I: Guide to Solo Sorcerer

Full walkthrough for a potato caster

Preface

This is a 100% walkthrough of the game using only a single Sorcerer. By 100%, I mean we would be able to explore the whole map, pick up all the treasures and beat every single mob, in order to complete all beastiary entries and item drops.

This walkthrough was made for version 1.0, so if you're playing a different version, some skills may be different. Notably, in v1.02, Magic Burn's cooldown has been reduced to 0, which is a big buff to the skill when under Auto-Suggestion.

Tip:

• Just run away if the enemy skills being fired off on the first turn puts us at a disadvantage!
  
• You can flank an enemy group and then run away, to register their data in the beastiary so we know what to expect.
  
• Magic Burn (魔力燃焼) doubles your next spell's damage by doubling your MAG until you use your next spell. This means equipment like the Protector's Sword (守護者の剣) and Shield of the Great Tree (大樹の大盾) will heal double until you do so! It's a fantastic regen buff. Magic Squeeze (魔力捻出) works just the same way. Finish healing, then drop a big nuke. My favorite is Firewall or Harm.

If you've finished a solo / restricted party run yourself before, perhaps in Etrian Odyssey or similar, you probably already have a good idea of what to expect. The other games where I've managed to do this are EOX (N/P), EOIII (N/G), and EO Untold (Frederica).

I think half the fun in a solo attempt or any challenge run is in figuring out the steps yourself. So if you're a veteran of dungeon crawlers, I'd suggest giving it a good shot yourself first, and only refer to this walkthrough if you get stuck.

Note: The English names of items may be different to what's written in the game, because occasionally the translation takes certain liberties (I'm not saying it's bad), there's at least one mistranslated item, and basically I'm just writing down the literal translation of the names as I come across them, because I'm playing the game in its original language. That said, there shouldn't be any ambiguity in I'm talking about at all, because I will be very specific about the item's stats and effects.

If I missed anything (e.g. shiny loot) or made any mistakes, feel free to let me know in the comments below.

Skill build

This is the skill build the walkthrough uses. Before you gain access to the skill point reset mechanism, be very careful if you wish to deviate from this suggestion, because it is entirely possible to lock yourself out of progressing any further, due to your level becoming too high to gain any more exp from the foes you can manage to beat.

This build does not require any skill resets throughout the entire game. However, if you're willing to do that, you might be able to take some fights slightly earlier.

Skill points: Total | Status | Name

Early game 序盤
- 01 1/1 Pyrolatry 火炎賛美
- 03 2/2 Firewall 炎の壁 (max)
- 04 1/6 Magician's Spell 魔法使いの詠唱術
- 05 1/3 Fireball 火球
- 07 3/6 Magician's Spell 魔法使いの詠唱術
- 10 3/4 Magic Reserve 魔力温存
- 11 1/3 Demon's Skin 悪魔の外皮
- 12 1/1 Pact 契約 (max)
- 15 3/3 Summon Familiar 使い魔の召喚 (max)

Midgame 中盤
- 19 4/4 Guardian 護衛 (max)
- 20 2/3 Demon's Skin 悪魔の外皮 *
- 24 4/4 Advisor 参謀 (max)
- 25 4/4 Magic Reserve 魔力温存 (max)
- 26 1/1 Magic Infusion 魔力注入 (max)
- 27 1/3 Magic Barrier 魔法の障壁
- 29 3/3 Fireball 火球 (max)
- 32 6/6 Magician's Spell 魔法使いの詠唱術 (max)
- 33 1/1 Helfire 業火 (max)
- 36 3/3 Flare 火炎 (max)

Endgame 終盤
- 39 3/4 Energy Drain エナジードレイン
- 41 2/3 Magic Burn 魔力燃焼
- 44 3/3 Magic Squeeze 魔力捻出 (max)
- 45 1/3 Harm aka The Bad Touch ハームタッチ
- 46 1/1 Auto-Suggestion 自己暗示
- 48 3/3 Harm ハームタッチ (max)

Ultra endgame 最終盤
- 49 1/2 Staff Fighter 杖使い
- 51 3/3 Magic Barrier 魔法の障壁 (max)
- 52 1/1 Consumption 消耗 (max)
- 53 3/3 Magic Burn 魔力燃焼 (max)
- 55 2/3 Ignition 発火
- 58 3/3 Incinerate 焼却 (max)
- 59 1/3 Death Spiral 死の螺旋

* Only necessary for initial fire slime king fight.

