Persona 3 - Low Level Part 5: Change Relic

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MoogleBoss

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Published on March 3, 2014 3:15:31 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0elbuEzLXI

Game:

Persona 3 (2006)

Duration: 5:00

2,710 views

17

Floor 36 boss of Tartarus Arqa block.

Akihiko's level advantage is pretty much irrelevant for all purposes aside from avoiding KOs at this point, so the party can be considered "fully low-levelled" once again.

The boss continues the trend of the earlygame enemies who carry wind magic, which spells out death for Junpei... who just happens to be in Great condition for this Unstable day at Tartarus (excellent for going on because of all the accident floors and an incredible opportunity to get rich while get slightly more and slightly better items than normal), so the two fight each other very well. Junpei can't just be guarding against the boss's attacks not to give him One More turns however, so we need to ensure Junpei isn't hit by those nasty wind spells (which do have OHKO potential against him and hurt everybody else just as badly). Great condition grants him extra avoid alongside other bonuses, and casting Sukukaja on the boss will cause the wind spells to safely miss Junpei... sometimes anyway.

The protagonist generally has many debuffs to choose from for this battle, all offering something useful. Tarukaja lowers the boss's attack, which is almost mandatory considering just how hard he hits (Magarula deals -medium- MT damage - compare this to Yukari's Garu dealing light ST damage until L21), and Rakukaja lowers the boss's defence, which is also critical considering we absolutely can't afford to push our luck dragging this battle out. Akihiko is meant to be the party's early-midgame debuff specialist, but we haven't levelled up enough for him to have any debuffs just yet - so the MC is always busy.

Having explored Tartarus even more before the boss fight, some very useful items were acquired. In addition to the 50 damage MT item magic, I got some -la items, dealing 100 damage (assuming they're not absorbed, nulled or repelled). The party's offence is generally impotent at this point, and definitely below 100 dmg most of the time so this is kind of a great tool in the earlygame battles. All gems but Garula Gem will deal 100 damage to the boss, but Akihiko can get some decent damage into with Zio, which conserves items.

The MC does have a wind-resistant Persona in Alp, but she doesn't have every single buff I'd like to use (and I don't quite have the social links or the luxurious funds to fuse several useful skills unto the same Persona) so sometimes I switch to stuff like Jack Frost, losing the resistance and thus becoming susceptible to a OHKO. Before Fool rank has reached lv. 5, allies can't protect the MC from KOs, but that wouldn't really help in MT attack situations.

Overall, if you watch the battle it feels like I'm about to get wrecked, what with me having no time to heal poison while the damage keeps accumulating, Akihiko falling and the boss dispelling the offensive and defensive debuffs I applied to him - so casting Sukukaja was an act of desperation on my behalf. I thought, 'if we can't ensure some level of reliability of withstanding attacks while dealing powerful blows, let's see if can just dodge everything'. And then Junpei starts those monstrous 100 dmg crits, dizzying the boss and allowing me to kill him on time.

Really lucky, and since this is just the beginning of a multitude of bosses without any weaknesses (which is the really easy way of knocking somebody down), this battle made me realise how I could tackle some of the later stuff, albeit with more advanced and varied means at my disposal.

So yay for Junpei, even if you suck after like another battle, those earlygame boss slaugherfests in Great condition on the right days were hard to ignore.

Challenge playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSv8zSDR9c28XzFFSOOfN_E02Ybp1SK5

(I also wrote down some thoughts on the game's mechanics that were relevant to this fight which didn't fit, see the comments section for those)

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