Even after numerous complete runs, I still struggled to make sense of that advice the Valsenian King gives to the group. That is the one given after coming back from Beuca island, about switching class before crossing into the land of the Beastmen.

What? Is there any way to switch to class three before that? Because well, about switching to class two, that is already done since long!

But reaching class three is entirely unneeded for beating these wolf pups called Beastmen: the King cannot be serious if he means switching to class three!
Anyway, on your very first run, it is impossible too: you can get your required switching item only after reaching the Sanctuary of Mana. And on any "straight normal" run, without farming experience by killing repeatedly the same monsters or using experience boosters, you do not reach the required level, 38, before the Sanctuary of Mana, again.

So, is there any way, without fleeing most monsters attacking you, to come back from Beuca island without having been able to switch to class two?

Actually yes! It appears there is an item named Rabite Slippers which allows just for that!

The King advice originates from the original game, in which the leveling rate is slower, causing the team to still be at class 1 after Beuca Island. It stayed in the remake "as is", even if it did no more make sense for the remake.

The rabite slippers are what one can imagine from their name: slippers shaped as a rabite.

They do not provide any armor, take up the slot of your accessory, but they have their little special effect:

Allows player to sneak up on enemies undetected

And they are an "orange" item: one that can be looted only on "No Future" difficulty. This one is looted on Anise, when defeating her for the first time of the run.

So, here come the challenge: can we beat the game with rabite slippers on all game long, never attacking monster not attacking us on their own? And more importantly, will that allow to make sense of the King's advice?

1. "No Future" difficulty. Rabite Slippers are an item looted only in a "No Future" run. So, it is only natural to use it in that mode.
   
2. Have your Rabite Slippers on at all time, on each of your characters. Yes, this means having at least three of them. So, you need to have done three complete "No Future" runs. Anyway that is a good training for what is to come.
   
3. No aggressive behavior toward these kind monsters which just mind their own business! Leave the local ecosystem intact. Better yet, avoid disturbing it: you should not run where that may trigger a regular inescapable fight unless there are no other way for progressing into the story. So, remember which treasure boxes are actually Mimics, avoid loots that triggers a fight with some monsters, and so on. Of course, bosses are here to die, they are free for all.
   
4. You may add on top of that the ban of combat experience bonuses. That means never ending a fight without having been wounded, not finishing a combat in less than thirty seconds, and not having any kill done with a class strike. That last one is tedious, especially when you do not switch off class strikes on your companions. And some bosses have charged moves that are hard or next to impossible to handle without breaking the break targets with class strikes (like Xan Bie). Anyway, I did not care about avoiding combat bonuses on my own challenge runs, at first.

Technically, it is not needed to have all three characters with Rabite Slippers to avoid triggering fights with most monsters. Only one of your characters needs them for that. But, we are here to do it with style, don't we?
Seriously, the idea is to have to fight with boss status effects enabled for all characters (by lack of mana rings or bracelets). That is part of the challenge.

If you have read the previous sections, you already know you have to complete three "No Future" runs beforehand.

You must have three Rabite Slippers pairs for equipping all of your characters with them. For that you must do three No Future complete runs, starting a New Game + from the previous run at each new run.

See some "No Future" guides for that part. There is quite a good one on GameFAQs, here[gamefaqs.gamespot.com]. But avoid "over leveling" as this can be sometime advised in these guides: that is not needed, and if you actually need it, that bodes ill for the challenge.

If you struggle with the Benevodons on those runs, know that it always felt to me they were getting way more powerful after each defeated one than what your characters get with the leveling earned from the boss fight and the monsters fights before reaching the next one. So, better fight the Benevodons in reverse order of difficulty: fight first the harder ones.

Keep in mind during those preparatory "No Future" runs to save for the challenge some useful items not available at Beiser's Night Market, like Bee Eyes (defense debuff), Batmo Eyes (magic def debuff), Shadow Eyes (all stats decrease), Tezla Oil (CS particle buff), Matango Oil (magic reflection), ... Consider saving the most useful class items too. Yes, you may need to burn some in combat, like Duran's Tags (excepted the almost useless Prince one), Riesz and Hawkeye mass buff or debuff class items, or the all debuff in one Ash Bottle from Charlotte.

So, you may consider farming for these items prior to the challenge if your inventory is low on them. Ten of each should be enough (even fewer for Matango Oil), but twenty can feel more confortable. They are not needed for all boss fights, but only for the hardest ones in this challenge. And Matango Oil is for abusing some mechanism, you may not want to do this.

You will fight without mana rings or bracelets: make sure to fill up your inventory with Medical Herbs, Stardust Herbs and Marmpoto Oil. Anyway, you should have enough money to buy everything at the Beiser's market: just do it. Claws are quite helpful too, and better have more options available than needed.

Ensure you have all "No Future" class 4 weapons. Item seeds looted in a "No Future" run have chances of yielding the class 4 ultimate weapons and armors in a "Not Future" orange version for your current character classes, with around double amount of stats of the regular version. That helps only against Anise and the Black Rabite, but better have them if you want to beat all Anise's timers while still being at the lowest character level possible.

Armor pieces stats are useless in No Future, so, there is no need to bother about having all the armor pieces. (But if you think about doing some other Expert run, these pieces could then be useful against Anise and the Black Rabite, notably for improving the survival capacity of your companions. Yes, you can loot them only in "No Future" difficulty, but you can use them in "Expert" difficulty afterward.)

If you have done already three "No Future" runs, you should know what works, and more importantly, what works for you.
(For example, the previously linked guide is from my viewpoint from someone having a taste for range combat. I favor close quarter combat, I do best by controlling directly a melee character while ordering the range ones to do their casts.)

Still, Riesz or Hawkeye looks to me as a mandatory pick, at least for a first challenge run: you will get to class three very late in the game. They are the only ones which have debuff spells at the class two level. So, only with them will you be able to have ability boosted debuff before fighting the last Benevodons (or the last two if you got many combat experience bonuses).
Of course, you are still free to try without any of them if you wish.

The characters you leave on the bench should be specialized with the most useful chain abilities they can provide to your selected team.
Forget about Cheat on Angela, go for Judge. Finishing Blow on Kevin does not look worth it to me, better go for Attack Help. Especially if you have Charlotte in your team: you will not have Miracle II. So, you can put Attack Help and Attack Help III (from Duran) on your main fighter character, start the fight with another one, switch to your main fighter as soon as he gets hit, and benefit from a huge 60% attack boost for the remaining of the fight.

Here I delve into a game mechanism which mastering is very helpful for the challenge. This game mechanism is maybe not identical depending on the platform, but at least, it works that way with the PC version of the game.

In Trial of Mana, all actions can be enqueued in a limited fashion. When your character is already performing an action, be it a weak attack, a strong one, a spell cast, an item use, you name it, you can order her or him a second action. That will not interrupt the first one, as a general rule. But as soon as the first one is finished, the second action will be initiated.

That mechanism is what can lock you into a combo, preventing you from dodging an attack. Dodge may interrupt some already started strong attacks of combos, depending on the character. (None of Kevin's strong attacks can be interrupted by a dodge. Hawkeye's two weak hits combo can be shortened by a dodge.)

While the first action is still ongoing, if you try to queue a third action, that third action will override the second one: at the end of the first action, the second action will be ignored and the third one will be started.

So, if your character is performing the second weak hit of a combo, and you order it a strong hit, she or he will engage the two weak-hit combo after finishing that second weak hit. With Kevin, that is a long one. If at the same time the boss starts a move you have to dodge, you are in trouble. In "No Future" difficulty, you can avoid your character death by immediately switching to another character. But are you certain that other one is in a safe spot? And still, depending on the abilities you are using on your controlled character, you may have to heal her or him up afterward, depleting your healing resources.

Provided the strong hit has not yet started, you may cancel it by overriding it with a weak hit. Why not directly by a dodge? Well, that one seems to have a special treatment, that was not working for me. You can alternatively choose to override the strong hit with a class strike. That is safer, but you may need to spare them for other phases of the fight. Still, weak hits being quite short in execution time, it is hard to override the already given strong attack order before it has started: better avoid queuing that order early. Delay it for launching it at the very end of the weak hits series.

It is more confortable to queue it early, guaranteeing your are chaining the hits as tightly as possible to maximize damage output, but that could be a bad habit when it comes to dodging. The other way is to know very well the boss timings, knowing when you can get in a long combo without risking being locked in it while having an attack to dodge.

That mechanism is handy at start of the fight too, when you want to get all buff and debuff applied: you can chain order your companions to apply two buff or debuff each from the very beginning of the fight prior to doing anything. And then go after the boss with your controlled character while the buff and debuff are on their way. (Unless your companions get knocked back: that will cancel their actions.)

This is also the mechanism which allows for chain locking a boss into class strikes. Some class strikes freeze the target enemy while they are ongoing. But your character is also locked in it, and you cannot switch to another character once the class strike has started.

There you can use the queuing mechanism and switch to another character before the class strike has started: your originally controlled character, even if configured with class strikes switched off, will start it after finishing her or his ongoing action, while your are controlling another character.

That works best with, as the first action, a long strong attack from a combo, like the two weak hits combo of Kevin or his four weak hits one. Order the class strike as soon as she or he has started the strong hit, and switch to another character. Repeat it with that other character, switching to the third one. There the boss is rendered helpless, eating class strikes in series, locked in each of them in succession without any interruption allowing it to evade, even for bosses with teleporting abilities.
(Ordering a class strike while using an item or casting a spell does not work for me.)

Depending on the duration of the lock of already launched class strikes, it should be possible to hit the boss with a full combo or even two, then initiate the next class strike with character switch. That is best for maximizing damage, while also restoring the class strike gauges.

Here is a video from ParaTelic's "Trials of Mana Advanced Combat" playlist illustrating the class strike chaining use of this queuing mechanism.

As soon as you get the control of your starting character and are out of fight, equip your best gear, included your Rabite Slippers.
(Depending on your starting character, you may have to do the tutorial fight before having the opportunity to switch your equipment.)

Now head to the Temple of Light. There is no fight to do until the Fullmetal Hugger boss, unless you attack by yourself some monster you will cross on your path. But that would fail the challenge. Beware of the second treasure box found with Duran, under a tree: nearing it triggers an inescapable fight with some rabites.

When you get your second character, equip her or him with her or his best gear, included the Rabite Slippers, again. Of course, do not forget to equip the Guiding Sword ability.

In the Cascade Cavern leading to the Temple of Light, do not go after the second treasure box found there: it would trigger a fight.

After the Temple of Light, go face the Fullmetal Hugger boss (weak to dark). En route, there is a treasure box with a sparkle nearby, and two undeads buried in between. If you go loot these, reach for the treasure box and the sparkle while staying as far as possible from the two undeads to avoid triggering the fight.

About Fullmetal Hugger, at this point of the challenge, well, there is no challenge in this fight, even if fighting with Angela and Charlotte, the weakest melee characters (second video). Most of your attack power comes from your stuff anyway when you are early in a new game +. And the early bosses attacks are simple to dodge. So, just get done with it, without wasting valuable items on it like a Duelist Tag.

Feel free to use some Demon Claws and Drake Scales and other consumable available at the Beiser's Night Market: you will be soon enough there to refill.

After getting your last character, again equip her or him, not forgetting to use Rabite Slippers too.

On the path to Stonesplit Gap, the left fork has a treasure box on a kind of peninsula in a lake: avoid trying to reach it, that triggers an inescapable fight.

Then likewise, get rid of the next two bosses, Machine Golems (weak to wind) and Jewel Eater (same weakness). They are still not more challenging than the first boss. The timer is no trouble either. But for these first three fights, better go without Miracle II for using some offensive ability instead: everything is easy enough to dodge. If you need Miracle II for them, you are likely not ready for the challenge.

Here too, the second video of each fight is done with Angela as the main fighting character. For my ninth Rabite Slippers run, I am checking if that is doable.


Now you are in for some long running, a bit boring, with some cut-scenes to change your mind, without anything to fight until reaching the very end of Gusthall. (Unless you go after the treasure chest under a tree next to the path between Valsena and Stonesplit Gap: three rabites will pop and trigger an inescapable fight. Avoid that box.)

At Gusthall, you will encounter your first real fight.

You will arrive at Harcypete with level 9 characters, maybe 10 for one of them at most, far from the 18 required to switch to class 2.

Harcypete attacks are easy to see coming and dodge, but they are frequent and tend to hit you even if you attack her in the back. So, you regularly find yourself having to wait for an attack opportunity window, which causes your overall damage output to suffer.

Moreover, she frequently flies a bit too high for you to hit her from the ground, forcing you into performing jump attacks, which are less efficient.

My damage output was too low to break her charged move most of the time: make sure to keep a class strike ready as a dodge for when she unleash it.

On top of that, she may put to sleep your companions. Have your status effect healing items ready.

For this fight, I still avoided using rare items, but consider them if you are in too much troubles.

She is weak to earth. Bring in the Molebear Claw, Basilic Fang and Gnome Icon. Instead of waiting when she does some of her moves forcing to stay back, use your highest INT character to throw some of these at her. You will not have any debuff move available on your character, you will have to use items for that too. But you can also spare them for later if your damage output is high enough without them.

For this fight, I switched to Miracle II on my first runs. I felt like I was needing to aggressively attack her despite the risk of taking a hit meant for another character, otherwise the timer would beat me. All bosses preceding the Benevodons have a ten minutes countdown timer which causes the whole team to collapse if it elapses.

As a consequence, I had to take numerous healing items. At least at that level, even candies fill up your health, allowing to re-enable Sturdy III if you are using it.

For my second run, I was more efficient on this fight. I was still not using def decrease items, I was using as my main controlled character Riesz which hits less hard than Kevin, and still was faster.

For my third run, having Angela, it was easier. Being a range attacker, even if left controlled by the computer, she was doing some good damage. To maximize her own spell damage capability, I had Converter and MP Boost II on her. Converter requires her to have health points to consume instead of mana. With Charlotte in the team to heal her, that was easy to ensure. But of course that also means fighting without Miracle II. Optimizing for raw damages with Beast Roar and Conflagration can still be more efficient thanks to items. Leaving Duran out of the team also give access to Attack Help III. Combined with Attack Help, both on Riesz, that means +60% Attack power when low in health. That, of course, helps a lot.

On my fourth run, being now well trained to fight without Miracle II, that was an easy and quick fight. I used all fangs excepted the Harpy Fangs with Angela equipped with Beast Roar and Guiding Sword. Kevin was having Attacker II and Attack Help III, and Charlotte was having Conflagration and Attacker.
Why this team by the way? Well, I consider doing at least six runs, one for each possible first character, using each character at most three times for these six runs. That way I will have played a good variety of teams and could then confidently state that any team is viable for this challenge. Since I will also do an "all guys" run in these six runs, considering the three teams I have already played, that left me with that fourth team, then Hawkeye + Charlotte + Angela, then Duran + Hawkeye + Kevin.



