Knowing that Vossler was a tough fight, I wanted to start on him as soon as possible instead of waiting until the last ass minute as I did with Beatrix. I also figured that this post might be more useful not being posted on the last day of the event. Vossler wasn’t as difficult as I thought he was going to be. Once I had the right party configuration, it was a one shot. In summary: Super tank Pencil + Heroic Harmony + Unyielding Fist = trivial fight.

I usually don’t like using the cheese tactics but after Beatrix, I feel as if I deserve a small break. Having Heroic Harmony, Protectga, Steal Power, and Sentinel’s DEF buff however, increased Pecil’s mitigation and decreased Vossler’s attack so much that I am confident I could have mastered the fight without the need of Galuf’s RW cheese. So will I go back and do the fight sans Galuf? Well, we will have to see about that. This was the team that I used:

Roaming Warrior:  Galuf (Unyielding Fist)
Notable Soul Breaks: Heroic Harmony, Blade Beam, Sentinel
Other Soul Breaks: Soothing Aroma, Tides of Fate

Since an AoE heal + regen wasn’t necessary for once and even detrimental to the fight, Lenna and her lovely SB were not needed. I tried a couple of rounds with Aerith instead of Mog for Planet Protector and Fran instead of Cloud, because I wanted to know if RS + Full Break + Defense Breakdown made up for the DPS loss. It did not, particularly towards the end of the fight where SSB spam was necessary as it usually is to finish off the boss. Keep in mind that you do have to use Dispel in order to meet the medal requirement. Banishing Strike does not count :/

Vossler’s encounter isn’t very RNG heavy like most of the other Utimate Fights. There is a bit of timing involved with getting mitigation setup properly before he starts instagibbing people with triple/quad strike, but it’s not nearly as hairy as Beatrix’s Climhazzard. Vossler is however, very much an HP management fight. The trick to CT0 is that he will cast it on the character that has the highest HP percentage (unsure if it’s only the first attack that is like this or all of them). It is not avoidable with retaliate nor is it tauntable. It’s very tempting to heal everyone up to full towards the end of the fight, but you will want to keep enough of an HP gap between your tank and the rest of the party to allow for some leeway. Curaja is likely going to heal the non-Cecil party members too much so you may want to use Curaga or Renewing Cure instead.

Other than CT0, Vossler was a fairly vanilla fight in almost every aspect, to the point where I was wondering if this encounter even was the ultimate fight, until the point at which he started triple and quadruple striking people to death that is. Also, the target scores are kind of annoying…ability tetris. I took a gamble and used Tempo Flurry to fulfill the slow criteria instead of using something more reliable like Slowga. Luckily it proc’d on the first hit. I have had other runs in the past where it just slow just wouldn’t proc at all. My fight more or less went as follows:

Until the adds are down:
Cloud: Bladeblitz the adds down
Balthier: Steal Power on Voss then Tempo Flurry the adds to apply slow
Pecil: Draw Fire then auto attack or Dispel to build SB bar
Ashe: Ruinga until Slow hits then Meteor to burn them down
Mog: Protectga, Heroic Harmony, then Renewing Cure spam

First turn after the adds are down:
Cloud: Lifesiphon spam to build SB bar
Balthier: Refresh Steal Power as needed, otherwise Tempo Flurry pew pew
Pecil:  Sentinal, Dispel as needed
Ashe: Meteor/Ruinga spam
Mog: Renewing Cure

Phase 3 (somewhere between 40% and 50%)
Cloud: Blade Beam Spam
Balthier: Continue refreshing Steal Power as needed. Spam Tides of Fate
Pecil: Unyielding Fist, Dispel haste ASAP
Ashe: Continue Meteor/Ruinga spamming. Pop Soothing Aroma if everyone gets low but watch Pecil’s HP. He MUST remain #1 in HP%.
Mog: Refresh Protectga, keep Pecil topped off, Heroic Harmony

God. What a pain in the ass. I have a fairly okay set of gear and set of Soul Breaks (minus 2/3 of the holy trinity. No natural hastega or wall) and this one was barely doable. I am not even sure if this one is doable without at least a natural medica and possibly AoE regen without a thousand S/Ls. Beatrix is guaranteed to cast at least two Climhazzards at scripted points during the fight. The trick is to watch her health bar. When the bar touches her toes she will cast it. Climhazzard is NAT damage that cannot be avoided or mitigated.

