(spoilers) Chapter 6 timed mini-boss strategies

[Chester]

Talkin' about that Gilbert fight. In this case on Hard Mode.

I haven't played FC in a couple years, am I the only one who remembered Gilbert even less than Estelle?

Anyway, near the end of Chapter 6 when Estelle is BY HERSELF on the airship she will be cornered by 4 Jaegers and Gilbert. This serves as something of a mini-boss fight for the severely undermanned Estelle with certain conditions based on the outcome - you can somehow achieve victory, you can draw the fight out to a stalemate, or you can even lose the fight and the game will still continue. However, despite this being an optional-win boss fight, this isn't like Mueller in chapter 4, there are repercussions: Estelle will only receive the max bonus BP (+5) if she defeats all 5 opponents. Losing results in no BP and a stalemate results in only 2 BP. After a maddening number of attempts, here is how I managed to win on Hard Mode.

5-on-1 seems like an absurd condition for a fight (and it is) but it is doable. The real difficulty lies in getting a victory instead of a stalemate - the fight will end incredibly quickly, giving you almost no time to actually win. I averaged roughly 5 turns before the fight ended and went into the resultant cutscene. That's about 1 turn to kill each of the 5 enemies. 5 enemies who each have more than 3000 hp, solid defense, and will individually attack for between 1000-2000 damage each action. Yeah. On Hard Mode it's just impossible for Estelle to do enough damage in that amount of time.

First of all, I need to give credit to http://game.midoshiro.com/trails_in_the_sky/sc/6/walkthrough/ which I turned to in desperation and which gave me a workable strategy that I modified. As I understand it, that site is a partially complete walkthrough for the game that someone wrote a while back but is revising now that the game has been released in English (warning, it has lots of spoilers if you haven't finished!).

There are three basic strategies the site advises to win: using food items (and their resultant status effects) to muscle through the fight, abusing the spell Death Roar for its 20% instant K.O. effect, and using the spell Silver Thorn for its ability to confuse the enemy (which the site recommends against using, as its the least reliable method). However, on Hard Mode, Silver Thorn is the only actual method that will work (even though it is unreliable). Unless the Jaegers all somehow stand next to each other to be in the food's range, there's just no way to deal enough damage before the fight is over - each Jaeger will take three hits each from a food item to go down and you don't have that kind of time (a sleeping/fainted enemy still takes turns). Also, the Death Roar strategy is really dicey - you're hoping for that K.O. effect to happen to multiple guys each turn or else you've got no chance (and for me it never activated once, so they may be immune). You'll need 2-3 casts of the spell to do enough damage to win, but unless you're dodging an absurd amount of times the Jaegers will likely have killed you 3 times over before then unless you're spectacularly leveled (and being killed with a reviving item equipped interrupts a spell casting). The only way to kill the Jaegers in time is to have them do it for you while they're confused.

Going into the fight you'll need several things equipped. You absolutely need a proxy/emergency puppet to revive you when you're killed (you might be killed before you even get a turn). Trust me, this is a fight you've been saving it for and you will almost certainly be killed. It'd be nice to equip two of them but you'll need an accessory that prevents faint or else you'll spend your one turn to their five watching Estelle do nothing. Next you need the quartz to cast Silver Thorn, which can be done with high level EP Cut, EP, Hit, and an Eagle Eye/Heaven's Eye. Hopefully you've prepared these for availability before Estelle got on the airship, as you do NOT have access to the quartz your teammates had equipped in the last fight. If you can't generate enough quartz to cast Silver Thorn... sorry. In the other line Estelle has I suggest you focus on survivability - HP 4, Defense 4 (you won't be doing much attacking), and Action 4. Maybe a Cast 2 if you can still cast Silver Thorn and aren't having problems surviving (you won't have time to heal yourself). Now you just need to get lucky.

