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Update 40: Golem
I never want to fight a giant statue, or a giant robot, or a giant robot statue ever again!
Um, I'm fairly certain that the Gatekeeper Senator Flowdia and Princess Gutrune wants us to take down is a giant robot.
...Aarrgghh.
Okay, that should... be what we... need...
Hmm? There's something over there...
Just what are those rocks... oh goodness, this heat is unbearable!
You said it... Hey... How about we take a break? Go do something else, like sail on the seas or something...?
That would be really nice. I don't know if I can stand this cavern any longer.
Ooh, now here's a pretty good accessory. Bash Charms reduce Strike damage by 30%. If you're having trouble with the next Sea Quest, buy a couple of these. They'll help a lot.
Ehh, I dunno about you guys, but I don't feel like going back in that Stratum just yet. You guys wanna do something else?
That would be a pleasant idea. But what should we do?
I hear they started up the investigation on those ruins we found earlier. Shall we lend a helping hand?
Ooh, I would love to do that!
Actually... I think I'm gonna bring some other people along for that. Akatsuki. Alice. I need you two do me a favor.
Hmm? What do you need?
Nothing big, just... mumble mumble murmur.
Oh. Yes, that would be important to know about.
Thanks guys! Alright, let's go!
Hey, punching the daylights out of statue sounds fun! You in?
Sure, why not? I've got nothing better to do.
Here's the team I'll be using.
And the Limits.
The interior is so expansive, it appears to have been built for things far larger than humans. While investigating the statues, suddenly the ground rumbles hard enough to shake the whole island!
Just what is going on!?
As if on cue, the statue’s eyes begin to shine eerily and you’re sure you saw it move! The client snaps his fingers, as though he knew this would happen. It seems he’s ready for battle! Now, draw your weapons without hesitation and challenge the statue before you!
Looks like that's our target! Let's go!
Video: Golem
Hey, I know what that is! There were monsters like that in Etria and Lagaard too, weren't there?
Well if you know that much, you should know how dangerous that Golem is! Be careful!
Here's another cameo. Golem was a boss in the first two games. This is actually its last appearance in the series despite that. It made a reappearance in the Untold games at least, but those are remakes. Let's take a look at how it operates.
Golem
HP: 5555
TP: 706
STR: 42
VIT: 44
AGI: 27
LUC: 28
TEC: 25
Attack Type: Strike
Exp: 24000
Item Drops:
-Normal: Statue Finger - 100% Drop Rate. 1 needed for Adama Armor (Heavy Armor. Must be restocked.)
--Stone that resists scratches no matter what it hits.
-Gold: 3-Lights Gem - Kill while Blinded. 100% Drop Rate. Prevents Normal Drops. 1 needed for Origin Tablets (Book. Must be restocked.)
--The tricolored source of a golem’s power.
Description: A stone giant found on the island of ancient ruins. What was it built to fight...?
Damage Resistances: Slash: 50% Strike: 50% Pierce: 50% Fire: 125% Ice: 125% Volt: 125%
Ailment Resistances: Sleep: 50% Confusion: 10% Plague: 1% Poison: 1% Blind: 50% Curse: 10% Paralysis: 10%
Bind Resistances: Head: 30% Arm: 30% Leg: 30%
Other Resistances: Death: 1% Petrification: IMMUNE Stun: 10%
Skills:
Multi Hammer: Uses the Arms. A Strike attack that deals 100% Strike damage to the entire party.
Triple Hammer: Uses the Arms. A Strike attack that deals 130% damage to 3 people. Will not target the same person more than once.
At the start of the fight, Golem doesn't do much aside from hammering your party in the face. Don't be fooled by those low damage modifiers, Golem's STR is really high at this point, so even a regular attack from it can do a lot of damage. You'll want to bring lots of healing or lots of defense. Or better yet, both. I actually don't like this boss. I consider it to be difficult in a cheap way. Probably one of my least favorite Sea Quest bosses. But I'll get to the reason why a bit later.
First things first, set up my defenses with double Cassandras.
Increase Bongaro's attack power, since he's one of our main damage dealers.
Faye will handle the healing with Protect Order.
And Asteria will get ready to launch elementals at Golem.
FIRE AT WILL!
Bongaro does a decent amount of damage with Breakfire Fist, but don't expect that to carry you to victory.
What you're seeing happen to Bongaro is Ascetic Deeds. Every time he casts a skill, he recovers some HP.
I have arrived! By the way Faye, did you remember to clean your room, like I asked?
AAUUUGGGHHHH!
This is essentially Golem's regular attack, only as an AOE. Yeah, dude hits hard.
A healing touch!
We are going to need healing in these fights. Lots and lots of healing.
Calculating spell trajectory.
