Celine Solo Run Part 4

 So far Celine's journey had been one of sheer perseverance and will, with little in the way of strength or power.

All of that was about to change. With one simple earring, she was finally ready to unleash her TRUE power.

She still had some glaring problems however. Her defense was fairly low, and her maneuverability was just average. This caused her untold problems in battles involving enemies that covered each other, and she was waylaid quite often by the encounters on the Centropolis-North City road. This road is honestly quite treacherous on Universe, and I have no clue why the developers made it roll encounters from a fairly distant dungeon, considering how this is meant to be the first overworld area on Energy Nede.

The Psynard was pretty simple, even with its beefed up stats and Celine's lackluster defenses. The Cave of Crimson Crystals was handled by taking as few fights as possible and trying to pick only advantageous fights, aka ones without flying stingrays.

The Arachnovias were actually quite troublesome for her, they were a hair too fast for her attacks, and often blocked her hits! Meanwhile, their HP draining aura wore her health down to dangerous amounts and they covered each other quite effectively, making this whole fight extremely frustrating. I was tempted to go grind out out Southern Cross, but then I remembered a tiny detail:

She did have usable ranged attacks, in the form of her starting three spells. What's more, the poisoning from the Stink Gel did apply to them. That turned the fight around and made it a lot more manageable, despite a few close calls. I'm actually kind of glad I figured that out, it was pleasantly surprising to get some more mileage out of her tools.

The Field of Might was pretty routine. On a whim, I played the Celebration Hymn for some of its fights, and discovered what Music levels did. This was its boost at level 1:

And this at level 2, boosted via a Rainbow Diamond:

Well that was certainly interesting! I would certainly consider leveling up Music more, though I didn't think she really needed the stats or its boost at the moment.

She made prodigious use of Ointment of Vedas here, those let her get away from the enemies comfortably and blast them apart with Southern Cross. This worked quite effectively, and for the first time in a while she could actually play like a wizard, even though she had to rely on consumable items to do it. I detested that even here, she had to heavily borrow Rena's skillset, but the results were tremendous, and who can argue with results?

The Guardian fight went swimmingly, as did the next Field, the one of Courage. I discovered that it had some blind spots in its final phase, and so Celine could safely bombard it with spells then. Well, that was definitely good to learn about, it would certainly be useful for any future spellcasters running this challenge. 

The Field of Wisdom was a snap, and the Field of Love was largely ran pas. Its encounters had little value to Celine, and would only be a rough slog. Lavarre was fairly simple, she always is once you figure out how to dodge both her Sunbreakers and her ground beams at the same time. Rather funny how I used to once consider her difficult!

There wasn't much to report till the Trio of Unholy Beams. I know how to handle melee centric opponents quite thoroughly by now; as long as the character outspeeds them, and doesn't mess up their attack timings, it's hard for such foes to seriously threaten them.

Well, nothing to do but grit my teeth and prepare for the Unholy Trio...

They certainly proved to be quite the exciting fight! Each one of them covered effectively for each other, and they did everything in their power to make her life difficult. So many times she would frantically rush into an apparent opening, only to be punished by Raphael teleporting in, or either of Zadkiel and Camael catching her in their beams. At one point she got Zadkiel down to his last few HP, only to be swallowed up by Raphael.

As bothersome as this fight may have been, I actually enjoyed it a lot. It was a good test of my movement and positioning skills, and constantly kept me engaged. I just wish some of their moves were less cheap, and that I could see more of the battlefield - not having vision on any one of the three often ended up being rather annoying and even deadly!

She eventually prevailed, and once she did, there wasn't any challenge left besides Gabriel. I already covered how trivial the Michael-Haniel duo and Lucifer were for Rena, and it was the same story here.

I enjoyed getting Celine into an impromptu spell off competition though! :D

The Gabriel fight played out similarly to how it did for Rena, with two notable exceptions - she could clear out Stone Rain's defense debuff with Neutralize, and clear out his Angel Feather with Curse. These two rarely see use because enemies rarely buff or debuff enough to use them, but this fight was certainly a big exception. Gabriel got close a few times, and she had a fair few silly deaths, but in the end, she prevailed.

Celine was a study of contrasts - her early game was rough, and she was consistently underpowered through most of Expel. The moment she got the Earring of Frenzy and Southern Cross, her fighting capabilities jumped dramatically. Spells unfortunately are a weak form of attack, but she was still able to get some good value out of hers. While she wasn't my favorite character to play, the higher skillcap and weak nature of her toolset did give me some valuable practice, and I enjoyed honing my skills. Further, it gave me confidence for future solo challenges, including the remaining two spellcasters, and in that sense these runs were definitely very valuable!

Coming up next: Ashton's solo run! We'll be back to fighter characters, woo! I personally can't wait! Until then, bye.

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