Bravely Default: Tales of punching
Dragon at 17, 1 reset
Profiteur at 18
Orthros at 19, JL6, 3 resets, 20 hipotions and a lot of potions
Khamer and Khint at 20, 2 resets, ~50 potions
Dragon (1 reset) - Difficult but not as bad as I was expecting (or as bad as the first attempt hinted). Dragon will brave woth Mow Down + Bully, which is predictable in that it's always a MT attack followed by a hit against the person with the lowest HP. Now, this does a fuckton of damage, and unfortunately the Dragon is "psychic" with the Bully attack. If someone isn't defaulting when he does this there's a very good chance they're dead unless their HP is extremely high. Oh and both these attacks can critical, that sucks.
But fortunately a lot of default-spam helps, since his strategy means I'll have openings to attack/heal after he braves. And on his non-brave turns, Bully is pretty wussy (Mow Down is still legit). I have 5 Hi-Potions for this fight and they make a huge difference. I spam Strong Strike in this fight, just like Jackal, because Dragon has surprisingly competent evade too (20), I think almost every boss from here on out does? Basic physicals for the lose. I'm Level 17.
Profiteur - The nice thing about being Monk is that I have enough HP to easily survive a double Takeover. In fact, at full HP I can even survive a Khint hit on top of that! This never happens, but hey. Different from the last fight in that Profiteur always defaults before he braves, and obviously I don't want to sink a lot of damage into that. And since defaulting doesn't slow Takeover anyway, there's zero reason not to attack on the turns you know he'll do it twice, since when he's at 1 BP he never defaults again. So save attacks for that.
Khint still isn't too scary against my party that gives no shits about silence (plus he leaves halfway through), and Profiteur's offence is less scary than Dragon's Mow Down for my potion supply even on turns when I default. I still use a few Hi-Potions here in tougher situations, but overall this is the easiest fight of the chapter. I'm Level 18.
Orthros (3 resets) - Oh crap. This fight, on the other hand, is terrifying. Orthros can unleash MT attacks doing about a quarter of my HP twice a turn. Defaulting cuts down on that, but that's a lot of consistent damage since it never stops (and occasionally criticals!). Sometimes he uses ST attacks too, but not often enough. This isn't terribly different from fighting two frailer Dragons at once.
The good news is that I have a new ability, Hidden Dragon, which does 1.25x damage but always goes last, so my offence is good enough that one head will die in six 4x brave-blitzes. i.e. I'm not far from being able to one-round a head! But it's far enough. This is the first fight where Potions are absolutely NOT an option, 4 of those will barely patch up a full round of attacks to a single non-defaulting PC. I buy 20 Hi-Potions (and also grind just a tiny bit so everyone has Hidden Dragon), which is the biggest financial investment I make for any boss fight. I use every last one of them.
Beyond that the strategy is simple enough. Hidden Dragon x4 when I get to 3 BP, heal x (current BP+1) whenever I feel I have to with anyone else, prioritising lower-Strength characters for healing of course (the gaps are small, but noticeable). People dying is bad so I try to mostly avoid it, of course. Eventually, I take a run at one of the heads (knowing their HP due to FAQing of course), since Hidden Dragon is actually reliable I can do this pretty safely.
It's a bit dicy since of course I go into negative brave to do this, and I know what comes next: once one head is left it will brave twice for a nasty triple-act... but fortunately only one is ST, and it gives me plenty of time to recover. I spend a while just getting back on my feet, using my last remaining hi-potions at this point, but once I do it's pretty smooth sailing. The remaining head will periodically triple-attack again, so the same strategy as Dragon works here, and I'm able to mostly cruise on Potions from here on. I'm Level 19.
Grand Mill Works - No rest for my poor monks, this is another challenge, the toughest dungeon since the first trip to the Wind Shrine for sure. Merchantry Thugs can blind, but more significantly can brave at any time and use Psych Up + Strong Strike, which has a 50% chance to OHKO a non-defaulting PC and does a strong 2HKO to the defaulting. Ow. Merchantry Mages meanwhile sometimes use physicals (puny) or Sleep (annoying but not too bad), but can also use Fira for a strong 2HKO to the non-defaulting. So there's a lot of damage potential here, and in particular Strong Strike sometimes just haxes me and there's nothing I can do about it. Another dungeon that takes a few runs as I also need to get my potion stock up for the next boss fight, which proves harder than I expect...
Khamer and Khint (2 resets) - I wasn't expecting this fight to be that bad, because I wasn't expecting them to have boatloads of physical defence. (Just in case there was any doubt that Black Mage is good through to the end of chapter 1.) I decide to go for Khamer first, who actually is the slightly less tanky of the two, because he's more dangerous, but even he takes less than half what Orthros did, and has more HP (though less than the Dragon... still more pdur). Fortunately I do have Invigorate, which while always dicy due to its 25% chance of failure (which does 20% self-damage for good measure) is extremely valuable for overcoming high defence as one successful use will double my damage and two will triple it, in this fight.
After a couple failed attempts and some time to theorycraft I realise, somewhat counterintuitively, that the best strategy here actually involves going into negative BP, an unusual strategy when it isn't born out of desperation or when going for a kill. Get to 3 BP, Invigorate twice, then Hidden Dragon x4 on the next turn. This leaves me at negative BP for one turn where I can't default, but it's worth it, because 150% PAtk Hidden Dragon x4 does ~1200 damage for 6 actions, a far better deal than I can get otherwise, and the extra turn spent non-defaulting isn't THAT big a deal since the offence of these two isn't -that- bad.
Not to say what they do is trivial. Khint is still mostly bad but the extra damage he piles on can hurt, especially when I'm not defaulting and not using a shield. Khamer will sometimes use Attack or Veilga (both essentially wasted turns) but also sometimes uses a Quara which hits for 120/240 against my entire team, and Stop, which is annoying as fuck since I can't block or heal it, so I just have to hope it wears off quickly. If it hits someone who has just Invigorated (either on the current turn or the previous, and Hidden Dragon going last means it gets the chance to do this) that sucks since I lose those turns in effect as well. Fortunately this obviously isn't too common.
One other ripple is that below half HP, Khamer can default, then always uses Quara+Stop. The only adjustment to my strategy is that I will never use Invigorate on turns where he has BP, since the chance of Stop is higher. If I've already invigorated the previous turn, though, there's no point in wasting that and I go for the attacks anyway.
Once he falls, Khint is pretty easy. Same offensive tactics work but he's just no good at killing me when alone, so I can use only Potions from here. I end up only needing about 4 Hi-Potions with this strategy. And like 50 potions of course, what else is new. I'm Level 20.
And I finally have Spell Fencer! And I immediately hate the Job Level mechanic since my Spell Fencers are going to suck until at least JL2 (when they get Sleep/Silence Sword), especially the non-Ringabel ones since they haven't hit 20 speed yet in this job, so only 2 hits! Gross. (My monks all have 5.) Oh well, Knuckle Lore means I don't lose tooo much raw damage per swing, and everyone will have the L1 elemental spellblades. I also confirm that magic sword works when unarmed, as I've now just hit Level 21 so unarmed is just as good as Mithril Knuckles (which I now sell). I buy the L1-2 spells, restock my potions, turn Ringabel and Edea into Spell Fencers, and get ready for a dungeon I already know will be nasty. On to chapter 2!