If we compare the Sorcerer's skill picks with those of the other 7 classes, he instantly stands out as a prime candidate for a solo attempt. A solo character requires the following attributes. Not all of them are required, but the more you have, the easier it's going to be:

Summons. The Sorcerer has Summon Familiar, the best summoning spell in Potato Flowers. A summon does wonders because it's many things packed in a single spell. First of all, it creates a different target, so you can view it as stochastically halving incoming damage. The summons attack, so it's a source of damage. Lastly, you can view a summon as basically creating HP out of thin air. You can view this as a form of healing, actually, in the form of a damage sponge or shield.

Counter or damage reflection. Only the Sorcerer and Wizard have access to Firewall, the only counter skill in the game. Among all the other dungeon crawlers I've seen, Firewall has got to be the best counter skill there is for a solo attempt, because it lasts 3 turns on a single cast.

AOE damage. The Sorcerer's basic AOE nuke is Flare, a relatively low-damage fire elemental spell which has a 1-turn cooldown attached. On top of that, his imp summon also has its own Flare. Unfortunately, his other AOE spells Rain of Fire and Blaze have impractically long channeling times.

Reliable nuke. The Sorcerer's basic nuke is Fireball, which is fire-based. He also has Harm, which has a melee-range restriction, but is other-elemental, which means it cannot be resisted outside of flat damage reduction skills.

HP sustain. Unfortunately, Sorcerer doesn't have any innate source of healing, so getting these in item form would be a top priority. There are also no consumables in Potato Flowers, but fortunately HP is fully recovered between encounters.

MP sustain. Only Sorcerer has access to Auto-Suggestion, the only MP-manipulation skill in the game. It makes *all* skills cast in the next six turns free. As broken as it sounds.

Damage reduction. We have access to Demon's Skin, which confers a durational buff that halves fire and poison damage. Magic Barrier is a flat 90% reduction skill for a single turn on a 4-turn cooldown.

Dodge. Sorcerer has no innate access to dodge. We need to rely on items for this.

Disabling ailments. Potato Flowers isn't big on disables, in the sense that outside of Ranger's Bear Trap / Pit Trap, stuns and freezes are short-duration high-impact disables, whose primary purpose is to set up other team members' attacks. So I think this isn't a particularly relevant category for this game. There are skills attached to items that reduce evasion, for example, but these are highly situational.

Lastly, Sorcerer has the following three class-exclusive skills:

• Magic Burn. This is a really good charge move for spells in the form of a *durational buff*. Casting a spell consumes the buff to double damage but also doubles MP cost. However, this buff also doubles our MAG until it's consumed, so anything that scales to MAG is also amplified for the duration of the buff. 4-turn cooldown.
  
• Magic Squeeze. Blood magic version of Magic Burn, except only a 40% boost, doesn't increase MP cost, isn't consumed on spell cast, and costs 1/2 of our current HP to use. It's rare to see a charge skill as good as Magic Burn on any character, much less two charge skills.
  
• Consumption. This halves stamina recovery on a single target for EIGHT turns. 8-turn cooldown. Stamina is used for absolutely everything in Potato Flowers. In my opinion, this is the most powerful debuff for boss fights in Potato Flowers.

Chap 01: Seeking the 2nd floor

Start by creating your sorcerer. Next, create either a knight, or a rogue, then unequip their medium armor, sword and shield. You can now dismiss this second character if you wish. You can choose not to create this second character at all, but it'll be slightly more difficult in the beginning because we'll be without a shield until we find or buy one.

