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Update 72: Suicide Curse

I went ahead and unlocked all the items I could through gathering in the 5th Stratum. Let's take a look at them.















The Armet provides a 20% resistance to Paralysis. Could be handy, as it also provides a defense boost.



Metopons are really handy items to have, especially if you don't have an Ad Nihilo user on the team. While they're usefulness in the main game is a little questionable at this point, a few enemies and bosses do buff themselves in the post-game. Metopons can make them much easier to deal with.



Amrita IIs restore 100 TP. Once you unlock these, there's no reason to farm for Amritas anymore.







Like with the elemental mists, they physical mists increases everyone's resistances to the specified damage type by 50%. Honestly they're not that great. Unlike the elemental mists, I find these to be too situational to be useful. The target type change from party to everyone really destroyed these items.

Anyways, while I'm here, I stock up on a ton of Curse Gases. Why? Because there's a loose end to tie up after reaching the 20th floor.






After reaching the 20th floor, the boss you fought in the 4th Stratum respawns on the 16th floor.

I'm curious as to how our more powerful foes keep coming back.

I keep telling you, they're gho-

Oh, not this again!

Eh, who cares if it's a ghost or not? We'll just kill it again, like we did with the other ones!

Don't you mean exorcise?

FOR THE LAST TIME, THEY'RE NOT GHOSTS!

Not that I want to back up Faye's active imagination, but if they're not ghosts, then what are they?

They're... Uhhh... Oh, screw this. Sure, they're ghosts. Whatever. I don't care anymore. Let's just get rid of this thing again.



Though for some reason, it actually has a patrol path, unlike most other bosses who just sit still. Anyways, let's take it on.





What we're here to accomplish is... getting Kirin's conditional drop. Which involves killing it with Curse damage. I already covered this with a regular enemy in an earlier update, but getting these conditionals for bosses are a different story. For regular enemies with that conditional, it's annoying but fairly doable. But for bosses, they're utter hell to go for. You have to basically whittle down the boss while making sure not to kill them. And then when they get low on HP, you have to inflict Curse on them. Which is a pain in the butt to pull off since bosses are resistant to status effects. And once you pull it off, you have to hope that the boss attacks you and kills itself before the ailment wears off.

If you really want to know how bad Curse damage conditionals are to go for, just watch this video. Because I'm gonna cut out most of that in this update.

Now if you chose to side with the Deep City, you don't have to worry about this, as the boss you fight there has a much easier conditional drop to snag. (Kill it while its head is bound.)




After 9 turns of dealing damage, I have Kirin really close to death.



So I'm gonna have Alice chuck Curse Gases at it, as she's the best person for that job with her TEC and LUC stats. Kirin has a Curse resistance of 50%, so I only have 2 shots at this. Right now, Alice has a 40% to 44% chance of landing the ailment with one.

Cover your mouths, everyone!



Nice! Now I'll just have Sidney soften Kirin up a bi-



FIIIIIIRREEE!!

Oops. Forgot that Retribution was coming out this turn.



Yeah, this is how little Curse damage does in general. It's essentially equivalent to trying to kill something with a slightly more powerful regular attack. To make matters worse, if a party member gets killed, any damage they took doesn't count towards the Curse damage, so you can't cheese the drop that way.



At least Kirin's still Cursed, but it's not killing itself anytime soon with that much HP left.



I decide to soften it up with a cast of Meteor.



Oh here's the skill that Kirin didn't get to use when we fought it for the first time.





...Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve this.









Mrgrgr...!

Imperial Pride is very likely to hogtie any unlucky people who decided to attack it, and makes them very susceptible to Divine Wrath.



Every time Kirin gets hit when it prepares to use Imperial Pride, it'll attempt to fully bind the person who attacked it. For each hit they landed.

Unfortunately, Imperial Pride is the other reason that the conditional drop can be difficult to snag, as Kirin does not attempt to deal any damage at all when it uses this skill. So if you're unlucky and Kirin decides to spam this skill repeatedly instead of attacking, you're gonna have to do this fight all over again.




Oh and while I lowered Kirin's HP to killing range on the next turn, the Curse decided to wear off.



So now I have to have Alice inflict it again, except now her chances for doing so is only 16% to 17%.







At least I tried.

As you can see, you really don't have a lot of room to screw this up. Because if you botch the first attempt, the 2nd attempt will be far harder to pull off.



It took 7 more turns for Alice to Curse Kirin again.





And despite that HP bar being only one pixel long, that wasn't enough to kill it.



However, Kirin is guaranteed to cast Retribution on this turn, so I don't have to worry about Imperial Pride coming out. Unfortunately at this point, Retribution will be at its strongest, so it might end up killing my entire party. Still, I don't want to risk using Antifire, only for the Curse to wear off next turn, or have Kirin use Imperial Pride again, so I just have everyone defend and hope for the best.





Ow. Ow. A million times ow.

Well, everyone aside from Sidney managed to survive that.



Um, I hope you find peace in the afterlife?

I dunno if you should really be saying that, since you cursed it to death.

But Kirin finally kills itself through Curse Damage!



And there's the conditional drop! I hope you can see why Curse damage conditionals are loathed among EO players. They're a massive pain to get legitimately, and most people just opt to use a Formaldehyde instead.

But the worst part? Kirin wasn't the only boss with that conditional in this game. There's one more boss in the post-game that also requires you to kill it with Curse damage. What makes it worse is that it's a Sea Quest boss, so you also have to worry about the NPCs stealing the kill. And unlike with Kirin, you only have one shot at it. (Its Curse resistance is only 10%.) But that's for another time.

Mercifully, there's no need to rush to get all of Kirin's drops. If you opt to side with the Deep City instead on your second playthrough, the game will allow you to fight Kirin again once you reach the 20th floor. The same applies for the other way around.










The Crimson Tail unlocks the Dark Attire, which is the Ninja's ultimate armor. It provides a bit of AGI, LUC, and 2 points of Action Speed. Sadly, we can't afford it yet.



I remembered to spend Cassandra's new skill point after selling the Crimson Tail. Parry now has a 10% activation rate.

I'm gonna end things off here, as I just wanted to dedicate an update to this awful conditional drop. Next time, we'll go through the final floor.