Bravely Default challenge continued
Gigas Lich (3 resets) - Actually this turned out not quite as bad as I thought. I don't really get Slam's mechanics, it seems to do roughly the same damage regardless of whether I default or not, and whether I use Nothing Ventured or not? May investigate in later fights. Regardless it's a high 2HKO without warning and where my healing sucks. It's terrible. If he uses it a lot there really isn't much I can do, 4 X-Potions don't fully patch me up and would bleed me dry pretty quickly anyway... I stock up on 20 for the fight which is a huge investment.
The bad news is that Slam sucks and I have nothing that really helps, the good news is that he doesn't use it too often and his other attacks are way less scary. Death is a pain of course, but a blocker helps, and it can be reflected (I use a light curtain on a couple occasions with spare turns). Reflect also stops everything else, but the other moves are even less bad: Dread, and Quaga, which thanks to everyone having Swordmaster's L2 ability Abate Earth isn't too big a problem. Even better, below half HP he starts using Quaga on himself, which is a complete waste of a turn as it doesn't even come close to offsetting 4 BP worth of offence.
So I mostly eschew counters and draining and all that nonsense and just largely try to balance damage with lots and lots of healing (mainly Phoenix Downs, but I use all 20 X-Potions as well). I throw the three Elixirs I have at him, because I figure nothing else will ever deserve them as much as this. (I have since decided this might be incorrect... oh well.) They do 9999 each out of his 108k HP, which makes a big difference when my best offence otherwise, Undead Slayer on one PC and the Divine Fists (holy weapon) on another, do about 2500 or so. At a certain point of the fight I go into desperation mode and stop even trying to heal, just reviving, and praying he doesn't use Slam. It's a rare move so this isn't totally crazy. It works. I don't have a remotely reliable strategy for him, which is bad given I'll have to fight him again, but I pull through with luck. I'm Level 51-52.
Alternis Dim - Buy Dark Charms for everyone except one PC with the Dark Shield. The first form of the fight is dead easy. Default then drain, or counterdrain. No problem.
The second part is pretty damn nasty on the other hand. Minus Strike kills anyone, which alone would be fine (see: why Kamiizumi or Qada are wusses). The problem is my revival is only 200 HP, and he can pick off anyone at that HP range, except my Dark Shield PC, with the MT Black Bane. In fact if I'm not defaulting/countering, there's a risk that high variance kills off someone even at 1700 HP (i.e. Phoenix Down + X-Potion), and yes, that's with halving dark! So the only real way to get back to safety is with draining attacks, and since I have to reset drain spellblade every time I die... yeah, this part's dicy. The Dark Shield is hugely helpful, since that PC can laugh at the MT, and thus if I always acted first I could avoid dying by having them toss Phoenix Downs if Black Bane wiped out everyone else, and have someone else revive him if he is hit with a ST non-elemental attack. I don't always go first, though, and that makes this battle rather scary. I use 48 Phoenix Downs in all, which I think might even be a record for one fight thus far.
Orthros 2 (3 resets) - I decide to hit him up first. I figure he won't be too bad, Ice Charms/Iceflame Shield on everyone, I now have elemental damage to control the heads... and yeah I run into a lot of trouble. His damage has roughly doubled since the first fight (relative to the time), which means each head has MT 2HKO if I'm not defaulting. Which means this is the first boss who potentially has the ability to one-round my party, at no extra BP cost, every turn, with Blazzard x2. Of course we don't see that potential, but still I misplay this fight a few times as that's a lot of potential damage, even controlling the heads, and recovering against it is hard.
Fortunately, counters are really good here, since Orthros uses a lot of MT and gets two attacks per round, all physical = lots of draining counters! I decide to have my two spellblade-counterers focus exclusively on that until one of the heads die. The other two PCs, one with the Iceflame Shield, buy them some time. On turn 1 the Iceflame Shield user uses Ice spellblade and disables one of the heads, on turn 2 (after a default) the other attacker (my ranger) uses a fire-enhanced Beast Slayer to hit the other. This allows my counterers to safely default a few times to build up extra BP with which to reset drain spellblade, if necessary, and spam Nothing Ventured from there, meaning they can't really die. Once one of the heads falls, the rest of the fight is really easy, although due to bad luck I do finish with my ranger dead, a loss of 999 JP.
This fight is way easier than Gigas Lich and doesn't deserve to have 3 resets, but that's the way these things go. This is even more true when you consider the next paragraph, which I should have done first.
At this point I realise looking things up that there's a Thief Knife hidden in one of the dungeons, which allows me to steal things. Now, BD steal isn't that great a lot of the time, but in chapter 5, it lets me pick up Iceflame Shields. So I go steal those from the Kobold Slashers in the Norende ravine. Easy enough. I now have four of them, which will make future refights against Orthros and Rusalka much easier. I'm much less comfortable about Chaugmar and especially Gigas Lich's second appearances. In Chapter 6 I'll be able to get access to the Muramasa, a katana which can use Defang, and lower their Atk to make them much easier, but for chapter 5... we'll see.
