Turn 2 Mithra? Sure, why not!

[FinalCataclsym]

I have to say, Illusionist can do absolutely bonkers things like this. How even? You summon Kamaitachi turn 1 with Gem. Turn 2, you use Replacement on Kamaitachi with Mithra as the only other Summon Cap 2 creature in your line up. Kackling maniacally optional.

But why stop there? Wanna clean house with Fujin/Raijin? Similar idea. Oh, but now your summon cap is too high and you can't get any more creatures out? Just use Empty to lower the summoning cap by one on one of 'em. PROFIT!

This can also be used on other big things like dragons and in the Wind Element case, Kamaitachi can come back out again and benefit from the wind elemental bonus.

As far as other abilities go, I run SP Restore and Conserve SP with Alien Abyss. I don't want my enemies running away when I have them on the ropes...

Only downside I don't like about Light and Dark elements is there is no Initiation skill on any of their creatures. So unless you run a class that has Light or Dark Sign, you can't be Light or Dark.

[Edii]

I was just experimenting Replacement-based builds with Yona to grind more TP. A turn 1 Kelpie for rushing is also pretty interesting.

Speaking of summoning FAST, let me share my Turn 4 Thanatos Team. Not sure if anyone has shared this team here before:
Master: Necromancer Falim (Sacrifice Sum, Summon undead, Sacrifice(skill))
Creatures: Lailah, Chimera/Aphrodite, Tai-Sui (with Petrify), Caladrius (with De-Stone), Kelpie and Thanatos.
Turn 1: Summon an undead and sacrifice it to summon Lailah.
Turn 2: Sacrifice Lailah to summon Chimera/Aphrodite, then sacrifice Chimera/Aphrodite to summon Tai-Sui and use Petrify on your own master.
Turn 3: Caladrius will be summoned because your master is petrified, so De-stone your master and cast the Sacrifice skill on Caladrius, immobilizing and silencing the enemy master. Sacrifice Tai-Sui to summon Kelpie and "ride" her so she can bring you closer to the enemy master.
Turn 4: You should be close to the enemy master, so sacrifice Kelpie to summon Thanatos and press the win button.

An "optimal strategy to summon X creature" list would be kinda nice too.

Edit: You can also have an Illusionist Falim and combine both Sacrifice Summon and Replacement for some interesting results. Replace some creature by one with longer ST and sacrifice it to summon some amazing cap 3 creature pretty fast.

[FinalCataclsym]

I was looking over all the Abilities of creatures to look for Chimera implementation and came across possibly the most awesome and wicked skill for both Illusionists and pure trolling. Hua Po has a skill called Evil Haunting that can actually raise the Summon Cap of any creature by 1. Although it costs 6 to use, so she can only do it a few times depending if you raise her SP or not with TP. In this case though, it'd probably be worth it to completely lock down enemy masters with the Illusion Alien Abyss.

Now the other half of this zaniness is bringing the cap up against your own creatures to replace them with Summon Cap 3 juggernauts. And with Illusion's Weird Mirror, you could bring in Lucifer and have the stat penalties work in her favor. If you decide to use Nika as your master, summoning Kamaitachi would get faster and cheaper every time and you can still swap in Mithra early for gobs of SP through Summon Gift 4 and SP Regen. And that's not even actually using Mithra to decimate enemy ranks. Nika would also benefit Hua Po for regenerating her SP for quick Evil Haunting and returning.

I'mma continue to work on this build more to see what is most effective, but so far I see Hua Po, Mithra and Kamaitachi as the staples with creatures like Loki, Bahamut, Thor and Lucifer plus Indra if you forgo Weird Mirror.

But yeah, certainly makes some of these awesome powerhouses functionally usable.

[Mr.E]

Lucifer's not one of my favorites to futz around with, as her negative abilities make her rather underwhelming but the Flying ability really complicates getting rid of them. If you try to Erase them one at a time you're liable to waste a turn hitting the good ability. If you try to transfer the whole set to an enemy unit, it's a double-edged sword since Flying is very good. Compare to Mithra and friends who have equally heinous stat totals but with no downsides beyond the requisite high Summon Time or Cost.

Not that I'd ever fault people for trying, that's the beauty of this game! Mithra played buddy cop to Iruse Knight's story and a lot of the Trial challenge maps myself, just using plain Cat Sith strats. The increased SP generation allows a quick rush up to 5 ZOC, which makes it extremely difficult for most enemies to do anything. Mithra can Erase ZOC-ignoring and debuff-resisting abilities to ensure the lockdown, HP Restore provides a steady drip of Heal Resist-agnostic regen to stave off chip damage, and dual Debuff Immunity shuts down a lot of would-be counters otherwise.