She is also guaranteed to cast Stock Break several turns after Climhazzard which will do AoE physical damage as well as sap all characters. Sap needs to be removed ASAP before the second Climhazzard goes off otherwise instadeath will occur at the first damage tick. Stock Break is straight up physical damage so normal avoidance tactics apply (retaliate, etc). After numerous party configurations this is the team that I went with:

Roaming Warrior: Hymn of the Faith
Notable Soul Breaks: Blade Beam, Princess’s Favor, Planet Protector, Dragon Force
Notable Weapons: Ultima Sword

• Dragon Force: This actually ended up being a crucial spell because it completely negated Stock Break, saving me the hassle of burning a RW or SB charge to heal/regen sap off of everyone before Climhazzard #2. In all honesty, I had forgotten that I even had this SB. If I had remembered and realized that it cancelled out Stock Break, much time would have been saved…
• Planet Protector: Used it before Climhazzard #2 (if I recall correctly, the turn after popping Dragon Force). Allowed for massive Blade Beam spammage at maximum damage to burn her down.
• Shadowsteel: Spam this in the beginning to get her sapped as soon as possible; It does around 4k a tick. Though 4k may not seem to be a lot of damage, overtime it adds up.
• Banishing Strike: Fulfills the holy damage medal requirement and also dispels. Beatrix doesn’t cast Holy that often but when she does, she tends to bounce it off of her self. Keep in mind that Dispel only removes positive effects so it won’t remove Sap, etc.
• Haste: I had Aerith haste everyone before the first Climhazzard. I managed to squeeze in a refresh on Cloud during the last half of the fight.
• Steal Power/Protectga: Most of her attacks are physical damage. The ones that aren’t are either NAT or holy. So in other words, don’t bother bringing Shellga or Magic Breakdown. Protectga was cast once towards the beginning of the fight and then again at the half way point.
• Armor Strike: New ability, also a medal requirement. Really liking this ability so far; It’s damage multiplier is based off of DEF instead of ATK. I stacked Steiner with as much DEF gear as possible and kept his HP topped off so that he could soak Shock. Decent damage with enough DEF.

Overall, the trick was to remove the RNG deaths from Holy and Shock during the later half of the fight. Holy isn’t used very often but can dealt with by keeping reflect dispelled (luckily it’s not refreshed often, assuming it’s scripted in at a certain turn). Shock is cast on the character with the highest HP. As long as Steiner was topped off, it wasn’t a big deal. Tried the Retaliate cheese strategy but it was too RNG dependent (unlucky Holy and Shock hits…) and irritating to time.

Ultimate Godo was probably the easiest Ultimate to date aside from Advantaliate cheesing Yunalesca. It is worth noting however that FFVII is by far the realm that I have the strongest synergy with. He was basically brute forced down.

Godo was beaten but not mastered on the first attempt because I ate a string of bad AoEs at the very end of the fight which killed Barret. I did master it using the same party configuration during another attempt. With the recent introduction of the orb exchange and shatter mechanics, it was very easy to hone Shadowsteel to R3. It was also a good thing that I did so because Sap only proc’d on the very last charge on all boss attempts. It is a shame that it did not proc sooner because sap does around 4k a tick. Party used:

Roaming Warrior: Sentinal’s Grimoire
Notable Soul Breaks: Blade Beam, Planet Protector
Notable Weapons: Organics, Gatling Gun, Silver Barrette, Aurora Rod

• Red XIII was used as a Black Mage for the other Bonus Battles and as a support bot for Godo. I had forgotten to remove him from the back row when setting this party up. Whoops. I think hairpins are melee? Well, go go synergy and Planet Protector for making up the damage loss.
• Shellga and Sentinal’s Grimoire were sufficient mitigation to keep everyone alive but just barely towards the end of the fight. Using Renewing Cure over Curaja did help a bit because the regen effect will cancel out the poison effect.
• Haste RM on 3/5 characters = poor man’s hasteaga I guess.
• Full Break and Armor Breakdown really softened him up. With Planet Protector, even back row melee Red XIII was hitting for around 8k or so a pop.
• Oh man, Lifesiphon is a fantastic ability if you have a 4*+ combat character with a good SB (preferably multi-hit non-elemental damage). Having Ace Striker and Lifesiphon on Cloud meant that I could use Blade Beam for 3×9999 damage every third turn.

