I followed ur advice and won the fight. But there was something that surprised me during the fight. Dante dodged ALL attacks from the beginning til the end. Yes, ALL. Zero damage received. Is it a bug or something?
- May 13, 2018
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I think that's exactly what is supposed to happen, one of the items you equipped will negate all damage if a counter is activated iirc.
The Ant Shield gives "Evade & Counter" from Final Fantasy X, an infamously powerful ability that gives you a 100% chance to dodge physical attacks and counter them.
To nerf this slightly, Ant Shield itself doesn't give much (or any?) counter rate. Only once you reach 100% is it as powerful as Evade & Counter.
Yeah, I vaguely remember the strats to keeping Bessie and Ray alive with Ray's versatility kind of giving option overload, it was tricky to workout, but pretty rewarding-
That said, Bessie is probably the hardest to keep alive during late game fights, since, reasonably, she doesn't have the raw survivability of Dante with counters, and doesn't have Ray's ability for just...being able to spec into doing almost any kind of build to a decent degree-
She DOES still have her perks, but I mainly just used her for occasionally using potent poison effects, mark for death, and DELETING large groups of weaker enemies.
She has probably the most non-magical offensive diversity in hindsight, but more defensive options REALLY get out of hand when you know what you're doing. To the point that it's just easier to explain to new players or people struggling with those areas that you can just slap an item on Dante and give him the most effective form of attack against tanky and fast enemies in the game. (Which everyone is by the time you reach end game)
And just sit back and watch as Mr. Demigod evades and counters everything without being hit while everything that SHOULD instantly kill him, slowly dies because only a fraction of characters know how to cure zombie.
I will say though, the balance for this game DOES work well. (Aside from a few glitched items)
It's just the eternal struggle between optimized meta, difficulty, and fun/player choice.
You NEED those optimized builds for those optional fights because that's what they were balanced for.
But I think it's fairly clear to most people at least that you intended those fights for either die hard completionists or exploit nuts like me.
Also hey, it's been a while, still gotta check out how FWB2 is coming along.
As people already said-
It worked exactly as intended, glad I could help.
But yeah, that's why I say if someone is ever struggling on a challenge like this, it's a strategy issue rather than a level issue.
There ARE enemies in the game that are just meant to be absurdly fast and powerful because well...they're absurdly fast and powerful even in the context of the story. So the game reflects that.
The biggest drawback to this strat is that it's bottlenecked in the early and mid game by either not being able to get your counter chance very high, or not being able to get your counters per turn very high. (As equipment that boosts Dante's counters per turn is pretty rare up until late game)
Although...yeah I figured if you're already at the ultimate challenge, you're probably far enough into the game you already had the ability to complete the build by just moving some items around-
Like the dev said in another message though, there's a lot of other fun builds to mess around with, that are also effective for these fights, namely Ray has a lot of abilities that are built for keeping you alive in situations you frankly probably shouldn't be able to, but those are more in-depth and harder to explain with my rusty memory of the game mechanics, so I just default to explaining the evade/counter build.
Edit: Which you can also use on Bessie and Ray, it's just the most optimized if used on Dante, then spec Ray into being a better, more involved support by using spells efficiently and MP management to juggle keeping her and Bessie alive with buffs/passives/resists.
I know the dev is working on their game friends with benefits 2, but hopefully we get something with more monster girls later down the line cause being frank I like this devs work and style, can't wait what you bring out next Scarlett.
I mean...it's a bit different and not the main focus, but there IS some monster girls in Unveiling The Unknowns if you haven't played that yet.
I do kinda wish we'll get something...MG1K adjacent, even if it's not actually made with RPGMaker, or is shorter or smaller in scope, since I just love the way Scarlett implements their gameplay elements and a lot of the time the gameplay has a high ceiling to it and has a surprising amount of theory crafting involved.
I'm surprised how many times I've gone "I wonder if you can make a build like this", and it just works.
To elaborate on this, FFX's Evade & Counter only applies to physical attacks that are both evadeable and counterable. Monster Girl 1,000 has non-physical attacks be evadeable too, plus I can't remember any physical attacks that aren't evadeable. The Ant Shell Shield is thus vastly better than Evade & Counter aside from the flaw of needing counter rate from other sources.
That's true, but there's also a default counter limit of 1 in MG1k. Sure, it's one of the most powerful builds, but it is a late-game build that requires complete commitment.
Yup, it was my personal go-to, despite those drawbacks though. While more limited, you can get it online relatively quick somewhere in the mid-game, just not at full capacity for the counter limit.
I always liked it because once it's working, you can take on challenges that are WAY out of your league
It's kind of why I wish I had been here sooner to make suggestions, as probably the biggest misunderstanding that I see is people who forget that in the tutorial the game explicitly says that equipment is more important than overall level, and so when they get to the tougher optional challenges, their first thought is to throw themselves against a brick wall by trying to power level against the equivalent of puzzle bosses.
Aside from minor bug fixes, if I were to recommend something to your past self, it'd be to emphasize the importance of gear over levels more outside the tutorial.
As a lot of people still approach the game with the mindset of "make number go up to win", and a lot of the people that DO pay attention to their gear, don't necessarily realize that the "newest" gear, isn't always the "best" gear for a situation.
I think some of my most powerful builds were mainly just using synergies between early and mid game items or mid/late game items.
Still never fully figured out how to pull off 100% phys and magic evasion without the counter build on Ray though-
Might revisit that one when I got time, I still got an entire steam guide that I gotta finish since I got burnt out making it.