(SPOILER) My personal tactics for the final boss of Ao no Kiseki. (SPOILER)

[Oguzhan]

I have just recently finished my yearly Trails marathon (from FC to Ao, 100% runs, used to have the CS games too but that is not the case anymore as time is a luxury these days) and for some reason decided to talk about my strategies for the final boss of Ao no Kiseki. For those who don't know, this is by far the hardest final boss in the series if not the hardest boss in general. It is designed around all of the OP strategies used by the players. For example, using earth walls? (which I actually don't do anymore, placement is more useful) well F you cause this guy has a claw attack that can not only inflict burn upon your characters but also get rid of ALL of your earth wall type protection. Meaning even your AoE all encompassing protection S-Craft is useless. You like spamming S-Crafts? Well the boss is going to banish your character for a few turns. You like art chaining? Well the boss has an art negate spell that can also mute your character. Finally, I think, with the exception of its art cancel attack, all of its moves ignore evasion. And even with the art cancel, if an evasion tank gets hit by that while casting an art, they will most likely get hit by it, as evasion drops while casting an art.

That being said it is not an impossible boss and there are quite a lot of strategies to beating it. Also, it is only the hardest boss in the series, or at least one of the hardest ones, if you are playing on Nightmare mode. If you are playing on Easy, you should be able to take it down via S-Craft spam I think......not sure though I have never played this game on anything but Nightmare.

Also, yes, the strats you will see here all assume that you are playing the game on Nightmare. They should work on any difficulty however. And finally, YES, this is my favorite final boss in the series. Not just because of it's challange, but also how it has moves that directly connect to its lore, kinda like the final boss of SC who had an attack that healed your character but also confused them (kinda like Aureole's ability to tempt people by giving them blessings)

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General Strategies:

1: Art baiting. Just like Slifer the Sky Dragon from Yu-Gi-Oh!, this guy has a weakness that ties to its effs. IF your character is casting an art, it is going to cancel that art when its turn comes. Meaning if your characters have accessories that can counter "MUTE", you can just take turns casting arts in order to stop it from doing its other attacks. THAT BEING SAID, the ability to banish a character who had used an S-Craft is a counter attack, meaning you can't stop that. ALSO, if you get rid of its adds, it might just decide to revive them.

Cool thing about art baiting is that, if an evasion tank is around a character that gets hit by the art cancel attack, they can dodge it and hit the boss as counter. I recommend placing your characters in a Y formation because of this. One character at the far back. 2 characters around the art caster that is close to the boss.

2: During the first form of the boss, you have to get rid of its adds first otherwise it is going to absorb them, leading it to rewind time to its benefit when you kill him. This only happens in the first phase so don't worry about it. That being said, all of the adds have double craft and art protection, meaning you first need to get rid of these barriers. (Get over them, hehehe). Personally, I recommend the use of crafts, as trying to get rid of the reflects means that your characters are also getting hit. Just use AoE crafts/food weapons and finish them off with S-Crafts. (Don't worry it won't banish during the first phase) I also recommend using Loyd's raging spin to get them close to one another.

3: The adds during the second phase can eat your Cp and do a decent amount of damage. Also, if the boss eats one of them after only having 20% of its health (not quite sure), it can do an all banish attack. Meaning you don't want these things on the field. However, if you get rid of all of them, it can revive them. Personally, I just get rid of them all but you can also make it so only one stays and use Loyd or Rixia to keep it around one corner of the screen.

4: If you have Burst orbs, you can use them to your advantage. Also, if you don't have any stealth spells, you can use burst to finish the boss off before it does the banish attack.

5: As I have noticed during my final fight, while the boss does follow the flags very consistently, it might waste a turn doing some other move.

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Characters: Personally, I prefer using Loyd, Tio, Randy and Wazy for this fight. Randy is really strong and has nice crafts that can be useful. Wazy is the same and is good for art baiting. ALSO, their S-Crafts are BADASS with the final boss theme. No seriously, when the guitar kicks in, I ALWAYS make sure to use their S-Crafts, or at least try to time it with the music. It is just badass. Hell, it is even more bad ♥♥♥ then using Estelle's wheel of time against the final boss of SC.


Loyd: The best evasion tank in the game, does a good amount of physical damage and has a craft that can drag the adds.