Oh, I mean it, you have to get lucky. Gilbert can revive fallen Jaegers and the 4 generic Jaegers can heal each other with items. If they do this the fight will drag and you're almost certainly guaranteed to get a draw. This makes Gilbert's death a priority, but there's not too much you can do about it. A confused enemy will almost always attack its compatriot but you can't control who they attack, although it will usually be the closest one. Assuming no enemies move on their first turn (which is likely, they all can attack you without moving and usually will at first) the top 3 enemies are all within range for a Silver Thorn. You'd better hope they don't move though, since Silver Thorn targets the ground and not actual enemies. Also, Silver Thorn has a 90% Confusion Rate, which is high but if it misses then you're losing turns. The good thing is, once the Jaegers are confused they're no longer attacking you, so your hp should start dropping significantly slower (though you're still going to die once). Gilbert won't be attacking you much but he may and he hits as hard as any other Jaeger. Once it's down to you and 1/2 non confused Jaegers you can start using food items for quick damage if you like but I still prefer confusing them; this fight will be over before you know it and since you're casting spells you have even less time than you would otherwise, so you need them damaging each other for you. 3 hits is what it will take to bring one down and hopefully they'll be doing most of that for you. Feel free to jump in and finish somebody off when they're close to death, preferably with a long range spell or food item so you're not near a confused enemies attack range.

Finally, unless Estelle's S-Craft will kill the last Jaeger don't use it. The time delay that results is going to crush you and if you use it late in the fight it's likely the stalemate will kick in before you get another turn.

It's a dicey strategy but this is probably the most ridiculous fight in the game. Even describing it is ridiculous: kill 5 strong enemies in 5 turns. Who can heal and revive each other. And can potentially kill you before you get a turn. Go! I can only recommend you put your faith in Silver Thorn and pray to Aidios. I don't even want to think about what this fight is like on Nightmare.

I wrote this up because this fight kicked my teeth in and I didn't see anything about it on the message boards. If you've got an alternative strategy that you think is viable/better, please write 'er down!

[76561198036824375]

Hiya

Thank you for linking to my walkthrough. I knew the Gilbert battle was going to be tricky (I didn't get the full BP the first time I played), which is why I prioritized writing the strategy part.

Other ideas to consider (not sure how valid it is on Hard/Nightmare mode though) include

- spamming Titan Roar (I tried this myself but it didn't work out so well for me, which is why I didn't include it -- if anyone can get this idea to work, feel free to share the details or, better yet, upload it to YouTube)

- equipping a "Death Blade 2" quartz (sorry, haven't bought the game yet, so I have to rely on translating from Chinese) to insta-kill one of the Jaegers. At least that will help with the odds a bit

One idea to improve on the throwing food strategy would be to adjust Estelle's starting battle position. If you're lucky, that might help line up the Jaegers ....

---

Edit: can I confirm which food you're throwing at the Jaegers? On the airship, if you do a bit of treasure hunting, you will find an attacking food item "Fainting Meatballs" (昏厥肉丸子) (900 STR). My walkthrough suggested at the end of Chapter 5 to load up on the necessary ingredients to cook a small arsenal of these to throw ....

[Kai no Kiseki]

I just spammed Titanic Roar after using the knockout meatball to faint 2 of them and a naptime cookie to sleep one and force 2 of them to line up. I had a proxy puppet equipped and focused on getting defense/hp then spamming magic. Took a few tries, but I didn't have to focus on getting Silver Thorn or Death Roar.

[Chester]

Hey Maradori, thanks for writing the initial guide. Perhaps I didn't give enough credit to you, your basic strategy is really at the heart of this post. I just wanted to make a post melding your work to a hard mode run. And Minazuki, were you doing hard mode? If so, then that's awesome, nicely done. As Maradori has noted, a luck based strategy is never preferable but it was the only one I could get working.

I was using Fainting Meatballs (I think that's what they're called in English too, can't remember). And yeah, I made enough that I could use them every turn. The issue I had with them on Hard Mode is that they just weren't dealing enough damage in time. Barring an S-Break I couldn't take any of them down in less than 3 hits (including food) and while fainting meatball was great at getting an enemy out of the fight due to fainting, I just couldn't kill them fast enough, as I could never get more than 2 in a line. Surprise Cookie was sometimes preferable, as its area effect sometimes got me two targets when Meatball's line effect would only get me one, but it still ran into the same issue, the fight would automatically end and I'd have a couple stragglers holding on to life.

