Gebura Meltdown Clear (Gameplay Spoilers)

[Blumenthal]

I'm writing this on the heels of clearing Gebura's Meltdown and I have to say that while I was nervous getting things set up, it went fairly smoothly and was an interesting spectacle to watch. If you've read my previous post, you will know I say, "watch," because this strategy barely required lifting a finger.

Based on how Gebura's suppression is built, I'm sure I'm not the first one to use this method; but for me, I got the idea when I read on the wiki that Gebura takes double damage from abnormalities. This gave me the impression that players are meant to pit Gebura up against abnormalities and not employees. This strategy is based around doing just that.

The only two Abnormalities you will need are Shelter of the 27th of March and Blue Star, though I do recommend others to speed up the process. The idea is that by using the Shelter's qliphoth counter reducing effect, you can make abnormalities continuously escape. Blue Star is necessary because it does AoE white damage to the entire facility, so no matter where Gebura is, she will be hurt. Shelter of the 27th has the added effect of protecting your one employee entirely, so you don't have to worry about dodging and weaving all over the entire facility. That being said, make sure you don't have any abnormalities that can call employees when their counter reaches zero (with the possible exception of Plague Doctor under extremely specific circumstances) as they may be able to pull your employee out of the shelter. Though Red Shoes does not seem to have this effect on sheltered employees, you should avoid abnormalities like Parasite Tree.

Plague Doctor is an exception if you are transforming him for your strategy to make use of his AoE and Apostles. For this, I would recommend going into the day with 11 pre-blessed employees and stationing them as far away from the shelter as possible, stationing your Shelter camper in front of the shelter, and send the 12th employee to get blessed by plague doctor. As soon as it looks like Plague Doctor will get a good work result (I believe its a minimum of 8 PE), order your camper into the Shelter. If by chance Plague's clock is almost full but you are missing blessed employees because they died or because you restarted from day 1, it appears that they will spawn back in as Apostles when the 12th employee is blessed and the transformation occurs. The extra Apostles will have the names of the original blessed employees who are no longer present in your game.

If it isn't self evident already, I will tell you now that all of the employees who are not in the Shelter WILL die, if not by the abnormalities, then by Gebura herself in her final phase when she goes on the hunt. It is highly recommended that you don't assign any employees you care about in the prep screen for this operation. If you are feeling especially sentimental, you may station ONE employee you care about as the Shelter Camper, but I did not risk it because I didn't know where the missing Apostles would spawn and didn't want to run the risk of one harming a valued employee on the way to the shelter.

The strategy may seem like a lot to process, but in execution it is fairly simple. All you have to do is keep an employee in the Shelter reducing qliphoth counters and have Blue Star go to work. That being said, I mentioned that there were other abnormalities that I recommend. Rather than just including a list of good abnormalities to have, I will include all qliphoth counter abnormalities I had in the facility and what effects they had that I was able to see. In this way I can not only recommend favorable abnormalities, but also warn of some of the minor hiccups you may encounter with others.

1.76 MHz: This one was just kind of annoying, it didn't do anything except cloud the hallways with static. Would not recommend if you want a good show.

Der Freischutz: Could potentially do a lot of damage IF his magic bullet happens to pass through Gebura.

Army in Black: Can be tedious getting anywhere in the game with him because his counter reacts to clerk casualties and abnormality escapes, but considering he spawns in every department hub and does AoE damage in those rooms, Gebura is bound to run into him and take some damage.

Plague Doctor (/White Knight): I already covered this one for the most part above but I would like to mention that because the day ends when Gebura is defeated, this would be an optimal time to transform Plague Doctor as you won't have to suppress White Knight to unlock him.

Queen of Hatred: I didn't see her do a whole lot, but considering her shoop da whoop spans a vast horizontal line, I can see her either really doing a number on Gebura, or suppressing other abnormalities and being a nuisance.

Punishing Birb: He tried. So hard. under powered, but undeterred. Truly a role model for all.
He won't get you much mileage against Gebura, but his tenacity is a sight to behold.

Wall Gazer: Screams a lot. Kinda spooky, not super helpful.

Heroic Monk: His open mouth charge should do a lot of damage, but I don't think it can insta kill non-employees. Plus even if it does a lot of damage, abnormalities don't seem to fight him long enough to trigger this move.

