UNIVERSE
Remember when I said that the run only started at Krosse Cave? Well, Universe difficulty begged to differ:
The very first enemy was considerably more durable, not to mention more evasive. It took 5 or 6 phase gun shots to take down. Normally it takes three. With an introduction like that, you know this difficulty's just going to be a treat!
Thankfully, Claude still had the Phase Gun for this portion of the game. Even more thankfully, he unlocked Air Slash quite easily. It didn't one shot any of the starting foes anymore, but it still reliably broke through their shields, which let him finish the job.
But fear not, because the difficulty very much lived up to expectations. Claude got flattened by an encounter in the Salva Mines. Eventually he got the enemies to line up exactly right for Air Slash to do its job, but damn.
Unfortunately Rena would deliver no hilarious smackdown this time. Thankfully, Allen Tucks is a fairly simple boss, and can be easily taken down as long as your character can kite him with a reliable ranged option. Air Slash is sucky, but counts well enough as such. Know what special art isn't sucky though?
Meteor Palm, that's what! Enemies started falling like bowling pins again, and for a while, I almost felt like I was playing on Galaxy.
I was quickly disabused of any such notions when these slimes humbled Claude, heavily resisting all his moves while dishing a lot of damage. And these weren't pulls from some long distant dungeon, they were Krosse Cave foes. Oh dear.
The cave was a complete doozy. Claude lasted for two fights before having to bail for resupplying. His offensive output was not up to the task, and he was often getting ganged up on and destroyed. I quickly unlocked Customization and made a Searing Sword, hoping to alleviate that. That definitely helped, along with raising his level to 10. I also inadvertently discovered that the worm enemies were weak to fire. Interesting.
As this difficulty demanded quite a lot more, I invested more into all the skills earlier, putting points in them until their cost raised above single digits. The skill points after that still went into getting Penmanship to level 8, of course.
Claude looted everything in the cave's crystal chamber, equipped a Regeneration Ring and Weighty Ring, and faced the Gargoyles.
He did eventually get them, but only by running around in circles and spamming Air Slash and Ultime Camui. Kind of an embarrassing battle, heh. At least they never murdered him, and he got some good prizes out of it.
He maxed out Qiqong and started working on Godspeed next. He used Writing using guild provided Fountain Pens, then raised skills until their costs went above 20. As on Galaxy, he also switched his formation to Escape Shift. He also turned up this interesting item during Crafting:
Angel Feather is a late game buff that raises all stats by a considerable amount. Normally it can only be cast by Rena, and only at a very high level. Having this buff on hand this early should be interesting. He gambled Customizing a bunch of Longswords with Crystals and got a Guthgwine, which was a decent boost to his attack power.
The Forest of Symbols turned out rather routine, besides a bunch of werewolves knocking down Claude once. Angel Feather let him dish out some sweet sweet revenge though. This Crown was already paying off dividends, and it would take a really good helm to dislodge it off Claude's head. Claude upgraded his skills again, until they costed above 30. He did his usual Writing and Machining at Harley. He also gambled on Customizations, and landed this really cool sword:
Just look at that! High attack, instant death chances on hit, and a boost to stats for being solo? Wow! This was almost the perfect find for him.
The continent of Lacuer went pretty smoothly. The monsters did get stronger, but Claude's equipment and additional stats were more than enough to deal with them. The only enemies that did give him trouble were the Cockatrices, mostly due to their attacks petrifying him at moderate odds.
Of course, I had no illusions of the game staying this way, and remained prepared for Sacred Grounds of Linga being a giant difficulty spike. A fight with some jumping rabbits just outside confirmed my suspicions. They were considerably more formidable and more evasive than the wildlife around. Thankfully, they didn't hit any harder, but it was clear Claude would be in for some protracted fights in the cave.
I swapped in a Gold Cross to cut into their evade, and that certainly helped. One nasty encounter with fire spitting dogs required him to outright pull out a Shield Ring, they were just too numerous and dangerous to deal with! Besides that, the fights were rough, but manageable.
I upped Claude's Customization, gambled on the regular results, and ended up with a Saad Blade. At 990 attack, this was honestly not particularly far from the attack of endgame swords, and would easily see him through the rest of Expel. I just hoped to get his defenses in a better shape somehow.
The Hoffman Ruins were fairly manageable, aside from the archer ladies. I found that the Stink Gel was actually quite effective, it let Claude reliably poison enemies, and with their bloated HP totals, this actually helped a lot offensively - poison ticks scale off max HP. Best of all, it even worked on bosses, both mini and regular! The Halfnyxes were completely trounced, and Claude proceeded directly towards Ell.
He successfully stole the Battle Suit off a crewmember on the Calnus, and that did wonders for his defense. It was a 11% chance, and he only had three attempts at it, so this was a very lucky roll.
Of course, good armor could only go so far, as Cynne showed. He still hurt quite a bit, and had spells to ignore Claude's defense besides. He did die to poison, thankfully.
This marked the end of Expel, and was a good stopping point for now. Claude will see you in Energy Nede next!
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