Round 1
Cloud: Lifesiphon
Barret: Full Break
Yuffie: Shadowsteel
Red XIII: Sentinal’s Grimoire
Aerith: Shellga

Round 2+
Cloud: Lifesiphon until SB is charged, use Blade Beam, repeat. Drain Strike if low to alleviate healing duties.
Barret: Full Break, Magic Breakdown, Magic Breakdown, Full Break. Use Full Break roughly every 25% health
Yuffie: Spam Shadowsteel until Sap procs then spam Dismissal
Red XIII: Alternate between Power Breakdown and Armor Breakdown
Aerith: Try to cast Planet Protector when possible. Otherwise, heal bot.

Sentinal’s Grimoire was cast at the beginning of the fight and then half way through the fight. I also recast Shellga at approximately the half point as well. Drain Strike and Dismissal can be replaced with whatever you feel is more suitable as both are filler abilities. Overall, the real MVPs of this fight are: Realm synergy, orb exchanging, and Lifesiphon + SSB spam.

Most of yesterday’s stamina was dedicated to Record Materia farming in the FFII dungeons with not much luck. Still need to do Rubicante Ultimate. For his fight I am thinking mage meta with Vaan to Steal when he cloaks and hit him with Magic Breakdown. If I recall correctly Rubicante counters physical attacks so I will probably have to shelf the usual suspects.

Leviathan and Major Ice Orbs
I went through a big effort to scrounge for the last 4 Major Ice Orbs needed to hone Full Break to R2; The last boss completed being Leviathan. It’s not so much that Leviathan was that much of a pain in the ass as it was mostly mastering the trash while not burning through to many ability uses. I was ready to burn a Mithril if need be but alas, it was not needed.

I didn’t have enough room for Carbuncle, but Sentinals’ Grimoire allowed everyone to stay alive long enough for Lenna to cast reflect on everyone. A few S/Ls were needed to reflect Leviathan before he started buffing himself.

I did run out of most abilities and ended up scratching my way through the last quarter of Leviathan. Gilgamesh’s self sustaining tauntaliate, Cloud’s Blade Beam, and Rinoa’s Angel Wing Bolt were the real MVPs of the fight. Honed Full Break about 2 weeks ago. Haven’t really needed it since :/

Yunalesca and friends
What an odd set of encounters, almost all of which are trivialized by Advantaliate or otherwise. For a super easy Yunalesca U master, it really did work like a charm. No wall, no hasteaga, no healing needed.

I ended up putting Omega off and to be honest, had almost forgotten that he was there. But at last, on the final day, he has been mastered. Go me I guess. Omega is weak to both lightning spells and stop so the strategy obviously is to keep him stopped as much as possible while nuking him down. In addition to having a SUPER high resistance and an array of AoE attacks/counters, Omega does two annoying things of note: Blind all and reflect-self.

I had originally tried having two white mages spamming stop in an attempt to keep him from casting anything at all for the duration of the fight. Unfortunately, because stop has a short duration (6 seconds) and a 30% miss rate, that was difficult to manage. It was much easier to just deal with blind than to avoid it altogether. Also, dedicating two characters instead of only one to casting stop is a significant DPS loss. Since Omega has a 1 stamina cost (versus Exdeath’s 60 stamina cost lol), it was kind of fun experimenting with odd party configurations. Ultimately, this is what worked for me:

RW: Boon for Hastega. Boon was cast at the beginning of the fight then again at the half-way point. Stop did drop off several times, but hastega helped significantly. If blind was cast, Sazh would Esuna Cloud and then himself; Everything else was offensive Black Magic and bypassed blind. Sazh would otherwise spam Mental Breakdown to allow the casters to do as much damage as possible.

Cloud attacked with Thundara/aga Strike and with his SSB when the bar was filled. Rinoa Reflected Thundaga/ja spells off of Aerith’s auto-reflect just in case stop dropped off and reflect was cast upon Omega. It is worth noting that the auto-reflect RM did last the entire fight. So with both Omega’s blind and reflect dealt with, the only major RNG factor was whether or not stop landed or not. Other than that, Shellga (from Boon) allowed my party to eat an AoE or two of any landed.