Next, go back to the Hollow Below the Cliff, turn around, and explore the two short corridors that were behind the portcullis that the starter party opened, before the opening sequence. You should be able to retrieve a trophy, and the Sawdust Armor with 14DEF but -100 fire resistance. Upon entering the main dungeon, you should be able to pick up a short sword from a chest, and 100 iron from a rack, without having to engage any enemy groups.


Our very first objective in the main dungeon is to try to get past the lvl1 ice wizard, behind the slime + rat group. This is harder than it sounds. Put on the medium armor. The only group we can beat initially is the single rat. Take it down by attacking it twice with our starter staff and return to town. Do this until we're level 2, so that we have 3 skill points.

Use all 3 points to max out Firewall. Now go back to the dungeon and beat the single rat as usual. Now go behind the group of 3 rats and cast firewall, then guard. Pick up the robes in the chest nearby. Repeat by farming these two groups until we're level 3. Put the skill point into Magician's Spell for the 20% MAG increase.

At this point, we can try to take on the slime + rat group as well by just casting firewall. If the rat doesn't use its special attack, we should survive with a single HP. Otherwise no biggie, just restart at base with no loss. It's worth taking on the slime because it can drop iron. We'll be getting plenty of rat skins, but don't bother with the Rat Skin Scarf at the leatherworker, because its defense is lower and neither the rat nor the slime uses slash damage.

At level 5, it should be faster to take the single level 10 skeleton in the other dungeon. Same strategy. Just firewall. These guys also drop iron instead of the fairly useless rat skins. When our fireball is strong enough, we can use that instead, but either way we're still going to get hit.

At level 7 or 8, we're ready to take the ice wizard behind the slime+rat group. Go straight to the slime group upon entering the dungeon because we need to conserve our MP. We need the wizard to use his melee attack instead of his ice bolt. If he uses ice bolt, just try to escape. We can tank one special attack from the rats. As usual, we just firewall, and then finish the wizard with a fireball.


Now we need to unlock the shortcut. We could turn the other way and keep going downstairs, but other than being able to pick up a shortbow or talk to the injured elf, we don't have the MP to go very far. Remember, we need the medium armor to survive the wizard group, therefore the passive that gives MP for wearing light armor will not help us push any further into the dungeon. Thus we need to take out this group of four.

Make sure you're using the Sawdust Armor with +14 DEF from the Hollow below the Cliff. Now equip the shortsword we found earlier, and the shield we got from the knight or rogue. We do lose 30% MAG but our firewall is more than strong enough. Engage the group. Unless too many of them uses their special attack, a single firewall cast will wipe them out. If we die, remember to re-equip our staff before engaging the wizard group again.

Once the rats are down, take the 100 iron from the chest nearby and unlock the metal door with the lever. We now have a direct path to the second floor.

Chap 02: The Minotaur

First, find and talk to the elf and take the shortbow from the chest in the area. Now we need to get past the 3 groups of bats. Keep your shield and sword equipped and engage the groups one by one. If any one of the bats use life drain, just escape. Unless more than one bat uses life drain, we'll make it. When none of them are using life drain, just firewall. For the last group, since we can engage from the side, just firewall and then guard.

When we open the door in front of us, we'll come face to face with a group of 4 bats. They're blocking 2 chests of iron and a shortcut path with 2 doors, but this shortcut isn't useful so we'll fight them later. Grab the first stone weight. Now go back upstairs and put the weight in the north-western pulley, and head downstairs to pick up the second stone weight from the chest. I found the slime king too difficult right now, but there's a hidden door at a dead-end north of where he is with the Unyielding Cutlass, one of the best swords we can get until the mid-game.

Head back upstairs, retrieve the stone weight, and slot the weights into the north and south-western pulleys. Head back to camp before heading back downstairs into a new area.


Don't engage the mermen/sahuagin. There should be a nearby room with mandrakes inside. Our goal is to get to the other door at the opposite side of the room without running out of MP. I only engaged 2 groups. Behind that door is a piece of medium leather armor. Remember to unlock the shortcut. Beating the mandrakes should also get you a mandrake leaf. Give this to the wood elf to get the jumping boots. Finally, some real progress.

