The Titan Ape

[Zettai Ryōiki]

Is complete bu!!sh!t

[Jimmy McGill]

stop being

[QuinZ33]

I've never had any problems with it. It's one of the easier encounters and gives an okay reward. It's fitting of its moderate difficulity.

[Ferrus Animus]

Read his description, he can buff up rather well if you play wrong. That makes him far harder

[Skirlasvoud]

Took him down once or twice, always in a team with Dolores. Get her on a patch of healing ground and she can take it down in a slugfest.

[Flamestalker]

I find the Titan Ape to be quite easy actually and compared to some of the other 2nd expedition epic encounters he really isn't that bad, esspecially with aggressive crews that can all one-shot the monkeys and take a few hits.

The Titan always charges himself up on the first turn so get rid of his monkeys first, Avoid Devious mood like the plague (that buff he gets is really nasty) so stick to attacks or friendly moves. When he makes himself confident use another friendly move to override it, this can cut his damage output significantly.

Lure him towards a chokepoint or heal zones if possible to limit his targets or to keep your health up. Even when fighting in open ground most characters with some armor can safely take two or more hits from him so you are generally safe to pummel away with everyone for a turn or two and burst him down before his monkey reinforcements arrive. Should the monkeys get close put one member that can one-shot the monkeys (preferably someone with range and/or AoE) on waveclear duty to keep them away, just make sure that he/she doesn't get swarmed in the process.

When someone drops low retreat him/her behind your chokepoint or as far away as possible(dont attack during this as he might still draw aggro if you do), you can also try toblock his path with the others to ensure he cant get to the low target. Aggro moves (group insult, deride, pinning strike) can also help with this and ofcource strong healing moves (cheer, tranquility).

If you're going for a friendly finnish (which I often do) try to stay in aggressive mood for the first few turns until you get him low. Do use primarilyfriendly moves during this process but try end your turn in aggressive so you dont get the armor debuf, punching him in the face once will put you back down to aggressive so it isn't that hard to do. When he gets low try to make sure you finnish him with the mood friendly, otherwise it is unlikely that you'll finnish the fight with friendly as the dominant mood.

[Chagataev]

Flamestalker's advice is solid. If you have primarily devious characters, it's probably best to avoid the encounter, though it can still be done once you're comfortable with it.

AoE abilities such as piercing shot make the encounter significantly easier. If you can finish off the weaker monkeys in your first turn you will take significantly less damage.

Also keep in mind that he uses only physical abilities. His confidence-boosting ability can make it tricky to get him into a negative mood, so I will often try and use an exciting or impressing friendly-type ability to change his mood effect to one that doesn't directly boost his attack.

Aside from that, yeah, use the terrain and a good tank/healer and just duke it out in a slugfest.

[Dmitrij]

Pedrinho with his Disarming smile ability makes this fight very easy (like other phisical boss fights too)

[El Guapo]

Originally posted by Chagataev:

Flamestalker's advice is solid. If you have primarily devious characters, it's probably best to avoid the encounter, though it can still be done once you're comfortable with it.

AoE abilities such as piercing shot make the encounter significantly easier. If you can finish off the weaker monkeys in your first turn you will take significantly less damage.

Also keep in mind that he uses only physical abilities. His confidence-boosting ability can make it tricky to get him into a negative mood, so I will often try and use an exciting or impressing friendly-type ability to change his mood effect to one that doesn't directly boost his attack.

Aside from that, yeah, use the terrain and a good tank/healer and just duke it out in a slugfest.

I've first encountered the Titan Ape just recently. Used to avoid epic encounters altogether. The first 2 attempts at the Titan Ape were quite frustrating (probably devious crew). I remember having encountered it later with an all-out friendly crew (Pedrinho was in it) and just ripped through him and his entourage.

The Titan Ape is indeed heavily reliant on crew composition.

[Chagataev]

Oh yeah, Pedrinho is amazing against him. And against Roche too, while you're on the island. Really, Pedrinho is just one of my favorite characters to bring in just about any party that needs a survivalist.

[Flamestalker]

Originally posted by Chagataev:

Oh yeah, Pedrinho is amazing against him. And against Roche too, while you're on the island. Really, Pedrinho is just one of my favorite characters to bring in just about any party that needs a survivalist.

I feel his "Party time" is the strongest ability in the game, even being close to being completely broken. An 75% AoE skill with teleport that doesn't need to charge a few turns for damage and scales for 25% for each target next to him on a relatively short cooldown. With Pedrinho's high speach this move can one-shot entire groups at once. You can even upgrade it into an AoE heal as well!

[Chagataev]

Yuuup. I love having him party into the center of a group of 6 surrounding sheep and sending them all off excited to finish the battle round 1.

If other characters get released or reworked, I'd be interested to see teleport mechanics experimented with in new non-friendly abilities (currently Party Time and Dance are the only two I think).

[El Guapo]

Originally posted by Chagataev:

Yuuup. I love having him party into the center of a group of 6 surrounding sheep and sending them all off excited to finish the battle round 1.

If other characters get released or reworked, I'd be interested to see teleport mechanics experimented with in new non-friendly abilities (currently Party Time and Dance are the only two I think).

The friendly approach is often times completely implausible.
I can almost guarantee you that you won't accomplish anything by dancing hard in the middle of a flock of sheep. It'd be a youtube hit for sure, but the sheep wouldn't be bothered in any way.
Now if you were to use a devious approach like terrifying those sheep, they might run away. The aggressive solution would obviously work as well.
Friendly though... not really. This is probably why I almost never go friendly in this game. It's just too ridiculous.

[Skirlasvoud]

Originally posted by El Guapo:

The friendly approach is often times completely implausible.
I can almost guarantee you that you won't accomplish anything by dancing hard in the middle of a flock of sheep. It'd be a youtube hit for sure, but the sheep wouldn't be bothered in any way.
Now if you were to use a devious approach like terrifying those sheep, they might run away. The aggressive solution would obviously work as well.
Friendly though... not really. This is probably why I almost never go friendly in this game. It's just too ridiculous.

Well, maybe on the Highland nuns or on the Mali villagers, and I've always been confused as why the Egyptian Goddess of War starts of Friendly, but you're right El Guapo.

The friendly approach simply has no bearing on realism. I mean, everyone knows that complimenting ghost pirates is completely implausible. It is well documented that only the ultimate insult works on those and that's definitly a Devious way of doing things.

[Ferrus Animus]

Originally posted by skirlasvoud:

and I've always been confused as why the Egyptian Goddess of War starts of Friendly,

If you read her description and observe, you can see the idea is that she's a dual character. Sekmet the aggressive goddess and Bastet, the friendly goddess. Her name changes and all.
Also not a bad interpretation of the goddesses.

[Flamestalker]

Originally posted by Ferrus Animus:

Originally posted by skirlasvoud:

and I've always been confused as why the Egyptian Goddess of War starts of Friendly,

If you read her description and observe, you can see the idea is that she's a dual character. Sekmet the aggressive goddess and Bastet, the friendly goddess. Her name changes and all.
Also not a bad interpretation of the goddesses.

Its just a bit weird that she starts in her friendly form, especcially as pre-fight dialog kinda infers that it was the Aggresive Sekmet that was speaking to you. It was probably just for balancing reasons though, its likely few players would have went friendly if both paties open aggresively.