Line Guard will take a lot of the sting out of Golem's attacks.
Eagle Eye is another damage boost that will help Bongaro deal more damage.
And Asteria will be attacking.
And here's one of the ways a Bunshin Hoplite can be useful. Double Line Guards, one for each row. Your party now takes laughably little damage from physical attacks. It might seem like overkill for the back row, but you've seen how much damage Golem does.
Stay behind me!
And me too!
Triple Hammer is Golem's hardest hitting attack. It hits less targets than Multi Hammer, but each hit deals more damage.
Starting a fire, Bongaro? Don't leave me out on the fun.
And now both rows are under the effects of Protect Order.
How amusing. You think that your defenses won't fall in my presence!
This is how much Protect Order heals at the moment. It's a decent amount, but Faye needs to master both Protect Order and Form Qi for it to be really effective.
Let's make this team even harder to kill. Why not?
An impenetrable defense!
Unfortunately, I forgot to pack Amritas, so both Cassandras are running really low on TP.
Not like that's gonna matter, because it's time to end this fight. 
Forward!
Hmm?
Ready to fire!
Um, I don't think that's a good ide-
Well that guy wasn't too-Wait what?
Aw yeah! Take that, you stupid-wait. Shouldn't that thing have toppled over by now?
Oh yeah, that's right. Golem has some more skills.
Endure: Does not use a body part. A passive that lets Golem survive a killing blow, and heals it for 2777 HP.
Thought you were done with the fight? Sorry, but there's more to it. It essentially extends Golem's HP, so it actually has 8332 HP. In fact, when Endure activates, it doesn't interrupt anything Golem does.
Which tripped me up, because I thought that it would stop it from using this.
Ice wasn't nice after all...
Remember when the game said Golem stands ready? That was it getting ready to do a counterattack.
Reflection: Does not use a body part. Whenever Golem gets hit with an elemental attack, it performs a counterattack on the person who attacked it. Counterattacks deal Almighty damage and deals 2 to 6 times the damage Golem took. Has an action speed of +30.
When Golem drops below 76%, it introduces this dick move into the mix. It had this skill in EO2, but it was only used on specific turns, making it easily avoidable. Now, it's used at random, so it's unpredictable when Golem will use this, resulting in a lot of cheap deaths that you can't do much about. Sorta. There's one saving grace that I'll talk about later in the fight. But yes, this is pretty much the main reason I'm not a fan of these Sea Quests. You pretty much have to accept that your characters will die, so you don't have a choice but to attack it. Why not just whittle it down with physical attacks then? Well there's more skill that we haven't seen that will make that strategy ineffective.
So how this counterattack works is that the damage that Golem deals is multiplied by the damage it took. The less damage Golem takes, the higher the damage multiplier. It's basically to ensure that whoever attacked it will die. Oh, and since it's a counter attack, it doesn't have an accuracy check, so it can't miss.
Blood Return restores a few points of TP to the Monk whenever an ally dies.
Oh by the way, Golem counters every single elemental attack it took if it put up a Reflection. Absolute Zero happened to hit it 4 times.
Oh, and if the intended target already died, Golem will unleash its counters on other people.
Uhhhh. Hey! Are you dead!?
...Really, Faye? Really?
He got hit pretty hard. I was just trying to make sure he was still alive!
Ascetic Reward restores a certain amount of HP to all party members if the Monk dies.
THIS ISN'T OVER! YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST OF MEGAQUEEEEEN! 
You people can deal with this thing yourself. I'm out of here!
When a clone dies, it disappears so you can't revive it. You'll have to summon another one.
This looks bad. What do we do?
Hmm. Let's see...
Well I can recover from the situation. Thankfully Faye and Cassandra can't be killed in one hit, they're both too durable for that.
Cassie! Use this!
Oh even better, I got a free turn! Yeah, Golem has no qualms about using Reflection multiple turns in a row.
Hey. You okay there?
Ugh. I think so. What happened?
Eh, don't worry about it. Just help us take down this statue!
My apologies for that disaster that just happened.
I'm not completely done recovering from that mistake. I need to heal everyone up and revive Susan. I have Cassandra Bodyguard Asteria to ensure that she doesn't die again.
Oh. Never mind, Golem insisted on giving me another free turn!
I'll... protect you?
I uh, don't think that's necessary right now.
Your queen is BACK! The battle may now continue!
Dr. Faye will see you now.
And now to move these two out of the front row.
The nice thing about Bongaro's AI is that it cheats. He'll never use Breakfire Fist on a turn where Golem casts reflection, so you don't have to worry about him. You can't say the same for your party members, unfortunately.
The queen is dead...
Oh come on! I just got her up!