Chimera can do some neat things, like combine Pygmalion's Puppet Master with a second unit possessing abilities beyond basic damage dealing. Mental Assault, Allergy Season, etc. are brutal coming from disposable Familiars. Sadly, it's not really possible to make a ZOC monster out of Chimera since everything rounds down. :(

Illusionist definitely does the most unique stuff in the game though. Bounce can be really cheesy followed up by a Chains ability, but I really like their Illusions since no other class seriously explores the design space of active abilities.

[Edii]

Illusionist is an amazing class. You can even make those bad abilities into something actually useful.

Shinatsuhiko, for instance, has Storm Zone, which unsummons allied creatures and familiars that get close to her. If you summon a Shinatsuhiko with no skills and Envoy her, you have yourself an anti-creature shield around you.

Ose and Lucifer have Total Control, but you have to swap this ability with an enemy unit since you cannot use Envoy directly on them. In my experiments, it takes too long and you have to face enemy creatures before accomplishing the ability swap. (casting Envoy and charming a Chimera also doesn't work because you cannot use abilities with charmed units)

Edit: Casting Envoy on a Kagutsuchi with no skills and Bouncing her just to damage the enemy master with Summon Risk is pretty funny.

[FinalCataclsym]

I played around with it a bit more and was able to squeeze some more juice outta the build using Penalu since Mithra is immune to Hazardous. This can grant you SP Restore 1 and Conserve SP while giving you much greater freedom in selecting which Illusions you want to utilize or if you want to give her access to more skills or Ignore Zoc 1 for example. You get an extra 6 Ability Points when she's at 50 for those curious.

Other things I learned is that 1 and only 1 Illusion can be active at a time. I suggest you really should make sure you are using the one you want to full effect before triggering another. Hilariously, Strange Journey completely cripples Elisha's Headlong Rush and therefore her rush strategies. Lunatic Moon will bypass Stat Resist when it comes to reducing Defense (and probably Total Immunity but I haven't checked) but Mithra doesn't care as it just makes Holy Blade wreck enemies faster.

Additionally, the boosts are percentages that stick with the stat, not static increases. So if you have... let's say 100 MAG boosted by 20% for 120. If you swap stats so the MAG would be 50 naturally, it'll be 60 instead of 70.

Edii, you gave me an idea I'll have to try out at some point. Summon Kukunochi without skills while loading her Summon Cap up with Evil Haunting. Use Envoy on her will cut the enemies SP production by 2 and instantly clog up the enemy master's ability to gain reinforcements. And with Kukunochi only being a 4ST 5SC creature, this can be done very early in a match. And with something like Strange Journey, it'd be a long time before anything could reach you outside of Chronos. Of course you could use a Summon Cap 2 creature to start, but the best for that is probably Yakubyougami and she's neither quick to summon or necessarily cheap. Kamaitachi could be used, but you'd have to Erase the Kamaitachi ability or risk taking repeat damage from her running around.

However, this could lead to quite a nasty build as you could easily pin her in the corner with your master and Hua Po turn 2, or even use a Decoy to block her in. Even just one use of Evil Haunting would put them at Summon Cap 3, so Envoy would shut down reinforcments brutally. You could probably continue the match at your leisure as you brought out your own forces, using stuff like Empty when/if you needed to.

Hell, the best method to defeating your enemies might just be making sure there are none to defeat in the first place. You might still have to deal with familiars like Samiel, Elementals or Undead, but without ample and rapid support, you'd cleave through them pretty quickly with big hitters.

Edit: One more scan through the creatures list reminded me that Gullveig's Spirit Burden could be used against your enemy to drain them of 2 SP when she is killed. Coupling Mithra with either Cherub or Flora using Mana Fruit would allow numerous strikes to wreak havoc on the enemies SP. I mean, without any SP, masters are dead in the water and why I love Mithra's Summon Gift 4 so much.

[Mr.E]

Illusionist conveniently has a Familiar conversion ability, so you don't even have to kill them!

All the extra SP of Summon Gift 4 can make for some tasty Master-centric team builds rather than them just being a conduit to summon dudes and cower behind them like the King in chess. Combined with her extra ZOC and incredible longevity and versatility, Mithra's definitely my favorite excessively-priced creature.

I dunno how special Illusionist is at actually abusing the extra SP considering they're the best at cheating her out though. They have no obvious SP dump skills. I suppose it powers a second Replacement quickly and Empty is good in small doses, but it's much harder to abuse Replacement at other Summon Cap values: The vast majority of creatures are 1-caps, difficult to isolate and not worth cheating out, while 3-caps lack a cheapie like Kamaitachi to facilitate cheesing the expensive ones.

