UNIVERSE
Rena's introduction to Universe was a bit milder than Claude's, as she didn't have to face any souped up gorilla. It was still clearly harder, but less jarringly so. What was jarring was how much slower she was in combat without Godspeed, I would definitely invest into it and Qiqong first!
Allen Tucks was her first "hard" fight. Not because he was a particularly difficult foe tactically, but because of how bad her damage was! She needed a weapon upgrade, and quick!
I upgraded her Customization to level 5 and Alchemy to level 4 before fighting the Gargoyles, she wouldn't stand a chance against them without a weapon upgrade. The upside of all this grinding, she got a Meteor Ring from Challenge Missions and that made Krosse Cave's encounters considerably more manageable.
The Gargoyles still hurt hard, but with a Metal Fang on, and some quick maneuvering, they were easily dispatched. She also got the Square Shift 1 formation, and switched to it, the Super Armor was practically essential for her.
Rena got Art, Compounding and Writing up in Kurik. She also maxed out Power Burst and would dedicate the rest of her BP towards Qiqong and Godspeed.
The Forest of Symbols' encounters were fairly trivial, outside of the Witchettes. The bandit bosses weren't, but they were melee centric foes, and Rena comfortably outflanked them. Godspeed got leveled up some more, and she invested a bit into other item creation skills, without seriously committing to any of them.
Azam Gille was fairly easy, easier than even the bandit bosses in fact! His minions just weren't particularly aggressive, and while they got some hits in, she was never truly in danger. In Harley, she began investing more seriously into Machinist to get its support items.
The Lacuer continent was a definite step up, as it served spicy encounters like these. The flying fish were very agile foes, and they did a great job covering for the witch, who could easily destroy her with her spells. The fish themselves were quite damaging, and a sore reminder of Rena's poor armor for this point. They could also paralyze, making them even more dangerous!
Rena got the Cestus of Poison forged in Lacuer, and that, along with Strength Bottles, was enough to tip back the scales in her favor. Got to say, having a weapon that poisons by default really helps out on this difficulty! At Linga, she leveled up Customization and Alchemy again, hoping to be able to forge better weapons and metals eventually. She would focus on getting her support skills up for the rest of Expel, like Replication, Machinist and Compounding.
The Sacred Grounds of Linga didn't prove to be much of a step up from the Lacuer continent itself. Rena learnt Guard, and that, combined with the Strength Bottles, was enough to let her keep pace. It was almost as if she was already layering Guard and Power Up together! That said, it was pretty clear twenty Strength Bottles alone wouldn't keep pace. She would need to get good enough at machinery to make a RIRICA soon! She maxed out Godspeed finally and started working on Sidestep and Guardbreak.
Level 6 Machinist was enough to get the RIRICA done. She began investing into Replication next to get a reliable supply of Strength Bottles. She also upped Familiar a little to get the level 9 bird, which would have Magic Films to keep her reliably restocked.
The Hoffman Ruins had beefier encounters, but overall was a step down from the Sacred Grounds of Linga, outside of the Bowladies of course. She gambled a bit on glove upgrades, but wasn't very successful. She did net a better Cestus of Poison, at least, one that rolled Adversity on it. This raised her stats as her health went down. Now, I'm not one to intentionally keep characters at low health myself, but hey, any buff is good!
At level 47, Rena learned Power Up, and now she could comfortably play the buffing game. Layer Haste(if necessary), Guard and Power Up, then go to town. Rena began surging ahead, and little stopped her. Not even the Halfnyxes, who were a complete joke once she completely buffed herself!
She got Familiar and Replication up some more, then switched back to investing in Customization and Alchemy. She was pretty close to finishing up Expel, after all.
The witches were the hardest enemies on the Ell continent, because they could cast spells before Rena had fully buffed herself! She still got those in usually, but they made fights a bit hairier than I expected.
Her first task in the Eluria Tower was to rebuild the Super Armor she had lost to the forced defeat to Cynne. For this, she sought miniboss fights. Those encounters broke the shields of every other enemy once the miniboss was taken down, which would let her get formation bonus orbs much faster - beating up on an enemy with broken shields generates lots of formation orbs per hit! She mostly sought out Goathead minibosses for this, but salamander(or I guess icemander in this case) minibosses worked fine too. Goatheads were just too lackadaisical to fight her, and salamanders, while hard hitting, were also fairly predictable melee foes that she could easily handle by this point.
What she couldn't handle were hourglass minibosses. Turns out, regen scales with health, much like poison damage, and at Universe difficulty that was enough for them to outheal her damage! Now she could still overcome it with some adjustments, but frankly, it wasn't worth the time or effort.
Cynne was extremely underwhelming, he didn't even deserve a screenshot. I frankly don't get why Expel's last "real" boss is so weak, especially since he's portrayed earlier as someone strong enough to withstand a direct nuclear laser to the face! You don't even get a good narrative reason for why you can beat him now, it's just, "Ah well, guess your party is stronger now!" They really could've done a better job with him.
That rant aside, she was in Energy Nede now! Her adventures there will be covered in the next post. See you then!
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