Claude Solo Run Part 5

Claude had reached Energy Nede, and was now ready to tackle this brave new world.

Like before, he Alchemized a bunch of Rainbow Diamonds to boost his item creation skills. Unlike before, he wouldn't immediately forge the Aeterna - rather, he would hold on to the Blade of Minos to capitalize on its Dark element against the Guardians, then upgrade it. In its place, he would gamble on, and land upon the Aurora, a 1200 attack sword that also rolled the Lone Wolf factor! Talk about getting lucky, eh?

For random encounters, he decided to combine the Berserker Ring with the Ring of Might. This nifty ring doubled his attack, at the steep cost of making him vulnerable to all elements. Well, random encounters largely didn't have much elemental damage, so this wasn't too much of a concern there. At 3260 attack, he was getting lots of strong hits on them, often hitting the 9999 damage cap! It could have gone even further with a skill that unlocks after dealing a total of 40 million damage throughout the game, but he was a solo character, and was unlikely to unlock it.

Of course, this offensive combo couldn't be used against bosses...or could it? The Psynard was a fairly simple boss, and died quickly to Claude's offense. It was only notable for not being susceptible to poison. The Arachnovias were, and died pretty quickly. Claude got the Phase Gun back, and got the Omega Double Slash assault action. He was just growing ever more powerful!

The Field of Courage was next, and was fairly routine. He added Vertical Air Raid to his assault actions, and gained so many levels, the enemies turned green on his very trip! The Guardian was very simple, just tedious. So tedious, I actually made Claude drink a Medical Rinse to regenerate his health during the fight! Oh yeah, he was immune to poison too, but I expected that sort of thing to eventually get routine, and was well prepared for it.

The Field of Might was a similar story. Claude forged the Aeterna, which rolled Earth element. I was a bit wary of this, but thankfully, I did have other weapons to fall upon if it ever became an issue. The Field of Wisdom was where enemies actually started becoming a threat, with the wizards within being able to both hit on Claude's elemental weaknesses as well as petrify him. I had to take care of them fast, and used quite a few Immunity Pills in this dungeon. I still don't know why this dungeon is recommended first, I bet it has chewed up a lot of unsuspecting players.

Effort was done, so he would gamble on ESP to get useful stuff. Oh, and he also unlocked this.

Damn you for proving me wrong, Claude! Needless to say, I was more than happy to get this, and would invest thoroughly into it. Time to unleash Claude's full power!

The Guard Hand was a joke as usual. The Field of Love turned up many wizards in its encounters, and as such was rather miserable to go through, if still manageable. At times, I was running the encounters with no less than three buffs from consumables!

Lavarre's encounter drew closer, and I prepared accordingly, swapping the Ring of Might for a Silver Charm. It was obvious the weakness to all elements would hurt hard here! Thankfully, both she and her entourage were susceptible to poison, and that ensured a largely straightforward victory.

Bardiche was trivial, as were Zaphkiel, Jophiel, and Metatron. Okay, Metatron was perhaps not exactly trivial - he was considerably sturdier than the others - but he was still a melee fighter, and so could be kited easily.

I must also mention, the Illusion Doll came in very handy here. It was visibly causing Claude to take less hits and brave himself against melee centric foes. I genuinely didn't expect it to Medical Rinse to be useful, yet here they were, helping out in key fights.

That said, the time for melee centric bosses was clearly drawing to a close. Claude had to face the trio of Zadkiel, Camael and Raphael. The good news was, Camael would be weak to the earthen Aeterna. The bad news? Uhhh, almost everything else! Claude could at least mitigate the Noah spells with an Aqua Ring, but everything else was quite hazardous. I resorted to spamming Helmetbreak here because the danger was just too great otherwise. I had to layer almost all my buffs!

Eventually, I got tired, and switched out my battle formation for Square Shift 1. This gave the valuable Super Armor property that stopped Claude from getting interrupted or stunned by hits, and I finally started making progress. After one more failed attempt, Claude got the right angles to shoot his Phase Gun, and downed first Camael, then Zadkiel. At that point, the fight became significantly less dangerous, and he carefully gunned down Raphael without too much trouble. The fight cost a lot of Mixed and Fruit Syrups though, sheesh!

For Haniel and Michael, I broke out the Under Guard battle formation, mostly to see how effective the stalling bonuses would be. Michael nullified Earth, so I had to swap out the Aeterna for the Godslayer. He also absorbed fire moves, so that required taking Knuckle Burst out of the picture, which definitely hurt. Oh well, not much that could be done about it.

However, their stats were just absurd. Both had 1.3 million HP, each, and they were really fast, with some cheesy moves that could kill Claude fast if he was ever caught in them. The fight really wore me down, and I experimented a lot with my options. At one point, I even considered bringing Rena with Guard or Faerie Healing to cut down on the attrition. Then I finally hit on a solution:

Megabombs did damage relative to their HP, and worked on them. It also got buffed greatly from the Surpass Damage Limit combat skill, hitting Haniel reliably for 63000~ damage! With that employed in the Escape Shift formation, he was taken down after a prolonged encounter:

Michael was largely harmless on his own, being a largely melee focused fighter who only could deploy fire spells against Claude. Those were easily cancelled out by a Flare Ring, and he was taken down in due time.

Lucifer demanded a Silver Charm. There was no other way to face his dark spells or his instant death spell. Wind of Decimation and his random lightning strikes meant that Claude needed a Sacrificial Doll to survive. He also resisted earth, forcing another swap to the Godslayer. Claude's offensive damage was cut severely, and once again he had to resort to chucking Megabombs.This was a very tense fight, with Claude constantly looking for openings to exploit, and Lucifer almost got him a few times, but he eventually won. 

This fight didn't leave me too optimistic for Gabriel. Still, he needed to be fought, and most of the same setup that worked for Lucifer would work for him too. However, I swapped out the Godslayer, as he thankfully doesn't have any resistances.

Turns out, Gabriel is far easier than Lucifer. For one, his Star Flares and Southern Crosses actually healed Claude. For another, he didn't have any rapid fire blasts to deal with, though getting close to him was too hazardous. This is not to say he was trivial, the fight was still very close, and he almost got him at the end. But Claude got the last hit in, and the rest, as they say, was history.

Claude mostly stood up fine on Universe difficulty. His melee damage was good, and his special moves did give him a fair bit of flexibility. Towards the end though, his character began to exhibit some serious flaws. His elemental coverage was limited, which made him run into walls like the Zadkiel-Camael-Raphael trio or the Michael and Haniel duo. He had very poor resistances from his gear, only being able to absorb light damage and nullify fire, water or shadow damage. His special moves scaled off attack power, and when he had to give it up for defensive purposes, they plummeted badly and completely failed him. Melee getting riskier in the end game definitely didn't help him, and the fact that he had to eventually rely on hurling Megabombs spoke poorly for his performance.

Still, I mustn't ignore how good Claude was in the segments before it, and while he may have petered out in the endgame, he sure did a lot of work getting there. He had very solid Customization options and made some very nifty offensive gear through Crafting. Helmetbreak had applications long after its damage had stopped being relevant, and Knuckle Burst and the Phase Gun both provided solid options for ranged attacks. And who can forget how powerful equipment like the Aeterna and the Crested Shield is up close? Claude was by no means terrible, most of his problems came from being too one dimensional.

Claude's journey ends here. Rena's will come soon. I hope you enjoyed reading through his adventures, and will be more than glad to hear your thoughts on it. Until next time!

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