 
I am now adding some additional runs, first with all the characters fighting their class 4 fight alone, then with the others. Furthermore, I am adding video of the fights.

 

Comparatively, the next fight is way easier with a hard hitting character as Kevin. Zehnoa is a very static fight, you mostly just have to dodge its repelling move while hitting it as hard as you can. This is especially true if you have Duran as a companion to provoke the additional monsters of the fight.

Consider having your companions set to other ennemies: you do not really need their damage output on Zehnoa, and that will leave you with more space to dodge. Otherwise they may prevent you from dodging. You may even set them to "Exclusively protect": that way, they will not kill the ennemies they have on them, avoiding them to spawn back near you. And they will tend to stay at the opposite side from you, leaving you alone, which is really better on that fight.

Still, your characters will only be at level 12 (maybe 13 for the third one if you have beaten some previous bosses without taking damages), your damage output is a bit low and you have to be efficient in order to not have trouble with the timer. With Riesz as a fighter instead of Kevin, I got beaten by the timer on my first try and had to use Shadow Eyes to compensate for the lower damage output. (Another way could likely be to switch Miracle II out for Judge.)

Do not forget to bring in Poseidon Claws, Dragon Fangs and Undine Icons: you will need them to put out Zehnoa's fire. For my second run, I also used Ice Coins.

With my third team, without Duran and his Provoke ability, without Miracle II, without strong damaging abilities not requiring to be low in health, this fight suddenly surged to the top of the list of the hardest fights.

I have first attempted to beat it by having Attack Help and Attack Help III on Riesz, starting to fight with Angela until Riesz got hurt, then switching to her. It repeatedly failed due to how unforgiving it is to be focused by the additional monsters: they come in your back while you are hitting the door, leaving you next to no time to dodge them, or causing you to dodge into a trap. Especially the little flying demon is treacherous, because it flies high and can even be out of sight when attacking your character while you are next to Zehnoa. A 1 health point character can only die of any of their hits.

So, I ended up switching to the lesser damaging abilities I had: Beast Roar and Personal Style. With these, I did not have to fight with a low health Riesz and could keep her at full health, being able to sustain some hits of the additional monsters instead of dying of everything. Her damage output was almost half of the previous one. Thankfully Angela spells were compensating it, allowing to still beat the timer, with also the use of Shadow Eyes and Ash Bottles. I had MP Boost II and Conflagration on her and used Sahagin Chips. But it remains quite hard. Not having a character with Provoke for diverting the additional monsters, means having way more dodges to do and losing time getting rid of the monsters focusing your controlled character. Sometime you can still hit Zehnoa while hitting the additional monsters, but that is not always the case.
I had to keep two Poseidon Claws for the last half of the fight, because Zehnoa starts to cast Disolving Wave if its fire is not put down, and that spell has a huge area of effect. I could "dodge" it only by switching characters, which is quite unsafe due to your other companions being frequently standing on traps or about to get hit by some monster.

On my fourth run, with Kevin hitting so much harder and being more trained to play without Miracle II, I did that fight while controlling Kevin having only one health point. I did not use debuffing items with that team. Same with the fifth, but with Hawkeye boosted by Attacker II and Attack Help III and Angela with Conflagratidon and Beast Roar.

The fight against Bil & Ben is harder than the previous one, when fighting both fights with Miracle II. Set your companions to use class strikes at will and target other enemy. Between each try, if your class strike gauges are not yet full, go back to Zehnoa room to refill for 120%, and save again before going to the fight.

They move quite a bit, and when hitting them in close quarter combat, their back-jump then shuriken throw can easily catch you and kill you despite Miracle II. Being straight in their back when they do that almost guarantees you will get hit by the three shuriken they throw. You will have it easier to dodge that if you are attacking them from the side when they do their back-jump.

You will be level 14 at this fight. Consider burning some Ash Bottles or Dragoon Bands to keep them debuffed.

Their Jutsus moves can debuff you if you fail to dodge them but still survive it. Avoid that since you will be very limited in buff sources, and the timer does not leave you with much margin for finishing that fight.

Of course with my third team, without Miracle II, it was harder. But it was not as hard as Zehnoa for that team. There is less to dodge, and it remains manageable to dodge it all. There is no non-fatal hit anyway, so, it works as well to go with Attack Help and Attack Help III for a 60% attack buff once the character is wounded, controlling another one while waiting for this to happen. With this setup, I set the Attack Help character to not use class strikes in order to avoid having her or him burn them while waiting for the wound.

Without Miracle II in this fight, healing items excepted Cups of Wishes are needless. You may use their slots for others items like Lumina and Shade Icons, or Arcana and Omen Books, or more buff and debuff items.

With a caster, beware of a recurring bug present in this fight and some others: sometime there is like some invisible obstacle causing your spells to blow at it before reaching their target. That is quite infuriating to burn the mana on that bug while we are quite low on damage output and beating the timer is not guaranteed. If that happens, ensure the line of sight between the caster and the target changes enough to no more go through where the invisible obstacle seems to be.

(That bug can also affect class strikes, especially those locking their target. That is usually not an issue in this fight. Excepted sometimes your class strike may go in an unexpected direction likely due to this, but that is infrequent with class 1 strikes.)

Even for my fourth run, I used debuffing items like Shadow Eyes and Dragoon Bands. It is easy to miss a dodge, so, I preferred shortening the fight as much as possible. For my fifth run, I did not use debuffing items, but had Broken Lines III on Charlotte. It procs seldomly, but enough to still be quite some help.

For my sixth run, I did not use debuffing items and was not having Broken Lines due to having Kevin in the team. But fighting mainly with Duran's quick combos, making it easier to dodge, that was ok. On that run, I choose to leave Charlotte from the previous run as a Necromancer in order to have Mighty III instead of Miracle 2.

After winning the fight, you may go back to Zehnoa room before finishing Laurent Castle, in order to refill your gauges on the class strike particles urns there.

After defeating Bil & Ben, your characters should be only at level 15, unless you got too much fight bonuses.

On the ghost ship, you will encounter your first unavoidable fight against regular monsters. Deactivate class strikes on your companions. This fight is a good opportunity to refill your class strike gauges before the Gova fight.

It happens right after Faerie telling you it seems there is some spirit on the ship. After that, do not attempt to enter any shop of the ship, because it would trigger an inescapable fight. Avoid attempting treasure boxes which are right in the middle of a room: they are Mimics. The first one is near the item shop, next to a room with a treasure box nearer to a wall. The next one is in the room with the Death Diary, opposite to the weapon shop. If you trigger one, and dodge back fast, you can still avoid the fight.

If unsure, have a look at the note telling which books have to be shelved in order to get access to the ship log, and shelve only them (Blood Book, Death Diary, Curse Column, Twilight Tome). For one of these required book, reaching it is likely to trigger an inescapable fight. That is the one in a room with a class strike particles breakable urn. You can avoid triggering that fight by sticking to the wall for reaching the book. Near to that, you could go loot some treasure chest: avoid it, it will spawn some monsters that can not be walked by without triggering the fight.

Now you have to choose which character to leave as a ghost. I choose to keep my main fighter, obviously, and my "will be main debuffer".

On the way to Gova, you will cross another Mimic chest, in a room on the far right as you enter it.

Right before reaching Gova, you have the choice between two sleeping rooms. To save here, sleep in the left one. The other one triggers a fight. Or use the grey Goddess of Mana statue nearby, if your characters are low in health and you do not want them healed due to the abilities you use.

Before sleeping/saving, prepare your inventory. Consider Parpoto Claws, Knight Tags, Brisingamen, Dragoon Bands, Bee Eyes, Shadow Eyes, Drake Scales, Ash Bottles. Fill the remaining slots with healing items or Light damage ones. Set your companion to use class strikes.

You may also consider only saving at the silver statue to avoid being healed, if you use abilities like Attack Help or Conflagration.

Gova moves are not easy to dodge. Its whirlwind is particularly deadly. With the monsters fight mandatory to reach here, your characters may be at level 16 or only 15.

Engage the fight by ordering your companion to buff all with Brisingamen then Knight tag. Run toward Gova. It may do its hands attack, just run dodge through it. Provided you are not already at him, that is enough to avoid it. At this point the first buff should be already applied and second coming: order your companion to debuff the defense of Gova with whatever you want. Start attacking it with regular attacks, and switch to class strikes as soon as the debuff lands. Beware of not launching it when you "feel" Gova is about to teleport away. You may need some training for that.

Your companion may have been interrupted by a Gova attack before having done your orders: be on the lookout for that in order to re-issue the missing buffing/debuffing orders when that happens. Otherwise she or he will start burning class strikes without benefiting of all the buff and debuff.

All Gova's moves hit characters nearby its target, so avoid fighting next to your companion, or be ready to dodge more.

The hands attack landing point can be controlled. When Gova starts this attack, it considers the current moving direction of its target (you or your companion). It will then make appears some "portal" marks on the floor where its target should soon arrive. And little time after that, its hands surges out from there.

So, if you are the target, the trick is to have a moving direction then change it at once when the marks on the floor appear. (Dodging through the marks only works when running at full speed and not having any obstacle on the way, which will be unlikely when fighting in close quarter combat.)

Silence is easier to dodge from afar. Run perpendicularly to the red area of effect and dodge in that direction at the last moment before the spell being sent away. Gova does turn ninety degrees on its left before launching it. If your are facing him there, that actually means your are safe from it, that is your companion the target.

A good alternative is to use your companion as a shield. It works great with silence, provided she or he does not dodge it.

Gova has a couple of spell casts like Dark Force or Dark Rain which are easy enough to dodge. But they may prevent you from attacking it for a time if they land near Gova, be it you or your companion the target.

With Whirlwind, Gova always first goes to its right. So, it is tempting to stay on its left. If your companion is the target, that is usually fine, Gova tends to finish its move far from its starting point if its target is not on its left when it initiated that move. But, if you are the target, Gova will perform a very sharp turn to come back at you, and unless you are ready for this, dodging fast toward where Gova was at start of the move as soon as it is gone, you will have next to no chance of dodging it.

So, you may favor fighting on its right side. The Whirlwind has a lot of warning before coming, you have enough time to react. When Gova initiates it, immediately move to its left side or behind and step back a bit, and you should be fine.

But if you feel like you are short on damage output and need to lose less time running, then better fight on its left side for having Gova finishing nearer to you. That is more dangerous, but it allows to hit Gova a bit more.

Depending on your damage output, the first Ghost leader happens between 1 minute of fight or 2 minutes. So, you may consider reapplying buff/debuff before or after, but do no more use class items which buff everyone for that. You need to spare at least one of each of them for later in this fight.

During Ghost Leader, go for the break but be careful not to get touched by any ghost. You need to preserve your healing resources as much as possible, especially if you are using Sturdy III, since at that point, the lowest healing resource may be not enough anymore to re-enable it.

The basic trick is to wait for the ghosts to have went past you then run after the break target, and repeat at the next wave. Sometime you may have your companion clean out some ghost for you, allowing you to attack the target more freely.

You should be able to remove more than a third of the break target life gauge at each Ghost Leader event. Then resume the regular fight.

At the third Ghost Leader, you should then be able to break it. So, before that last one, you should have refreshed the debuff on Gova, and you should use your companion to reapply the buff all Brisingamen and Knight Tag during the Ghost Leader or just before.

That way, you will maximise your damage on the broken Gova. If you were efficient enough during the fight, you should then be able to finish him before the timer runs out.

With Angela in the team, you should be able to break Gova at the second Ghost Leader. That is not useful: better keep your mana for Gova. Angela spells help a lot to make this fight shorter.

On my fifth run, continuing to have my inventory lower and lower on buffing and debuffing items, I only used Ash Bottles, Drake Scales, Parpoto Claws and Sahagin Chips. I also used Hand Axes with Hawkeye during Ghost Leader while controlling Angela, whose combos are more effective against the break target than Hawkeye's. It allowed me to break it at the second Ghost Leader, while still having buffing and debuffing items. Furthermore I used Arcana Books once having broken Gova.

On my sixth run, using Duran which hits quite fast, I did not use any debuffing items, but only Parporto Claws and Drake Scales, along with some throw items and magic ones (but not Arcana Books), that I used with Hawkeye. I had Attacker II and Judge on Duran, and Attacker and Guiding Sword on Hawkeye.

Now that you have defeated Gova, your characters happen to be only at level 17 or even 16 or 15 for the ghosted one.

There is no mandatory monster fight on the way from the Ghost Ship to Valsena. Just take care of not going after that sparkle in the Beuca island cavern (Seaside Cavern III on the map, right after the treasure chest with an accessory in it) which will trigger a fight if you attempt to take it. And a bit later after the pack of sleeping Parpotos with a regular treasure box above them, there is as Mimic box.

So, you will arrive at the King's place without having been able to switch class. Now his advice makes sense, at last!

Head next to Altena. Or, you may choose to go to Fiery Gorge first for an extra challenge if you wish. The boss there will have three more levels than the one in Altena.

Get ready for another tough fight: the three Iron Golems from Altena. Maybe even the hardest one. Your characters are still at best at level 17 at this point in the challenge if going there before Fiery Gorge, and at worst, at level 15. Even if fought after the second encounter with Bil & Ben, if you have not upgraded to class 2, it stays very hard.

The Golems are weak to wind, have some Siren Claws ready in your inventory, maybe with Harpy Fangs and Sylphid Icons. You will also need status effect healing items, including Marmpoto Oil since your companions are likely to get petrified together. Have Shadow Eyes and Ash Bottles ready for this fight, or even better, Dragoon Bands and best, Dusk Dices.

Most of the moves of these golems are multi-hit: they will kill you even with Miracle II. There is two moves which are single hit, but they are easy to dodge. Excepted the start of a Grumpkin throw which can be tricky: even if you are out of its expected landing area, if you are attacking in close quarter combat the golem about to launch it, it will likely blow out at your face. So, stay away from a golem casting this.

As a result, there is not much point into equipping Miracle II for this fight: better favor an offensive ability. Judge works well with Sturdy III, for example.

Set your companions to use class strikes and target range or other ennemies. Most enemy moves have a wide area of effect, you do not want to have your companions fighting near you. Otherwise you will spend too much time dodging the enemies moves. The Range target works better for having your companions as far as possible from you than the Other target, but they also tend more to get petrified together with this target.

