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canto 8 spoiler

He did it

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Canto 8 - 30 Boss Tips & Strategy

Been awhile huh? Sorry for never getting around to the guide for canto 7's boss. You know how it is, Got busy with something else and just didn't feel like refinishing the dungeon for footage to review.

Hopefully I can make up for it cause it seems like the canto 8-30 boss is giving people trouble, and people are once again complaining about unbreakable coins. I can't completely blame them, But hopefully I can alleviate the stress with some stuff I noticed and some strategies I came up with fighting the boss.

just in case of spoilers I will Refer to the boss of this stage as "TigerSlayer"

Skills & Clashing Priorities

Double Slash - Slash / Pride : & Triple Slash - Slash / Envy : Deal with these skill with your Faster sinners first. Preferably in the order of the double slashes, Then the triple slashes. Winning these clashes will reduce TigerSlayer's ammo count which will help with a skill later down the skill chain.

Blasting Shatter Slash - Slash / Gluttony : This will be the main skill you plan all your clashes around because of it's coins and effects. even though any sinner can clash with it regardless of speed, you want you slowest sinner to clash against it if you can. this is because you main want to avoid the burn and burn count it can forcibly inflict. just make sure Their ammo count is at least 1 or 0 when They use this skill.

Reloading Tiantui Star's Blade - Slash / Gloom : This skill isn't so bad. You either ignore it or you beat it like the other slash skills. The spookiest thing to me is the SP heal mechanic, Which this Boss already has a lot of.

Tangle Cleaver - Slash / Wrath : & Savage TigerSlayer's Perfected Flurry of Blades - Slash / Wrath: Allllllright. These 2 are the big one's people are complaining about. Well, mostly the Second one with the big ass name. If you have followed so far and minimized the burn and tremor afflicted against you, The best way to deal with this is to pick out the sinner with the least amount of both, doesn't have Prey inflicted on them, And use EGO to clash over it. you have to otherwise these skills will guaranteed kill or stagger your sinners. To reduce damage more, Every other sinner needs to use their defense skill. This will negate one of his passives that normally buffs his damage. The single coin skill shouldn't cause any problem. But once he starts using the multi coin one, That's the sign you need to try and wrap things up. After TigerSlayer uses either skill, they'll be inflicted with "Overheat" for the turn. this will reduce their clash power and inflict Fragile based on how many times they used either skill. suffice to say after They hit you with a big attack, that's your Cue to hit back even harder!

Prey Mark and You

The prey status is the more obvious gimmick of the fight, Aside from the ammo stuff. When a Sinner is inflicted, You have 3 separate actions for them. 1 is to wall up with a defense skill. The status effect itself will reduce damage taken if you do. 2 is to do unopposed attacks. This is tricky because Their Counter skill will force you into a clash, But can be dealt with by a Sinner faster then the one with prey. 3 is to just win the clashes with a EGO. If a Prey Sinner does win a clash you get a decent chunk of 3 free EGO resource, So you could conceivably use your cheapest EGO to clash against Triple Slash or Double Slash. Just be careful not to let them get staggered while they have Prey, Other wise your whole Party will be inflicted with clash power down next Turn and lose 10 sanity.

Bind

Another likely reason for Their Big Flurry blade attack killing sinners is another of Their passives. It gives TigerSlayer slash damage up based on Their speed. Since They gets a massive speed boost using the skill, It's guaranteed to max out Their damage. They use the skill on a fixed turn order or at certain Health thresholds, So you can counteract the damage boost by inflicting at least 3 bind, Which disables the passive completely. Those Thresholds are 80% HP, 60% HP, and 40% HP.

General Tips & Sinner Recommendations.

While you can pretty easily avoid being inflicted with too much burn in the early game, Tremor is pretty much impossible to avoid. But it's not much to worry about as long as you avoid your sinner getting inflicted by scorch, Or letting them get hit by Tremor Burst from Blasting Shatter Blast and Triple Slash.

If you have to let a sinner take a one-sided attack from the boss, Make sure it's Double slash, Since that only inflicts tremor and won't inflict tremor burst.

If I had to recommend any sinner to bring it would be Mersualt And/Or Ishmeal, since both of their egos are easy and FTP sources of Bind. N corp Mersault is also useful for his skill 2, which baseline inflicts enough Bind to cancel out the Damage passive. another good option is Red eyes Ryoshu, both ID and Ego.