Little Red Riding Hooded Mercenary: Seems more preoccupied with other abnormalities. It's kind of a toss up whether she goes after Gebura or not.

Silent Orchestra: Could have been useful had Gebura been in his department when he was doing his thing, but all he really did was move my camera, obscure my vision with that curtain, and make my ears bleed a few times.

Forsaken Murderer: Didn't murder anything, but got owned repeatedly. How the tables have turned.

Burrowing Heaven: Made a lot of avant-guard sculptures. I don't really get it, but the critics love him. Art has been my major for four years and the art world is still an enigma to me.

CENSORED: Employees suffer a huge chunk of sanity damage when seeing it, but abnormalities aren't affected. Turns out that eldritch abominations aren't intimidated by eldritch abominations. Attack and movement speed are too slow to be a real threat to Gebura. Aside from being an H.P. Lovecraft love letter, doesn't do much.

Nothing There: Does good damage to Gebura on the rare occasion that he can catch up to her and doesn't get distracted fighting other abnormalities.

Red Shoes: No effect on sheltered employees, thankfully. All employees and clerks will likely be gooey puddles on the ground before Red Shoes can entice any of them with the forces of fashion.

Mountain of Smiling Bodies: Prioritized eating over fighting, something that will probably be on my tombstone. Burrowing Heaven used all his food for its senior installation sculpture, so he wandered around looking hungry and sad. Honestly surprised he found anyone to eat at all.

La Luna: Did't do much, and I don't think she interacted with Gebura at all, but it was funny to watch her bonk abnormalities on the head with her cane, particularly Silent Orchestra.

Melting Love: Damage sponge. Immunity to red and sheer HP threshold made her an aggro lure for a number of abnormalities, not the least of which were Apostles. If not for her E.G.O. gear, I would have avoided her.

King of Greed: Last but absolutely not least. As most are probably aware, Greed has a hit box in front that does massive red damage, insta killing any employee who touches it. for this reason, suppression is typically done approaching from the back; however no matter what direction you approach from, passing through that hit box will still have the same affect. Greed's movement pattern is also nice and slow and limited to the hallways. In a delicious twist of irony, this means that whenever Gebura does her warp attack through the hallways with King of Greed's E.G.O. weapon, she runs the risk of passing through that hit box. In later stages of the fight when she goes through more hallways by both warping and running, she increases the risk of being punished. It was actually Greed punishing Gebura's warp that dealt the final 100 damage blow needed to finish the fight.

Ultimately if you're going to boost your ranks with any of these abnormalities, my number 1 recommendation has to be a tie between Plague Doctor/White Knight because he does AoE pale damage across the entire facility and spawns multiple helpers who roam the facility looking for a** to kick, and King of Greed purely based on its increasing probability to punish Gebura's movements.

When you finish Gebura's meltdown, you will be awarded with a lovely boost to the amount of E.G.O. equipment you can make from each abnormality. For this reason I recommend having as many Alephs as you can because of the extra equipment you can get. Also if you're reading this, you almost certainly have execution bullets by now, so you can avoid the casualties that trigger Mountain and Army's escape conditions while working your way through other core meltdowns.

I hope this strategy and my experiences can be of some help to someone. At a later date I would like to try this same method with Binah, though I understand her suppression is a bit different in that she does not take as much damage unless you adequately respond to her terms and she moves around a lot more than Gebura. If any of you have any input on why this strategy would or wouldn't work for Binah, or if you have thoughts on it in regards to Gebura's meltdown, I'd love to hear feedback.

[Folex]

Just to let you know, Binah is completely immune to all Abnormalities, so this won't work on her.

[Blumenthal]

Originally posted by Folex:

Just to let you know, Binah is completely immune to all Abnormalities, so this won't work on her.

Well damn, I must have missed that somewhere. Thanks for the heads up.

[NeedsMoreDoge]

Personally speaking from experience, my recommendation would be Nothing There, Blue Star and Shelter.

Nothing There will do heavy work against Gebura although requires being baited into fighting her. I found it sped things up a lot having him do most of the heavy lifting. He's also incredibly tanky given that he will regenerate his health when not damaged.
Blue Star is also excellent and you can just sit back and relax since its damage is consistent and facility-wide; however your frames are liable to start dying all over the place due to Blue Star's animations. There is such a thing as Too Much Leg.
As for Shelter, it will help avoid any issues with Gebura's hunting in phase 4. That being said, it might be possible to work around this issue with Rabbits?

