Digimon Hacker's Memory No Digivolution Part 24: GranDracmon
11Challenge playlist:
• Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker's Memor...
Time to face the game's ultimate postgame boss, who sits on the 30th floor of Abyss Server (and every time you face him, you have to travel all the way from floor 21, as saving is only a selectable feature on the 'rest' floors like that). Magic is his specialty lorewise based on the dialogue, and magic is what you'll see the boss cast when the battle actually starts. High-Intelligence Digimon like Gryphonmon are a blessing to have for that reason, and bugging the boss so that he can be fought with a Data team is imperative to success.
The only issue with the boss while being limited to certain lv. 60 Digimon (e.g. not having access to Sistermon and others) is that you cannot just protect against a specific element, like darkness in the case of VenomMyotismon. GranDracmon has two attacks of both water and darkness elements, so you can take your pick. I haven't found either element to be more common than the other on in the boss's pattern, but Crystal Revolution is water-elemental and restores more HP the more damage it inflicts. It's not a direct correlation, as dealing a ton of damage will result in about 1,8K health being restored, but attacking three Gryphonmons with 3x Aqua Guard DX will still recover about 1-1,1K HP, meaning there seems to be a minimum it heals no matter how weak the actual move was.
Early on, you want SkullSatamon to be doing much of the damage with Nail Bone, as you've come to expect from the endgame/postgame videos I've shared, as fractional damage is way too strong against bosses with high HP. However, I just didn't bring enough Aqua Guards to equip several possible parties, and I had one SkullSatamon who could wield both types of guards for the boss's dual elemental damage, so I had two Gryphonmons run support while the boss was being weakened with Nail Bone. The SkullSatamon was mostly safe.
Getting the boss to low HP allowed me to switch to a third Gryphonmon to improve my defence a lot, all while dealing very heavy damage with Gryphonmon's piercing special - having three Gryphonmons out boosts wind-elemental damage by 45% (similar situation to BlackWarGreymon and Neptunemon, though I may be wrong about the former since what is being boosted is different).
What does the boss have exactly? Single and multi-target water damage, single and multi-target darkness damage, Eye of the Gorgon it's the thrill of the fight risin' up to the challenge of our rival which panics one of the party members while decreasing their defence, and a mental break on our entire party, which affects both damage received and inflicted - very impactful if it stacks.
The worst move in the boss's arsenal is Immortal King, by a landslide. It's used early on in the battle and guarantees that the boss will resurrect when KO'd and restore 3k HP. GranDracmon can then restore some more with Crystal Revolution, staying alive for a number more turns and possibly using Immortal King to restart the dreaded cycle.
What happened in this video is that the boss ended up using Immortal King... a whopping five more times, dragging the battle out and even putting me into situations where I was about to risk it and lose my party - and I didn't quite have several parties with proper accessories and stat builds.
And so, another one bites the dust. We still have the Master Cup to partake in after this.