Final Thoughts

This is definitely a fight that's harder at the end then it is the beginning, and I think that's my main problem with it. I get the idea that this is a Level 83 Character that is basically a Unstoppable force, and it's by a stroke of luck and miracles that we even match him, both in story and from the meta perspective of how the fight progresses. Every new phase we get to, is him deciding to stop holding back another 1 or 2 times. I Am a fan of unbreakable coins and skills that force me to use my full pool of sinners. But it can definitely be tiring to think I'm near the end of the fight, only for him use the same skill that killed my first half of sinners a few turns later, then again, then again.

I'm sad there wasn't a free opinion section in the survey that came out recently (though understandably that could be exploited for harassment), Because something I don't think I can express through it is the fights pacing. While I See people complain about the unbreakable coins, the real vibe I get is they're upset that they're near the end of the fight, but the boss isn't letting up. I think that if the boss used Flurry of blades first, then in the final phase kept spamming Tangle Cleaver, people might be more receptive? The point I'm trying to make is I think the start of the fight should easy, then ramp up into difficult, then ramp back down to before, or just a bit less. in the survey I listed the difficulty of the Start, Middle, and End as 2,2,4. I think I'd rather it be 2,4,2.

Any way I hope this Guidepost helps you out somewhat. If I feel it or people request it, I'll do more for the other final fights that are likely being overshadowed by Tiger's fight. I hope you have a good day, and that you enjoyed my Unsolicited Advice.

[headless-robot]

7-36 Abnormality Boss Guide & Tips

Hello again, I am doing a second run through of the last dungeon of canto 7 and will be recording my thoughts, tips, and making a little guide for the boss fights. Hopefully if you're having trouble with any of these, I hope this Unsolicited advice can maybe help you.

the two abno fights this dungeon were relatively easy compared to the Last Boss (which I Will try to write a guide on) leaving me with less to comment on them mechanically sadly. So I've decided to put them both into one post.

Lets Start with Hurting Teddy

"Expression of love" is the main Gimmick skill of the fight, and is pretty easy to deal with. when a sinner with more negative effects then the Teddy's "Faint Memories" stacks clash, they will use "A Sad Embrace" next turn. Just that skill next turn, then gets staggered.

If you want to speed-run the fight, you're going to want to let one of your sinners get stacked with as many status effects they can handle, then clash with this skill. Then you get what equates to two turns of free damage. That, or you can clash with all the other skills over the course of the fight to lower faint memories, which is honestly kinda easier to do.

"Clawing" and "Violent Clawing" are just some filler bread and butter skills. You should be try to be careful about who clashes with these, just so not everyone is stacked with attachment. Although maybe that would be better? When everyone has attachment it uses "And Old, Nostalgic Embrace" and only that skill. Even if it hits everyone it's really not that scary of a skill. If anything it kind of helps since you want some status effects on at least some of your sinners, and it does exactly that inflicting curse(if you don't break the first coin) and nails.

If you don't want it to use the big skill anyway, just let a sinner clash and get hit by it's counter skill. It'll drain the attachment from them and inflict them with curse and stuff.

This has a Event that I don't remember getting the first time, but I'll write down my result. You can either hug the teddy or not. I am not a monster so of course I give it free hugs, succeeding the lust check will heal your sinner's sanity by 30 and inflicts teddy with 1 perma clash power down.

the passive for it is written wrong I think, but when it hits the 30% HP threshold it will Both inflict all sinners with attachment, AND get 15 offense down. Don't know why it's written how it is right now. Probably to be left for a future bug fix down the road.

It has a passive that lowers it's own base power when your sinner is inflicted with 3 negative effects, stacking up to 3 times. It's called Please don't be sick. that is sad and adorable.

And that's the most I can think I can scrounge up on Hurting teddy. I like reading people's analysis and stuff on characters and abno's, but I'm not a huge Character analytic my self. I'm better with looking at mechanics. So going round a second time against teddy, I confirmed it's probably the easiest boss in the dungeon so far. But I do like how the mechanics try to show the Teddies personality that some people have pointed out. Despite the fact the bear "plays rough", it's not completely malicious. If a sinner too "hurt" with status effects, It tries to comfort them and wait's for them to heal before "playing again". very cute, but again, very easy boss fight.

