EZ Anise Kills (using Rune Seer Angela)

Set-up for beating the post-game boss Anise + Anise Time Trial with Rune Seer Angela in your team. Black Rabite is also vaguely mentioned.

Introduction & Set-up

Quick Introduction

Anise is the Level 75 > 76 secret boss that you get to face post-game, after you complete the main story and do the Class 4 promotion quests given to you by Grand-Croix.

Completing the new dungeon and defeating Anise grants you access to New Game+, and clearing the Time Trial mode also awards you additional Chain Abilities that can make an already easy game much, much easier.

Basic Set-up

I'm running a Level 99 Angela that went Rune Seer > Spellbinder, but any reasonably geared Angela at Level 77 or thereabouts with the following set-up of Abilities, and decent weapon should be sufficient. You basically want to make your spells hit as hard as possible (so minimally some Cheats and some Wound Magics).

Your spell of choice is going to be Stone Cloud, so make sure you have it placed on your hot keys.

While some people have mentioned using the Magus and Ancient Curse, the long cast time of Ancient Curse means it's harder to spam, makes targeting Anise in Phase 1 incredibly annoying, and that can overall detract from your score in Time Trial.

That said, it's great for dealing with the Dragon form since it gets coiled up (I've two-shotted the Dragon form with Ancient Curse before), and it destroys everything else if you want a big AOE nuke though.

Other Considerations:

As you can see, I have Obsidian Power (Black Rabite Chain Ability that reduces mana costs for moves to 0), which frankly trivializes everything in the game if you're high leveled enough with Annilate spam.

It's overkill, but if you want to pick this up, it's from defeating the Black Rabite (Level 83) in Dark Castle. You can access this in the post-game using the Rabite statue at the Night Cavern entrance and going to the previously barricaded door that's down the left corridor from the Gold Mana Statue you get ported to.

Strategy, Time Trial & Rewards

Overview

Anise is a two-phase fight.

In Phase 1, you have to burst down four floating mana crystals that are Level 73 each before you can attack her for big damage. Just hit your action ring, and single target those crystals with your Rune Seer single-target elemental spells. You can easily do high four-digit numbers and one-shot those crystals.

Subsequently, just spam magic on Anise's human form. My preferred is Stone Cloud, which easily hits for several instances of damage.

In Phase 2, Anise transforms into a massive dragon. This is where you run around dodging the dragon's AOE attacks, and spam Stone Cloud or any other effective spell from a distance.

Once you beat her, you get a fancy cut scene and get to save your game again. Hurray.

Time Trial

After you beat Anise for the first time, unlock New Game+, and save your game again, you can return to beat her up, this time on Time Trial mode.

To get all the rewards (Chain abilities such as restoring your HP to 100% at the start of a fight, increasing your CS gauge by 100% at the start of a fight, and making you not consume items in combat), you need to defeat her under a total of three more times.

You must clock under 6 minutes on Normal difficulty, 4 minutes on Hard difficulty, and 2 minutes on Hard difficulty.

Of course, doing that is a breeze with my set-up right?

[Hao Zhao]

Be Rune Seer. Cast Rune Seer spells. Wow, that is some high quality advice. What a guide.

[Bahamut]

Bullshit. You have to set YOUR party for the right way otherwithe you gotta suck a big black banana. The guide is worth nothing. Sad truth.( And once againe, think by your own mind! GL and HF plying Trials of Mana!! 8D

[Crimson]

Yes. It makes NG+ a joke once you've acquired it. ;)

[Rokushou]

Ironically the reward from the time trial lets anyone spam the item versions of the best Rune Seer spells Stone Cloud (Basilisk Fang) and Annihilate (Rune Book).

[frowningmirror]

I was able to kill this thing with Duran as a Paladin and two low attack mages in under 2 minutes

[chris_c21]

Yes they can, Sudoku. I got a 1:14 kill with 4th class dark. Duran.

[Sinister Mister Blister]

Can the time trials be done with the melee focused classes?

[Crimson]

Oh yes, I definitely agree that it's not too hard at all even on Hard mode so long as you've got a decent amount of Int and spells capable of dishing out reasonable damage. Personally not that big a fan of the Light side classes, but things can get sorta fun if you've got the Black Rabite Chain Ability and can spam them on the quick to clear screens.

The game really needs a Very Hard mode, or more content to keep people who breeze through it happy.

[Pyros]

You can do it easily without farming to 99, I did a 1min kill at 75 without her best weapon. Didn't use this spec though, went Light Dark(Archmage), less raw damage but you get a lot of crit and you spam explosion+ which is large enough it hits almost every parts of the boss at the same time while casting faster. Other characters were a useless tank Duran and Warlock Charlotte(magic debuff all and the fetid breath magic debuff while spamming her own crappy spells).

[Crimson]

Just farm Anise's Stockade for XP. It's a good place to grab seeds anyway.