Return to the mermen room, go up the stairs and jump down. There should be a door that leads to the lvl32 phantom, and another room with a greatsword on a rack of spears. Further on, there should be a lever that unlocks another portcullis. Before heading upstairs, find the hidden door west of the staircase with Heavy Greaves (24 DEF). It's the best we're going to get for a while. Head upstairs and talk to the goblin NPC. Don't engage anything. Pick up the Plate Armor +4. There should also be a set of daggers +3 at the end of a long corridor.


Now head back to town and put on our best cloth armor, which are the robes we retrieved from the chest near the group of 3 rats at the beginning. We should have at least 30 MP. Return to the area and engage the north-easternmost 2 wolf groups guarding a chest. The wolves like to waste time casting evasion so they're not as difficult as they look. Just firewall and guard, and don't run out of MP. When we drop below 20MP, switch to the Heavy Greaves / Plate Armor. We're going to be doing this quite a bit until we're comfortable with our MP.

That chest contains a handaxe, so that's not very useful. Go back to town and return to the area again. Now our goal is the 3 group of wolves guarding the shortcut that lets us bypass that short section in the second floor, just south of the group we've just engaged. If you're having trouble with the last group, level up using the other groups and try them again at level 10. Once we're past them, we get to a little 2x1 room. Open the 2 shortcut doors, and there's a Halberd+1 in the chest. If you still have MP, there's a single group of double wolves guarding another 2x1 room nearby with a chest containing some iron.

Now farm these wolf groups until we get our imp summon. If you're following the skill build, this should be level 12. Avoid the group of 4 until we're level 10. We could make more armor from the wolf skins, but nothing beats our plate+4 right now. I managed to beat the slime king back downstairs at lvl 11. He's guarding a chest with a Round Shield, which the elf girl also sells. It gives 10% evasion but it also has lower defense, so I didn't use it. The slime king also drops a plate mail but it's not better than the one we currently have. Once we have the imp, we could take the smaller mermen groups downstairs, but they just drop a spear.


I managed to get past the two lizardmen guarding the next area at level 13. Try to run away until that spearman uses guard, and we'll summon the imp on the first turn. Then just focus on the same target as the imp using our fireball while trying to stay alive. The two chests behind the lizardmen groups contain a flanged mace, and I believe just iron. The hard part about unlocking the shortcut to the Minotaur is that we need summon imp to be maxed, or we WILL run out of MP, unless we take the first group of lizardmen with cloth armor (robes). You could try either way. Also, if the last group of lizardmen decide go gang up on the imp on their first turn, it's not going to survive, and neither are we.


The Minotaur himself is a pushover. I took him at lvl 14, using any staff (I used the Freezing Wand) and the +4 plate armor. Unless he decides to use his special on the imp and the imp didn't manage to dodge, he'll go down really quickly. Help out the imp with fireballs and firewall, just don't run out of MP. The imp is the MVP in this fight. Congratulations on beating the first boss solo. It's not going to get any easier. Pick up the documents and the Candle Extinguisher Key (うろそく消しの鍵) in the chest and head back to base.

---

「…食ってねのか」
「食う？何を」
「は？急に俺を襲われてきたのはお前じゃねか。目が高すぎて俺が飯になれねぇのか」
「何であなたを食べる？あんたはそんなに美味しいのか」
「そりゃお前の方がわかっているじゃねか！まったく、人類どもめ。そもそも俺が地面に暮らしているんだけど？だから何故今俺がこんなに暗い臭い草のない所にいると思うのか？俺を襲われてたお前らのせいじゃねか！こんなに不気味な洞窟まで逃げて骨を折るぐらい身を磨いたのは何月前の事だったと思うのか、はぁ？俺みたいな両足で歩いて斧を振り回している牛を見たことがあるのか？」
「あなた、牛ですか」
「牛と決まっているじゃねか！」
「あ、すいまえん。うん。でも食べないよ？」
「で、何故勝手に俺を襲ってきた？正直もうダメと思ったのよ」
「えっと、邪魔だから？（笑）」
「…もういいよこの人生」

