Bravely Second - 0 Exp Run+ Part 9: Summoner Mephilia

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MoogleBoss

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Published on July 6, 2016 5:41:28 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PabjXlN4mhs

Game:

Bravely Second: End Layer (2015)

Duration: 5:49

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22

Stop!Hammertime begins...

0 Exp / Low Level Game+ (Hard Mode) challenge playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSv8zSDR9c0ShrxNBNo2fTL8ueFn45rS

Battle against Mephilia, one of the asterisk holders from Bravely Default. The choice this time is between Summoner and Swordmaster. Swordmaster has some very potent counterattack abilities, dealing humongous damage under certain conditions, however, we have moved on from physical attacks (seemingly for good) and so the application from the Swordmaster class appear to be limited. Summoner, on the other hand, has some really powerful magic and also handy passive abilities that we will be sure to make use of on this run.

This is the battle where I am forced to abandon the old Trample at maximum possible HP strat and employ Wizard's Spellcraft instead. Mephilia is accompanied by 3 Legion minions, and together they pack quite a punch. Mephilia herself unleashes a powerful summon on turns divisible by 3, which believe it or not can be survived by everyone at full health without Defaulting (Yew has a harshcore +mdef setup to take the least damage from it). All my attempts with Charioteers, two or three, resulted in a failure as I couldn't inflict enough damage to kill a decent number of minions to have a reasonable chance of keeping the battle going.

The girls are the casters (Edea the poorer one due to her physically inclined stats but you hardly ever notice the difference), with Yew and Tiz running support. The girls get Stand Ground, while the guys are in Freelancer to have innate access to the skill - they fill up the slot with Red Mage's Revenge instead (a skill that's probably more expensive than it's really worth). Tiz is meant to cast Mystic Boon on both the girls on the 1st turn, giving them a 30% boost to magic. With it, they're supposed to KO two of the minions and leave the Legion mage really really close to KO as well. Because the game's turn order is stupidly inconsistent for no reason at all, Magnolia goes before Tiz and attacks before getting the boots, causing two minions to remain for the following turns, which obviously puts me in a bit of a predicament.

When the mooks are dead, I prepare to unleash Hammer Spellcraft + -ara spell of choice on Mephilia herself. MP is restored with Ethers and girls Default while I apply Mystic Boon boosts, readying myself to slowly whittle down Meph's health.

And then to my surprise, Hammer completely destroys Meph in a double casting, each hit proccing a lucky crit for double damage.

Hammer is unbelievably potent even at low levels and doesn't seem outclassed by any spells until the acquisition of Rain (which could well be acquired much earlier with JP grinding, but it's only later that we can realistically get it). It runs off the user's magic but targets the defence stat instead, and it's still super powerful even against the occasional foes with high phys defence except some cases like Heinkel with a 150% defence buff which necessitate the use of other Spellcraft skills. The reason for its potency is the way the damage formula works, with multipliers stacking on top of each other and the attack being treated like a physical, i.e. it has a pretty good chance to inflict a critical.

Spellcraft allows us to deal with later bosses efficiently as their max HP gradually increases as we progress the storyline (don't forget that enemies are twice as healthy on Hard Mode and have significantly higher stats).

So that was a really anticlimactic ending to this battle, and I didn't see it coming myself.

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