Start by taking down the golem shields with charged attacks. You will need two of them per golem. Then use your companions to buff you and debuff your target golem, then the middle one once near enough. I favor fighting first the left most golem. With Duran away provoking them, it tends to move from time to time and somewhat regroup with the middle one. At that point you can manage to hit both with your attacks. Consider having them magically debuffed too and order your highest INT companion to throw Claws and Icons at them, hitting them both. Shadow Eye or Ash Bottle are best as a debuff item in this fight, since they apply def down and magic def down at once (with other debuff which are useless in a "No Future" run.) But if you only use physical attacks, then Dragoon Bands are better and Dusk Dices, doing also wind damage, are best.

Once the first golem is down, you can attack the middle one. After it, the fight changes a bit since all characters will be attacking the same golem: you need to stay back when a wide area spell is cast if the target is near the golem.

Once the fight is over, you will be able to switch to class 2 for two of your characters. If you want to keep the possibility of testing later to which point the King advice is sound, save your game before switching class and save to a new slot after that.

This fight involves a lot of randomness. You may get out of status effect healing items due to having companions too frequently petrified. Having to heal them with your controlled character is very challenging because you have to find a time window without anything to dodge from the three golems, focused on you since your companions are petrified. And Marmpoto Oil is quite long to use...

Casts like Stone Cloud and Dark Force + are very hard to dodge if you wait to see the red area of effect: you need to keep an eye on all three Golems to check who they target when initiating a cast, and react in advance if that is your controlled character. You need to heal your companions fast when petrified, with the other companion before he gets petrified too. Especially when you rely on Duran for taking most of the attacks, he will get petrified a lot and then become useless for reducing the focus on you.
Sometimes even with Duran's Provoke, two Golems are focusing your controlled character for long periods of time, preventing you from attacking. To the point of causing you to run out of time.
And the fighting area is a quite narrow circle. I ended up frequently prevented from dodging by the edge of it.

Despite the final time remaining, I really had a harder time beating them on my second run (Riesz, Hawkeye and Duran team). It was looking as if the more I tried, the more the randomness of the fight was against me. I beat them on my first try of the day after numerous attempts the previous days. That successful attempt was with an incredibly low amount of petrify on my companions, low focus on my controlled character, fast and perfect regrouping of two Golems allowing me to kill them almost simultaneously, ...

My third team, without Duran to provoke them, with an Angela still too low in mana to be my main attacker, also had a hard time beating them, but not so hard than my second team. Angela spells help to shorten the fight, and I could use one less item slot for status effect healing items thanks to Charlotte Twinkle Rain spell. Of course, I still had to keep two slots for them for de-petrifying Charlotte with Medical Herbs and Stardust Herbs.

The fight was likewise with my fourth team. Not really easier than with the third, but a bit shorter thanks to Kevin strong damage output and the added levels of having fought Bil & Ben before. (Despite having forgotten to fight on night...) For my fifth team, I only used Ash Bottles as a debuffing item, and only Darke Scales, Siren Claws and Sahagin Chips. I had to optimize better the time to use them, in order to be able to hit two Golems at the same time while buffed.



Thanks Angela for still cheering up despite petrified! (From the 12' of the video, 5' left of boss timer, cheering at 12'46, 13'40 and 14'54.)

If you have switched to class 2, the remaining fights preceding the Benevodons are quite easier.

There are very few novelties in the second fight against Bil & Ben. Their Jutsus moves just tend to be more muti-targets than in the first fight, their poison dagger move seem a bit more dangerous, and that is it. Your characters level will be 19 for two of them and 17 or 18 for the last one.

With two characters switched to class two, the fight will be a lot easier than your first fight against them, even more if that includes your debuffing character.

But if you attempt without having switched to class 2, that will be another story. I got beaten by the timer trying that with my first run team, all my characters just fainted. It was not looking utterly hopeless, but still, I have not insisted. I have tried that after finishing my first run. It is better to try it right after the Iron Golems fight or even before, in order to be still used to fighting only with class 1 moves.

On my fourth run, I did go straight to them after seeing the King, instead of going to Altena. And I did beat them with still some timer left


On my seventh run, having a quite powerful team, I decided to disregard the King's advice once more: I stayed at class 1 one instead of switching.

Most Ludgar's moves are easy to dodge in the first half of the fight, including its Suzaku Aerial move: just keep running straight and dodge before he lands, and you should be alright. Sometimes he slightly croushes, turns at the last moment toward its target and then dashes to it while hitting multiple times: I am unable to dodge reliably this one excepted with a class strike or by switching characters. So, keep class strikes for this or be ready to switch character real fast.

Or have Duran with Provoke taking most of the heat for you.

He gets faster at some point half way in the fight and his Suzaku Aerial is harder to dodge, along with some of his other attacks. There you may need to heal back if you have Miracle II and got hit, or switch characters before getting hit, or use a class strike as a dodge. He is not doing these kind of move so often (especially with your other characters interrupting him with level one class strikes) and he is not very long to get down, at least with class 2 characters. Their levels will range from 19 to 21 in this fight.

But beware, if he has a Moon Saber up and inflicts your controlled character big damages, Ludgar can get fully healed in one blow. That is the especially case with his Suzaku Aerial move: better not fail dodging that one in such case, or have Miracle II up or switch character for trimming down the damage it inflicts. You may also take some Specter Eyes to remove the buff from Ludgar.


With my third team without Miracle II and no Provoke, no Enigma on my controlled character, that fight was a bit challenging due to being able to fail a dodge only three time. You have to dodge a lot less than against Bil & Ben, but the second half of the fight dodges are harder to perform. So, arrange for maximizing your damage output for the second half, by keeping your consumable best buff and debuff for that second half, and spare the mana of your caster until the second half of the fight if you have damaging spell to use.

On my fourth run, I did the fight while still at class 1. So, the King's advice can be disregarded. But the fight is very hard done that way, unless you have Duran with Provoke, which was not the case. You have to pummel him intensely to cause him to get frequently interrupted, allowing to hit him even more instead of dodging. At the second half, once Ludgar enraged, I ordered Angela to spam all four fangs while under the effect of a Sahagin Chip, with Ludgar debuffed by a Shadow Eye. I was still controlling Kevin, but I attacked a lot less aggressively, prioritizing safety.



For my seventh run, I did it again at class 1, but with Duran provoking him away from Kevin I was controlling, that was not very hard.

The usual tactic of standing on Grapplavine's right side, using class strikes as dodges for the Poison Bubble or other things that may target you from time to time, just works as usual, if you have Enigma or Provoke available. Otherwise it works but it is more tedious, being quite frequently targeted. Grapplavine has a very high cast rate. About the seeds, I found it more efficient to destroy the middle one, rather than using a class strike as a dodge. You usually also hit the head at the same time.

You can set your companions to range ennemies if you want to minimize the risk of having them fighting near you. They may get put to sleep, wake them up with some Medical Herb or leave them waiting for a waking blow, which may sometimes be long to come. There is no need to remove the poison from them: even if you switch to a poisoned one at some point in the fight, that will not kill her or him. The level of your characters will be between 21 and 23.

Jet blast leave you with a very short notice to dodge it if you are fighting next to Grapplavine's body. Better back up a bit and hit the head instead when lowered, when it throw that. That will leave you with slightly more time to dodge it. When Leaf Spine is cast, better keep moving for dodging it.

On my fourth run, I had still not switched to class 2. That just caused the fight to take longer.


 
After this fight, you are ready to open the portal to the Sanctuary of Mana. You will have characters ranging from level 24 to 25. That is not so low, considering the normal level when reaching the Sanctuary is around 38.

After the Sanctuary of Mana, you have to lose the Sword of Mana at Ferolia's castle or Altena's one, or at the Nevarl fortress.

Beware of some places there spawning inescapable fights.

At Ferolia's castle, right after the entrance, go to the opposite wall, follow it to enter the first corridor on the right with a barrier preventing to go through it. Then step to reach the exit with the star marker: monsters will spawn but dodge forward to exit their fighting area before the fight actually begins and become inescapable. After the gold Mana statue, in the room with four tables in it, stick to the wall again to avoid triggering a fight.

In the Nevarl fortress, avoid the room at the left right after the fortress entrance on the first floor, same for the second room on the right, and avoid the corridor on the right of the second floor.

At Altena's castle, the monsters pack right after the magical barrier triggers an inescapable fight if you run straight through them. But you can avoid that fight by sneaking on the left, from one corner to the other, jumping above bushes and dodging forward in fast succession. Then from that corner, dodge your way to the door. It is tedious and it required a few tries for me. I am not sure if it changed anything but I have done that when the monsters were looking as opposite to me as possible. Some of them turn to you when jumping above the bushes, wait for them to reset back to their original stance before attempting sneaking out of the corner through the next door. But they may not reset, and when that happened, it did not prevent me to go past that pack. It seemed to me easier to it with nimbler characters like Hawkeye or a girl rather than with Duran or Kevin.

Once the sword is lost, it is time to go fight the Benevodons.

The countdown timer is raised to fifteen minutes for the Benevedons. Depending on team, the Benevodon and the order in which you fight them, that can prove useful.

All Benevodon fights should be started with full class strike gauges. It is easy to do: you have four CS particle urns easily reachable with Flammie, at the entrance of Fiery Gorge or at the Moon Tower bottom. Getting out of the area and coming back respawn them.

Take some time to choose in which order you will fight the Benevodons. The same Benevodon will be harder and harder the more other Benevodons have been defeated.

Personally, I went brainless and just did my usual order. That was fine at first. But that meant encountering Land Umber as my fourth fight. It was feeling too late. Land Umber is a hard one because it has a very short time window during which you can damage it, surrounded by fights with its fists. In this challenge, being quite low on damage output, that causes this Benevodon to raise to the top of the list among hardest Benevodon.

So, better fight it among the very first fights.

Then another one was quite difficult for a full melee team: Lightgazer. It jumps around so much, while frequently being dangerous to characters near it, that it is hard to have a good damage output on it. I dit it as the fifth fight on my first run. I am not sure I would have been able to beat it later. For range characters, unless doing it last, your characters will only be at class 2 and may have too much mana issues for sustaining the fight unless doing it quite soon. For my second run, i fought it third, and with that team, that was still considerably hard.

It is likely that I would fight the Benevodons in the following order for new runs:

I am fighting Xan Bie as my first Benevodon since long and I wondered if it is so difficult when fought later. Some walkthroughs consider it to be the hardest but it is not really hard as a first fight. So, I considered fighting it later. I have checked on my second run, fighting it just as the second fight. It took me eleven days...

Anyway, nothing really changes with a low damage output team. At least with mine, I was able to break the altars before it switches mode (no more as a second fight but not by long), and I was able to break them when Xan Bie was charging its move too (same as a second fight). Both companions were set to not use their class strikes, attack other enemy, in order to just have to switch to them and trigger their level 2 class strike on the next altar, during Xan Bie charged move.

Consider fighting with a character not haunted by faerie: Xan Bie's Heat Beam always targets at least that one, excepted when it is in rotating mode. Furthermore, its three target beams are then easier to see coming: Xan Bie will look at your controlled character when readying to beam them, instead of looking at the faerie haunted one. Be prepared to get out of their path when this occurs.

At the fight opening, starts by applying an adequate saber on your controlled character, magic debuff Xan Bie if you have Angela (if you use Hawkeye as a debuffer, it will not work: Xan Bie is immune to wind and fire), attack buff your controlled character, all that by chaining orders to your companions. Run to leftmost altar. (Xan Bie tend to be too near the rightmost one at the start of the fight.) Destroy it with a level 2 class strike. Order a companion to buff you with Tezla Oil or Gold Aura (CS particle boost, optional though). Run to the middle altar and destroy it, ideally without using a class strike. It may help to use a companion at the same time to throw Undine Icon or Dragon Fang at Xan Bie at the same time, which I was doing on my first run. Then run to the last altar and use a class strike on it. Xan Bie may be too near from it to safely attack it otherwise. Arrange for having Xan Bie def debuffed for your strikes on it after the last altar.

The timing is key against Xan Bie. Xan Bie cast spells like a clockwork and you need to have them cast on time for breaking them by destroying an altar or for them to land behind you while running to another altar. At the altar's respawn, better wait away of them for the Lava Wave Xan Bie always cast first after respawning them, because it does that too fast for having time to break one. Otherwise the lava area prevents you from keeping attacking your first targeted altar. Another consequence of the stringent timing constraint is, it considerably complicates the beginning of the fight if you use Attack Help on your main fighter and need to wait for her or him to get low health before controlling her or him. In such case, you may consider disturbing some monsters nearby first, to get wounded then escape these monsters fight without killing any of them.

Refill your CS gauge on Xan Bie while in whirlwind mode. When it switches out of whirlwind mode, you can use class strikes again on altars if they are back, on Xan Bie otherwise, and refill. Get cautious you stay able of having all class 2 strikes ready for Gigantaburn once Xan Bie nears or is below half of its life.

Having Angela in the team, even if she does not have enough mana for the whole fight within this challenge, still helps a lot. Use her spells mainly on Xan Bie out of its whirlwind mode with Enfeeble on it, secondarily on the altars when late on destroying them, be it for breaking a cast or avoiding having them up for long in whirlwind mode.

My sixth team, all guys, does not look like performing very well. But I am fighting with Duran mainly, for a change, having already fought a lot with Kevin. That is quite suboptimal since having switched to class 2: it prevents me from having on the main fighter not only the best abilities but also the boost from Attack Saber. Moreover on Xan Bie, Hawkeye is unable to debuff with his spells.


  
My seventh team is quite efficient against Xan Bie despite not having a debuffer and not even using items to spare them for weaker teams. But that is also the first fight for that team in which I was not able of avoiding fight bonuses: I am unable to get through Gigantaburn without using class strike to breaks the altars, which then count as class strike kills, +1% experience per alter. Breaking them without class 2 strike is too slow (and dangerous). Letting Gigantaburn occur while surviving is doable, by timing class strike with Gigantaburn ticks adequately to dodge them all. But then, Xan Bie might be in Whirlwind mode with three altars up, which is hard to survive too. Furthermore, it tends to cast a new Gigantaburn fairly quick when the previous one has not been broken. So, it was looking hopeless to try getting through that without class strike kills.
On the contrary, my eighth team had a hard time against Xan Bie, being a bit weak.

Land Umber is weak to fire and wind. Take the corresponding claws if you do not have a character with saber moves. Land Umber may petrify your companions, take status effect healing items.

Set your companions to not use class strikes, at least for the first tries. You need to check if your controlled character class strikes will be enough to break Land Umber charged move, or if you will need the help of your companions class strikes for that. Set them to same target.

If your are not limited in your buffing abilities, at the start of the fight, immediately order your companions to apply buff, and debuff on the left hand: def down, attack up, saber. Otherwise just apply def down. Go jump strike its left hand at most twice, then wait for it to punch down someone in the land, dodging it if your are the target. If you were the target or are near of its target, get away, an Earthquake is coming and you need to dodge it. Then class strike it (level 2). You may use the class strike directly to dodge the earthquake, but depending on the class strike, it may end too soon.

