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Update 35: Fissure
Only one thing left to do in this dungeon.
Time to take out Flame Eater.
Here’s how our party is doing. I’m going to bring Nila’s 120 INT to attention right now, as that’ll be relevant for some mechanics chat in a bit.
Ahahaha! Oh no you won’t! And there’s nowhere to run this time, either!
Video: Flame Eater
We’ll make sure to finish the job right here, right now!
And there’s no magma to help ya out anymore!
Flame Eater
Level: 53
LIFE: 6000
ATK: 200
DEF: 110
INT: 130
SPD: 72
Attack Type: Blunt
Attributes: Boss, Disables Escape, Large, Dragon, Death Resistant
Exp: 25200
Gold: 400
Item Drops:
-Normal: Helldragon Tail - 100% Drop Rate.
--Tail of Flame Eater.
-Rare: N/A
Damage Multipliers:
Slash: 100% Blunt: 100% Thrust: 100%
Fire: 0% Ice: 250% Lightning: 100%
Ailment Susceptibility:
Death: 0% Masked Pain: 100% Skill Seal: 5%
Fear: 10% Curse: 50% Bleed: 25%
Poison: 25% Sleep: 10% Confuse: 10%
Paralysis: 50% Blind: 25% Stun: 100%
Skills:
Lava Flow: Passive. Restores 150 LIFE at the end of each turn for each living Magmaroth in Doma Volcano.
Flame Veil: Places a buff on the user for 5 turns that causes anyone to hit the user with a melee ATK-based attack to be struck with a counterattack for each hit. Counterattacks deal ranged INT-based Fire damage and have a base damage of 80. Counterattacks cannot miss. Has a speed modifier of 80%.
Fire Breath: Deals ranged INT-Based Fire damage to all party members. Has a base damage of 90. Has a speed modifier of 80%.
Flame Ball: Deals ranged INT-Based Fire damage to one party member. Has a base damage of 130. Has a speed modifier of 80%.
Rock Cannon: Deals 130% ranged ATK-based Blunt damage to one party member. Party members adjacent to the initial target take 80% damage instead. Has a speed modifier of 90%.
Magma Wave: Deals ranged INT-Based Fire damage to all party members. Has a base damage of 110. Has a speed modifier of 70%.
Magma Wave: Activates right after casting Magma Wave. Heals the user with a base healing of 200 (Restores 266 LIFE to the target, factoring in INT.) Has a speed modifier of 100%.
Flame Eater has gotten quite a few upgrades ever since the encounter with him back in Devo Desert. Every single one of his skills got buffed up from the Devo Desert version of the fight, and he’s picked up 2 new tricks. Lava Flow can end up slowing down the fight if your party’s damage output is too low, but you can stop this by killing the Magmaroths. Magma Wave is Flame Eater’s other new trick which he likes to bring out at low LIFE in order to drag out the fight more.
It’s not all good for Flame Eater though, as he now takes 250% damage from Ice attacks instead of 200%. Aside from the beefing up, Flame Eater is about the same as the Devo Desert fight, so a lot of what I said there applies here too. Ranged attacks are the way to go here, as Flame Eater will try to maintain the Flame Veil buff regularly. If you have a lot of melee, you’ll have to make sure to heal up regularly, as you’ll just be taking a lot of extra damage throughout the fight. A Knight’s Firebreak is still good at cutting down how much damage Flame Eater can do, though it won’t work on Flame Veil due to that being a counter skill. Heat Regulators are also very good at dealing with Flame Eater's attacks, though that item is single target, so you better pack a few of those.
Starting off by lowering Flame Eater’s defenses. I’m not too concerned with increasing his status vulnerability, as I have no plans on using Masked Pain, and this fight shouldn’t last that long anyways.
Come ooooon!
No!
Come oooooooon!
No! I-It’s silly.
What’s the harm? It could help us work together better! And uh, I’ve wanted to do something like this for a while...
...Ngh. Fine!
Cloaked and daggered.
I’ll also apply as much damage as I can, and have Ark try to lock Flame Eater out of his turns.
I don’t even need to go all out to deal with the likes of you!
Okay, you might be wondering why I’m having Nila immediately attack instead of going straight for a Concentrate. That has to do with magic damage that deal more soft cap, which Nila will easily ram into in this fight. Since her INT stat is 120, any attacks from her that deal more than than 1200 damage will have its damage reduced by 80% after that point. And Flame Eater’s 250% Ice multiplier essentially means Nila has Concentrate passively active, so using Concentrate becomes a straight up damage loss.
