First part of Schnell Ruins, in which we kill off a bunch of secondary villains who have potentailly overstayed their welcome.
4-8-A (Double Predator Barrage to the face) (1 reset)
Well, okay, despite the battle title, Chelle isn't the most dangerous thing here. That goes to the Stealth Stalkers. If I thought they were bad before, I was a fool. Now there's twice as many of them, they have twice as much HP, and half of them start right on top of me. Oh and they're fast and have good attack that has a 25% chance of instant death, as always. More or less I lose the first time because I don't have Mesmerise, and just can't kill them as fast as I'd hoped, leading them to repeatedly wipe out everyone but Clarissa (Soul Survivor for the win). Clarissa does end up surviving all the way to Chelle (although some of the stealth stalkers still live) but her attempt to cast sleep misses and gets a Predator Barrage as a reward.
Anyway, on the retry, I swap Levin out for Vin so I can repeatedly apply Mesmerise, while the two mages focus on IFF Devastate. Elayne kills the stalkers in two, or can combine with Clarissa for a 2HKO, so this works pretty well. I make sure to keep my PCs together because without a PC in the area of effect of Mesmerise or Devastate, the can't be used, even though neither has any meaningful effect on my PCs.
The top plateau has to be approached carefully as there are two Forsaken Mutants who use nasty status effects (Dispel to the rescue, of course) and Chelle whom you have to seriously respect position-wise if you don't just want to die. Getting her to sleep is crucial, and otherwise I just smash one Mutant with Elayne while petrifying the other. The mutants are the most durable such enemies in the game with nearly 600 HP, but fortunately they still have the elemental weaknesses and status vulnerability.
Chelle gets slapped with stat downs, but most importantly Mesmerise. Since sleep wears off randomly, and she -does- wake up once while I'm finishing off the mutants, Mesmerise is particularly important. Chelle washes all statuses off her if she ever gets a turn while not asleep (stupid triple-acting) so Turn Shift to reapply Sleep. Nothing too bad, but a little scary. I could spoil her badly with evade twinking but that hasn't been an avenue I've really found necessary due to Mesmerise. If I had Extremist armour, though, I could probably spoil this battle in general that way.
4-8-B (BUILDING KINGDOMS OUT OF CORPSES)
Ho hum. Vin doesn't get to play here since she has an earth weakness. Elayne is basically immune to the element, though, so that's a nice boon.
Anyway, Piedras Blancas doesn't really have much in the way of useful status weaknesses (besides Ragnar's Provoke, which can be a reasonably effective lockdown since Ragnar resists earth, but I don't bother). He does have a 25% weakness to gravity, which is notable since his HP is so ridiculous, and horrid evade, though. The Forsaken Mutants on this map have only around 330 HP, but have few (in one cases, no) elemental weaknesses, unlike most.
I move over to the nearest Forsaken Mutant, killing it with Emulator skills as I do, and Piedras moves down to meet me. My basic approach to him, besides healing off his initial rush, is to hit him with the usual stat downs and gravity, while Levin hits him with Cancel Strike to help keep him a bit under control. As time goes on, the other three Mutants suddenly start charging across the field, so I have to deal with them. I do a decent job of eliminating them from range with elements and petrify as usual, but then Levin gets hit with misery, and suddenly Piedras is free. Worse, at his HP range, he's free to use Devour on them. There are some panicked turns of trying to bait and control him, but I'll freely admit I get lucky that he never chooses to eat his ally. Eventually, I lure him into a Cancel Strike where other PCs are around him, and Action Replay it so I cancel multiple turns at once. Aw yeah. From there on it's easy enough to clean up.
4-9-A (Professional villains combine their strategies)
It's pretty much the first two fights against the Tormenta Triad combined into one. So we get a bunch of messy distracting enemies (who aren't very good, but still, chipping in for 40-50 damage when you can't actually kill them adds up) while the brothers themselves aim to set up ludicrous one-shotting damage. This time the brothers are spread out, so I have to choose one to concentrate on. Once again, Lluvia is quite fast (although a bit less so this time) so I opt for Nightstalkers to avoid getting wiped out before I get a turn. An opening combination of Turn Shift, Rush, and Rob Turn sees me stealing Trueno's ability to one-shot me well enough, and from there I'm able to kill him.
Unlike the first fight this doesn't make the remaining battle trivial. The remaining two brothers still benefit from Triple Mind, and, it turns out, this means they can -still- pull OHKO damage to Clarissa with their normal attacks (and not too far from it against my beefier generics) because Nightstalker HP is complete shit. Still, dispel brings them back down to earth, and from there it's just a matter of paying very close attention to which enemies will get turns and healing often to avoid dying from a combination of a real brother (who does about 150 damage) and a clone. Once the second brother dies, mop-up is fairly trivial.
4-9-B (One final torment)
I love this fight. Straightforward, simple, quick, and so easy to die if you don't play it right.
The brothers initially hit for 80-100 damage and act in fairly close succession, but otherwise aren't too scary. I switch back to classes with real HP for this one, and Slow Down one of them to mess with their turn order a bit. Otherwise, I focus on healing. Vin has the lowest MDef so the brothers often go after her, and I respond to this by having her use Forcefield, a random boon of opting for Sentinel OC for this battle. I Devastate and Drop Kick the brothers down into reasonable HP range (Debilitator on Lluvia to increase Vin's hit rate), with Elayne doing most of the hard work. At lower HPs I start chipping them with Electrigger, elements they resist, and Allowance until they're all 1-30 HP away from death.
Finally, I take the plunge, killing the one who is closest to getting a turn (Trueno) with a Clarissa Electrigger. Immediately the other two go up in stats a -lot-, but Elayne has the next turn and shoves Devastate down the throat of the one who is to going to get the next turn (Viento) so we're down to one. Vin has the next turn, as planned, but now she's facing someone with complete godmode stats and has a 0% hit rate on him. Lluvia's also getting the next three turns in a row, but Slow Down makes that only one, and he actually isn't able to one-shot anyone thanks to my good HP (comes close, though!). At this point Elayne gets a turn and although she can't quite break Lluvia's res, I'm able to set up some Turn Shift shenanigans with Clarissa to bring her over and drop Sacrifice on him, winning the battle.
EPIC STANDING ON LAVA
That'll do for today's update.