Actually, I have an idea! ... Nope, can't summon Thanatos with Replacement (nor the Ancestral Gods if you were curious). But Evil Haunting on Kamaitachi works for the other 3-caps! You could probably get a lot of mileage out of Thor-Loki-Typhon abusing their high-cost abilities while effectively using Replacement to hot-swap between them as the previous summon recharges SP.

That has the issue of accidentally resummoning Kamaitachi though. Maybe it's best to focus on one, which brings Phoenix and Bahamut back into consideration as more longevity-based beefgates, or at least let them suicide via SP exhaustion so you can resummon Kamaitachi conventionally and repeat instead of trying to keep them alive.

And they're all so juicy! Loki's Diamond Dust is incredibly cripping, Typhon's displacement can facilitate multiple cheese strats, and Thor hits so stupidly hard she may well solo the enemy Master. Heck, summon Mithra first for her Summon Gift 4, then resummon Kamaitachi + Hua Po for your choice of three-drop after and you have a hella beefy duo. Neat!

... Alright, I just tried that. Conserve proc lets you do it by Turn 4 which is insane. Missing the proc forces you to wait until T5, which feels significantly slower despite objectively still being really fast compared to a combined Summon Time of ~40. All without the liability of Cat Sith's summoning circle taking up 2 Cap forever, chain Sacrifice Summoning or whatever. Replacement really is nuts.

Shinatsuhiko-Envoy is quite an interesting combo mentioned, but it'd be much neater (and broken) if Storm Zone procced every turn so you could use it to actively desummon problematic enemy units. It only procs on her controller's turn, however, so you have to really commit to the strategy by Immobilizing her or whatever to avoid the enemy just moving her out of the way.

[FinalCataclsym]

Illusionist has so many tools in her box, I forget that some of them are even there. I'm still used to carrying the trio of stat swaps and Magic Blast, so it's usually SP Swing, Empty and Replacement while the 8th was Metamorphose, just not anymore.

Her familiar conversion is another simply amazing thing that only she can do and it only costs 4 SP to do IIRC, which is basically nothing to this build.

If you wanted to pin down Storm Zone, Hua Po has Vine Bind for the problematic unit while Mithra's ZOC can pin Shinatsushiko in place during the initial turn or two of Envoy. Hua Po only has 3 Move, so it'd have to be planned in advance.

Yeah I saw you could have Mithra plus basically anything by Turn 4 which is why I was happy there was a counterpart to Empty. Empty will usually be your I have too much SP skill for eventual lowering of units to 1 or 0 and summoning Kamaitachi again for another Cap 3 creature of annhilation.

I think Loki's true terror comes from a combination of her passives mixed with skills. Magic Eye gives +35 accuracy and Pure Focus giving +50 to Proc rate. She can use Frost Armor for an additional boost to Proc of +20 per cast. After just 2 times, the normally weak hits from Icicle Shots are certain not to miss and always trigger the loss of stats. This lowers the enemies attack and defense by 25% each casting! And if they try to counterhit, Ice Queen lowers Attack, Defense AND Magic by another 5%, possibly even per hit of the skill and not just per damage skill use. Another creature, especially Mithra, can walk right over them for an easy kill. Even made easier if you used Lunatic Moon for bonus attack and lower enemy defense.

Typhon unfortunately lacks both Scalding Gust and Cold Front which would have made her more viable for killing creatures over tossing them all over the battlefield.

Thor has the huge AOE lighting move and can follow up crits with more hits. Accelerate gives additional usage to skills and move, so she can close in and solo enemy masters easier.

Bahamut is self explanatory with striking elemental weaknesses and silencing them.

Phoenix I haven't played around with in testing conditions and Lucifer can abuse Weird Mirror if needed. Even if she suicides to SP loss, Penace might be able to be stat reset via Mithra, if you even need to. Not sure, haven't tried though.

Only other natural Summon Cap 3 monster is Thanatos and I bet her summoning condition is what locks her out of normal replacement. However, if you did burn the SP of say Thor and Lucifer with big AOE SP hungry strikes while letting Mithra and Hua Po do the same... it COULD be possible to swap her in late game. Her added benefit to the lineup is forcing the selection to 2 creatures instead of 3 normally during replacement and maybe bypassing Summon Risk 3 due to Replacement. Not that it would even matter as Kamaitachi can move anywhere and getting Thanatos should be victory anyways.