Titanic Roar and Death Roar I had a different issue with. I think that's a good plan, where you simply damage the Jaegers out by magic-ing the whole screen, but I could never get two casts out uninterrupted. The Jaegers do too much damage on hard, I was dead too quickly, even with a defensive setup. Typically I would barely get one cast out, then be killed and have my puppet activate. Then I would be killed before getting a second cast. Plus, on hard I think it's going to take three casts to wipe the screen if that's the only damage source. The only way I could progress the fight is if my first spell removed at least two Jaegers from the fight (hence Silver Thorn's confusion, which can actually potentially remove three in the first turn, including Gilbert). Then I just let them do the damage for me and focus on using status effects to remove guys from the fight. Food can potentially be helpful here, but it really depends on how the Jaegers are damaging each other.

"Death Blade" quartz I think is called "Deathblow" quartz. I think they're immune to deathblow though, since I tried Death Roar a dozen times and it never activated. I can't say that for sure though. Although, if they're not immune to it then Deathblow 2 quartz has a 100% kill rate and Estelle's Hurricane attack could potentially kill 3 in the first turn... hmm... something for me to check on...

Now for someone to talk about this fight on Nightmare!

[Kai no Kiseki]

Yes, I am playing hard mode and I was lvl 67 when I had that fight. I had HP4 and Defense 4 and after disabling a few of them and then healing with the Shellful Dish to give me another 20% Def, I was tanky enough to just ignore them (gilbert does nothing at all really!)

[Chester]

So, the Jaegers are not immune to Deathblow. I successfully used Deathblow 2 to kill an enemy instantly, but I had a misunderstanding on how that quartz works. If multiple enemies are hit by an attack with Deathblow 2 equipped, only one (seemingly at random) will die - the others will survive and Deathblow 2 will break without affecting them. By the time of this boss fight two Deathblow 2 quartz should be available. It's possible to use the both of them to gain an instant leg up in this fight, making it 3 enemies you need to fight, though I'm not sure how necessary or practical that is, since you sacrifice two quartz slots as well. Theoretically though, I suppose it could work if you insta-kill 2 guys immediately and then use food to kill the more manageable 3 remaining enemies. You just have to hope one of those kills is Gilbert since he can resurrect the others.

[Pnume]

- Gear estelle with anything that increase ATS
- Make sure you have titanic roar (earth magic)
- equip emergency puppet (you can get it by the lake earlier - fish with a eal bait)

Everybody's dead in 2 round
Works almost consistently - I just did it 3 time in a row

If one survive - S break

[Hagen2900]

The fight is no different on Nightmare.

You cast Silver Thorn on them and then watch the Jaegers one-shot each other.

[Kyutaru]

I beat it a different way. I had Estelle equipped with Deathblow 2 and ran towards the back to one-shot one of the minions. Then I noticed that all the other minions, as well as Gilbert, wasted their turns running towards me. So Estelle can actually outmaneuver these guys which helps with survival. Then you can take out the remaining ones with either comets or thrown food or staff attacks to the face with an Action 4 quartz.

When they follow Estelle around they line up for the comet to hit multiples, the cookies all hit multiples/lines, and the Titanic Roar can drop the health on most of them while you're far away and not taking much damage.

[DHBTVS]

Originally posted by chester.longdon:

It's possible to use the both of them to gain an instant leg up in this fight,.

No it isn't, you can't equip two of the same type of quartz... deathblow 2 is in the same category as all the ones that have a chance on hit to inflict a status, so not only can you only have one, you can't even stack it with DB1

[moshiwakeda]

I beat this by using SPD up EX and spamming hurricane. Put Estelle off to the side so that she is likely to get knocked in the corner. Everyone will bunch up, allowing you to hit them all with hurricane every turn.
Kill Gilbert at the start with one 200 CP craft. The rest will get your CP back up.
This wouldn't have worked without Emergency puppet though