I found Swift Bolt to be an excellent alternative to Thundaga/ja if you do not have enough orbs to create a duplicate spell for a second black mage. In addition to being easy to create/hone, it has about half the cast time, ignores resistance, and bypasses reflect. Since I did not know how long auto-reflect would last and did not have enough ability space to include Reflect, the idea was that only one character would be rendered useless if it dropped off of Aerith.

Since I don’t have Shadow or Thancred’s relic, I felt that Tyro was the strongest ninja choice. He has a fairly high baseline magic stat and is beefier in general than the other ninjas, on top of being able to use literally any item.

Did everyone have a happy holidays? I hope so. *Sigh* I am 4 Major Ice Orbs short of honing Full Break to R2. Looking at the event forecast, it looks like I will be waiting a while :-|. Anyway, now that orb farming and holiday madness are for the most part over, I finally had some time to complete the bonus battles for the FFV event and Omega (will do a separate post later).

Melusine+++
This one wasn’t too hard for a +++ encounter. I used the, “put her to sleep and burn her house down” strategy. Melusine will rotate elemental weaknesses throughout the fight. Her first elemental weakness however is always fire. The idea is to perma-sleep her so that she never rotates weaknesses and spam her to death with fire spells. All attacks need to be magic only since any physical offensive ability will break sleep. This strategy obviously requires a decently outfitted mage crew. 2x Firaga R5 and 1x Firaja R3 was sufficient for me, but I do have decent mage gear. Mileage may vary.

RW: Boon for hasteaga. Tyro alternated between casting Sleep and Mana’s Paen (boost magic all). Lenns was either on standby or spamming sleep depending on whether or not Tyro’s sleep landed. Everyone else just spammed offensive magic. Because Sleep is super cheap to create/hone and also because Sleep seems to have a shitty hit rate (30% if I recall correctly), I equipped Vivi wit ha third sleep spell which was needed during my run.

The idea of course is to sleep-lock Melusine. If she gets a cast off, you may need to S/L. I gimped resistance in favor if upping magic so her -aga spells one-shot my casters. If all goes well, you shouldn’t take any damage. Overall, it is a pretty easy encounter to master as long as you have enough fire power to burn her d own (literally).

Exdeath (Ultimate)
Exdeath was a fun fight, challenging, well designed, and not too RNG dependent though the AoE tornadoes are bullshit. If there was one bad thing that I had to say about this encounter it would be that it is kind of a gear wall that serves to highlight how important certain relics are. That said, I don’t have a hasteaga or wall relic and still beat it. One could also say the same about literally every other boss fight.

RNGesus was not in my favor and I did have to S/L several times after a string of attempts where I would receive back to back to back tornadoes. Of all abilities that Exdeath uses, Doom is probably the most benign. If the fight takes longer than 60 seconds, you are probably either dead or out of abilities anyways. I had originally tried two separate mage meta party configurations; Both of which failed due to the casters being utterly eaten alive. Another attempt using a physical only party (+ 2 healers) worked:

RW: Lunatic High for Protectga and Hastega.  I don’t have great FFV armor record synergy, so things hurt. To combat the amount of damage that I was taking and the amount of healing required, I ended up using Drain Strike on two spellblades on top of full mitigation (shellga/protectga/offensive breaks). I really wish that I had enough orbs leftover to hone both Firaga and Thundaga strike past R2 but since both spellblades spent the majority of the fight spamming Drain Strike to self-heal, it didn’t really matter I guess. Drain Strike + Planet Protector does decent damage, about 8K if I recall correctly.

When Exdeath hits 50% health, he will take two attacks per turn and for the most part will spam single target magic attacks on your party. I cast Carbuncle at about 40% to 45% health to get reflect up. I have Carbuncle honed to R2. Only 1 cast should be needed but having 2 available would be safer just in case he gets an unlucky dispel off before hitting 50% (Dispel all drops off of his ability table when he is under 50%). I didn’t master this encounter, but got close. I ate several unlucky AoEs towards the very end of the fight that killed off Aerith and Lenna. I may go back and try to master it, just wish it wasn’t 60 stamina a pop.