Randy: BADASS S-Craft, enough said.

Wazy: BADASS S-Craft, enough said. Also I believe his S-Craft his the most powerful one in the game which makes sense.

Tio: The MVP of the fight for me. Why? Well first off, if you give her the water bell she can spam Tear over and over again. Keep in mind Tear can heal burn and heals around 8k health if you have the master quartz that I mentioned earlier. Combine this with a super gladiator belt and she can easily fill her S-Craft for emergency use (Eidolon Gear not the Grail Sphere like one). Also, if a character is banished, spending turns using nothing but heal means that you can get your characters back no problem. And finally, while the Art bait strategy is good, sometimes your characters are just going to be too fast meaning you might not be able to bait the boss. So you can simple waste some turns casting tear and then try to bait the boss. Her craft "Absolute Zero 2" does a very good amount of AoE damage and her Energy field is a cool way to heal characters (I believe it also heals statuses like mute)

Rixia: Good physical damage, field nuke S-Craft and a craft that can literally drag the adds. Also the second best evasion tank after Loyd.

Elie: Heavens whip like craft, best ATS in the game and the best element when it comes to offensive arts. I don't use her however since that would mean kicking out Randy or Wazy, and I am not loosing out on those S-Craft animations.

Dudley and Noel: I am yet to use them in this battle. Not that they are bad, it's just I need Loyd and Tio, and Wazy and Randy have badass looking S-Crafts that go amazingly with the music.

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Soooo yeah, these are basically what I do and keep in mind when fighting with this amazing boss. What are your strategies? I am really curious to know. Ao no Kiseki has by far the best boss fights when it comes to challenge since a lot of them either ignore the usual strats or have some interesting conditions. You can't simply cheese them with an evasion tank (though it helps against 4 of them), Zero Field, S-Crafts etc etc...

It is by far my favorite in the series when it comes to challenge.

[alonkishon]

Originally posted by Oguzhan:

Soooo yeah, these are basically what I do and keep in mind when fighting with this amazing boss. What are your strategies? I am really curious to know. Ao no Kiseki has by far the best boss fights when it comes to challenge since a lot of them either ignore the usual strats or have some interesting conditions. You can't simply cheese them with an evasion tank (though it helps against 4 of them), Zero Field, S-Crafts etc etc...

It is by far my favorite in the series when it comes to challenge.

Agree with you on that, in term of boss fight this game is the best, at least so far. I think what make this fights so well, is even when you cheese, and lets face it you alwyse find cheese strategy(can I say that?), but how the game encourage you to find a strategy and how one little mistake and you will be dead. I did like 5 times Arios fight (Mirror Castle), just because little mistake. We all can say goodbye to tha last good boss fight in this trails game.

Well I only play the game only once, due luck of time (which is very sad), at hard level so the fight was cool, not stressful as Loewe fight, but intense- forty minutes, spend a lot of them on Phase 1 because I didn't understand how to beat him. I didn't see any good reasron to bring two male fighters to the figth, so used Wazy, which i find his space slot very neat, Elie, Tio and Lolyd.


Just small question, did you succeed deafeat Sigmund (at the harbor) at nightmare?

[Oguzhan]

Originally posted by alonkishon:

Originally posted by Oguzhan:

Soooo yeah, these are basically what I do and keep in mind when fighting with this amazing boss. What are your strategies? I am really curious to know. Ao no Kiseki has by far the best boss fights when it comes to challenge since a lot of them either ignore the usual strats or have some interesting conditions. You can't simply cheese them with an evasion tank (though it helps against 4 of them), Zero Field, S-Crafts etc etc...

It is by far my favorite in the series when it comes to challenge.

Agree with you on that, in term of boss fight this game is the best, at least so far. I think what make this fights so well, is even when you cheese, and lets face it you alwyse find cheese strategy(can I say that?), but how the game encourage you to find a strategy and how one little mistake and you will be dead. I did like 5 times Arios fight (Mirror Castle), just because little mistake. We all can say goodbye to tha last good boss fight in this trails game.

Well I only play the game only once, due luck of time (which is very sad), at hard level so the fight was cool, not stressful as Loewe fight, but intense- forty minutes, spend a lot of them on Phase 1 because I didn't understand how to beat him. I didn't see any good reasron to bring two male fighters to the figth, so used Wazy, which i find his space slot very neat, Elie, Tio and Lolyd.