Each time a fist punches down on someone, that will be the same: an Earthquake will be cast on that target right after the punch.

After that, Land Umber should do a very wide swiping move with its left hand, which can be dodged either by staying next to Land Umber or far away. That is the time to debuff the right hand if you are not limited in that.

When hands comes back in their default position, you may attack from the ground. Beware of dodging the other fist punch down then the boss spell cast, then left fist punch down. Prioritize attacking the left hand, but when that is the right which punches down, attack it. After that sequence, the left hand will attempt to grab someone by sweeping the floor: dodge away with your main fighter then switch to your weakest character and throw him or her in the hand grab, then switch back to your attacker. Reapply buff and debuff if needed. After grabbing a character with its left hand, Lamb Umber will crush the character with both hands for an extended period of time, leaving them open to your attacks. Start with a level 2 class strike, then combo both hands as much as you can. The first hand should not be too long to get down. The right hand takes longer to destroy, but is easier to attack once the left hand is destroyed.

When the last hand nears its demise, reapply buff, and debuff Land Umber. As soon as the last hand is destroyed, Land Umber becomes vulnerable. It will cast spells in rapid succession. First it casts Diamonds Shards on everyone. If no one was near Land Umber, it is possible to go strike it. Then it will cast an Earthquake, anticipate where according to its gaze. Dodge back if need be or use a level 1 class strike as a dodge, but be sure to have enough particle for using a level 2 class strike soon. Then it cast Diamond Shards again, a Stone Cloud and finally an Earthquake. And then it goes into its charging move. You need to break it, but better break it at the last seconds remaining before the charge complete: it will maximize your damage. Starts with a level 2 class strike, then combos should be enough. After that, hit Lamb Umber as hard as you can. It will shortly afterward reanimate its hands, and be invulnerable again.

When fighting it as my fourth Benevodon with dark Kevin, it was looking almost desperate. With a perfect fight it seemed still possible to get it down, but no mistake allowed at all. At some point I decided to use a dirty trick.

You can instantly kill Land Umber as soon as you have destroyed both hands once. Right before destroying the last hand, apply Matango Oil on your controlled character. When the last hand is destroyed, dodge Diamonds Shards and Earthquake, but dive into the area where Land Umber is casting Stone Cloud. Reflecting that spell back to it can instantly kill Land Umber. Each time I have done that, it did kill Land Umber. If you use that trick, then Land Umber becomes the easiest one, and you can consider fighting it among the last Benevodons.

As a second fight with a suboptimal team, my third one, all girls, so, no Miracle II, Dark Charlotte, so, no sabers, ..., I really had to optimize the fight to make it possible without exhausting my ressources on the fists. I used Angela spells only on Lamb Umber, I had to keep a Faerie Walnut for Riesz debuffs and had to use them sparingly, using only one def down per fist. And I also had to use only one claw per pair of fists, choosing the optimal time to get buffed with them.

I did not have enough training points to have Explode, Move MP Saver and Elemental Combo altogether on Angela. I gave up on Move MP Saver and used Converter instead. It is less efficient, being 30% MP saved rounding down while Move MP Saver is rounded up, and requiring Angela to have health points to consume instead of mana. But still, it helps casting more.

My fifth team had not killed it within three phases but within four, without enough mana to have buffs and debuffs for most of the fourth phase. It caused the fight to use most of the allowed time. That team is maybe the most underpowered: at class 2 in this challenge. Only Hawkeye is an effective damage dealer at that point. But he is also the only one of team to be able to debuff, causing him to sacrifice two abilities for boosting his debuffs. (That was the same for my third team.) Moreover, Angela is less helpful than usual due to not having Weak Point II, not available with a low level Hawkeye. Charlotte only helps through her Sabers, and without any saber boosting ability at that level.

My sixth team, still doing the suboptimal choice of fighting with Duran instead of Kevin, was rather efficient on the fists thanks to Duran high swing speed. But it was not so efficient on the boss itself, surely by lack of freezing class 2 strikes. (Kevin was on the Light side for Attack Help.) It took me five phases to take it down. Fourth should have been doable, but I forgot at one phase to reapply the saber before the boss being vulnerable...


 
It appears my seventh team is just overpowered: that Benevodon did not last long against it either.
The eighth team was not too bad, but I was somewhat. On the first succeeded attempt, I did have two class strike kills, so, I retried. When I succeeded without class strike kills, I did mess up a bit some damage phase on the boss and had to perform an additional phase to finish the boss.

Lightgazer is hard for a team with a low damage output because it moves a lot over a very wide area and has lots of melee damaging moves, forcing you to be extra careful when attacking it with melee attackers.

Lightgazer may mooglify, have some status effect healing items. One of its frequent moves does weaken the attack if not dodged.

Choose between setting your companions to use their class strikes, or handle it yourself for sparing them for the breakable move. Have Demon Claws and Duelist Tags ready, along with Brisingamen and Drake Scales. Open the fight by buffing all with class items and debuffing, run on the side, not too far, just to avoid where Lightgazer will land, then class strike it once. Class strike it with freezing level 2 class strikes as often as possible, excepted when it is near to do its charged moved, that is, when it is down to around 3/4 of its life then at 1/4. (After that, Lightgazer may cast it again many times.) If your class strikes are not freezing the target in place, it is quite unlikely their finishing blow will land on the boss. So, with such class strikes, it is usually more efficient to use regular combos instead.

When it switches into "high jump" mode, both its take off and its landing incur damage. After the first jump, you can combo it only once after it has landed, before it jumps again, otherwise you will be hit. Even though, in this challenge, you only have three weak hits combos, if you are a little late on comboing Lightgazer, or have a too slow hitting character, you will be hit by its next jump before finishing it. After the second jump, you may at most combo it twice before having to step back. Then it may switch mode, or go on jumping, alternating one combo opportunities with two combos ones. Beware, if you class strike Lightgazer or open the ring menu, it alters its timing and shortens its jump phase or its cooldown phase.

Your characters may get a light saber from Lightgazer, which does heal it: reapply a dark one on yourself, or any saber other than light or fire on your companions. (By the way, it also means Hawkeye moves cannot apply the magic down debuff on Lightgazer.). The Light Saber is shortly followed by Lighgazer enraging after receiving some additional damage, and triggering its charged move. So, it is better to reapply buff and debuff to maximize damages shortly after the Light Saber cast.

Lightgazer regularly switches to another mode. The more favorable to strike it is the one with small jumps where it drops bombs, in its initial phase, before the first charged move. It is possible to almost continuously attack Lightgazer in this mode, but be careful not to trigger any bomb.

When Lightgazer, instead of jumping, rushes toward a character while dropping a series of bombs, beware not being caught because it does weaken your attack too. (If you survive.) Better attack Lightgazer at the end of its move in this mode, so, anticipate where will it arrive. You can at best land a combo after its run, and that becomes too dangerous after its first charged move because Lightgazer may then chains the next run too quickly.

Lightgazer does its charged move right after changing color. You can combo it twice before it jumps high, then a second time twice before a second jump, then either you are able to finish to break him in the few remaining seconds or it will unleash its charged move. If you have level 2 class strikes available, it is far easier to break him.

Otherwise, run to its left, at the corner nearest to it: that place is safe from its charged move. Or switch between your character according to their placement in order to avoid being in control of the ones about to get hit. Lightgazer does then heal a little but not that much.

And then, repeat.

After its first charged move, Lightgazer gains a cast, Shackles, which targets each characters and will turn into a Moogle those staying in its area of effect and surviving it. It is sometimes bugged, not showing the growing inner red area letting infer when to dodge out of it. If unsure, use a class strike as a dodge.

And it gains a new mode: Eye Beam. In this mode, it teleports, fires a wide light beam straight ahead: dodge it then run to Lightgazer. If close enough you can combo it once before it teleports and fire a new beam. After a random number of beams, Lightgazer will have a long cool-down allowing many combos on it. Then it will drop a circle of bombs around itself, and switch to another mode, including possibly the "high jump" mode. Choose between taking the risk of getting hit by this mode and go on comboing it, or step back. You can stay in the bombs circle if you choose to keep on attacking. Just be careful not trying to exit it when the bombs explode.
After the second charged move, Lightgazer switch right away to any of its mode after recovering from a light beam series, so, better step back as soon its eye reopens.

Its rush move changes a bit after its first charged move: step back after a first rush, because Lightgazer will shortly chain with a second rush, after which it can be comboed once.

Once red, Lightgazer gains its charged move as a new mode, switching to doing it like switching to another mode.

On my second run, without Kevin, although fighting it two fights sooner, I had quite a hard time defeating it. On my third run, Angela spells helped speeding up the fight. But of course, the lack of Miracle II in my third team caused the close combat fighting to be even more tedious, and it took me some training time to get enough cautious for this fight.
I used the class strike chaining trick with Angela level 2 class strike Love Typhoon, which does freeze the target for a short duration of time. I used her three weak hits combo to chain the class strike order then switch to Riesz before the class strike starts. It helped me to finish breaking Lightgazer with Riesz while sparing Riesz's class strike for after the break.

For my fifth run, that fight was very challenging. I did beat it after two weeks of tries. I realized, at the challenge low level (29), that even Light Charlotte was more powerful than Hawkeye in close combat while he has to sacrifice two slots for Super Stat Down (while using Attacker I & II and Attack Help I & III). So, I switched to Charlotte as my main fighter against Lightgazer. But Charlotte comes with its own challenges, like slow comboing increasing the risk to be a bit too late and get killed by the boss next move, and a freezing level two class strike having a tendency to alter the timings of the boss in a lethal way.

My sixth team has the worst timer of all, but that was not particularly hard with Duran thanks to his fast sword swing, which helps a lot not being late and getting hit by a high jump take off. Still it was a long fight, this team being not optimal for fighting with Duran.

Have earth or dark saber, set one or both of your companions to use their class strikes, same enemy. Do not bother much about debuffing: breaking Dangaard debuff it, applying Defensless, Enfeeble and Weaken in turn. And it does a lot of charged moves, which you should all be able to break.

The fight with Dangaard is quite basic. At each phase start, it may start with a melee attack then charge a move, or charge a move right away. Wait to know then break the move, without exhausting your own class strikes if Dangaard is in Cyclone mode while your teammates do not block the safe spot on the out most side of the target head. If your companions are set to use their class strikes, beware, them may push you out of the safe zone when using them.

Usually Dangaard starts out with a Cyclone mode. Otherwise, especially in Thunderball or Thunderstorm mode, use your class strike to dodge the spell by the way. When it recovers, step back and wait for its melee attack to be done, Dangaard then charges a move again, usually Thunderball as its second charged move, break it again. When it recovers, choose between going on hitting it betting it will move to the side as usual, or stepping back in case it does not and instead does a melee attack.

Dangaard may also be in Air Rush mode, in which its charged move is charged very fast: break it as fast as possible, otherwise you will have two cyclones on Flammies's back reducing the available fighting area.

Once Dangaard moves on the side to cast some spells or rush at you, dodge all that. After its Charge move (not a charged one), position your assisting characters near the head of Flammie to avoid having them in your way, then reapply buff and debuff, repeat.

Sometimes it gets more messy, Dangaard may omit moving on the side and starts a new phase instead, or even starts first with hard to avoid spells like Thunderball. This can still be handled by being quick to adapt to the situation, like switching to another character if you have class strike spared on one and need them as a dodge for spells.

The main hurdle is being able to break it. Attacking this Benevodon after too many other Benevodons may cause this to be no more reliably doable while on a Rabite Slippers challenge.

While my seventh run has a good timer (video), I had to do many tries due to glitches with class strikes getting lost "in the void", especially the Abyssal Slice of Kevin, when launched from the left of the battle field.

In this challenge, Mispolm does not appear particularly hard provided you have Miracle II. I fought it on my first run as the second Benevodon, and regretted it: I should have kept it for later, it was too easy. There is a lot of things to dodge, but you can concentrate on hitting Mispolm. Having Miracle II is enough if you dodge appropriately. Fought as the fifth, the fight was more demanding because longer, but that was not exceedingly hard.

Have wind saber, status effect healing items in case your companions take a nap and you do not want to wait to see if they get hit soon and waked up, set companions to use class strikes, and use same target. Ignore the stalks.

Misplom right and left sides are safe from the corresponding tentacle. The trick about dodging the tentacle is to jump early when you have the Misplom's right tentacle to jump, or late when that is the other one. Their swiping animation does not matter much: it hits everywhere at the same time actually, excepted at their safe post.

If your companions ends up at the same side than you, switch to the other side. It is also required to switch sides from time to time to collect class strike particles. Use them as often as possible. If you feel like Mispolm is not far away from breaking, better save the class strike for that moment, but do not bother too much about it.

When you have a spell to dodge, dodge backward. When they start the cast for spawning brambles, do not go running, it takes some time. Keep attacking, waiting for the last moment to dodge that. Jumping then getting out of their way without a dodge is the easiest way to handle that for me.

Without Miracle 2, the fight gets way harder. You may consider switching it with Dangaard's fight.
With my third team, I am also doing it without a saber caster, which increases the difficulty too. I was considering resetting Charlotte class to change that. But when the fight is long, it may get unexpectedly easier for the last minutes: it is as if Mispolm could run out of Mana and then could no more cast anything or spawn stalks.

On my fourth run, benefiting again from the power of Kevin, I had it so much easier that I realized only after the Mispolm fight that I forgot, once again, to change weapons after the previous class upgrade: I fought the first five Benevedons with class 1 weapons.

Fiegmund is one of the easiest Benevodon when you have Miracle II. Some training may still be required to get use to the sequence of actions it uses and dodge it appropriately.

Have fire saber, status effect healing items in case your companions get frozen and you want to thaw them quickly, set them to other enemy. Fiegmund absorbs Water and is insensitive to Wood.

Its basic cycle is to start by seemingly cast something without any visible effect, then perform a circular wide area wiping move (not named but with a big red circle telling about it coming), then a random number of its spells, like two to four (and sometimes among them a bite that takes it quite some time to prepare, so, it is recognizable easily), again its wiping move, a few more spells finishing by a Cold Blaze or Spike Freeze + (both of which have two versions, as explained later). And finally Fiegmund jumps out of the fighting area, triggers an Icicle then come back with a Dive, and repeats.

All along, it will blind the screen full white, changing the floor from snowy to icy and slippy. That regular blinding can be quite a bane, forbidding you to see some ice spikes coming, by example.

The basic tactic is to stay behind Fiegmund, hitting its rear. Beware of where the three weak hits combo may cause you to land on its final blow. Avoid pressing forward, its reduces the tendency to move "far" forward. Fiegmund always turn to the target of its cast, so move away or back in its rear when that happens.

