Ashton had reached Energy Nede, and the enemies continued to give him little trouble.
On a whim, I checked out his two new moves. Hurricane Slash seemed fairly straightforward, hurling out a wide tornado after two slashes. For the most part it was a direct upgrade to Northern Cross, as it executed much faster and launched a faster projectile too. Deadly Triangle was interesting, it played out a rather long animation, but kept him invincible throughout, and often locked them in place before bombarding them with multiple hits. It was certainly good damage, just extremely unwieldy. Once again, these moves added utility instead of competing with his normal attack, which I greatly appreciated.
The Psynard fight was trivial. The Arachnovias were easy, if not particularly elegant - slice them down with regular attacks, poison them a bit, win. Out of curiosity, I experimented a little with Deadly Triangle and it did freeze them. I didn't expect it to work on bosses, this was a pretty interesting discovery. Could it perhaps have uses against future bosses? I would be sure to find out!
He bought a Mithril Mesh and Mithril Greaves next, along with the Wyrm King's Ribbon for novelty. The Mithril Mesh would be his best armor for a while, having innate fire, water and wind resistances alongside some hefty defenses. The Wyrm King's Ribbon was exclusive to him, and did have good defensive stats for an accessory, but characters are extremely reliant on them for offense, so I didn't anticipate using it much.
The Field of Might was fairly easy, all things said. He had unlocked Dragon Breath earlier, but that was similar to Claude's dragon summoning move, and thus too slow to be worth using. Sword Dance, however, was quite powerful - it executed a bunch of swings extremely fast, and ended with a circular slice around him. It didn't offset his regular attack as it locked him into place for its duration, but it was quite powerful for single targets!
Ashton was done getting his core combat skills in here, so he could start upgrading his special moves. I began with Piercing Blades, as that looked like his most useful move. It turned out that was actually quite effective as a close range shotgun, and I actually switched him to the Square Shift 1 battle formation so that he could get to use it without any interruption.
The Guardian went down easily - he could easily slice it until its third form. For that form, Piercing Blades didn't do much damage, but it did let him hurt it from range, and wasn't too slow at killing it.
It was clear that he was more than ready for the endgame, so I started rushing through the remaining dungeons. I was surprised to see how easy Lavarre's Sunbreakers were, even with a Ring of Might on - their Star Flares were damaging for sure, but he could quickly cut them down before they got many of them off.
Fast forward to the Beam Trio. He prepped for this by getting the Ring of Lightspeed, which made the Mephistofar superior - 2 extra hits is better than one. ;) The other accessory was still a Ring of Might, ofc. He used the Escape Shift formation for them, and for every battle onward.
The Beam Trio were...easy! The Mithril Mesh blocked enough damage from their spells, Ashton's evade combined with all the evasion bonuses and an Illusion Doll blocked most of their beam and aura hits, and they themselves were exceptionally susceptible to his swords! Well then!
It was the same story for Michael and Haniel. For Lucifer he switched the Ring of Might over for a Silver Charm, the danger of a random Word of Death or his spells killing him were too great otherwise! He consumed some Refreshing Syrups, but still cut him down quickly, with little trouble.
For Gabriel, he combined his Mithril Mesh with a Neo Greaves. That handled everything except Light and Darkness, which were handled by the Silver Charm. His evasion faltered a bit against Divine Wave, but not enough, and with almost everything protected against, all he had to do was wear Gabriel down. And wear him down he did.
Ashton was a very powerful character. His special moves were situational, but they played their fair role, especially against the Guardian and regular mobs. His regular attack was quite fast, and the extra evasion on his weapons helped him avoid lots of nasty things. His best tool was his Gemini, that thing sliced right through so many enemies it was unbelievable! Missing some of the caster specific gear, particularly ones with absorbs, did hurt a bit, but not too much. Nor did swapping out an accessory for a Silver Charm hurt his damage too much.
Considering how smoothly his journey went, I have to wonder if perhaps I played Claude "wrong"; after all, on paper he has a lot of the similar advantages, though he gets his evade from shields, which probably translates to a worse result. Either way, that's just a thought for later. Ashton shall move on to Universe. See you all then!
Comments
Post a Comment