Just small question, did you succeed deafeat Sigmund (at the harbor) at nightmare?

I have beaten every boss in the game on nightmare.

Sigmund requires A LOT of preparation. His physical defence is insane meaning you are not damaging him with physical attacks.

What I do is simple:

Ep cut 3: You can fish this quartz as early as the fishing rivalries start. It is dropped from gold salmon which is also the best way to get money in this game.

Wind bell: Super high level monster chest inside Mainz mines drops this accessory. The fight is hard but if you use food weapons or stuff that gives status elements, you should be able to beat it VERY early on. My last run I beat them in chapter 1 since you have burst when you enter this place for the first time.

Give wind bell to Ellie, as spark dyne is the best art for dealing damage.

Evasion tank Loyd: Sigmund does an insane amount of damage on nightmare even without his s craft, meaning you need to keep him busy somehow. Loyd, after learning raging spin from one of the sidequests, is by far the most suitable person for the job. Just drag Sigmund away and you should be good. Keep in mind however that unlike in CS, an evasion tank is only good for this one job as their attacks do little damage and they can't risk casting arts all that often due to the drop of evasion while casting.

Silent blue: Give two of these to Ellie.

Strategy:

If you want to beat him use Loyd as distraction and keep him far away from your characters.

Randy and tio should just focus on making sure Ellie always has ATS up (on red) as her attacks are by far the most damaging. Ellie should just focus on casting spark dyne.

On tactics, place Loyd on the middle block closest to the boss. Have the rest on the corner way back. This will increase the chances of Sigmund targetting Loyd for his first attack.

Skip every animation that can be skipped and be really fast with your menus. The time limit is insane in this fight if you wanna beat him completely.

Make sure to have zero field at all times as you can't evade Sigmund's s craft which does an insane amount of damage.
Sigmund will use his s craft multiple times and he almost always uses ogre cry before doing it. ( it is an implication that he is filling up his CP to use his s craft)


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Gold salmon fishing:

This is by far the best fish in the game. You need to beat the broken accent guy to open up the spot however.

First go to the Mainz old path that leads to the.moon monastery. In that area you can get the chest containing the fishing rod you require.

After that you can also get another fishing rod from the casino.

Go to the fishing shack to purchase 99 dumpling dx (100 Mira per bait). While you are there, also fish the noble carp.

And you are all set. Go and challenge the French guy, use dumpling dx and the fishing rod you got that is near the moon monastery and catch gold salmon. Now you can fish there to your heart's content.

Gold salmon either drops gold sepith or ep cut 3. It also sells around 700 Mira per fish. Since you will get all of your ep cut 3 from fishing this thing, you won't need to use sepith to get them, meaning you can just sell your gold sepith. You can also sell your extra ep cut 3s (after all you only need 4 ) for extra cash.

Gold salmon can also be given to the cat for ep cut 3.

Finally, you can also beat 2 of the other fishing rivals if you want.

I don't do the whole gold salmon thing anymore as I always carry over my sepith and cash since time is a luxury that we don't have anymore. Ahhhh, if only I could spend time fishing in trails again..........me sad.
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All things considered, not counting the time limit, Sigmund Orlando is not too hard. And in all honesty, I actually think the first Arios fight is harder since his arcane gale can reach out to your other characters if he decides to AND IGNORE ZERO FIELD PROTECTION / CRAFT GUARD.

[Oguzhan]

UPDATE

So, I decided to try out "RUNE OF VICTORY" which times your physical attacks by 1.5. And not gonna lie, being able to do 40k damage with Randy is amazing. You can also use it to make quick work of Maribelle.

THAT BEING SAID, even if you do equip the character who is using "Rune of Victory" with an accessory that nullifies "mute", the character still does lose the spell, they just don't get "muted". And the thing about these mega spells is that they have an insane delay, which is actually nice since you don't want your character to "continue casting" all the time and run out of "EP" but this still means that you won't get to have it on all the time. Sure you could add Elie for her "at advance craft" but at that point you are giving too much resource for something that you won't get to activate all that often anyways as the boss will just negate it and Randy can only use War Cry 2 and S-Craft so often especially considering the boss banishes him right after. And since the boss is going to cancel the spell, you can't get long-term use out of it by having Randy countering all enemy attacks (it would have been so cool though since he does like 7k damage).