It casts a Spike Freeze (without +) which area of effect will follow its target in the first few seconds of the cast, so go on moving. It is the same for the second version of it Spike Freeze + and for the first version of Cold Blaze, but with a wider area of effect.

So, Fiegmund casts a Spike Freeze + too, but first, it is like a Spike Freeze with multiple occurrences appearing at random spots in succession, instead of being at a single spot doing multiple hits with a wider and wider area of effect.

It also has Ice Crystal: that is a three ice rocks throw forward, done right after performing a jump back. If careless when performing combos from its rear, it is then easy to finish in front of Fiegmund at that moment, in the throw area of effect. If you can get right against Fiegmund before the throw, that is a safe spot.

Cold Blazes cause a block of ice to appears in its area of effect, turning into snowmen characters caught into it. Usually I just wait for them to get broken out of it by Fiegmund hits, but sometimes I do cure them when in need of some of their capabilities.

If you recognize its bite coming and that you look like being the target, move away. Getting back behind Fiegmund is not enough, it will jump-turn toward you. Being just a bit away is not enough either, its jump for the bite allows Fiegmund to move a bit forward.

When the wiping move is coming, dodging out of it if you were facing Fiegmund is easy, but from its rear, you may have a too long way to go. Use a class strike if you were caught by surprise. Switching to another character that you have seen to be out of the area of effect is a good alternative for sparring your class strike if you prefer. (Which, by the way, is not really needed, unless you use them a lot for dodging.)

At an Icicle, spikes of ice will fall from high up targeting the location of characters, just move around a bit. Then Fiegmund will Dive on one character : better be running to be able to dodge out of its landing zone if need be. After landing, ice spikes will spur out of the floor at random for a few seconds.

At around the first quarter of Fiegmund life, then a little below its half and last at its last quarter, Fiegmund will jump away again a perform a Frozen Crack, its charged move.

The two first occurrences of its charged move should be easy to break. Run toward a break target, hit it with combos without pressing forward in order to stay in place, repeat for the second break target. That is all for the first charged move. The number of targets will increase by one at each next occurrence. For the third target, you should have time to switch to one companion which, at that point, thanks to particles collected by breaking the target, should be back to having a class 2 strike ready (preferably a short duration one) even if the companion is set to use them, and so, use it to break the last target. Beware that it will count as a class strike kill, if you want to avoid any experience bonuses.

The last one, where you have four targets to destroy, can be missed, unless using at least two fast class 2 strikes, more likely three. Just keep a class 2 strike as a dodge in case it is going to be missed. The companions will then be attack debuffed by the charged move and an Icicle will follow. If having dodged the charged move with a long class 2 strike, it may ends right in time to get hit by it without being able to dodge.

The fight is a bit long, but not hard with Miracle II. There are many random spikes of ice spurring from the floor at random with little time to dodge them, after a Fiegmund's Dive or Spike Freeze +, but they do a single hit.

After the second Frozen Cracks (its charged move), Fiegmund becomes a bit frenzy and it gets harder to dodge everything. Its cycle is less regular, interrupted with many additional Dive moves done mainly without a prior Icicle. Its Spike Freeze + spell becomes the same than Angela's one, targeting one place but doing multiple occurrences of damages on a wider and wider area. Its Blaze Cold spell, the one that that turn hit characters into snowmen, switches to multiple occurrences spread all over the fighting area.

Without Miracle II, it becomes then quite a challenge, to the point I ended up, with my third team, fighting Dolan instead then coming back with two class three characters. (But, as visible on the screenshot, I forgot to do a "little" optimization following that class change. Anyway, that was enough to beat this boss. Beware, if your run is as low as possible in experience taken, the seventh Benevodon is fought with level 37 characters only, so, without the power of class 3.)

On my fourth run, still without Miracle II but with Kevin, I did it before Dolan as usual, thanks to the damage output of Kevin combined this time with a Light Charlotte giving sabers. On my fifth run, I did it as sixth Benevodon too, with a quite weak team. I decided to give up on Super Stat Down abilities on Hawekeye for this Benevodon while still using him as my main fighter: switching them for Weak Point and Attack Help was more efficient than keeping them, be it by using Hawkeye as the main fighter or Charlotte. It causes Angela spells to be less efficient, but that is largely compensated by the added power on Hawkeye. Overall, despite the lesser debuff on the boss, Hawkeye was doing 30% more damages that way.

Avoid the two Mimic Treasure boxes in the tower. The first one is located in the room reachable only by jumping accros a collapsed floor. The second one is on the only box of the next floor.

If fought as the seventh Benevodon, you may have two characters at level 38, which can be switched to class 3. But you may also still have them all at level 37.

With class three characters, even if fought last, it will remain one of the easiest Benevodon fights. Without class three characters, the fight will be quite long, requiring to more carefully dodge everything.

Dolan has no multiple-hit moves, everything is not particularly hard to dodge. The dodge for the Pummel move is not hard either but when Dolan uses it a lot, I get bored and start failing it. Another gotcha is that Dolan bends over the floor at each pummel and can prevent you from jumping high enough if your character is below his head or shoulder. Anyway, that should be not too much for your healing resources.

You can burn your class strikes as you wish. Having them for breaking Dolan's charged move is nice, but not critical. Anyway, at some point it charges faster and become hard to break, but that is not a lethal move.

Dolan has no weakness, excepted being lame. Without Miracle II, when Dolan becomes frenzy around half of its life, this boss is not so lame anymore, because it is then not so easy to dodge everything. But it remains manageable. Well, with my weakest teams, it still took me many tries and it may have been a bit messy.

Zable Fahr is a fight that requires dealing good enough damages. Otherwise, the side heads debuff your characters, causing your damage output to get even lower. Then it prevents you to kill them fast enough to have significant time for attacking the middle head. And trying to ignore the side heads, especially as melee fighters, is hard, because they cast their fare share of spells and force you to dodge a lot, even more if trying to fight in the middle in order to hit the middle head.

The left head is more vulnerable to magic damage while the right one is more vulnerable to physical damages and casts mostly lot of debuff, along with Dark Force. The left head has a lot of dangerous moves.

Its Dark Beam can be tedious to avoid. It has a long cast time, first get to the nearest side to get it as most outward as possible. Dodge out of it at the last moment and go to the opposite side. Order the companions to do some actions for avoiding having them bringing their own beam on you. For the Diabolic Blast, just go to the blowing head by dodging toward it then hit it with 3 weak hits combo.

For this fight, your characters will be at level 39 (or even 38 for the ghosted one). Better set them to range targets in order to have less to dodge when fighting a side head, while having them focusing on the other side head.

This said, with a team with a Fatal Fist Kevin, some Knight Tags and Parpoto Claws, Brisingamen and Drake Scales, that remained rather easy. The damage output of that team was high enough. You have to spare some good multi-target class strike for breaking the charged move. Kevin Fatal Fist's level 3 class strike is just that.

I mainly used the single target, non-class items buff, switching to multiple ones only once having exhausted the others.

With my second run team, using Riesz as my main fighter, Hawkeye as my debuffer and Duran for not much (his sabers are next to useless in this fight), it was harder and I have to take care not to waste my moves and buffs.

I had to optimize the use of Parpoto Claws and Knight Tags: one Knight Tag at the beginning of the fight, then a Parpoto Claw after each charged move break, or a Knight Tag if Hawkeye was high on CS particles.

I had Duran set to not use his class strikes in order to use him for the break with Hollow Slash on two orbs and the demon, all caught in the same class strike. If the demon was not dead after that, I ordered Riesz and/or Hawkeye to throw Lumina Icons or Light Coins on it while destroying the last orb with Duran.

I used Personal Style on Riesz instead of Brisingamen, being low on those items. So I also opened the fight with Riesz first class strike in order to trigger it, then kept my CS particles to launch Dragon Rend on all heads : when they are all aligned, you can position Riesz at one side next to that side head, turn your back to it and class strike toward the opposite head, hitting them all with Dragon Rend. I also had Weak Point II, Judge, Sturdy III, Beast Roar and Miracle II.

On Hawkeye I had both Super Stat Down, Guiding Sword, Stat Down Resistance to reduce the nuisance of the side heads, Life Wisdom to be able to fully heal Riesz with one Chocolate and one Candy, and Blacksmith, for lack of better ability. Duran had Provoke, Attack Help, Conflagration, Offensive Stance, Counter, Concentrate.

With my third team, without Miracle II, I prioritized killing the left side head which has more damaging moves than the right one (which cast the debuff spells). Previously I was not caring much about dodging the Alien like tongue of the left side head thanks to Miracle II. Without it, I learned to dodge it, which is easy enough: the head looks at you opening its mouth once then open it again throwing out its "tongue". To avoid it, move away from the direction the head was looking at before that second mouth opening.

With Angela, prioritize casting Lucent Beam + on the left head, because it will hit the central head too. That is not the case with the right head.

With my fourth team, that was just a piece of cake. My fifth team was so weak (moreover I have forgotten to switch to class 3 weapons once more) that I had to prioritize killing the right head to avoid being too frequently debuffed.

The sixth team had Monk Kevin's Spin Kick class 2 strike which brings the three charge move breaking targets down to a few weak hits from breaking, making it easy to break the move, while having waited enough before that for fully rebuffing my main striker, Duran. He always had enough CS particles for his Hollow Slash class 3 strike thanks to Nature Aura. Like with Dragon Master Riesz's Dragon Rend, Duran can be positioned next to one side head, turning his back to it, facing the opposite head. His Hollow Slash then hit all three heads, doing most of the job of getting rid of the side heads.



With my seventh team, taking care of not getting class strike bonuses makes the fight harder. It remains possible to break the three orbs with regular strikes, depending on the character. But the timing is extremely tight and many characters strongest combo tends to make them drift then miss the last hit on the orb. So, most of the times, I have missed the break.
Riesz appears to be quite efficient on breaking the orbs with regular strikes, while Charlotte is too slow. Hawkeye can do it but barely on time and he tends to drift a lot.

After the Benevodons, Goremand looks like a joke. Fifteen minutes to finish him is a lot more than needed. There is no need to bother about its images, juste nuke him. He is weak to water. His charged move is easy to break even without class strikes. Even if failed, he does it too infrequently, and it has too little consequences, for depleting your three Cup of Wishes. But have some status effect healing items, he may petrify or froze the party.
 
At Mirage Palace, first pay attention to the circles drawn on the floor. There is a first one right at the entrance. Do not go through them, otherwise that triggers an inescapable fight. Always go around them. It is possible to avoid all fights associated with those circles.

Then, you have six illusions to dissipate. For four of them, that involves killing at least some of the monsters found there. So be it. Two of these monsters are already killed bosses coming back here, which I call "Zombies bosses". Their level is upgraded, but that is about it. Well, they may use a few additional moves, but that does not make much of a difference. On your side, you have already fought them limited to class 1 moves. Now you have class 3 moves... That is not fair fights for them, even if the timer countdown is down to ten minutes for them. After dissipating the illusions, you have to fight one more zombi boss, which will not really fare better.


 
 
 
At the end of Mirage Palace, you fight Tainted Soul, the second lieutenant of the end boss. This fight is more challenging, without being very hard. The timer countdown is again fifteen minutes, which is way more time than needed. There is no weakness to use against him. His charged moved can be broken without class strikes, but it may be tedious. There is also a lot to dodge, and he teleports a lot, without being as annoying at that than Lightgazer, but still.

Moreover he may after a teleport throw some purple magical high speed discs straight ahead, causing a straight run toward him to be suicidal if he is facing you. Better first go to a side then run toward him.

So, now, the final boss for Kevin or Charlotte: Dark Lich. The timer countdown is raised to twenty minutes for the final bosses, which is again a lot more time than needed.

You will be at level 50 or 51 for this fight. To be only at level 50, most experiences bonuses must have been avoided. There is only around 14 000 experience points of margin for being only at level 50 on this route, compared to never gaining any experience bonuses in all fights and avoiding all avoidable fights.

That is one of the less forgiving boss for melee fighters. With a melee fighter, you may have a lot to dodge, but the boss has also a very wide hit box. So, that is not so hard, but you have to train to fight near the limits of damage areas.

You can set your companions to use class strikes: the ones of your controlled character should be enough to break Dark Lich's charged moves.

He starts weak to Light. Engage by ordering your companions to buff all with Light saber (Knight Tag) and Brisingamen, queue a debuff from your debuffer companion, maybe queue some CS boost from an item or a move of the other companion, then run to the left (right of the boss). Dark Lich usually opens the fight with a move that does not hit its right. Arrived there, with Kevin, I was ordering him to boost himself with Moon Energy. (But, especially without Duran with Provoke, the boss might cast quickly a spell on you.)

At that moment, your two companions may get frozen. Take the time to thaw them if that happens, re-issuing any missed buff order as needed.

Then I was throwing the most powerful single target class strike of my controlled character. Generally the companion were shortly afterward throwing their own class strike. If their are freezing Dark Lich moves, all the better: easy combos for you while he does nothing. Once Dark Lich starts moving again, I was throwing another Abyssal Slice from Kevin.

Then the real fight starts, with lots of moves to dodge, status effects to remove from your companions, ... Just keep the pace, exploiting any "safe enough" opportunity to combo Dark Lich.

If you happen to have the boss Lucent Beam flowing way outside the red areas they were supposed to go, restart the game. It is sometimes bugged, and restarting the game usually fix this. (Only reloading a save without restarting the game does not fix it.)

After having lost half of his life, Dark Lich may switch magic and changes his weakness. If you have a saber buffer in the party, apply the corresponding saber.

On the video, I used less powerful items, having not many of them anymore.

Like Goremand, Malocchio looks like a joke after defeating the Benevodons. His life goes down so fast when hitting him, especially with Attack Saber and Attack Saber II on Duran, Flame Saber from Duran cast on your main fighter, Weak Point II, Judge, Sturdy III, def down (Thunder Technique) cast on Malocchio with both Super Stat Down abilities on Hawkeye, ... Malocchio is weak to Fire and Earth. The timer countdown is fifteen minutes for this boss.

He may summon quite frequently his three ghosts charged move which heals him a lot, but with Duran set to keep his class strikes and adequate positioning, his Spin Slash gets rid of the ghosts. And you should generate enough CS particles to keep up the pace.

I did not worry much about the two monsters he resurrects from time to time: I had my companions set to other ennemies, and they die fast with def down cast on them. That works well when using Miracle II and letting one companion use class strike at will, or having a caster spamming wide area spells, or using Enigma.

With my second Archdemon run within this challenge, I had it a bit harder because Angela Explode+ spell causes you to not see anything. So, dodging is made quite harder for your main fighter while by the same time ordering Angela to spam her spells. Moreover with that team, I did not have any wide area class strike to get rid of the healing ghosts. Spells are ineffective against them. But chaining three fast level one class strikes works, providing the class strike final hit does not miss. That may happen due to the rotating move of the ghosts, especially with Hawkeye rather slow level one class strike.