Another subject I want to bring up is that normally, the Bloom bonus multiplier of 1.3x would increase that 250% Ice multiplier up to a whopping 325%. Except the game actually caps damage and ailment multipliers to a maximum of 300%. I bring this up now, because this is literally the only time in the entire game that this ever comes up. No other fight has high enough multipliers to ram into the 300% cap aside from this version of the Flame Eater fight.
Fun fact, Etrian Odyssey also caps the damage and ailment multipliers of its entities to 300% as well in all of the games in the series, though it pretty much never comes up as far as I know.
Comet blow!
You’re bound!
Starting off this fight strong. EX pretty much brings the chances of Paralyzing a dragon up from 48% to 72.96%, which is pretty great!
Glacial embrace!
What did I say? Ahahahaaaa!
Despite the extremely harsh soft caps, Mages are still utterly broken as shit. Now as for how the damage would have measured out if I used Concentrate...
Freeze: 830 to 910.
Freeze + EX: 1209 to 1233. (Down from 1245 to 1365 true damage.)
Freeze + Concentrate: 1375 to 1415. Effective damage: 687.5 to 707.5. (Down from 2075 to 2275 true damage. True effective damage: 1037.5 to 1137.5.)
Freeze + Concentrate: + EX: 1582 to 1642. Effective damage: 791 to 821. (Down from 3112 to 3412 true damage. True effective damage: 1556 to 1706.)
Yeah, they really get kneecapped by the soft caps, but still dish out tons of damage despite that. Even then, you can see why using Concentrate in this fight is a horrific idea.
That being said, Mages do get a rather big benefit in their damage formula, in that past a certain point, they’ll ignore the target’s INT stat. INT stats are hard capped to 100 defensively, so that can’t end up reducing damage too much, which lets the Mage’s base damage stay relevant for pretty much the entire game.
Wriggle all ya can! It won’t help one bit.
Double meteor strike! Hee hee, I always wanted to pull off a team attack someday.
Probably could have done a better job on my end, but oh well.
Pfft. Oh, you dorks.
Let’s get serious!
Now time for Stella to go on the offensive since her support duties are done.
Ark continues proving herself as a goddamn bashlord.
MALLET BONK!
Very sizeable damage dealt from everyone due to the DEF debuff.
Holy shit, Ark! We’re almost done with this fight and Flame Eater hasn’t gotten a single turn!
Frost bitten, twice shy!
Wh-What happened to Flame Eater!? He was just there a second ago!
Oh, you’re breathing him in.
Yeah uh, that was Flame Eater. Poor guy never got a single turn while the entire party just vaporized him. Makes you feel kind of sorry for him, huh?
So you know what, why don’t we rewind a bit and actually give this guy a fair fight? Flame Eater never got to show off anything and basically turned into a DPS dummy, so let’s actually show off what he can do and how to deal with him without using a Mage.
Here’s the party I’ll be using for this fight. Nila’s out cause she’s just beyond broken for this. I reverted to a much earlier save, so Ark is still using Bows, but that’ll be helpful in dealing with Flame Veil. I’m also using a lower leveled party here as well to add to the challenge a bit.
I’ll also be fighting Flame Eater at full power this time, which is really just letting him have his 300 LIFE regen. The Magmaroths being alive doesn’t do anything else for him. Still, it’ll be a notable setback to deal with.
Video: Flame Eater
That’s unfortunate.
Oog. That actually stung...!
Yeah, he actually hits pretty hard when he gets chances to act. So if you don’t have a Mage in the party, don’t be entirely fooled by just how easily I took him down.
If you do have a Mage though, chances are your experiences will be similar to the first battle. You just might take a few smacks in the process.
And since we can’t burst down Flame Eater as easily, that mechanic will definitely slow down this fight considerably.
Because Lava Flow will be healing back 5% of Flame Eater’s LIFE per turn, it’s very important that I increase my party’s damage output as much as possible.
Edward is going to have a much bigger support role in this battle, as Flame Eater hits super hard, and the less time everyone has to waste patching themselves up, the better.
Ark will chip in some damage.
And Haru will set up.
A one and a two!
Feeling better?
Eh heh. Yeah, I am!
Such heat will be nothing to my blade.
If you have access to the Samurai’s Fubuki skill, you’ll absolutely want to use that in this fight since it’s Ice damage. Be warned it’ll still trigger Flame Veil.
Perhaps I should not have worded that as a challenge! Ouch, ooh, hot, hot!
