Rena Solo Run Part 2

 Rena reached Energy Nede and forged a veritable spread of fighting gloves:

The Kaiser Knuckles were just a really strong pair of gloves, but this particular set rolled a chance to paralyze, and so was worth keeping. The Magic Knuckles were considerably weaker, but raised spell damage by 50%. The Knuckles of the Moon were considerably less interesting, but did provide a hefty 30% MP boost. These knuckles had also rolled the Poison property, and you've seen how potent that can be. The Sorcerer's Knuckles reduced MP consumption by 33% and granted 2% MP regen every three seconds, thus being potentially useful for fights of attrition. Lastly, the Emprezia had the highest raw stats of them all, but no further properties besides.

For now, she donned the Emprezia and paired it with some damage boosting equipment. Sadly, her crafting hadn't turned up much useful, so she still stuck to the Meteor Ring and the Chain of Might. Her regular attacks were considerably weaker than Claude's, even with Power Up, but she got more of them in with hit and run attacks, so it balanced itself out, sort of.

The Psynard was a pretty simple fight. Buff up, pound it, retreat when low on health and heal. She cast Haste on herself for the last action there. Haste was a buff she had learned back in the Hoffman Ruins. It made the buffed character extremely fast, letting them dodge enemies much better. I didn't have much use for it in regular encounters, but in cramped spaces like these, it definitely came in handy!

The Arachnovias were a bit more complicated, but not by much. Their constant HP drain made Rena chew some Blueberries, but otherwise they fell quite fast to her offense.

Rena stole a Earring of Frenzy from the Nedian mayor's secretary, only to find to her dismay that she couldn't wear it! I was hoping she could use its 200% attack bonus, apparently that was not to be. She definitely seems to get shafted on gear in the weirdest ways, her amazing weapon selection notwithstanding. A guild mission finally gave her a Berserker Ring, and she happily took it over her Chain of Might. She also bought a Wizard's Armor to bolster her raw defenses, keeping the Mithril Coat and Eagle's Shawl on hand for when she needed their resistances or protection against instant death.

The Field of Might was next. Rena had unlocked her final buff, Angel Feather, from beating the Arachnovias, and used it on the fights here. It gave a 25% bonus to attack, defense, and hit rate. The bonuses were certainly smaller than Guard and Power Up, but they stacked together, and she was tearing through the encounters with them all stacked. Hasten Speech was maxed, and she started working on Breaker next. 

A fluke accident broke the battle formation bonus, and highlighted just how much Rena relied on the Super Armor. Without it, getting more than one buff through was a struggle, and she fared a lot more ordinarily. Thankfully, it wasn't too much effort to build it back up, and the rest of the dungeon was smooth sailing. She found a Ring of Might within, and gladly equipped it. For the Guardian boss, she swapped over to a Blazing Knuckles that rolled Dark element. It also had an extra hit on it, like the Dragon Claw.

The Guardian was surprisingly easy, she was consistently hitting it for 9000s, and hitting and running it made it extremely trivial. The Field of Courage was a similar story. I discovered that actually, given all the buffs she could layer, the Blazing Knuckles were in fact her weapon of choice, despite the significantly lower attack. The extra hit mattered more than the raw attack, in practice. She also got Breaker maxed out and started working on her last two combat skills, Body Control and Sidestep. I would perhaps invest into Trance to improve her spell damage, but to me it was pretty clear her buffs were her trump card.

The Field of Wisdom gave her some trouble, but not too much. Her toughest enemies, oddly enough, weren't the Wizards or the Magic Defenders, but the Controllers. Too often they would get to make an odd move and then gain control of her! Thankfully, this was more annoying than threatening, and she never got into any trouble. The Field of Love had both the wizards and their guardians resistant to Darkness, so she switched back to the Dragon Claw for the area.

Lavarre was completely pathetic. She resisted the dark element and her Sunbreaker minions spammed Star Flare, but all Rena had to do was switch to the Empreza and the Mithril Coat, layer buffs, and pummel her, while dodging her telegraphed light beams. Those two equipment adjustments more than took care of it.  Every punch was hitting for 9999! Meanwhile, the Sunbreakers were barely scratching her with spells, and hardly hurting her with their physical attacks.

Oh, and Claude is there just because I was manipulating her relationship level to get an ending. He was completely unequipped and died pretty fast, contributing nothing to the battle.

The Minae Cave was a little hairy, as Rena was forced to take a loss and lose the buffs from her battle formation. I probably should've grinded it back up on random fights first, heh. Anyway, it wasn't too hard, mostly just a harsh reminder of how ordinary she was when she couldn't stack buffs. The Barchian was a non fight as usual, and I made sure to replenish the battle formation's bonus before proceeding.

Zaphkiel actually gave her some trouble, he was a swift fighter just like her, and she had poor ranged damage to capitalize on that. Thankfully, Haste let her outspeed him and take more openings more safely. This fight boded poorly for her chances, though. Jophiel was a pushover, aside from his petrifying touch. Metatron was a big block of HP and little else.

But now her real challenge was coming up, the Zadkiel-Camael-Raphael trio. She used an Immunity Pill to take status effects out of the picture first. I found to my dismay that Camael could cancel out her Haste with his Delay, so she needed an Ointment of Veda too. A Dream Crown at least took some of the pressure off by absorbing Raphael's Thunder Clouds. Make no mistake though, he was clearly the most dangerous of the trio. He teleported around with a deadly ring that often hit her multiple times, and he had the nasty swallowing attack up close. Zadkiel and Camael were really nothing noteworthy compared to him. Rena dealt with them first, making sure to avoid Raphael while relying on him for some incidental heals. Then, she fought him, making sure never to be so close to him as to be unable to avoid his swallowing move. It took a few tries, I had quite some false starts, but eventually she broke through without much issue.

Rena got a Robe of Deception from one of Phynal's chests, and that mostly put my equipment concerns about her to rest. Not only did it null both Wind and Light damage, it also blocked petrification while giving her higher defense than the Wizard's Armor. This would prove very handy for Gabriel's fight, completely taking the danger out of his Star Flares and Southern Crosses.

Yet another freak collision forced me to rebuild her formation's bonuses. I discovered that Hero's Arrival was a great way to grind safely, as I could simply choose which dungeon's encounters I wanted to repeat. Hoffman's Ruins hit the sweet spot of not giving too much XP for her level, while being formidable enough to boost her formation bonus without being too hefty for her to quickly take down.

Michael and Haniel were surprisingly easy. Michael was healing her with all his spells, and Spicule was almost a full heal! That kind of healing easily let her tank Haniel, and he was easily punched out, at which point the fight was basically over. Lucifer healed her with both his teleporting lightning strikes, and his Wind of Decimation, so he was barely worth recognizing. The only prep work required was a swap to the Mithril Coat to block his Word of Death.

On to the big man of the show, Gabriel.

Gabriel's big spells, Star Flare and Southern Cross, were nullified by the Robe of Deception. That took out most of the bite from this fight - Explode healed her, Noah didn't hurt her much, and Earthquake could be managed by Reflection. Stone Rain could be dodged, and neither his ranged attack nor Divine Waves bothered her much. Gabriel got close to doing her in once, but at the end of the day, her buffs and fighting spirit won out.

This was a pretty enjoyable run. Rena played very differently from Claude, relying more on hitting and running than chaining attacks. Her low defenses caused some issues early on, but once she got her buffs, she was mostly set. It's a bit absurd how fast the final stretch of the game went, but elemental absorbs and buffing can go quite far.

She will join you in Universe difficulty next. See you all then!

PREVIOUS                BACK TO INDEX                NEXT