At this point in the game, there are a crapton of 4* abilities available and not all of them are really all that great. Here is a short list of 4* abilities that I feel are worth creating and honing. Just as a general disclaimer: Though I did try to make this list as generic as possible (no cheese strategies, etc), like all things FFRK, overall usefulness of a particular ability will depend on your party makeup, abilities available, SB’s, and so forth. I have a tendency to lean towards physical damage parties. My typical party makeup is: 1 Healer, 1 Hybrid Black Mage, 1 Cloudblade Spellblade, 1 Support, 1 other physical. I don’t use summons all that often, thus the reason why none are listed.

Support & Healing Abilities
If I had to choose an ability to create first out of everything listed on this page it would be Magic Breakdown.

Magic Breakdown
Unlike physical damage, magical damage cannot be mitigated by backrow parties. Magical damage is also heavily used in the and needed to avoid being instagibbed in many of the higher level boss fights.

Shellga & Protectga
Yay mitigation. Don’t bother honing either of these past R2. One cast lasts for quite some time. There are other mitigation options in the form of certain relics, bard abilities, etc. Regardless, I would say that it is worth creating these abilities. Depends on your party makeup though.

Steal Power
If you can fit a character with a high thief skill into your party, Steal Power superior to Power Breakdown. In addition to a longer duration, it offers a 50% attack buff. Keep in mind however, that this ability does not in itself do any damage and that the buff does not stack with any other attack buff (such as Planet Protector, etc). Because I have Aerith pimped out with Planet Protector, I usually end using Power Breakdown (mostly because I already had it honed to R3 by the time Steal Power was released :/).

Armor/Mental Breakdown/Steal Armor
Steal Armor > Armor Breakdown. Obviously, use Armor Breakdown for physical parties and Mental Breakdown for mage parties. If you are a completionist or have spare orbs available, these abilities may be worth getting. Otherwise to be honest, all of these abilities kind of fall under the “filler” category.

Curaja
If you use a character with a low mind stat for tanky healing (like Pecil for example), then Curaja is to get a decent heal of any sorts. Otherwise, I have never felt the need to use anything higher than Renewing Cure or Curaga on any of my white mages.

Elemental Damage
The elemental strikes are included in this category because of the role they fulfill and the fact that their orb usage heavily overlaps with the -ja/-ga spells. Keep in mind however that these are physical abilities and that damage output is attack based.

Waterja
Of the elemental spells, Waterja is the least resisted, has the fastest cast time, and is fairly easy to make.

Bioga/Thundaja/Firaja/Blizzaja
The power creep is real. There will be a point/already are certain bosses where -ga spells simply do not put out enough damage. The order at which you craft and hone these abilities is up to your preference I guess? Bioga seems to be pretty easy to farm, not very often resisted, and a weakness on many bosses. On the other hand, it does have a lower damage multiplier than the other ja spells so many only be a higher priority if your ages already hit or are at least close to the damage cap. I personally use Thundaja a lot so I chose to hone that one first (magitek + all mechanical things are weak to thunder damage).

Diaga
I would argue that this ability may be worth crafting first along side Waterja. Being a white mage spell, it doesn’t use any of the same orbs as the other -ja/-ga abilities if I recall correctly, so it should be fairly easy to craft and hone; As long as you have Shellga and Protectga crafted that is as both of those spells should take precedence.

Ruinga
Non-elemental AoE damage. Ignore Quake, use Ruinga. Great for AoE bosses and nuking Daily Dungeons.

Thundaga/Firaga Strike
Both of these abilities are in the same boat as Thundaja and Firaja.

Physical Damage
I personally have a preference for Dismissal and have used it quite a bit. Pound though is decent for combat characters with a limited selection.

Dismissal
It’s like Pound damage wise but has a chance to interrupt. Celerity isn’t that uncommon of a skill so Dismissal it usually pretty easy to squeeze in. It doesn’t however have a great proc rate, so unless you create and hone multiple copies it may suffer from filleritis like Pound. If I had to choose between either Pound or Dismissal: Dismissal.

Pound
Straight up single target physical damage. Pound is a combat ability so it is widely usable. I don’t think this is stated anywhere on the actual ability but it has a 100% hit rate so no missing even when blinded! On the downside, Pound is kind of a filler spell at best: It only does 15% more damage than Launch and doesn’t really do anything special (no buffs or debuffs). It also needs to be honed to be useful.