Next up is The Rose Hunter

TBH I kinda F-ed up on my second go with this guy cause I also felt he was as easy as teddy, thinking "I won't even need to use ego with this guy, I'll just save all my resources for the final dungeon boss".

I made the fatal mistake of not accounting for unbreakable coins staggering a sinner before they could clash with one of his AOEs. I still beat him relatively easily, but uh, you should use ego here if you can.

Ok, so the Main Gimmick of this fight is one of your sinners getting "Lassoed" every turn. "Snaring Lasso" will inflict it's target with "Barbed Lasso" at the start of combat. This is kinda like those captured states some previous boss's had, but they can still act freely. They're just paired with a minion that will fix their speed to one as long as they're lassoed.

These minions do not have a lot of health, so the sinner lassoed can easily free themselves with almost any skill really. If you have more then once sinner lassoed, just make sure they're clashing with the lasso targeting them. Free them as soon as you can.

The most dangerous part of this fight is definitely the rupture it inflicts, and the free rupture your sinners are inflicted with in the dungeon event before the fight.

As mentioned this boss has skills with unbreakable coins, and a coin hitting will still trigger the rupture on your sinners. So as I will keep repeating (more for myself by this point), Watch your sinner's health bars and stagger points. If someone is about to be staggered, make sure they aren't clashing a big AOE skill.

Sadly, unlike the bleed effect stuff from the 7-34 fight, I can't really say there's a consistent way to lose your rupture count. "Spiked Whip" only inflicts potency, so if a sinner is gonna lose a clash, better to lose to that probably. "Whip Crack" isn't something you want to get hit with since it just refreshes and keeps your rupture count and potency up.

"Strangling crown of thorns" is also something you don't really want to get hit with since it deals sanity damage against your sinners (unless yknow, your running NClair or UmbrellaHeath) it's also harder to clash against if you took the Hemobar from the previous dungeon event, so don't take it unless you're using the new bloodfiend IDs and/or have ego to heal your sanity every fight. (I did take it with out using my sanity healing ego and that I think is what led to my big F up.)

"Withdraw Whip" and "Barbed Lasso" are it's two AOE skills with the unbreakable coins to look out for. W-Whip isn't a strong skill and can be dealt with any skill2/3, but if you're really scared of AOE damage you can use Ego.

It's better to use Ego on the B-Lasso. since it will inflict Rupture potency and count no matter what, it'll technically get stronger each use since it's coin power scales with its target's rupture potency. BTDubs, it was the unbreakable coin on B-lasso that staggered my sinner before they could clash W-Whip which then proceeded to kill 2 sinners. Remember, Check those Stagger Thresholds!

And that's about all I got on the Rose Hunter. Compared to Hurting Teddy, which felt like it was trying to use it's mechanics to get across it's "Character" and "Story", Rose Hunters Mechanics were trying to express "He's a dude on a horse, and he has a whip". The whip captures sinners, it slows sinners, it's kink-I mean spiky, so it inflicts pointy status effects and inflicts SP damage. The MD event included an apple the Rose Hunter was chasing, and I remember seeing people interpret how the Hunter was trying to make the apple follow the flow of the story. How that was representative the sinners following the flow of their story and what others expect of them, whether they have a say in the matter or not (Faust and Hong Lu being extra obvious, since they got the Ego). I guess you could say in this fight, you take the place of the apple, trying to fight the fate the Hunter and those at home have for you. Despite that it's still a pretty simple and straight forward fight.

Annnd there's no Camilla fight sooooo we wait till RR5 for that I guess, probably. maybe.

I don't mind the abnormality fights this dungeon being relatively easy, since it is story content and we want players unlucky with gacha or time to experience the story. they'll be harder in RR probably, though mostly cause they'll be higher level probably. Whats important is if they have interesting mechanics that gets across their "Character" and their "Central Gimmick". As I said i think Teddy gets across its kinda tragic character of a lonely toy that wants to play, but only knows how to play rough. The rose hunter just being a dude with a whip is a little uninspired I guess, but they do try their best to go "What can a boss with a Whip do to impose a challenge to the player".

I hope this post was enjoyable to read through and helped you in the fight at least somewhat. I hope to be back later and bring more Unsolicited advice to those who wish it be, if it were the flow of my story.

[headless-robot]

I find it really funny Gregor has gotten two 3 star id's based on characters in story that you would expect to have dedicated boss fights against them but don't.