For the third Archdemon run, where I avoided experience bonuses, not breaking with class strikes the ghosts healing him complicates the fight. It is still doable to break them all with one three weak hits combo per ghost, but that is hard to do. On the video, Malocchio did use his healing only once so that helped a lot.
 
There are three Mimic treasure boxes to avoid triggering in the Dark Castle, and that is all.

The first one is found after fighting Fullmetal Hugger for a second time, at the end of the underground maze you have to go through before reaching an upgraded Zehnoa. There is a room with two treasure boxes. Open only the rightmost one. It is possible to try opening the other one and dodge backward to avoid the fight, but then you will not be able to reach the other box if not already opened, without engaging an inescapable fight with the Mimic.

The second Mimic treasure box is after the golden Mana Goddess statue, alone in the middle of its room, a few rooms before reaching the fight with Harcypete.

The third one is at the very end of the Dark Castle. It is the only treasure box to be found after defeating Belladonna.

As in Mirage Palace, the new versions of earlier bosses do not stand a chance and are easily dispatched. Their timer countdown is down to ten minutes.


 
 

 
Belladonna has some hard to dodge moves, but her life goes down quite fast. So, it is not a hard fight. She is weak to Water and Earth. As she absorbs Wind and Fire, Hawkeye cannot debuff her defense. Her timer countdown is fifteen minutes. With my second Archdemon team in this challenge, I used Broken Lines III.

Her Shockwave is easy to dodge, but appears to take effect in a wider area than the red one, so step back more.

Her Roseslash starts at one throw and gains more throws as she is going down in life. It targets all characters and go through the whole room, meaning it is deadly too if dodging behind another character even if the red area stops at that character. On that move, better freeze the companions by giving them some orders and so, avoid having them dodging where you want to dodge.

Headbutt is easy to manage. It takes some time to charge up, use it to go the opposite of the room relative to Belladonna starting point, at some place not in red. She will finish nearby, go combo her when she arrives.

Hexas is a move where she becomes a break target, while still performing her other moves. Better break her to avoid her casting a very wide area spell. She also may break somehow when sufficiently damaged, giving a good opportunity to combo her.

The final boss for Riesz and Hawkeye is Archdemon. His timer countdown is set at twenty minutes.

Here too, the level of the characters on this challenge will be 50 or 51. To be at level 50 on this path, there is only around 7 000 experience points of margin, compared to never gaining any experience bonuses in all fights and avoiding all avoidable fights. That is less than on the Dark Lich route, despite Mirage Palace having unavoidable monsters fights: all bosses in the Dark Castle, and Malocchio, give a few thousands more experience points.

He has no weakness for most of the fight. He starts out absorbing wind, fire, earth and dark, so, forget about def debuffing him with Hawkeye. At some point he will change type and gain a weakness, but, if hit as hard as possible, he will shortly switch to his second phase where he recovers fully his life, gains two fists, and resets back to his initial absorptions without a weakness.

In the first phase, he casts a lot, and sometimes with wide area of effect spells. Better stay away from your companion to avoid having to dodge what targets them. Especially his Explode + spell leaves you with very little margin to exit in time its area of effect.

In the second phase, he casts somewhat less, but now his fists cast on your team or buff him. They may cast Dark Curse on your team, or target one of the character with a wide sparkling orb which will blow into a Dark Force spell on contact: be careful not staying in its way. The other fist may cast Hyper Cannon, which throws rocks at its target at a fast pace. Dodge continuously if targeted, or switch your controlled character. That said, it is still more effective to concentrate on the boss rather than taking the time to take down his fists. He brings them back quite fast. Moreover the boss gains many additional AOE (damaging move having a wide area of effect), including some which debuff.

In his second phase, he also has a lot of charged moves. I kept Duran class strikes to help with the charged moves with multiple break targets. The one with a single break target, the boss himself, is charged very quickly, but can be be broken with one combo and a few additional hits.

With neither Miracle II, nor Duran with Provoke (and forgetting about Enigma, which could have helped), Darkshine Knight is far from being a joke contrary to the other end bosses lieutenants, even if his life gets down quite fast. His multi-thrust sword attack is hard to dodge, especially since he turns toward his actual target very late, leaving you with too little time to react if you wait for knowing who he is targeting. It is then too late even for switching to another character, you will take at least one hit. (Miracle II could save you with a character switch.)

But the fight is quite shorter than a Benevodon fight, even though it has the same fifteen minutes timer countdown, and a few tries should allow to win it. He is weak to light, so your Zable Fahr setup should be good for fighting him too. Excepted, you do not need to spare your class strikes for fighting him. This said, letting your companions use their class strikes at will can be quite annoying: they tend to interrupt some of his easy to dodge moves which open him vulnerable to your attacks, especially his Spin Slash strike.

He is moreover weak to fire and wind, and absorbs water, earth and dark, if you have some item slots for which you were not knowing what to put in them, or if you have boosted sabers.

Somehow, on my first Dragonsmaw run, it felt almost easier to fight him with only one character standing: that puts you in the same situation than a Loki fight. The Loki fight tactic works as well against Darkshine Knight. When another character is standing, I frequently got deceived thinking he was targeting the other character and believing I could attack instead of backing up, while actually he turned against my controlled character at the last moment before unleashing his strikes.

On my second run, I had enough powerful class strikes in that team to hammer him to the point of breaking him before he did anything, then proceeded with class 1 strikes to interrupt most of his attack attempts, helped by Nature Aura from Kevin as a Divine Fist.


 
In Dragonsmaw, there are one Mimic box and one trapped box to avoid. On the South-East path, the first treasure box, on a small island, is a Mimic which furthermore causes monsters to spawn. The trapped box one is on the West path, that is the last treasure box before reaching the boss of that path. It causes a bunch of monsters to spawn, triggering an inescapable fight.

Likewise to the other end areas, the three upgraded bosses from the early encounters are easily killed within their ten minutes timer countdown. There is no need to bother re-specializing anyone, even Angela, for optimizing against them.


 
On the way to the Crimson Wizard fight, you have mandatory fights, first against nine dragon kids. Then, at the palace, the packs of monsters there attack even with the Rabite Slippers equipped. But you can dodge the first two of them by sneaking on the sides of the room. It is tricky, but with some attempts you should succeed in doing it.

For the first pack, sneak on the left or right of the three knights, run along the wall to the door and open it as soon as possible. The fight may be triggered then, but if quick enough, you can still open the door and get out before it becomes inescapable. In the next room, a bunch of dragon kids are wandering. Wait for them to regroup on one side of the room and sneak around them from the other side. If they start noticing you, you may reset them by getting back to the entry of the room. The last room has two demons standing still and two wandering robots. You can try to move the demon away from the exit by getting noticed without triggering the fight, then resetting their attention by getting back to the entry. But I did not succeed moving them enough to sneak past them.

For fighting the Crimson Wizard, you may consider sparing some class strike with an area of effect to help with breaking his charged move. He does cast it three times. The two first can be broken with regular strikes: three weak hits combo are enough for each target. But for the third one, it is short on time, unless using a class strike with a large area of effect like Spin Kick. (It will count as kills with a class strike.) If you miss them, triggering a long class strike right before may save your controlled character. Otherwise, you have plenty of time to choose which one to let die, if you do not have Miracle II or Crystalline.

Crimson Wizard's moves are not hard to dodge when fighting with spells at range, so, letting one of your characters die on one of its charged move should not be an issue in that case. When he switches to one of his elemental mode, his moves may be harder to dodge. But you can switch him out of it by casting the opposite element on him, including by using items.

If fighting with close combat fighters, this boss is quite annoying due to teleporting a lot. Furthermore he sometimes does hit around him to repel your close combat fighters, watch out for this. But again, his life gets down very fast. Do not miss opportunities like when he casts spells away from him, or his Dark Force which seems to be all around him but does not hit when you are next to him.

If you use the class strike chaining trick after breaking its charged move, you can bring him down enough to trigger directly its next charged move. And with Nature Aura, you can refill enough particles to do that again on the next break.

As for all end bosses lieutenants, his timer countdown starts at fifteen minutes.

The final boss for Angela and Duran is Mondoragon. Its timer countdown starts at twenty minutes. Mondoragon has no weaknesses. Some of its moves may debuff your team, petrify or froze it. Prepare accordingly. The dragon may also buff itself, be ready to reapply debuff.

While fighting in close combat, always get behind the dragon legs. In front of it, its moves hit too fast with a too wide area of effect to be dodged. The safest leg to attack is the right one. The left one tend to be a bit more forward, exposing you more to the dragon frontal attacks. But change leg or attack the dragon tail if your companions are gathered with you, bringing all the random casts where you are.

In range combat, better stay far away from the dragon, that is usually the safest. Be ready to dodge or switch character at any time, for when some of its random casts lands on your controlled one.

Its Charge move (not a charged one) has a huge area of effect, but it does not hit a soon as the red area vanish. Instead, you have a few seconds left to reach a safe spot, which is largely enough. After that columns of fire will spur from the floor at random spots, be ready to dodge them.

Consider keeping level 3 class strikes available to break its charged moves. One class strike with additional hits from a combo are enough. At worst using a class strike as a dodge right before the move is unleashed works too. You can also break them with four "four weak hits" combos, but it is a bit tedious to achieve.

Fighting from range is safer and easier but causes the fight to be quite longer. See, on the first screenshots line, the left screenshot vs the right one. On the left, I mostly fought while directly controlling Angela (letting her die on her finishing cast). On the right, I mostly fought while directly controlling Riesz, ordering Angela to cast Lucent Beam in series in the same time.

After having defeated the last boss, the post game opens up. You have first to defeat three bosses to obtain the class items required to switch to class 4. These bosses can be fought in any order, but contrary to the Benevodons, they do not get more powerful according to how much you have defeated. They are all at level 65. So, better fight first the easiest ones, especially when the fight is done with your full party. Excepted Charlotte's one, these bosses do not have elemental weaknesses. Their timer countdown starts at ten minutes.

At this point of the challenge, included with the Dark Lich route, your characters will be at level 50 or 51.

Mimiqueen is an easy fight, giving you Hawkeye's class 4 item. It is fought with all your companions. There is no weakness to use to get it down faster, but it is fast anyway. And there is nothing hard to dodge. You may get hit if fighting carelessly like me, but not often enough to get out of healing items.

 
Revenant is another easy fight, giving you Charlotte's class 4 item. There too, you fight this boss with all your companions. Revenant is weak to light, and summons additional undeads. The moves are not hard to dodge. Getting rid of the additional monsters allows to dodge less.

Empreeb has to be defeated for obtaining Riesz's class 4 item. This fight is done with all of your companions. It is the least easy fight of the class 4 items fights done with a full party.

Empreeb fight starts with a bunch of humanoid wasps along Empreeb, which adds a lot of additional attacks to dodge, especially for melee characters. Throw at them your most powerful multi-targets class strikes to get rid of them fast.

Once they are down, the fight is really easier. Empreeb moves are dangerous but once known, they can be reliably dodged. That is nothing hard compared to the fight with Dark Lich.


 
Angela has to defeat herself in the Trial of Queenship, as a prerequisite to get her class 4 item. That fight is a special case: most hits will not be enough to kill you alone, even at a the lowest possible level of your character. Worst, a lot of them are even lower in damage than 30% of your health, so, having Miracle II does not help so much. But many moves cause multiple hits and failing to dodge such moves is usually fatal.

The fight is quite boring. It is not very hard to dodge each move, but you have to do it a lot. Supposing you have Lucent Beam +, the basic scheme is as this:

• Run until a move is cast, dodge it and dodge the subsequent move chained cast with the first move.
  
• If near your double, dodge past it.
  
• If far enough from your double (which requires some training in order to properly evaluate this; and being shielded by some stalagmites helps), do some of your own moves (buffing, debuffing, casting a Lucent Beam). Your double will be running toward you during that time. Dodge past it after your cast unless your double was really far away: you may even chain cast a second Lucent Beam before dodging in such case. Beware of not casting twice if the double has stopped to initiate a Blessed Pledge.
  
• Immediately after the dodge, prepare a cast with the cast ring (not with a shortcut), checking before ordering it if the double has started a physical attack toward your previous position, unable to reach you. If not, get away instead of casting.
  
• Run again until a move is cast, repeating the sequence. That is the point where failure is the most frequent: being a bit late in the sequence here does not forgive much, especially if the double casts a wide area spell like Explode+, Lucent Beam+ or Dark Force+. So, if unsure after having dodged past the physical attack, do not cast and just run waiting for the next spell of your opponent.
  
• When the double cast Blessed Pledge, run in circle around your double staying at some distance then dodge out of the wide area of effect it ends having. Then cast up to three Lucent Beam if your are efficient enough in handling your moves (otherwise only two).
  
• After the double cast, your double may start running toward you but then stop in order to cast Blessed Pledge instead of going on running toward you. But it takes some incantation time before dealing damage and you should have enough time to end your current move if already underway, then move away.

Even at a very low level like 50, mana is not an issue for this fight, provided you use Move MP Saver and Move MP Saver II, have boosted your spells with Elemental Combo, Elemental Combo II or Judge, Beast Roar and Sahagin Chips, and have debuffed the double with some Batmo Eyes or an ability like Magic Smash. You may have to use one Faerie Walnut, but you should not run out of it.

For me, there was no need to use class items to help me in this fight. For my second run with Angela, I did not even use debuffing items, having only very few remaining: I used Magic Smash instead. Even with Angela's low Luck, it was enough to have the double debuffed for likely a bit more than half of the fight.

You may also take some healing items since you can fail dodging some moves without dying, like the first phase of Blessed Pledge if not taking it fully, or part of the second cast of your double, or one hit of a physical attack other than the Double Slash. About class strikes, on some runs I did just throw a class 3 one at the start of the fight, and forgot about it afterward. But it can also be used to escape death when caught by a spell.

If you do not have Lucent Beam +, it may be quite harder. I have never tried in the context of the challenge. The trouble with Angela spells on her Dark path is, the most powerful ones are longer to cast than Lucent Beam +. It is unlikely it will be possible to cast them during the physical attack of Angela double, and be back moving on time for dodging the double next spell.

Kevin has to defeat his father the King of Ferolia, alone, in order to obtain his class 4 item. That fight seems very hard at first, but once used to it, it is repeatedly winnable.

All moves the King of Ferolia does for the first half of the fight can be reliably dodged.

For this fight during the Rabite Slippers Chalenge, I used a Fatal Fist Kevin, specialized with Payback & PayBack II, Judge, Sturdy III, Miracle II, and having the Moon Energy spell. For the last ability, that was a damage ability for sure, maybe Beast Roar or Attacker. You may consider Personal Style, which will allow to get the attack buff constantly up by regularly using class strikes.

