ZOMBERO'S PROFILE

I decided to record a vid of myself fighting Kerberos to show how it can be done without any reliance on luck. The only thing I really messed up is I used the wrong Impulse on Kappa, I should have just used the one on his weapon.


Kappa has a lot of Str, and Str is best suited to Force attacks (Str helps Weapon attacks too, but they are partially based on your weapon power while Force skills are based entirely on Str), but he lacks accuracy in his attacks. I gave him the Lumbar Axe to boost Str even more, and Felt Boots, Gi, and Bandana to help his accuracy and damage. Kappa has a lot of defenses, so he can give some up to be more in line with the survivability of your other party members. Kappa uses Raptor Talons, since this skill increases in damage with each turn of combat making it powerful in boss fights.

Harpy has a lot of Dex, which is well-suited to Weapon attacks, since lacking Str doesn't effect Weapon attacks as much. He has the Long Sword to max out his weapon power, and some other EQ to help out his damage and survivability. Harpy uses Reprisal, which does more damage with lower HP. This works out very nicely because he out-speeds my healer.

Roc is optimized for healing and survivability, which means Will and defenses. This also optimizes his poison damage. But aside from poison, Roc just heals every round for this battle. I use this setup outside of bosses too and Roc focuses primarily on status ailments there.

Isonade is spec'd for magic, everything he has gives +Magic to help his damage. His EQ also has high M. Def to survive Kerb's breaths better. Isonade uses Freeze and the Ice Bolt impulse to take advantage of the high Magic stat. Having a mage gives the possibility to inflict elemental injuries, and your physical attackers can then crit while the enemy has reduced defenses, which creates synergy between the two types of attackers.

With all this, Kerberos can be killed with several rounds to spare on his enrage timer. I do let myself get low enough that an unlucky crit could have killed a couple times, but those situations could have been avoided by having Isonade do more preventative healing. I just wanted to explain this stuff to give some ideas on how the battle mechanics work.

author=EdgeOfChaos
Why does the skill Nightmare exist by the way? It's pretty lame...

Why does an instant death skill exist? Hmm... because it's an RPG tradition, I suppose, would be the main reason. I can't think of any reason instant death skills need to be in a game. The closest I can come up with is that it instills fear and is a unique threat that players need to try to avoid and manage. The "avoid" (which currently comes in the form of the Sanctuary rally) admittedly needs some work. It reduces the chance of instant death succeeding substantially, but I also want to change it so that even when it does work, it knocks any character at above-critical HP down to critical HP instead of killing them.

author=EdgeOfChaos
Also, I really like the hyper mechanic. Great work on that.

Thanks! Me, too. I've actually actively regretted that it takes so long for Hyper to come into play, because it makes normal battles substantially less repetitive, but there's no way I could just throw it in the start of the game. The starting difficulty would have to be lowered substantially to make room for Hyper. Plus, the beginning already throws a lot more mechanics at the player than most games do, and this would add to the pile. Beyond the start of the game, the different paths sprawl out, so the only clear place to begin Hyper seems to be after Kerberos. Plus, since I plan to have the game be about 4 times as long as it is now... I guess it comes with the territory that I need to spread the mechanics out some.

author=EdgeOfChaos
They're weak from the powerful attack and party attack, so they probably have more near 600.

Ah, if you aren't able to heal back up to full or near-full, that could require some guarding. With a Will-spec'd Roc and a secondary healer (both with Aura), you should be able to keep up without the party-wide guarding.

author=EdgeOfChaos
After some changes, I did 19526 damage; is this close?

Pretty close, yeah.

It's within the realm of reachable through luck now, though I'd still suggest finding more ways to optimize over trying to brute force it.

The shield should at least let Isonade survive a crit, I think. Claire should have some nice weapon upgrades to help you deal the damage you need, too.

A few other things stood out to me:

There's an Axe weapon from the cliff area that you seem to have missed. It's kind of hidden in that you have to walk down a path that leads off screen to reach it. I don't think it's *necessary* for success, but it certainly helps.

I also notice you have Isonade decked out in magic equipment, but you don't list any magic attacks in your battle plan. Will boosts the power of your heal spells, so if you have a char who is going to heal every round, you should consider optimizing them for Will. This makes Roc a better healer than Isonade. Will also boosts the potency of body/mind/wrath/malice attacks. This makes Will a viable stat build outside of bosses, too, but that's purely up to preference. Also of note: any enemy in the game can be poisoned, including Kerberos. The damage dealt by poison is based on the Will of the character who inflicts it. Just an option.

There aren't any better buyable helmets than Wicker Hat and Salad Bowl at this point in the game, no. :P

Kappa is generally more survivable than the other party members. He also lacks accuracy in his attacks. You might want to consider giving him a Gi to help with the damage output.

I see you have two turns where all your chars are guarding... there shouldn't really be a reason for this to happen. Are you aware that you can switch which elemental barrier you have up by casting a new one? You'll want to have the appropriate barrier up for each of the 3 breaths he uses. This is made easier if you still have the consumable Rock items that cast the barriers. If not, you'd have to learn the abilities themselves.

Hrm, what EQ do each of your characters have?