The other stuff tended to be too inconsistent in damage (Silent Orchestra and Army in Black as well as Mountain's erratic AI), not having enough staying power (Melting Love and CENSORED) or just plain annoying by playing hub with your speed (WhiteNight and Silent Orchestra). WhiteNight at least makes up for it by his backing groupies though.

But yeah, that strategy won't work at all on Binah.

[Blumenthal]

Originally posted by NeedsMoreDoge:

Personally speaking from experience, my recommendation would be Nothing There, Blue Star and Shelter.

Nothing There will do heavy work against Gebura although requires being baited into fighting her. I found it sped things up a lot having him do most of the heavy lifting. He's also incredibly tanky given that he will regenerate his health when not damaged.
Blue Star is also excellent and you can just sit back and relax since its damage is consistent and facility-wide; however your frames are liable to start dying all over the place due to Blue Star's animations. There is such a thing as Too Much Leg.
As for Shelter, it will help avoid any issues with Gebura's hunting in phase 4. That being said, it might be possible to work around this issue with Rabbits?

The other stuff tended to be too inconsistent in damage (Silent Orchestra and Army in Black as well as Mountain's erratic AI), not having enough staying power (Melting Love and CENSORED) or just plain annoying by playing hub with your speed (WhiteNight and Silent Orchestra). WhiteNight at least makes up for it by his backing groupies though.

But yeah, that strategy won't work at all on Binah.

I've heard of people using Rabbits on Binah, but this is the first I've heard about using them on Gebura. Would their quarantine stop Gebura's warp jump? If I play through the game from a completely new save one day, I think I'll try it.

Its a shame Binah is immune to abnormalities, especially considering I'm a bit to understaffed to handle her meltdowns, plus I have abnormalities like Don't Touch me that are going to make it a pain or down right impossible to handle all of them. I think once I get all of the ego gear, including White Knight's, I'll start from day 1 again.

[NeedsMoreDoge]

Originally posted by PurpleThirst:

I've heard of people using Rabbits on Binah, but this is the first I've heard about using them on Gebura. Would their quarantine stop Gebura's warp jump? If I play through the game from a completely new save one day, I think I'll try it.

Its a shame Binah is immune to abnormalities, especially considering I'm a bit to understaffed to handle her meltdowns, plus I have abnormalities like Don't Touch me that are going to make it a pain or down right impossible to handle all of them. I think once I get all of the ego gear, including White Knight's, I'll start from day 1 again.

I don't know how much you are aware of game mechanics, but it's good to know anyway even having done it with the cheese method.
Basically, the issue with Red Mist is the fourth stage, at which point her transition is a coinflip: you either get a special variant of her previous corridor teleport, with the difference being her throwing her gauntlet ahead of the rush - or you get her full on murder hunt mode, where she moves normally (without teleporting) at high speed towards her target.
Rabbits prevent normal movement in and out of the deparment(s) they're called to. They won't stop abnormalities from leaving via other methods (Magical Girl teleporting, Amber Ordeals burrowing), and WN is a weird exception because all of his apostles count as separate instances of the same entity and qualify as being in the same department for some reason... but they will otherwise prevent normal movement in and out of the department. So they won't be able to do anything about the warp jump, as you call it, but the problematic hunt mode might hopefully be prevented.
This is entirely theory, though; in the end I didn't actually test this out because I just flat nuked her after she did her first hunt. But you'd theoretically be able to do this to avoid all deaths (to Gebura).

Don't Touch Me is entirely immune to meltdowns, by the way - as are Backwards Clock and We Can Change Anything. The game will never force you to flat out murder employees in order to deal with works... it'll just gently encourage you to screw up and get them killed instead.

[kaymarciy]

Originally posted by NeedsMoreDoge:

the problematic hunt mode

What are you talking about? You shoot a slow bullet and her speed drops to... what? 50? At this point of game even a newly hired LOB 1 agent can outrun her. And after she's got tired you collapse on her and she dies in a matter of second (unless you are an idiot like me and forgot to unequip 2 Magic Bullet guns).