As far as Replacement goes for Summon Cap 1 stuff, best I'd consider is Fortuna. Only thing I learned from the Fortune ability for certain is that if you have any Crit % on your creature (Thor, Ukobach or Artemis's Lunar Grace) and/or skill, you are guaranteed to critically hit every time. Paired with Lunar Grace and EVERY damaging skill is critical as long as Fortuna is alive and the creaure has Fortune.

Why Fortuna for replacement though? Her summon cost is only 4 but her summon time is 8. This strat works best with Gem summoning thus far, so it'd be a six turns before you could crit constantly. So swapping her in thru Hua Po would be child's play. This pairs insanely well with Thor to the point of absurdity.

[FinalCataclsym]

So I finally got around to doing the Trial of Preservation. I was able to do Susu's Ultimate Justice in a single try with Hua Po, Aphrodite, Kamaitachi, Asclepius, Bahamut and Mithra. It was REALLY close though and the end could have gone a bit smoother as her Wood Vestis was tearing my girls apart with statuses. Asclepius died for the cause to rid Penalu of poison among other things but Penalu was able to deliver the finishing blow with Magic Blast. Again, very close.

Vishnu herself wasn't too bad as I used Loki to strip her off all defense and then Mithra to rip her to shreds with Holy Blade. When I swapped to Iruse for the capture, I used Kamaitachi to push her where I needed her, removed Total Immunity with Erase, gave her Poison with Allergy Season and surrounded her with the team and decoys. It was pretty funny watching her use Enlightment on a Decoy. SUCH OVERKILL!

Now to some more random stuff I have learned. First off is Thor/Lucifer's Keraunos ability is not nearly as cool as I though. It is like Beam and Laser but with bigger range, better accuracy and higher paralysis. It hits in a line, but it doesn't specify as such, so I initially figured it was a giant, get the hell outta the way or DIE AOE blastzone.

Second was playing around with my new Goddess for a bit and getting her missing stars. She can be Bounced if she has at least 1 HP and SP which can lead to absolute shenanigans. Reason being, Fleeting Dream triggers EVERY time she comes onto the battlefield, thus making Fleeting Dream infinite along with any and all abuse you can imagine from having a Goddess that won't leave, can't die from SP loss and has so many tools to play with. You can mitigate the SP loss by using SP Regen as she'll keep the status (and all other statuses) even when bounced, heal through Mana Fruit or passily through Aphrodite.

If you were able to get her out quicker, you could have insane levels of lockdown, which I suppose is the point, but this is even more complete ruination against enemies. I'll have to mess around with her again when I can think of way to rapidly up my defense. Maybe something involving defense down and Weird Mirror. I do know that even if you have the full 250 defense score to summon her, you can't use Replacement to bring her in. She absolutely can only be summoned and you also can't cancel her Illusion with one of your own. As an Ancestral Goddess, she IS that much more powerful than you that she straight up overrides those usual abilities. As she should I suppose.

Anyways, maybe someone will find Bouncing Vishnu amusing or useful. I'll have to take Susu through Story Mode tomorrow or when I'm not super sleepy from playing too much Moekuri. I know, who woulda guessed that one?

[Mr.E]

I don't see much point in Bounce other than the generally useful fact it effectively extends how long you have access to Vishnu without having to wait the extra turns for resummoning. Considering Enlightenment is by far the best way in the game to nonlethally dispose of enemy creatures, it's probably pretty good.

All my Ancestral God shenanigans were nominally done with Warrior, since they have high base Atk/Def, access to all stat boost abilities plus stat boost skills (which can be doubled to 10% via another ability). It's still really slow, Weird Mirror could probably make it efficient for Atk/Def with Icicle Shots. Mag might be difficult either way though.

It's a smidge disappointing I could never find a way to keep Shiva or Brahma around. Soul Slaying... Mmm...

[adelicjimmy]

First of, I would like to thank all of you for this discusion, I am now hooked on this game :P
I am sad you are not as fond of Yukabyougami as I am, especially as illusionist where her high cap doesn't matter/ is a perk.
This gave me a class to look forward to unlocking all the skills for, as Illusioinist is pretty rough early on. and I guess I should really try night one of these days too...

[FinalCataclsym]

Originally posted by adelicjimmy:

First of, I would like to thank all of you for this discusion, I am now hooked on this game :P
I am sad you are not as fond of Yukabyougami as I am, especially as illusionist where her high cap doesn't matter/ is a perk.
This gave me a class to look forward to unlocking all the skills for, as Illusioinist is pretty rough early on. and I guess I should really try night one of these days too...

Glad you're hooked! I need to finish power leveling the remaining creatures and characters. Read up on Sharing My Teams for more creative builds. Hope you have more fun and find/share your own team.