting one. It protects against a selection of basic arcana: all the elemental attack arcana; debuffs like Fragile, Feeble Mind and Eraser; and even things like Grav, Banish, and Curse.
The levels control what FP level it can activate at: at level one it will only activate when user is at 100FP, while at level 4 it works at just 25FP.
Sadly while it could be quite nice, there just aren't enough enemies that actually use these arcana! Most of the problem enemies use enemy-only arcana like Screaming Mad or Agony Effect that this PS does nothing about. The only arcana it protects against that I'd want to equip it to avoid is Grav.

Right, now it's... hm, where were we?



Oh yeah, Fortune Gear. Try to open this black box and it'll tell you how many treasure chests you've found and opened. In my case, it's...

317/320



Crap, I missed some!
I proceeded to spend hours combing through every part of every dungeon, searching for the missing treasure chests. After searching literally everywhere else, I found them...



... halfway up Yggdrasil. You know, only the most out-of-the-way dungeon in the game.

I want to emphasis this. Any time you want to go to Yggdrasil, you can't fly Lombardia there (can't land on trees) and the Teleport Orb doesn't go to Greenlodge. You have to go find an entrance to Nidhogg Pass and spend 10 minutes trekking through that dungeon, doing all the puzzles again because unlike every other dungeon in this game, the dungeons in Nidhogg Pass reset. It is the worst thing when you have to do it three or four times over the course of the game.

Anyway, all these chests contain is a Revive Fruit and two Gimel Coins. But that's what we needed to get. On returning to the black box, we can try to open it again...

Do you wish to know? There are 320 treasure chests in this world, of which 319...
It appears all the treasure chests but one have been opened. Do you have the courage to open the last treasure chest, me?

Yes
No

That's a bad habit of yours, trying to open the chest many times... You might just hurt yourself...


OPTIONAL BOSS BATTLE: BLACK BOX



A super-mimic, Black Box mostly attacks with Dark damage and you can almost-trivialize this with enough Dark Wards.
He has a Light weakness, but if you don't have Dark Wards you do NOT want to try to exploit it. He'll counter Light attacks with Phantom Hazard (hits all), counter all other elemental attacks with Screaming Mad and counter physical attacks with Gimmick Hand. On top of what he does in his own turn.
Personally I'd say you should stick with regular physical attacks if you don't have the Dark Wards (and by regular I mean Finest Arts) and give him a non-light weakness and exploit that if you do. Beyond that he's not too different from Heimdal Gazzo, just much more HP.

VIDEO: Black Box

The reward for killing him? Another EX File Key!

EX File Keys found: 9/15

OK, last one. Level 90.



Hidden in a well in Little Twister. Use the Kramer Dolls and...

The cacophony that rings is a sign from the messenger of the darkness. The numerous tentacles grasp Pearl and her party! They are dragged deep into the well, and come face to face with fear!!

OPTIONAL BOSS BATTLE: KRAKEN



A gigantic sea monster, Kraken mostly uses water-based attacks.





He'll also smack anyone who hits him with a flipper.

None of those abilities are too much of a threat. In addition, he is completely inexplicably weak to Water, so I don't even need to Weaken him. Boone can Attach water damage to Doc and Billy's ARMs and copy the enemy's own abilities, hitting him with his own water attacks.
His 280,000 HP is impressive, but since he can't kill us nothing is stopping us from Arting him to death.

VIDEO: Kraken

It's a little bit crazy. Today I've fought a level 48 Lolithia and a level 90 Kraken, and while one was certainly more time consuming, I can't say either was more difficult. I guess that's what happens when you primarily balance by how much HP it has and neglect to give it any tactical edge. Lolithia is a more complex fight than Kraken.

Still, he drops one hell of a reward: the Comet Mark, which gives the ATT Plus PS. It'll cost 40 points to get this to level 4, but at that point it will triple ARM damage.
I'm a little torn about whether Billy or Doc gets this. I'm thinking Billy, since Doc is already hitting the damage cap with Finest Arts, and Billy is running out of PS to spend his points on anyway. But maybe I'll let you guys decide.

Well, as of the end of the Filgaia Optional Bosses, Pearl is level 73, Billy and Boone level 71, and Doc is level 79. And we have a whopping 3.7 million gella. Not far off that Black Market EX File Key, considering...

Next Time: The Truth is Totally Out There This Time


A DAY A DAY

Today is April 14, Con Day. To con someone means to argue against them. Another meaning is to swindle. A con also means convict. Although commonly mistaken, the real meaning of con in Con Day is constitution.

Today is April 15, Resistance Day. It's the day the resistance forces won and Claiborne was founded. The Resistance Festival is held today and all the villagers divide into feds and rebels to show a mock battle. The feds always lose at the end, of course. Claiborners started the festival to commemorate their rebel spirit, but I think it defeats the purpose when you make a festival out of it.