Why ZERO is HARDER than ACES (Not Clickbait) (#1 Will Shock You!)

Channel:

areaofmobeus

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Published on September 8, 2021 2:37:17 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeWLeA4AqMs

Game:

Epic Battle Fantasy 5 (2018)

Duration: 2:51

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293

Happy Cirno day! Today, I'll demonstrate why Zero is actually the hardest difficulty of EBF5, mathematically.

So, status damage and Matteus. The best by test strategy that's been there from the very first betas. Though the wee buff to his resistance means that you can no longer kill Matteus soley from Virus and Tired, you can still get rid of over 90% of his health during the time given by Stoned status, and just the moves that you used to place Virus and Tired could probably finish him off.

This all changes in Zero difficulty, due to status damage being reduced to a measly 35%. This means that having all of Burn, Poison and Virus at 9 stacks for all turns, while being boosted by Dry and Tired (Matteus is immune to Stagger) only get so far as about 70% of his max HP. This can still be boosted further by Invisible to make the kill, but it's starting to get a lot tighter.

Finally, if you apply the More Foe Resistance challenge, Matteus gains a 50% resistance to both fire and bio, which means the damage is further halved. At this point, it's no longer possible to kill Matteus purely through status damage discounting Scorch. So of course, that's what I decided to do.

Ok, I cut myself a little slack to make it actually possible, but I also placed some pretty harsh restrictions too. I'll allow health loss by things that aren't strictly "damage", such as the HP debuff from Scorch and skipping a chunk of health by capture. But also, absolutely no damage that aren't from statuses will be allowed, even to apply those statuses. Natually, this meant any counter or autocast equipment that Matteus can't negate or absorb are a no. Also, no Sharpen, since that'd make it too easy keep refreshing the stacks after first application. And throw in the rest of the challenges while we're here, and we're doing it without steroids, because why not.

Status antibody bit me pretty hard here, since it's no longer possible to apply Weaken reliably with the amount of Tired I have to use to boost Virus. Also, it's not really possible to apply poison after some time has passed since Matteus will build up immunity pretty quickly. And surprisingly, it's not totally impossible for Matteus to kill you at Zero difficulty, at least if you have little space to play defensively with no steroids, and he has Doom on many of his attacks which unfortunately, isn't affected by the damage reduction of Zero.

A bit of RNG is present at the start where I need SNEK to actually hit both Burn and Poison against a tiny bit of res that's built up, but otherwise it's mostly fine... until the moment of capture.

So, Matteus has a heal that he uses once he gets to half HP, right. It's not realistic to try and do damage past that and reach capture threshold again within the turns given, so I have to go for a capture before he uses it. As fate would have it, the threshold for capture is around exactly 50% health, which means I need to capture on the turn before he would use the heal. Problem is, I have no idea when he reaches 50% HP due to Hide Foe HP, the most meaningless challenge in the game.

Fortunately, the damage that's accumulated when Burn/Poison stacks are at 1 is also about exactly 50%, but there's some factors to consider here. First is that even status damage has RDF for some reason, which is normally pretty minor but not something I can afford to go wrong with when the threshold is this tight. Also, how fast Virus decides to build up is fairly consistent but still up to RNG, and if this goes wrong either way of doing too much damage and proccing the heal/too little damage for capture, the attempt fails.

Well, I got this first attempt somehow, so I didn't have to stress over that. Anyway, here's the hardest, and stupidest Matteus battle possible.

Music is Beloved Tomboyish Girl ~ Killer Tune arranged by Demetori.

...I could have sworn my life on there never being any possible uses for the Cosmic Monolith summon under any circumstance. What is this world coming to?

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