[headless-robot]

Canto 7 Part 2 Boss Guide

Hi there, for personal fun i decided to try and write up some tip's and strategies I was coming up with while fighting new Boss. some might be obvious, maybe some are less obvious. I just hope some of these help players fight the fight on their own. so please enjoy this Unsolicited Advice

For personal context and bias I'm partially FTP, only bought the first two passes, cleared this fight thrice, definitely had to reset it deep into the fight a couple times and used a level 45 Ncorp team (except Nclair who was 48) and mostly have kept the initial on field sinners alive until the third phase.

Skills

The parasol lady will use the same set of skills almost every turn.

Her first important ones are the 2 different wrath skills that buff her allies. one will inflict offense level up on allies or 3 bleed potency on sinners. the other will inflict defense up or 3 bleed count. if you clash with one of these, clash the one offense level/ potency skill, since offense level makes clashing harder and getting inflicted with bleed potency is safer then count in this fight. Or if you're having trouble clashing early due to an under leveled team and lack of sanity, you can focus target the minion she's targeting to stagger them preventing an action for a turn.

Make sure your winning your clashes against her pride skill. it won't inflict bleed count if you do, but she'll still get thorns. unless you use a evade skill to not get hit. otherwise you can also not clash it at all and let it hit you. it's always going to give her thorns and depending on your sinner's resistances, you could just take the damage.

Her envy counter is a unique clashing one, like wild-hunt heath's. It will give her 5 thorns at combat start, but winning a clash against it will also remove the same amount. once you start focusing the parasol lady it's probably best to beat this first so you don't need to worry about more bleed on your sinners. however it gets harder when her festive fever stacks hit five, since it gets some extra clash power. by this point its almost better to ignore it if your sinners are already having difficulty clashing, or no one has extra bleed count to worry about.

Choose your clashes with sinners about to be staggered carefully, Skills with unbreakable coins still hit you if you win a clash against them and stagger you. but if you stagger them with your attack, they won't cause y'know, they're staggered.

Try winning at least one clash with the parasol lady once a turn to try and keep her sanity in check, or use an ego or skill that reduces her sanity every once in a while to keep it even, like don's Fluid sac, Ishmael's Capote, or Rodya's Rime Shank. If she doesn't take damage for a turn she'll get a stack of haste. this isn't too much trouble if you're hitting once a turn with a skill.

Status Effects

Something I think is important to explain is thorns. The parasol lady and the minions will get a buff called blooming thorn that inflicts whoever hits them with bleed equal to half it's stack, then reduces itself. This is not terrible to handle for "unavoidable damage". The real killer for me is watching out for sources of bleed count.

All minions the parasol lady summons have an effect on them called "Unstoppable Bliss". it has 4 effects, 2 we care about. Killing a enemy will give you free ego Resources. Hooray! BUT when a minion dies, they inflict the sinner that killed them with bleed count. This leads to a small puzzle of minimizing the damage your sinners take from unavoidable bleed count from killing enemies and the bleed inflicted by thorns.

The simple answer is to make sure your sinners with bleed count isn't attacking anything that has thorns applied, so they can run through their bleed count with harmless 1 damage ticks. This will ease and minimize how much you'll need to spam healing ego.

This gets more complicated by phase two of the fight when every minion start to get thorns for free every turn. the best i can suggest is to accept whatever damage you take. If a sinner without bleed count is faster, have them remove the thorns from a minion, then let another sinner clear their own bleed count. if your faster sinners are stuck with bleed count, aim them at who ever has the least thorns, or just use a defense skill to not attack. Assuming your not using sinners with counters at least...

Keep track of her Festive Fever and Imperfect Parade stacks. when she has max Fever she'll use a AOE that can be clashed, but the unbreakable coin will inflict bleed count and give her minions thorns. better to win this clash in my opinion if your clashing with her since the first coin gives her offense level up.

The more Festive fever she has also gives her more offense level. she will also heal sanity by it's total stacks. i personally think this is why it's important to reduce her sanity with clashing or ego, otherwise it's going to become more and more annoying to clash with her in later phases.

When imperfect parade reaches 5 she will use only one AOE skill. Beat this in a clash so she doesn't heal from the first two coins, and heals less from the unbreakable third coin. Keep in mind these skills don't have a lot of base or coin power, but gets clash power for blood feast consumed, so saving strong ego for these skills is recommended. the skill will also max her Fever stacks.