Have some Tezla Oil or Gold Aura available, Drake Scales, Bee Eyes or Shadow Eyes or equivalent class items, and healing Items.

At the opening of the fight, dodge his Genbu Bash: this one is a bit tedious. If dodging too soon, that is, before the red area vanish, Kevin gets hit. To dodge it reliably, get quickly away from the King, and when he starts running, right after the red area has fully filled up and vanished, dodge (preferably backward). Beware not reaching the edge of the fighting area when doing that, otherwise use a class strike. If dodged, immediately buff yourself with Moon Energy (Pressure Point if using a Light Kevin), and apply another buff or debuff. At the end of its Genbu Bash move, go score a four weak hit combo on him. Use your Abyssal Slice class strike (if dark) when having CS gauges full or next to full.

About class strikes, the CS particle buff is really important to have because it combines with Payback and Payback II, improving by 50% what the Payback abilities gives you back. (If you do not have Payback II, then using Payback alone is not really worth it.)

The basic pattern of the fight is to stay at some distance from him, wait for his move, dodge it. (You can speed up a bit the fight by provoking him with one weak hit then dodging away, instead of waiting. It is a bit less safe though.)

Avoid fighting near the broken edge of the tower top: the King may fall when jumping backward. And if he falls too far, he will not come back, while being unreachable for hitting him, causing the fight to be no more winnable.

For his regular attacks, he runs at you, and for the first half of the fight that is easy to dodge and get away. Then, while he is finishing his move, apply some buff (first the one for gaining CS particles) or debuff if they are not all up, or throw a fang, then wait for the next move or score a weak hit to trigger it sooner once he has finished his previous move.

There is not much point trying to get back at him once his move is no more dangerous but not yet finished, because you will at most score two weak hits before he jumps backward out of reach. But sometimes he will instead cast a spell and when that happens, better get back there quick for hitting him with a combo. If that spell makes him glow red, score one weak hit then dodge sideways to burn out his Counterattack, instead of waiting for it to finish.

If he does his "class strike" moves, dodge it then apply some buff or debuff, if needed, or fang, while waiting for the move to be no more dangerous. And go score a combo on him.

With Suzaku Aerial you can even apply up to two buff or debuff before he lands, and still dodge him, apply another one (or fang) and go combo him. (Train first by applying just one before he lands: applying two buff requires to react real fast when that move is announced. But no need to wait for it to be announced to recognize it: he will do it after each regular attacks he does without a high jump.) He will usually chain his Suzaku Aerial with a Seiryu Strike, and sometime he will do that too fast for dodging away after a 4 weak hits combo: use a class strike as a dodge in such case. After he enrages, only a three weak hits combo is possible, with a class strike to avoid getting killed by the following Seiryu Strike.

The King will enrage when he has lost about half of his health points. He becomes faster, harder to dodge, and he chains a lot more his attacks, leaving very little opportunities to hit him.

If you are using a lot of class 2 strikes thanks to Payback and Tezla Oil, he should break before that: chain throw Abyssal Slices at him when that happens, but try to keep enough CS particle for a level 1 class strike. Better have a class strike available as a dodge. But he should also be very near his demise.

Otherwise, if you use few class strikes due to fighting without a CS particles boost or with Divine Fist, he may break very late, at worst when almost finished. That causes the fight to be a lot harder. Better have a rather full CS gauge then, to dodge most of his moves with Phenomenal Fist and help trigger his break. I did it that way for my second and third runs with Kevin, starting the fight already low health with Attack Help III, Conflagration, Attacker, Attacker II, Broken Lines (due to lack of debuffing items) and Judge. On my third run, I used a Divine Fist with Attack Help (not III, unavailable with that team), Attacker, Attacker II, Judge, Conflagration, Beast Roar.

 
The video above was taken with the setup of my third run, on which I did not knew how to dodge Genbu Bash. The next video is with a level 50 Dark Kevin, but without using debuffing items anymore, in order to spare them for other fights. To improve damage despite not using debuffing items, I did not used any Payback, but Broken Lines, Conflagration, Attacker, Attacker II, Judge and Finishing Blow. (Attack Help abilities were not available with the team of that run.)

The Golden Knight Loki remains a hard fight in the Rabite Slippers challenge, but no more the hardest, especially for rather weak teams. Some Benevodons or even some pre-Benevodons bosses can be a lot harder.

Duran has to defeat his dead father, alone. Loki has a bunch of moves not so easy to dodge, and there is not a lot of opportunities to attack him safely. You frequently have to wait at a distance for his next move in order to be able to reliably dodge it, especially his "crouch then teleport" move.

I used an Edelfrei specialized in sabers, with Attack Saber & Attack Saber II, Sturdy III, Judge, Miracle II and, of course, Offensive Stance. Have Drake Scales and def down items available, along with healing items.

At the start of the fight, immediately apply a saber then dodge his Glint Slash, apply a Drake Scale and debuff him (yes you have time for both). If he crouches, throw your level 2 class strike. If instead he does his three hits slash, dodge it.

The later is better, only here at the start of the fight, because his next moves open up a good combo series opportunity. After the later he does some teleports, finish far from you and starts a crouch attack: throw a level two class strike at that moment - and not sooner or it will not work as good. Then combo him with four weak hits combos. Do it a lot. He will initiate a Spin Slash, just go behind him and add four more combos.
(He will not initiate a Spin Slash if you have thrown your own in anticipation for his crouch move: your Spin Slash will finish too early and will not interrupt the next move he would initiate after his crouch one. That is only if that next move is interrupted that he will then do a Spin Slash.)

After his opening Glint Slash, he seldomly does some other move than the two previously mentioned. Just refer to the next paragraph below in such case.

For the remaining of the fight, you can usually safely combo him once after each "class strike" attack of him, excepted for his spin slash where you should throw four combos (only three at the end of the fight). Use your own level 2 class strike if available for his crouch attacks, because he will take it fully when doing this move. On other moves, that is less certain. You must still be trained to dodge this crouch move, since it is very unlikely you will have enough class strikes to dodge them all with class strikes.

Dodging the crouch the dash and multi-hit attack of Loki can be done in several way. Many recommend jumping then dodging. It seems easier, and I was doing so at first. But actually, dodging to the side right at the just moment, that is, right at the start of his dash, is more reliable, especially once Loki gains some additional speed in his moves, once low in remaining health.

Reapply your buff and debuff instead of going for a combo, if needed.
When he breaks, combo him as much as possible, using that for refilling your CS gauge to the max. After this, that is a race to finish him because he gets faster and harder to dodge. You may class strike him to be safe, but if you exhaust your CS gauge for easy to dodge moves without finishing him, you are likely to regret it.

On my second challenge run victory over Loki, I had a level 53 Duran but I also was quite lucky on my victorious attempt, having got a lot of Loki's Spin Slash to combo him plenty. As a result the remaining timer was quite high. I did not even have to use some class strikes after breaking Loki. I finished him only with combos without him having time to recover from the break for launching another attack. His break happened while I was full buffed and him debuffed.

On the third run, I was back to level 52, without Miracle II, and with Offensive Stance, Attacker II, Attack Help, Judge, Attack Saber and Attack Saber II. I started the fight already at only one health point for benefiting of Attack Help. So, no safety net at all, but an even better damage output.




On the video above, I fought with the same setup as for my third run. But furthermore I got quite lucky and got plenty of Loki Spin Slash move to hit him a lot safely.

The video below is another run, where I ceased using debuffing items, due to having little of them remaining. Loki is no more a fight for which I would consume these. Instead, I switched out Attacker II and Attack Help (actually Conflagration, I did not have Attack Help available on that run) for Broken Lines II and Concentrate. So, no need to fight with little health anymore. But the fight was also quite longer. I was only at level 50, having taken care avoiding most combat experience bonuses in this run.

Before reaching Anise, you have to go through illusions representing the starting place of each of the six playable characters. With Rabite Slippers, it is possible to run through all of theses places without a fight.

In the Valsena Castle, there is two Mimic treasure boxes, one in each side room upstairs, so, avoid opening them. At the end of this illusion, after the portal, three dragon kids are waiting for you. They may trigger an inescapable fight if you walk through, too near one of them. Going by their side as far from them as possible avoids triggering that fight.

In Nevarl illusion, there are places triggering a fight, but you can dodge them all providing you give up one treasure box, the one requiring you to de-activate a crystal. You cannot reach that crystal, activate it and leave while avoiding the monsters spawning in that room.
Right at the entrance of the Nevarl illusion, there is a fight-triggering place which you cannot avoid, but you can run through while the monsters spawn and be far enough for them not to engage you before they have finished appearing. It may take many tries to do that, and maybe using the most nimble characters (Hawkeye, Riesz, Charlotte) helps. Right after that, avoid getting downstairs straight ahead or on the right side. Jump down on the left side to avoid triggering a fight.

In the Temple of Light illusion, opening the magic barrier without fighting is very tricky. I did it first only on my fourth run. You have to open the path by interacting with a sprite statue. Nearing it triggers multiple monsters waves. Stepping back immediately without interacting with the statue allows to avoid the fight. There is then two zombies wandering around the statue. By waiting for them no be as far as possible from the statut and reaching it from the other side, it is possible to remove the barrier and get away without having fought. They may get back at you while interacting with the statue, causing the fight to trigger. But not discarding the dialog appearing at that moment allow for the fight to get cancelled. So, if that happen, just wait with the dialog opened. And when they wander far enough again, dismiss the dialog and get away.
After that, there is one Mimic box to avoid, in the small square on the right of the temple.

In the Altena Castle illusion, underground, the treasure box right in the middle of that level is a Mimic box.

In the Laurent Castle, in its last section, after deactivating a crystal, the next treasure box is a Mimic box. Then, in what is the Bil&Ben fight room in the actual Laurent Castle, there will be four treasure boxes, of which two are Mimics: the South-West and the North-East ones.

Anise is a two phase fight. At first, she is at level 75, has no weaknesses. She spawns four elemental crystals, causing her to be invulnerable when they are all there. These crystals are insensitive to elemental damages excepted from their opposite element. This causes the use of sabers to be unpractical in her first phase. Once having remove most of her health, the second phase begins. She turns into a level 76 Dragon, weak to Light.

The initial fight against Anise has a timer counting down from thirty minutes. The next fights have no more a countdown, but a chronometer. Half an hour to kill Anise is a very, very long time.

For fighting Anise with my first team, my characters were at level 54, excepted one at level 53.

You may have some or even all of them at level 55: those having fought three of the class item fights, while not having been able of dodging all monsters on the way to Anise. (Or maybe if you got too many fight experience bonuses against bosses, you may still have level 55 characters while having dodged all monsters on the way to Anise.)

If you have avoided all Anise's monsters and be careful not getting much fight experience bonuses (including by reloading a save when the Li'l Cactus bonus was triggered on the few mandatory other monsters fights), a character having fought only one class 4 item fight should be only at level 51.

I further specialized the Fatal Fist Kevin in Payback. I used Payback, Payback II and III, along with Sturdy III, Judge, Ambush II, Weak Point II. Combining the three Payback abilities means a 60% reimbursement of the class strike cost. With a CS particle buff, that raises to 90%. So, starting from a full gauge at 400%, you can use your level 2 class strike eleven times in a row without needing to collect any CS particle... That is a quite boring gameplay, but efficient.

On Duran, I gave up the sabers and specialized in critical damages, but still with Offensive Stance which is so huge. It did not allow to get Concentrate II at level 54: he needs to be at level 55 for that. Instead, I had Concentrate, Pinpoint, Flourish and Flourish II, then Conflagration, Beast Roar and Provoke.

Riesz was specialized in debuffing, with Bad Luck, Super Stat Down and Super Stat Down II, Guiding Sword, then for lack of better abilities, Personal Style, Payback, Stat Down Resistance, Blacksmith.

It is not hard to defeat Anise with this team, but it is hard to beat the five minutes timer of the last time trial fight.

Here I used the class strike chain lock trick. For it to work, you need to use class strikes that do freeze their target. That was the case for the class 4 strikes of this team excepted the one of Kevin, which, as a Fatal Fist, only have his level 2 class strike which does lock the target.

I set all characters to not use class strikes and attack nearby ennemies.

At fight engagement, I immediately ordered Riesz to def debuff Anise, then ordered my controlled character, Kevin to buff himself with Moon energy, and run toward one of the far crystals, leaving the nearest to the companions. After breaking one crystal you could run after Anise, but while Crystal are up, there were too many spells landings to be able to reliably engage a class strike chain lock. So, after breaking the two far crystals, I broke Riesz's one then ordered my companion to buff with Brisingamen, ordered Kevin to buff with Moon Energy Duran and Riesz, broke the last crystal, switched to Riesz, ordered Kevin to rebuff himself with Moon Energy then add a CS particle buff with Tezla Oil, and started the chain lock.

With Riesz, that meant being at some distance of Duran pointing at him, starting a four weak hits combo while Anise was phased out, in order to have its strong hit ready to land on Anise when she reappeared, counting on Duran's Provoke for her to reappear near him. If that was not the case, I just aborted and repeated. Otherwise I launched the strong hit, queued Riesz's level 4 class strike and switched to Duran.

Duran has not very long combos. But that is still doable, though a bit tedious at first, to queue a class strike order then switch character with his own 4 weak hits combo. And so I did with his level 4 class strike. To best optimize damages output, you should wait for Anise's break before launching that second locking class strike, locking her in the broken state, receiving more damages. That should allow to do at least three combos before queuing the class strike on the last combo and switching to the next character. On my first run I just brainlessly chained them without waiting, and that was enough to beat the five minute timer. On my second run, without Kevin, I had to optimize this better.

Then with Kevin I started immediately the Abyssal Slice series on Anise. She could get out of her broken state before exhausting the eleven ones chainable when using all three Payback abilities and a CS buff. Between each of these class strikes, Anise got unlocked for a short duration, allowing her, at some point, to recover, unless she got finished (for her first phase) before that. If she recovered, she respawned her crystals and regained invulnerability. Then I broke just one and finished her in her human form.

Against Dragon Anise, you will need to use status effect healing items on your companions. Dodge her spells then debuff her, re-buff and buff with a Parpoto claw or Knight Tag, and switch to level 3 class strikes if they have a good area of effect, or repeat the level 4 locking.

My second run team was having a Dragon Master Riesz, a Ninja Master Hawkeye and the usual Edelfrei Duran. I used Riesz as my main fighter, with 43 strength points, 6 luck, 27 intelligence, Miracle II, Judge, Sturdy III Weak Point II, Pinpoint, Beast Roar, Personal Style and Counter. Many of these abilities are weak but I had to sacrifice many points to still have Super Stat Down II for Hawkeye. Conversely, Weak Point II means sacrificing a bunch of point from Hawkeye just for this ability.

