Dragon Quest XI - Low Level (Draconian) Part 11: Elysium Bird

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MoogleBoss

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Published on April 11, 2020 5:10:28 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxSRqCV4-mY

Game:

Dragon Quest XI (2017)

Duration: 9:51

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A fairly easy battle on Normal difficulty, it shocked me how powerful these three semi-boss/semi-regular enemies were on Draconian / Stronger Enemies. These folks really hurt with their attacks, and they attack a lot - Hades Condor, encountered as a regular foe in this area, act once per turn, either with a regular physical or healing a single weakened ally; Elysium Bird is the unique enemy here and acts twice whenever it gets a turn. The usual moves expected from it are the regular physical and an AoE Sizzle which targets a "group" (what qualifies as a group when I'm the target I have no clue, as it can be anywhere from 2 to 4 victims). It can heal the whole enemy party with Moreheal, and later on it may even use the physical attack twice.

The strategy seems fairly clear: eliminate the Hades Condors as the less healthy ones to cut the number of incoming attacks from four to two. Multithrust strikes a random condor and may seem less reliable than the simple & cheap Harvest Moon with its aerial effectiveness but then you actually try to use Harvest Moon and you discover it whiffs a lot - indeed so does any physical attack, but striking four times means some of them are definitely connecting. So it's a bit of a gamble getting the damage in. The Condors will be healing themselves, which is welcome considering we want some breathing room from all the blows our party has to withstand.

I did try my best to open the battle with a powerful Pep skill like Brownie Boost. Instant +50% attack, defence AND hp/mp regen would be awesome and basically ensure that the Condors die early on, but you just don't survive until you get your first turn most of the time. Brownie Boost requires Jade, Hero and Serena to be alive and pepped up to be used. Jade, Rab and Sylvando may be healthy enough to survive the first turn, but Hero and Serena generally get picked on and die. You could do something different like letting in somebody scrubby like Erik and Veronica in, watch them die, then switch them out while Jade uses Brownie Boost with freshly switched in, healthy Hero and Serena, but that leaves you with a burden of resurrecting Erik and/or Veronica later on, and there's really no room for another character you have to revive.

This is a cool battle, because the way strategic decision making and luck interact with one another is nuanced and complex. You want Jade buffed so that Multithrust deals that necessary extra damage to watch one Hades Condor die, then the other, but Sylvando is generally too busy using Hustle Dance for AoE healing and Yggdrasil Leaves on the KO'd party members to cast Oomph. At one point, I forego healing Jade to give her the attack boost and she falls, losing the boost as well as Bounce status.

Another dance with fortune is attempting to do something about the enemies hurting your units without directly killing them. Blinding the condors with Dazzle (available to Serena as well as Rab) weakens their only form of offence, rendering them incapable of connecting many attacks. Dazzle targets a group, so if you have a spare turn, this may well tip the scales in the heat of the combat.

Finally, something needs to be done about that nasty Sizzle spell the boss Elysium Bird has got. Serena could technically cast Hymn of Fire on the party repeatedly, but a 20% boost to fire protection is way too small and you lose it all when a single party member dies (which happens all too often). Instead, casting Bounce with Rab offers a more reliable solution (though it wears off with time with no easy way to re-apply it to the whole party at once and is also lost upon KO). Bounce functions as Reflect status against offensive magic, not affecting buffs or Midheals in any way. The boss also hurts itself in the process, which gets us closer to the eventual outcome of the battle.

No matter how you put it, Multithrust must kill the Condors, stopping the stall that ensues before this. If you fail to get lucky, it's just a test to see how quickly the party's equipped Yggdrasil Leaves run out. I do carry quite a few from the Casino minigame, but not nearly enough to fill up everybody's entire inventory.

So, all in all, this was a surprisingly pleasant sudden spike in difficulty. I hope it's a trend that the future bosses will carry on with. The next one, Dora-in-Grey has quite the reputation as far as bosses in this game go, for its difficulty and the gimmickry involved.

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