Gil Turtle strat?

[Its Almost Harvesting Season]

The guide suggests a knight, a Time Mage, and a Black Mage (for some reason the image shows 3 black mages though). This strat doesn't work!

My knight is wearing the bone mail and the genji glove, I cast Float on the party, but the battle always goes as follows: Gil Turtle acts first, attacks the Knight for 600HP then goes to attack someone else and either kills them or the Knight covers and gets killed. There's no possible way to act before the turtle in my 100+ attempts so far, and the only thing I can see being possible is just grinding out for 20 or so levels to get the HP pool.

How is this strat supposed to work? How does the Knight with 1308 HP survive the attacks from Gil Turtle if nobody is healing and I need 3 Black Mages with max MP pools just to kill it? How do you make the fight open differently? There's no variance in any of my attempts, it is literally always Gil Turtle acts first> targets the Knight first then another and usually kills the Knight. No attempt has even reached me inputting party turns yet lol.

How can the strat from the guide be this useless?

[spy]

Gil Turtle can be missed. Get him before the world changes. The guides mention an area in the old version, but that area will not be opened in this version. Also, the enemies in the section with two towers can be missed. Watch out for these. If it's hard, try increasing your level.

[Its Almost Harvesting Season]

Seriously I don't think this strat works. The knight still takes damage with bone mail, genji glove, float, hastega, and guard active. What is the trick here?

[Ederwolf]

I just managed to beat it with a
Knight guarding constantly
Bard who cast the regen song first and then spams the requiem
Summoner who spams golem (also wears the gold hairpin to cut mp costs)
Time mage that casts haste (and float before the battle) and can replenish mp for summoner
Takes a whopping 33+ turns but works.
My team was at level 32, while doing this, if that helps. Put everyone in backrow.

How this works:
- Knight uses his guard command (not defend), which nullifies any phys attack heading his way. (my knight didn't wear bone mail at all).
- Bard casts regen song on everyone, which makes them recover any random damage they might suffer over time
- Time mage, speeds up the party (if you didn't get hastega yet, it's important haste lands on summoner first and then on bard, so that summoner can keep doing their thing constantly)
- Summoner casts golem, which protects you from phys damage to some limit
- on the next turn, bard starts spamming requiem to hit the turtle, while knight keeps on guarding and summoner keeps on using golem. Your time mage is just waiting to use items if needed.

This isn't the best method out there, however you don't need to have any of these jobs maxed out, you can even put them on for the first time ever for these characters and they will win. Subbing Bard for a Black mage casting blizzara may be faster but then your time mage might have to worry about replenishing MP for both black and summoner.

PS. Give bard to someone who has maxed out summoner, cause the damaging song's damage scales off of magic stat.

PS2. If you're only going into the cave for the sake of filling out bestiary, you'd better remember to use the return spell on time mage after the battle, cause the corridor can spawn another gil turtle, a few steps after beating that one!

[aregularbear]

I tried the gil turtle using the 4 job fiesta ruleset with blue mage, summoner, ninja, and chemist. I'm not saying it's impossible but even with these being almost all of the best classes for each crystal, I got absolutely stomped. Blue magic is doing nothing here, his level is really prime stacked to avoid all of the level spells. Resisting death claw and dark spark. I am going to try double weapon from ninja on a summoner with two frost rods, but even then I doubt that I will crack 800 hp per shiva summon. This boss is really well stacked to resist beating for sure.

[aregularbear]

I might need to try ancient sword on my blue mage to proc old and then see if I can luck into a level 5 death on level 55.

[Its Almost Harvesting Season]

I ended up beating it with the terrible strat suggested in the guide. I know it probably would sound like exaggerating but it took me around 35 attempts not counting 10-20 from the previous day, for the strategy to actually result in something besides an opening death or wipe. After that it took a few more tries (I even forgot to cast Float once or twice) to see it *sort of* work...

Eventually I just got lucky and after my main Black Mage had expended all mana I finally killed it. So after 40-50 attempts where I just died instantly and another 10-20ish of staying alive I'm still confused why this strat is listed in the guide like it's a reliable method lol. I'm not convinced anything besides Float helped, and I simply got lucky with RNG and misses. The gear I used seemed to make no difference and the Guard command didn't either. Hastega just upped my DPS from mages but made no difference for my Knight.

I think telling the player to just auto-attack with Float active is as solid a strategy as the suggested one; has the same rate of success anyway lol.

[nesoukefka]

Actually doing a No EXP run, I found out that the Gil Turtle is undead (she is immune to instant death so Phenix Down doesn't work) and throwing healing item at her doesn't trigger her counter, so I beat her by setting Float before entering the fight and having all 4 characters with Chemist and Image ability, put all of them in Image use Haste Drink for Haste, and just throw Hi Potions for 1000 damage per Potion, refreshing the Image when needed.

I dunno if casting Healing spells trigger her counter, if it doesn't then probably can do a similar strat using White Mage's Curaga instead.

[Locke]

Can confirm, the "Spam Golem and Requiem" strat works. I was lvl 41 and I managed it on the first try. Genuinely not sure how much Cover helps, but I do advise making your character with the highest agility your Summoner. My load out was a Knight in Bone Mail (I actually don't recommend the Bone Mail), and three Freelancers (mostly because the character I wanted to use Cover with didn't have that mastered). One Freelancer had Summon Lvl 5 and Time Lvl 6, one had Time Lvl 6 and Sing, and the last had Summon Lvl 5 and Sing, just for coverage. The Knight had White Magic Lvl 6 just in case- did have to do some healing.

But as long as you have Float on when you enter the cave, pop Hastega and Hero's Ballad asap, and then keep spamming Golem every turn while your Singers spam Requiem works well. Have your Knight/support character use Guard when they don't have to heal or use items to prevent getting smacked with a counter. It's not a bad idea to have the last character on healing and ethers as necessary. Also, Ribbons. As many as you can equip. (The Gold Hairpin on your dedicated Summoner is a good idea, and if anyone gets status'd, use your healer with Esuna.) Even still, it is a battle of attrition. But Golem will keep you from eating All The Damage.