Every 5 imperfect parade stacks she consumes will also inflict Fragility, making it easier to burst her down in general.

Important to note that she will prioritize using her Parade stack skill over her Fever stack skill if both are full.

Phases and General Advice

So assuming you are not me and have actually leveled some sinners to 50 before this fight, the first phase won't be particularly hard to handle. Your general strategy is to kill the minions she summons, stripping her of protection. Then she staggers when she runs out of backup. afterward she'll continue summoning two minions at a time, and will stagger every time you kill them both.

Second phase might be a snag point, especially if you are like me and only have level 45 sinners on hand. This triggers at 66% HP, so around 1811 HP. clashing gets a lot more difficult as her thorn's buff changes to also giver her more offense level per stack. And a coin buff on any skill that consumes blood feast. And she inflicts more bleed in general. Oh, And now all her minions get free thorns every turn. Smashing. Otherwise second verse same as the first here.

Phase three is pretty much a count down. Not for immediate game over but for all on-field sinners. When she enters it at around 900~880 health, she'll use "The Finale". All unbreakable coins, inflicts 6 bleed count and potency, and if you don't win the clash it'll do big damage, obviously. If you do beat it the real killer again is that bleed count. Some of your sinners are very likely to die just from the count and combined potency from hitting anything with thorns, which her Minions are still getting for free.

Now it is possible to try and just kill the parasol lady before your whole team is fully wiped, but that depends heavily on your comp and general strategy. It might be for the best to set up and let most of your on-field sinners die to make way for your other ones on back up. Weaken some minions to clear them for next turn or soften the boss up some more. If you don't even have leveled back up, uh, grab your heal ego and pray i guess.

The good news is she will also lose sanity after she uses it equal to the blood feast she consumed. This will easily put her into the negatives making clashing a lot easier at least.

Jia Xichun is... here. Seeing how she's going to clash helps in that you can intercept it for her if you think she's going to lose it and let her do a one-sided attack. Other wise it's a 50/50 on if she's useful through the fight or not. depends if she wins early clashes to get her sanity up. As far as i can tell no support effects like healing or buffs seem to effect her what so ever.

I wanna keep this guide mostly free of team advice. but if I need to suggest anything, it would be an ego or sinners that have supportive healing. Since playing from the start of the game Faust's fluid sack or Mersault's Pursuance hasn't really failed me yet. i don't use it on Nclair but i do think Lantern is a decent choice in this fight for having extra targets for extra healing. Once you really learn the in's and out's mitigating the bleed damage, healing ego can extend your sinners on-field presence a lot more. even before you go into your back-up Sinners

After that the most consistent weakness across the boss seems to be Lust, gloom, maybe gluttony i think. physical types don't really matter other then a 0.8 pierce resist which didn't really me and my mostly pierce/blunt team.

The boss and minions have a sanity gauge so sinking isn't going to be a second rupture. but it will making clashing the boss a lot easier as her sanity gets lower. lowering sanity also inflicts her with defense level downs upping your damage overall.

But other then that this guide is really meant to be to help players who don't have access to better or meta ego or ID options or want to play using team comps of their own making. Not just bursting the boss with meta options. So i focused on mitigating damage and deciding your clashing options easier.

Some final thoughts

after clearing it a couple more times now, I had fun fighting this boss. but only after clearing it three times and REALLY sitting down to read the status effects and passives to understand what i was doing wrong on the first day. if your casually playing and don't understand why your one sinner is dying of bleed and bleed count is just appearing out of nowhere as the potency outpaces what your ego can heal, i can under stand why you'd be frustrated. this is a fight that isn't just about winning clashes, it demands your pay attention to your own sinners and decide who they need to or can attack first, then clash. very important distinction since I'm almost sure the bleed count and thorns will be the big hurdle for some players. it was for me. took me 4 tries on the first day, first 2 with my usual Ncorp team, then 2 with tremor. then i finally realized why Hong Lu kept getting bleed count despite winning his clashes. after that i swapped back to Ncorp to clear it properly. uhh if anyone is curious I do have footage of a clear with my n corp team, though i doubt it.

Anyway if you read through this whole mess of a list guide thing thank you very much. I hope you enjoyed my Unsolicited Advice.