Bladeblitz/Yukikaze
AoE physical damage. Great for trash clearing and AoE bosses. If you have a Samurai that you drag along often (such as Sephiroth), I would choose Yukikaze over Bladeblitz for the chance to blind all. Keep in mind that both of these abilities require Greater Power Orbs, which complete with the Breakdowns.

First and foremost, with the plethora of upcoming events, I created a small calendar for personal use to help keep track of them. I am sure that there are a thousand of these on the internet, but I was bored. Unfortunately/fortunately? Most of the events seem to overlap, meaning that stamina is going to have to be prioritized. Orb wise, I would really like to hone Full Break to R2 so that means: Festive Fantasy phases (aka Orb Fest) 2, 3, and 4 are going to be important. Phase 4 probably being the most important because who doesn’t need Power Orbs?

I am pretty stocked on White, Holy, and Earth orbs so Phase 2 will be used to complete the Blood Madness Bonus Battles. Once Veil of Memories starts, enough stamina will of course be allocated to snatch the RM2 Crystals. This is all assuming that I am even going to able to or interested in playing Final Fantasy Record Keeper on or around Christmas (busy busy fun party time). If anyone else finds this of use, here you go.

Narshe+++
Valigarmanda isn’t that super RNG dependent so therefore, not that irritating of a fight to complete. He also does pure magical damage so drop Defense in favor of Resistance. The general strategy that I chose is to: Get magical mitigation up ASAP, cast reflect on a spell blade, have the spell blade use Fira/ga strike on the boss, have the black mage cast Firaga on the reflected party member to avoid the counter, have Shadow not die.

The trick is, at least for my setup, to get Magic Breakdown and Shellga off before the first AoE Blizzard. With full mitigation it only hits for around 500 to 700 a pop versus well over 1k. Since I had a group regen up on all party members earlyish into the fight, that took the edge off of the AoE. Celes was more or less self sustainable with Drain Strike and Aerith just sat and spammed Curaga for anyone who got too low on health. His single target spells do hurt but are more manageable than the constant AoE spam

I don’t have Firaga Strike or Firaja honed enough to last for the duration of this fight so I used Fira Strike and Firaga instead. Fira Strike hit him for max damage and Firaga hit him for about 6k to 7k. Reflect did need to be applied roughly half way through the fight. Shellga was recast at about the same time as a precaution.

• Celes: Fira Strike. Drain Strike when approaching/below half health
• Setzer: Alternate between Magic and Defense Breakdown
• Shadow: Dismissal/RW bot. Magic Break backup just in case
• Setzer runs out of Magic Breakdown (which he did at the end of the fight)
• Terra: Cast Firaga on Celes do that it reflects on the boss
• Aerith: Shellga + spam heals + planet protector when possible

That was an annoying fight. I have very little FFIX item record synergy, but still beat it. I can probably master the encounter by swapping around a few things but we’ll have to see about that. So close :/. My setup:

RW: Hymn of the Faith for regen and to take the edge off of the 2k AoE that is is almost guaranteed to get off before you can do anything at all. May have been better off with Boon for the group Haste, but reluctant to drop the group heal because Fira spam :/

First round starts off with: Dark Buster, Protectga, Shellga, Hymn of the Faith, and a melee attack. If Dark Buster doesn’t blind him on the first hit, you will probably have to S/L unless you are lucky enough get get it on the second try without being AoE’d down. The trick with the water and fire abilities is to chain cast them so that he is not stuck in the burning state for too long. Waterja has a shorter cast time, so it needs to be cast at just the right time to avoid it going off before Fira Strike. Because of the touchy timing, much of the battle was fought at an irritatingly low speed to make sure that all abilities were executed in a properly timed manner. He still will get a guaranteed Fire Blades cast off as soon as he gets set on fire. Luckily, since it is physical damage, it will most most of the time if he is blinded. MOST of the time…

Having both Shellga and Mass Shell wasn’t that useful. If I redo the fight, I will probably swap Eiko for Aerith (for Planet Protector). Also, Steal Power was resisted each time. I may be better off swapping that out for Dismissal or something else. I may swap Drain Strike out for Dismissal or some other higher physical damage ability.

Really wish I had Light’s Wrath for one of my physical characters.