As I was using Hawkeye as my debuffer, he had Super Stat Down and Super Stat Down II, and a lot of fillers: Guiding Sword, Weak Point, Blacksmith, Life Wisdom (useful to heal back to 100% health Riesz with two chocolates and re-enable her passive attack boost ability), Stat Down Resistance, Mighty. His points were 21 strength, 33 luck, 21 intelligence. Hawkeye as a debuffer with Riesz in the team against Anise is also not very optimal: no Bad Luck due to lack of points (with the constraint of the challenge) for getting it from Riesz, and only one crystal is sensitive to his debuff. (Anise's crystals in her first phase are weak to their opposite magic and insensitive to all other elemental magics.)

Duran was almost all on attack: Offensive Stance, Attack Help, Conflagration, Concentrate, Concentrate II, Flourish, Flourish II and Provoke. Getting all these abilities is possible only from level 55. His points were 27 strength, 53 luck.

It is very likely this team would be more optimal by using a Fenrir Knight Riesz as a debuffer, and a Nomad for Nature Aura and Moon Energy, while striking with the Edelfrei without Provoke. But I wanted to play with Riesz as my main fighter, so, that was still OK for me to play with the shortcomings of this setup. On top of that, being low on Brisingamen and Knight Tags, I was fighting without them. But this team also have all its class 4 strikes able of locking their target, and that allows for impressive damages. So, it was still possible to beat Anise under five minutes.

On the last time mission, I still took some Knight Tags just in case, and had some luck by getting a two break targets charged move from Dragon Anise early in phase two. That allowed me to clean the fighting area from the additional ennemies, refilling fully CS gauges before breaking Anise, then I ordered one of the characters to apply a Knight Tag and locked her in class 4 strikes with two full combo between each switch. That allowed to beat the mission timer with a good margin, despite being at level 54 to 55 in No Future difficulty with a likely suboptimal classes choice.

 
My third run team was with a level 55 Archmage, a level 54 Fenrir Knight and a level 54 Warlock. This team overpowers Anise. First attempt: less than four minutes to kill her.

Archmage was trained with 53 intelligence points and 27 spirit points, which requires her to be at level 55 at least. This gives Limit Break III, Elemental Combo and Elemental Combo II, Lucent Beam+, Move MP Saver and Move MP Saver II. I have added to that Weak Point II, Conflagration and Magic Switch. A mere 5% increase in magic attack seems lame, but boosted by a 110% magic damage increase not including the Weak Point effect, it is still better than Beast Roar. Move MP Saver abilities allow to avoid needing to refill mana by healing Angela then waiting for her to be damaged. Against Anise, refilling that way is not very effective because Anise may debuff the character in the process, or petrify it, ..., causing you to lose time and ressources restoring Angela buffs. Furthermore it also disables the Conflagration effect while waiting for damages.

Charlotte was with 53 intelligence points too, 21 strength points, and two points in luck and spirit. That gives Weak Point All, Weak Point All II, MGC DEF Down All, MGC DEF Down All II, DEF Down All, Ambush and Healing Light, just in case I need to refill Angela mana. That was not the case. I added to that Guiding Sword and Stat Down Resistance. So, against status effects, I did not have Twinkle Rain and did take Medical Herbs and Marmpoto Oil instead, along with Stardust Herb for also being able to remove any debuff Anise's spells may cause.

Riesz was with 27 points in intelligence and in luck, 15 points in strength just for the strength bonuses and nine points in spirit. That gives Super Stat Down and Super Stat Down II, Bad Luck, and mono-target debuff spells. The crystals starts magically debuffed by Charlotte passive ability and are broken fast enough that way with Lucent Beam, thanks to Archmage ignoring their elemental resistance. So, mono-target debuffs are enough. I just had to not forget reapplying them over Charlotte non boosted debuff on Anise at start of the fight and at the start of the second phase of the fight, which triggers again Charlotte passive ability. For other Riesz Abilities, I used Attack Help, Attack Help III, Personal Style, Beast Roar, and Blacksmith, for lack of anything better. (The Blacksmith ability, like Magic Switch, is further boosted by direct damage boosts and likely by Attack Help too, but since its 5% boost only applies to equipment stats which account for just a little more than half of the base attack power of the character at the level it was, that remains quite low.)

I still used the class strike locking trick after destroying all crystals (level four of Angela and Riesz, three of Charlotte) and after Dragon Anise charged moves (level three of Riesz for locking and not level four due to not having enough CS particles, four of Charlotte for damages, Lucent Beam from Angela for damages too).

The second victory was bugged: sometimes when opening the cast ring at the same time than a Lucent Beam cast starts landing, the Lucent Beam gets chained triggered while the game is paused and it eats away the target remaining health in a fraction of second... Around half of Dragon Anise's health was remaining when that happened.


 
My fourth team was not as effective. I had a harder time with it, while I was expecting to perform better with Kevin. This team lower level is not the reason alone (51, 52 and 53 for Charlotte, Angela and Kevin, respectively). I was using Charlotte as a Necromancer for debuffing with her Dark Curse move, which prevents getting Charlotte debuff all abilities. And for some unknown reason I was unable to do a perfect try about chain locking with class strikes. I was not having Move MP Saver II on Angela due to the lower level, but that was not an issue, thanks to her Archmage passive ability.

My fifth team, the weakest overall for me until now, was still doing alright against Anise.

With my sixth team, all guys leaded by that clueless warrior Duran according to some fortune teller, I decided to go while forgetting to switch to class 4. After all, Grand Croix congratulates us for getting our class 4 items then urges us to go confront Anise, without advising going back to the sanctuary of mana first.

Of course, that makes it a lot harder. But the very long countdown still looks like a joke: half of it is still enough to beat Anise. The first phase is by far the hardest. With a very low damage team, having a single freezing class strike, many cycles of breaking the crystals, then breaking Anise, have to be done. And from the second one, an Anise image is added which is almost as deadly as Anise. A long training was needed to get through this, sometimes. Then I frequently did basic mistakes on the second phase, part by having too little opportunities training on it, part from stress.


After having switched to class 4, the last two remaining timers were not really challenging.


The seventh team, despite having Angela, which, as a wizard, should be a bit more brainy than her teammates Duran and Kevin, the team still did not thought about delaying rushing to Anise by first switching to class four. Anyway, with that team, switching to class 4 really is optional, excepted for the last Anise timer. Although they were all only at level 51, very likely the lowest level possible overall, they were still able to defeat her in less than ten minutes.

(I doubt Dragonsmaw path would allow to gain sufficiently less experience compared to Mirage Palace, to have one level less. Dragonsmaw does not have four illusions to dissipate by killing monsters, but have some strong waves of opponents to defeat in unavoidable fights. And the Dark Castle Path, surely the one with the less unavoidable monsters fights (I do not recall it having any) is not available without Hawkeye or Riesz. Both have a class 4 item boss fight shared with the whole team, causing the whole team to gain that experience, and so, forcibly, that path will cause two characters to gain even more experience.)

The presence of Angela really eases the first phase of the fight. By spamming her Glitter Dust spell on the target nearest to Duran having Provoke, Anise's Double was regularly nuked away. Good riddance of that annoyance. Then in the second phase, of course Angela helps a lot by spamming Lucent Beam+.

In that team, Duran is mostly used for taking most of the heat through Provoke, and debuff through abilities (Broken Lines, Magic Smash and Hard Ricochet III), helped by his Concentrate ability and Kevin's Moon Energy (with as last ability, Guiding Sword). Angela abilities were mostly useless for the first phase of the fight, being Elemental Combo ones, Weak Point II, then both Move MP Saver and Magic Switch. As a class 3 Archmage, she does not ignore elemental resistance, so, I used Glitter Dust during the first phase. But for the second phase, they allow her to be very potent against Anise. Kevin was having all the best attacking abilities available with that team: Conflagration, both Attacker, Beast Roar, Personal Style, Ambush II.


Then beating Anise's first and second timers with that team was not very hard.

The last timer still required to switch to class 4.

My eighth team, made up of characters fighting their class 4 fights all together, was at level 54 due to this. None of its characters is hard hitting, causing the fight to be quite longer. Only the initial fight was done at class three.

The last timer was hard to beat with that team. As shown by the two previous video, I had to be more than three minutes faster than for these fights. That is quite a lot when the target final time is five minutes. I adjusted my setup to get a little more damage output out of it, swapping Personal Style for Attack Boost All III on Hawkeye, counting on Drake Scales and on Hawkeye last passive ability, About Face, for getting boosted. I also put Attack Saber II on Charlotte for its 25% gain for being able of beating Anise first phase in only one pass. And I used a Knight Tag and a Gold Aura.

So, Hawkeye was having: Attacker, Attack Help I & III, Attack Boost All III, Ambush II, Beat Roar, Conflagration, Judge. Riesz could not provide Attacker II at that level while having to provide Super Stat Down I & II and her debuff spells. Charlotte was having Attack Boost II & III and Attack Saber II. (It should have allowed Hawkeye to do a bit more damages by switching Charlotte to Warlock for having Def Down All I & II on her instead of Attack Boost abilities, even if loosing Attack Saber II. But I have not tried.)

The Black Rabite can be fought after defeating the second main underling of the end boss, Tainted Soul in the case of Dark Lich, Crimson Wizard for Mondoragon, and Belladona for Archdemon. Its countdown timer starts at twenty minutes.

In most of my runs, I fought it after Anise, still at the same level than for the fights against Anise.

Black Rabite resists all four basic elements, absorbs dark and light, and is insensitive to Wood and Moon. So, unless using Fraction, sabers are next to useless. Black Rabite may buff you with a Dark Saber. You may use a Ice/Wind/Earth saber to replace a saber healing the rabite for a saber doing less damage on it, while sparing your Stardust Herbs for other magic removals. Fire would work too but is absorbed by demons summoned by the rabite. So, it is even a poorer choice. Ice is slightly better due to the demons being weak to it.

You will need status effect healing items. Sometimes Black Rabite petrifies, minifies or "mooglefies" too frequently your characters, causing you to run out of status effect healing items. Then it is just a wasted try. Minification and "mooglefication" are not permanent, so, you may instead wait for it to dissipate on your companions, while dodoging them with your controlled character. This way, even if fighting for the whole timer (20 minutes), you should run out of status effect healing items. The minification ("Change Form +" cast) can only be dodged with a class strike.

Black Rabite buffs itself from time to time (when switching to Hard Mode or Bloodthirsty), so keep an eye on this in order to reapply debuff as needed.

Consider keeping some good wide area class strikes of one or more of your characters ready for breaking Black Rabite charged moves. Fast class 2 strikes can do the work too.
The charged move with a big sphere in the middle is almost harmless and can be missed without much worries: it triggers a Moon Spiral which never kills, it always leaves at least one HP left. And it does not take up much time.
The charged move with three break target orbs triggers a Southern Slice if not broken. It can be dodged with a level 1 class strike, but that requires having a target left, so, not having already killed the demon spawned right before the charged move. And that one take some time to run before the Black Rabite appears back, so, if having a weak team needing most of the timer, better not miss breaking it. It can be broken with only combos too, two four weak hits combos are enough for each orb.
Toward the last quarter of its life, there will be a charged move with the break target being three other rabites, actively fighting. That is a lot safer to kill them with some good wide area of effect class strikes. If missed, it will trigger an Ancient Curse falling very fast: dodge it it with a class strike. If broken, the Black Rabite will be stunned and vulnerable for a few seconds, better not miss this opportunity to deal good damages.

It is a demanding fight, but it is just all hit and run (dodge). On many of its moves, only a three weak hits combo can be done before dodging immediately away. Some allows for a four weak hits combo:

• Its Eye Beam if not jumping the very last of it.
  
• Its Endless Chomp, but be careful not ending up next the rabite while its chomp is still ongoing: it may bite you even when attacking its back during its chomp. (Unless being really straight in its back, not the slightly to its side.)
  
• Its Jumbonk, right after dodging its landing. Beware of not opening the ring menu while going for a four weak hits combo: it tends to shorten the rabite recovery time and in Hard Mode it may then chomp at you before you can dodge away.
  
• Its Psychic Blast (Hard Mode), allowing even an additional three weak hits combo if able to hit the rabite from the start of this spell.
  
• Its Lucent Beam, if not the target of it and its target does not dodge toward you.

The worst mode for hitting the Black Rabite is its spell mode. Its dangerous to come at it because it may spawn three dark force orb right at him, leaving almost no time to dodge it. The rabite will almost always do it if you happen to be next to it right after a teleport: dodge away instead of going hit it. Otherwise it does it when casting a many spells without porting away, if not stepping back between each spell to check what it does next. And so, the rabite teleports a lot in this mode. Well, there is also its Bloodthirsty mode, in which the Black Rabite locks itself while low life, and teleports a lot too. But I find it less dangerous than its spell mode.

In Hard Mode, it is somewhat easier, once having debuffed the rabite again. Black Rabite no more casts annoying spells like Lava Wave, Dark Force + or Stone Cloud. But it will chomp a lot, always step back up at safe distance between each of its move to check what it is doing next.

Black Rabite may drop a Moogle Pin which allows to switch to a Moogle or back to normal from being a Moogle. Unfortunately, it does not carry over to a new play. If fighting again Black Rabite or Anise in the same play through, it may still be used to remove most status effects as much as you want, since status effects can not be accumulated, and that pin is not consumed when using it. (But it cannot target a petrified character.)


 
At some point, I decided to raise the challenge difficulty by fighting the Black Rabite at class 3 only. That makes good use of the boss countdown timer! See the first video below.

The second video is the same fight after having switched to class 4, but with the characters still at the same level. That gives a good way of assessing the power increase of class 4.


The third video is again a class 3 fight, but at even a lower level: 50 only. It was done even before getting after the main game end boss. Kevin was using Attacker I & II, Conflagration, Personal Style, Judge and Fraction. Duran Was boosting Kevin with Attack Saber I & II, and was using Offensive Stance, Mighty III, Provoke and Guiding Sword. And Angela was having Beast Roar, Blass, Magic Smash, MP Boost II, Pinpoint and Broken Lines II. So, she was my debuffer.

Once switched to class 4, still only at level 51 since having a team of characters fighting all their class 4 fight alone, I put Fraction on Angela to abuse the combo it creates with her class 4 Light passive ability, and used Duran as a debuffer instead.


And with the next team, likely one of the weakest, same thing: fight the Black Rabite at level 50 with class 3 characters. First with Hawkeye as my main character, then with Riesz. It felt like Riesz is better at that, but then I was playing worst, since it still took me more time with her. And last, with Charlotte as my main fighting character.