Uber Bosses

[JCaesar007]

Someone in the DQH2 Discord chat (https://discord.gg/DJ8ssGn *ahem* probably the last refuge for multiplayer for this game) was having trouble with Uber Estark and asked me for advice. I wrote up a quick post to cover how I do it, and I figured this might help some other people and maybe even ignite the community a bit if we start talking about end game builds and strategies. So I'm going to flesh out my Uber Estark strategy here for anyone who needs it, and I'd like to hear from others if they have a different effective strategy, or better yet, strategies for Uber Dragonlord, Map of the Mighty, etc, anything related to the end game.

I don't claim this to be the best strategy for farming Uber Estark and it certainly has plenty of room for optimization. But I have a ~90% win rate and typically win in 5-6 minutes, so it's pretty consistent at least. Uber Estark is the best place to farm Ace of Spoils, so this should help people with that.


Uber Estark:

Here's the party I use:

Psaro
Maxed Tough Guy Tattoo - +29% damage, no mana regen
Uber Ace of Spoils - +8% damage, no mana regen, +1.5% crit chance, +16% movement speed
Ace of Spoils - +1.2% crit chance
Erdrick's Orb
Skills: Liberation, A Cut Above

Angelo
Lucky Dragon's Wing +10
Life Ring +6
Adamant Pendant +5
Orbus Regale
Skills: Oomph, Timbrel of Tension, Shining Shot

Meena
Ruby of Protection +8
Monarchic Mark
Lucky Dragon's Wing
Zenithian Orb
Skills: The Devil, The Moon, Multiheal

Cousin Priest
Maxed Venus' Tear
Restless Heart +10
Prayer Ring +7
Orb of Enlightenment
Using Wands
Skills: Cheer Leader, Kabuff, Multiheal

Party Powers: Critical Faculties I, II, III (crit chance up), Fighting Dirty (crit chance up on stunned/weak point), Stunning Revelation (chance to stun), Divine Intervention (chance to survive a deadly hit)

Most of the specific characters and accessories are not that important. What you should take away from this is: Psaro as DPS with a maxed Tough Guy Tattoo, 2 multihealers (one with Kabuff and one who can sap), and Angelo for Oomph and ToT. Psaro is the keystone for me because his damage output with TGT is absurd and he doesn't need natural MP regen. There are other DPS options (someone in the Discord uses Carver for this fight, and I'm guessing a Martial Artist with a TGT and an Uber Ace of Spoils with MP regen on crit would also work). Like I said, this is just the strategy that works for me.

So first you should get to know Estark's patterns and how to avoid his attacks. The main thing in the fight (as in most boss fights I suppose) is to try to stay behind him. That will make it easier to avoid several of his attacks. Let's go ahead and list them one by one and how to deal with them (forgive me if I forget one or two, I'm doing this off the top of my head):
-Long range flame lines - He fire a line of fire at you Sizz-style, then does it again. He only does this at long range. Easy to dodge.
-Sword leap - He leaps at you and slams his sword down. He only does this at long range. Easy to dodge.
-Multislash - He slashes a bunch of times in front of him. As long as you focus on staying behind him this will never hit you. If you are out of position you can usually dodge out of the way as it has short range. The last hit has somewhat longer range I believe so dodge again if necessary.
-Sword spin - He spins around twice (or is it 3 times?) swinging his sword. This one can be tricky to avoid, but it seems like if you stay right up in his grill this won't hit you.
-Sizz rays - He strikes the ground 3 times and sends out rays of Sizz-type fire. The 1st and 3rd hit are identical, and the 2nd hit is shifted halfway between them (like + x + but imagine that with 8 rays each instead of 4). From a distance this is easy to dodge but up close it can be hard to see coming. It always telegraphs the hit with a line before the fire shoots out of it so keep your eye out for that. At the very least, don't get hit more than once. Remember how the pattern works and dodge the 2nd and 3rd hit accordingly.
-Short range Sizz web - He strikes the ground and Sizz lines wrap around him like a spiderweb. Pretty short range so you can just dodge away, or if you're feeling brave, stand near him in an open spot in the web.
-Short range Kafrizz - He summons a giant Kafrizz fireball and throws it straight down, doing a small AOE. I've found you can simply jump to avoid damage from this, but it isn't hard to dodge either.
-Medium range fire spin - He draws a wide fire circle around him, then spins and lights up anything inside the circle. This is his toughest attack to avoid. You have to be watching closely and see when he draws the circle, and then high-tail it out of there. If you realize it too late to escape, just block.
-Tension up - Not an attack per se, but he starts glowing pink and greatly increases his damage. Be very careful once he tensions. There are two levels, 50 and 100. At 100, most of his moves will one-shot you.
-Snooze - Your character will be surrounded by a blue spell circle for 5ish seconds, then it will stop and cast Snooze shortly after. The idea with this is to catch Estark in his own Snooze, because it wipes his tension. But once that happens, you have to deal with...
-Sleep explosion - Whenever Estark is put to sleep, after a few seconds he will glow pink and explode, hitting everyone for big damage no matter where you are. Then he does it again 2 more times. If you block, this greatly reduces the damage (50% I believe). I like to switch to a healer for this so I can multiheal between sleepsplosions if necessary. Whatever it takes, it's worth it to wipe his tension.

While Psaro is using his normal moveset, I mostly use his C4 (weak weak weak strong). If I need MP, I use Jump->Strong->Repeat (it seems to absorb MP faster than just spamming Strong and do more damage as well). In Liberation mode, I just spam his Strong attack combo. For those who don't know, Liberation is Psaro's ability that greatly buffs his moveset but slowly drains MP while you're using it.

I don't typically start using Liberation until Estark starts using tension. Prior to that, it's fairly safe to whittle him down. Liberation won't last the whole fight. I've tried using Liberation as much as possible and absorbing MP when it runs out, but I feel that it just makes the end of the fight much harder, so holding off and saving the MP works better for me.

You should be getting close to tension when Estark starts tensioning himself. If you can hit tension before his first sleepsplosions, that's great. You don't have to worry about the damage and you can wail on him. Your second tension should be near the end of the fight.

If things start going wrong and your party members start dying, choose carefully when to revive them. If Estark is asleep, wait for the sleepsplosions to end before reviving. If you get low on leaves, Angelo is the most expendable.

That's ... pretty much it. This is what works for me. I can make a video if anyone is interested.


So, anyone got any strats for Uber Dragonlord? I'm afraid to even try it.

[otakon17]

I remember seeing a Japanese strategy video on Youtube a long ways back. Don't remember the dratted link though.