Breath of Fire 4 - 0 Exp Part 11: Angler (with Scias's maxed Render)

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MoogleBoss

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Published on February 13, 2016 10:40:16 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1MVlb_PGbk

Game:

Breath of Fire IV (2000)

Duration: 3:37

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23

Until now, I haven't had much of a reason to demonstrate the full power of the overpowered weaponry Scias and Cray receive as early as chapter 2. You need to spend quite a lot of time playing the fishing minigame to obtain both (Render especially) but the weapons are broken as all hell... in a vacuum. A party that doesn't resort to farming can get by without these two just fine in a regular playthrough.

You might ask, this challenge must require or at least see itself being greatly facilitated by their acquisition? Not really. The 4 idols battle is trivialised by item magic not powerful single-target weapon attacks. Ight dies in 2 turns without the weapons.

So just how useful is Render?

Challenge playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSv8zSDR9c3ilm03NGBn_GGmnY7aukpm

Now, many players haven't understood exactly how Render works. It's true that it gets more powerful the more encounters your party has fought and it's quite accurate that it powers up by 1 point (not reflected in the description which will always display the base atk power value of 50) for every 20 encounters.

However, there's a limit for how far you can upgrade it - that's 1000 encounters for a total of 50+50 base power. As a 2-strike weapon, that's really good nevertheless, but we could always compare it to - for example, Ursula's strongest 2-hit Repeater has 82 base atk, isn't crippled by an element for certain situations and doesn't need nearly as much effort to obtain.

I haven't properly talked about Cray's Linked Pole either. This powerful toy has 133 power, making it the game's second strongest weapon base power-wise, and has an interesting secondary effect - if Cray's level is lower than the foe's, it will add 25% damage to his physical blows, but do the opposite if Cray is higher-levelled. In a 0 exp challenge run, you can expect its damage can impress.

Angler seems like the perfect victim to a demonstration of the chapter 2 obtainables, Render specifically. An optional boss with 22K HP (unthinkable at this point of the game), offensive stats comparable to those of the final dungeon's bosses in the endgame including a Wisdom stat of 200 (!!!). Wisdom also works as magical defence in this game so they gave him a weakness to magic so that you could still try getting your Ursula/Nina fusion magic going, and that seems like a good idea considering he halves all physical damage with resistances further amplifying his raw defensive prowess. Really, you'd rather go Berserk Kaiser and let him slowly destroy the boss, but a lv. 1 Kaiser will deal under 10 damage with his breath (the Ight video shows this very well).

This boss is cheating, and so will we!

Scias's personal skill Rakhasa, which activates Last Resort when he's about to attack while in critical HP, works perfectly with Render and RainbowTrout stack to maximise damage. He dies to everything physical afterwards (so does nearly everyone though; Ursula has much better chances of survival) so we want to at least keep him impervious to magic - that's Angler's wind/water Jolt spell. Scias's innate water resist + Robe of Wind + Blue Seed turn Jolt into absorbed health. Functional allies also get some elemental protection (I didn't have the fairy of the right type in the shop to get everyone the right Ward accessory but I could work around it in-battle) to die less easily.

This attack setup does comparatively large damage to the highly physically resistant boss. Whenever Scias's allies aren't busy healing and reviving themselves, Cray sets Scias up for a combo to slightly increase ShiningBlade's damage and I have Cray restore Scias's AP with a Wisdom Seed after the first three blades. The boss doesn't take too long to fall.

I didn't save after defeating the boss so that I can try him without Render / do so later in the game when the party is a bit tougher. For an optional superboss, beating him is surprisingly useless - the fishing spot it opens offers seemingly nothing of value.

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