Oh yes. Here's its last skill, and one that also makes it a pain to deal with.
Regen: Uses the Head. Places a buff on Golem that restores 240 to 245 HP at the end of the turn for 3 turns.
Once Golem drops below 51%, (even before it activates Endure.) it starts using this move. If you don't do anything about it, Golem will end up recovering 720 to 735 HP. It also casts this every 5th turn. In fact, it will always cast it on turns that are multiples of 5, so that's the only safe time to use elemental attacks. Which is the saving grace I mentioned earlier.
LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!
And Regen will restore Golem's HP bit by bit, undoing our hard work.
Let's fix that.
Now now, I didn't give you permission to do that.
...This is gonna hurt.
Cheap shot!
While the counterattacks are STR based, and will deal reduced damage to the back row, that won't really save anybody most of the time.
ABSOLUTE...
Zero? Uhhh, not sure what I'm supposed to do here.
If someone who's supposed to cast a Limit skill gets killed before they can do so, the Limit won't be casted, and you'll get that message instead.
Armored like a Hoplite!
Okay, try to stay up this time.
Sorry.
Not this time.
So the fight basically boils down to, kill it. Dispel buffs. You can't even hope for your party members to not die from Reflection, its AI is too random to predict that. You basically have to accept that any elemental damage dealers will die, and then just work on recovering and getting them back up. And then repeat until Golem's dead. It's not really an interesting boss, it just deals cheap shots, really. There's not much you can do to deal with Reflection.
Ha! That thing is totally, one hundred percent DEAD! No way it's coming back!
I suppose so. But I still have an uneasy feeling about this place.
That's also not the only... I'm worrying too much.
The client examines the stones from various angles, noting specifics from the battle moments ago. After some time, he sighs in satisfaction and thanks you before heading deeper into the ruins. You smile wryly at his insatiable lust for knowledge before returning to your awaiting ship.
Researchers have been examining it ever since you left... But its power source is still a mystery. They can’t even recreate it with our current technology. So the question is, was it created by man before the Calamity? Or by something else...? We’ll just have to hope those scholars can find the answers. All that aside, you guys did great. Your reward this time came from inside those ruins. You should hold onto it.
We get the Aegis Barrier Limit, which is like the Aegis Shield Limit, only it blocks elemental damage instead of physical. Handy, but not useful at all against Golem. It has no effect on Almighty damage, so neither Aegis Limit can block those.
Now I have to do that Sea Quest again, but to get the equipment from that. And I want to get the conditional drop this time, so I'm stocking up on Blind Gases.
I'm bringing in Fang to maximize my chances of getting its Gold Drop. Scott does have Lights Out, but he doesn't have that skill anymore, and I didn't feel like grinding him back up just to relearn it. Besides, his LUC and TEC stats aren't that great to to inflict Blind on Golem. Anyways, let's go for it.
I thought you said you demolished that thing!
We did! That must be a different one! There are a lot of those statues around here.
Let's just hope the rest of them don't activate while we're dealing with this one.
Let's make things easier for our attackers.
Cry wolf!
Beaten like a drum!
Aw, what's the matter? Can't think with that... wait, can statues think?
I don't like where this is going.
Yep. Didn't like it at all.
Hopefully the next punch to the face will be less painful.
Golem's running pretty low on HP, so I'm gonna try to Blind him now. I could hold my party members back, but I can't stop Bongaro from attacking it, so I'm kind of on a time limit in regards to that.
Heads up!
Kid, I think you were supposed to aim at its head.
I was trying to! 
And the thing about the Gases are that they aren't that accurate when it comes to inflicting ailments. They only have a 25% chance to inflict their associated ailment. While Fang's LUC and TEC stats will boost that to a 50% to 59% chance, Golem has a 50% resistance to Blind, lowering that back down to 25% to 29%. They're not meant to be a complete substitute for skills.
Golem's running low, but it hasn't activated Endure yet. Though any ailments it gets inflicted with will persist after it Endures a mortal blow.
Here's mud in your eye!
And there we go!
Full sail ahead!
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
And I managed to snag its Gold Drop!
He’s a strange guy... Makes you wonder if he prefers to study or fight. He left something for you guys with me, though. He seemed excited, said it would be perfect for you.
His last line changes to this if you've already gotten that armor:
In any case, you’ve done well. It seems I made the right choice when I picked your guild.
Bongaro's Singlet is a really good piece of armor at this point. Provides a decent amount of defense, but it also reduces the damage output of all physical attacks by 10%.
Let's see what these drops unlock.
The Origin Tablets are unlocked by selling the 3-Lights Gem, but you also need a drop from a 4th Stratum enemy to do that.
The Adama Armor provides a nice defense boost, and provides a 30% resistance to Instant Death.