I would still recommend having LVL 5 Chevalier on one of your characters; however, since being able to do a quick 40k damage is always a nice thing to have. And besides the MQ gives great stats boosts to Loyd. Yes, I said Loyd, since I give Force to Randy for the great Physical stat up. I still don't get why "Axe" is so weak, was it like that in CS? It's been a while.

Over all, "Rune of Victory" is a nice option. I might experiment with it during my next run. Up until now, I had only relied on the "Wing" MQ's super spell which casts reflect on your members and beats Campanella in one go if he uses butterfly on you. (well you still need to do an attack on nightmare but it gets rid of his barriers too and ends the fight quickly). Then again, you can also cast reflect normally or use that one candy.

Btw, I gotta compliment Campanella's fight, it is yet another really unique one from this game. Again, Ao has the best boss fights, by far. It may not be my favorite in the series but damn the bosses are amazing.

[bugfragged]

I barely managed to beat that battle. I found that the Keeper MQ can interfere with the art baiting strategy. Since the boss is focused on the character with Keeper, they'll actually prioritize using a damaging craft on the Keeper user over impeding a different caster. However, if the Keeper user casts, the boss will most likely impede them. Of course, it's possible to use Keeper strategically to allow your casters to unleash their biggest spells on the adds unimpeded, provided you keep the casters alive.

[Oguzhan]

Originally posted by bugfragged:

I barely managed to beat that battle. I found that the Keeper MQ can interfere with the art baiting strategy. Since the boss is focused on the character with Keeper, they'll actually prioritize using a damaging craft on the Keeper user over impeding a different caster. However, if the Keeper user casts, the boss will most likely impede them. Of course, it's possible to use Keeper strategically to allow your casters to unleash their biggest spells on the adds unimpeded, provided you keep the casters alive.

Wait do you mean like the boss might target the character with "Keeper"? even though someone is casting a "Rune Spell"? I might test that out but even than the one who is equipped with "Keeper" would still need to be in the process of casting an art.

As for itself, there is no point since the boss is programmed to null an art caster either way. And silence is not something to worry about since you can just give your art casters "immune to all status effects" kinda accessory.

[bugfragged]

Yes, the boss will prioritize the Keeper user over all other party members, regardless of what anyone is doing. If the Keeper user isn't casting, the boss won't use its impede craft and instead use an offensive craft. Note that I did this with a level 5 Keeper. At lower MQ levels, the boss's behavior would probably be less consistent.

I really hate myself for only discovering these details in hindsight, since it means my gameplay video is going to be suboptimal. On the bright side, my failures will hopefully prevent others from repeating my mistakes.

[Oguzhan]

Originally posted by bugfragged:

Yes, the boss will prioritize the Keeper user over all other party members, regardless of what anyone is doing. If the Keeper user isn't casting, the boss won't use its impede craft and instead use an offensive craft. Note that I did this with a level 5 Keeper. At lower MQ levels, the boss's behavior would probably be less consistent.

I really hate myself for only discovering these details in hindsight, since it means my gameplay video is going to be suboptimal. On the bright side, my failures will hopefully prevent others from repeating my mistakes.

No, what I meant was, while someone is casting a "rune art". The boss is programmed so while someone is casting an art, it will waste a turn negating it. So, are you saying like the boss is going to ignore an art being cast just to attack a character with "Keeper"?

[bugfragged]

Yes, the boss will ignore the art being cast.

[Oguzhan]

Originally posted by bugfragged:

Yes, the boss will ignore the art being cast.

Okay, I might test that out later. That could be useful.......but you would have to deal with the insane damage of the claw attack.....but you can heal it via Tio using "Tear" (Yes I said tear since with MQ and water bell it is more efficient and useful) no problem and it even heals burn.

[Oguzhan]

I am gonna have to save that for another run, my "Keeper" is not at max level and I don't feel like grinding it. Oh well, I was thinking of having a file with all max leveled MQs and ultimate weapons so I might carry over MQ levels and ultimate weapons and special bonding accessories (the main group ones) for my next run.