Haru isn’t even underleveled and he already got taken to low HP!
This should extinguish those sparks!
That should make the regen much easier to push back.
Now’s my chance!
Now I’ll have Stella join in on dishing out damage.
It’s now or never!
I’ll have Edward contribute some damage, as Flame Eater usually likes to get Flame Veil up as soon as possible. So this is possibly a free turn for some extra damage. And the sooner I can end this fight, the better.
Nocked and loaded!
I do believe it’s time for some payback.
And time to go all out on this turn. That should hopefully get me a good chunk of the way through the fight.
Crater cracker!
This should teach you to not interrupt someone when they’re preparing their weapon!
Some great damage from Haru!
Dousing strike!
Eugh. Stella’s lower stats are biting her in the butt here.
Ah, and there’s the Flame Veil.
That’s still a good chunk of progress through the fight at least.
Now that I know Flame Eater is going to be attacking from now on, I start tossing out Miracle Cures to deal with the extra damage Flame Veil is going to toss at my party.
Patch up!
I appreciate the assistance.
My arrows don’t give a damn about yer fire wall!
Fortunately, Ark doesn’t care about Flame Veil at all, so she’s easily the most reliable damage dealer of the party.
What a dishonorable trick!
This guy really doesn’t like fighting fair, huh?
We shouldn’t have to endure too much of this at the very least.
You know, I really didn’t miss this.
Flame Veil sucks to deal with in a melee heavy party, but you’re going to have to put up with it if you have to deal with Lava Flow, as you cannot afford to let up that often, lest Lava Flow undoes a lot of your progress. There’s a reason why they give you an out instead of making the regeneration a mechanic you’re forced to deal with no matter what. Bring supplies to heal up, and just turtle through the fight as best you can.
Ouch! That’s gonna smart.
Fortunately I can just slam the AOE heal button again.
Aaaand Flame Eater can just hit my party with an AOE. Sure.
I don’t have much of a choice other than to rest up this turn since Edward is out of EX. Ark doesn’t need to heal up, but I have her cast Seeker since she fired 8 arrows off already, meaning her accuracy got tanked by 24%. And I definitely don’t need my most reliable attacker to become unreliable.
Hold on while I get ready to kill ya in a bit.
Not my best work, but it should be enough for now.
Okay, party’s fully healed up, so we should be able to go on the offens-
Oh come on! 
Magma Wave is Flame Eater’s new attack, and he’ll start bringing it out at low LIFE. Not only is it his hardest hitting multi-target attack, it also heals him! And the heal is coded as a separate skill that activates immediately after casting the attack portion of Magma Wave, so there’s no way to stop it from going off.
Talk about kicking us while we’re down!
This Imperial Dragon is quite opportunistic.
And of course, he still has the regeneration on top of that.
Fortunately, I know it’s safe to attack this turn.
Because Flame Eater will spend said turn refreshing Flame Veil.
The damage from Flame Veil can’t take out my party members right now.
And we don’t have much of the fight left to go.
Your flame is snuffed-
...Really? You just did that?
Yeah, it wasn’t great being hit with that back in the desert too.
And that’s Flame Eater down for real this time. I’m sure you can see why I opted to show off the fight in a more proper light since all the upgrades he got can make him a pretty formidable opponent. Especially if you opt to go for him straight away and ignore the rest of the dungeon.
Anyways, why don’t we get back to the actual save file we annihilated him on?
Ha! No sweat at all!
Heh, that Imperial was a sitting duck when we shut down the lava. What a wimp!
Makes me kind of wonder what would have happened if we just tried to tackle him straight on.
Oh I’m sure we would have been fine.
Er, without you around as well.
Hmm. Maybe you wouldn’t have taken him out as fast, but I’m sure you all would have handled it nicely! You don’t need me for everything, you know. You somehow killed an entire mountain without me after all!
Even then, you really did a lot here! Now let’s go back and tell that innkeeper that we evicted that Imperial from his precious volcano.
So, think he’ll change his mind about paying us?
I wouldn’t count on it.
The game doesn’t say it outright, but killing Flame Eater eliminated the Bloom from Doma Volcano as well.
...It's hellish!
Yeah yeah, sure. Just keep on playing lookout duty or something. I guess.
The Dragon is gone now, so spend all the time you like ♪
Feh. Doesn’t look like the inn had its business hampered all too much.
Aww, I wanted to see that innkeeper squirm a bit more.
Calm down... slow... Stay calm and it'll be fine... don't cramp up.
Are these people okay?
