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.
| Character | Ability 1 | Ability 2 | Record Materia |
| Tyro | Mana’s Paen | Sleep | Devotion |
| Vivi | Firaga | Sleep | Impetuous Youth |
| Rinoa | Firaja | Ruinga | Attunement II |
| Krile | Firaga | Valefor | Vow of Vengeance |
| Lenna | Shellga | Sleep | Prayer of Cetra |
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:
| Character | Ability 1 | Ability 2 | Record Materia |
| Cloud | Firaga Strike | Drain Strike | Self-Sacrifice |
| Bartz | Thundaga Strike | Drain Strike | SOLDIER’s Pride |
| Gilgamesh | Power Break | Magic Break | Dragoon’s Determination |
| Aerith | Curaga | Carbuncle | Mako Might |
| Lenna | Renewing Cure | Shellga | Light of the Faith |
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.