Nope. I blame the working conditions.
Hmm.
Yeah, we just sailed around until we stumbled upon this place.
Oh, that makes sense... Guess I should head out.
Yeah... he shouldn’t be bothering this inn anymore...
Hey, that's awesome! It didn't even occur to me to fight it! I ran...
Uhhh, I’m not sure if you really could have killed him all by yourself.
Ya have our sympathies.
I shouldn't have to clean even more! Better do it all fast!
Hmm. Maybe we should have taken out Flame Eater just a teensy bit slower.
The boss'll be in a good mood for once. He's been on edge.
He has good moods!?
Uhhh...
Yeah. We sure did.
The Imperial Dragon is dead. It shouldn’t be bothering you anymore.
Good, good, it's dead! Finally I'll have some peace around here! All right, get out of here. Don't track soot onto any of my carpets. And don't expect a reward. You were just doing your job, is all. If you understand, then get out of here. I'm busy with paying customers!
Ugh, there’s so much soot and grime all over my clothes. Hold on while I just wipe this off.
Ever heard the saying "virtue is its own reward"? Too true, too true. So scram. Scram!
And have you ever heard the saying "you get what you pay for"?
This can't be happening. Begging me for a handout? I'm speechless. Scram. Scram. Scram!
You know this is a pretty nice looking room. I think I’ll relax here for a while.
You think staring like that will get you something? GET OUT!
If you say no any earlier, you’ll lose your chance at getting this valuable Paro Fruit.
Mmph. Snarf. BWRAAAAAP! Thanks for the snack. Oops. I think I spilled some fruit juice onto the carpet. Sorry, we’ll get going.
Jerk.
Yes we seriously only get paid 1 G.
Now that we’ve turned in this mission with an utterly worthless reward, there’s one more thing we can do now.
Hey, where’d Arietta go?
Music quiets down.
Also that should be “work harder.”
.........
What's this attitude?! You have a bad habit of talking back, kid!
What are you...?!
Don’t you dare lay a hand on her!
...uh...
You're my servant! You do nothing without my permission!
Do you want to say that in front of me again?
Anyway, you'll work harder from now on! Believe me!
Fade to black.
Eh, it was no problem. Holy shit, Stella.
Mm, sorry we couldn’t get there earlier. Are you okay?
I've only just met you, but... ...I'm glad...
Just how long have you been working here!?
Why did you stay with them all this time?
If I don't work, I get beaten... and they'll abandon me.
Oh. Nowhere to go, huh?
This inn is on a peninsula surrounded by mountains. The workers here told us that there’s nowhere for any of these people to escape to, unfortunately.
It would be wonderful if I could come work for you guys instead...
Hmm... You know, that’s not a bad idea. Certainly would beat working here.
Yeah! We’ll provide actual living conditions for one. And make it really worth your time! Ooh, you’ll love our guard cow. She’s fierce, but sweet once you get to know her!
Ugh. Stella, Edward. I really really hate to say this, but I don’t think we can just walk outta here with her. Those workers are still giving us the stink-eye...
Sorry, Arietta. We’ll um, think your offer over.
Turning in that mission was the next step to progressing the Arietta sub-event, but unfortunately that’s all we can do for now.
People like you spoil them for honest work with promises! Don't think I won't hold you responsible! Watch your step!!
“Spoil them!?” How about you treat your workers like actual people instead of slaves you can just toss around!?
Uh, we should probably get going. If we don’t, I think Stella might just hurl him out the window. As much as I would really love to see that again...
No no, let’s just stay for a liiiittle while longer. I really wanna see that!
Do it. Doooo iiiiiiit!
We really can’t leave this place fast enough.
Psst! Behind us.
Yeah, we’re out of his earshot at least.
I still think ya should have just tossed him outta the window.
......... Can I really just walk out this door? When I leave, things will... be different...
If ya really wanna leave, I suggest making all the preparations you can.
Mm, think it over, I guess.
Despite what Arietta’s statement implied, no she’s not coming with us. She’s still stuck in the inn.
In Japanese, what she’s saying here is more along the lines of “You don’t have to help me right away. But... maybe later...?” Which sort of explains why your guild isn’t just getting her out of inn right the fuck now. I guess. But either way, we’ve done all we can for this sub-event.
Now, we have one more Imperial Dragon to take down before we finally trigger late-game. Let’s change up the party, and vote for 3 party members you want to see take down Dreadnought! Votes must be in bold.
Official artwork of Flame Eater. No concept artwork for this one, oddly enough.