(Minotaur): "You're not gonna eat (me)?"
"Eat? Eat what?"
"Huh? You're the one who came at me out of nowhere. What, you're so high-born that I'm too scrawny for you?"
"Why should I be eating you? Are you supposed to be that good?"
"How am I supposed to know! Gods dang it, these humans. In the first place I'm supposed to be living above ground, you know? So why do you think I'm living in this sunless grassless stinking hole? It's because you humans were attacking me! How many months ago did you think it was that I had to retreat to this godforsaken cave and trained until my bones were past breaking, huh? Have you ever seen a cow walking on two legs swinging an axe around?"
"You, you're a cow?"
"What else am I supposed to be!?"
"I-I'm sorry. hmm. Yes. But... I'm not gonna eat you, you know?"
"Then? Why'd you attack me out of nowhere? I thought I was a goner."
"Mm... Because... you were in the way? (smiles)"
"... I'm so done with this life."

Chap 03: Slime Statue and Forest Beast Armor

After this, head into the dungeon Hollow Below the Cliff and explore the new areas. Pick up the Heater Shield and a cosmetic, near the group of 3 golems.


On the other side of the map, opposite the jackalopes, there's a little bit of iron on a table. The jackalopes are really quite strong, but I managed to beat the 3 groups guarding the door to the Old Priest's Robes with 1hp left, at level 14. The priest's robes have 3 more defense than our normal robes, so they're quite good if you can get them. There's nothing left to do here at the moment, so head back to the main dungeon.

First, head to the north-eastern corner of B2. There's a door that's now unlockable, leading to a 2x1 room. The chest in here contains the missing part of the slime statue. If we bring the part back to the statue at the jackalopes' side in the Hollow Below the Cliff, we'll be able to reset our skill points, so there's no longer any danger of locking ourselves out of progression because we're too high level to gain any more exp.

This 1x1 room here, on the same floor, is also now unlockable. The treasure chest inside contains a trophy.

Now unlock the red door in the room where most of the NPCs are. Pick up the map trophy on the table nearby. At the southern end of the corridor, reveal the hidden passage to the east and pick up another trophy in a chest. Jump down towards where the bear is and pick up a greathammer in a chest. Unlock the shortcut nearby.

We could take on the bear, and I managed to take him out at level 14, after a few tries, as long as he didn't one-shot the imp. The chest he's guarding only contains 400 iron, but he drops bearskin. Bearskin + Wolf skin at the leatherworker gets us Armor of the Forest Beast, which is a medium armor with a whopping 28 defense, but -100 fire resistance. Craft it, and head back to town to replenish our MP.

Chap 04: The Fire-Eating Slime

Note: When I did this entire floor, I missed out on picking up the Heavy Greaves I mentioned earlier. I think you might have an easier time if you use that instead of the Armor of the Forest Beast, especially against fire-heavy enemies.

Now head down the new set of stairs in the southwest of the first floor. Make sure to talk to the chief, who has relocated here. Pick up the trophy near the table. Point the party towards the dead-end at the north-eastern corner of the map, and unlock another hidden passage. The trapdoor behind it doesn't lead anywhere at the moment, but the chest nearby contains the 2h-axe Cavalry Hunter's Voulge.

With that distraction over, head down to the third floor and we should find ourselves near the center. You should already know what the fish contraption does. Now let's get ourselves some salamander scales so we can start improving our armor.



First, equip the Voulge. This is the highest-damage weapon we have on hand. Also equip the Armor of the Forest Beast. Now head over to the north end, use the water bath, and take the salamander+slime group on our right. Using the voulge, we'll one-shot the slime immediately. If the salamander uses its flame attack, guard, because we'll catch fire otherwise. If it uses its special, we're screwed, so just retry. Summon the imp when it's refreshing or attacking normally. Then guard as much as we can and only attack the salamander with the voulge when it attacks the imp. When it goes down, we'll get the scales for the blacksmith. In the chest nearby is a 2h-spear Protector's Poleaxe.

First, return to town, then the blacksmith, and give the scales to him. Now our goal is to make the Potion Belt light armor that needs the Al-mirage's skin (from the unique Jackalope) and Salamander Skin. This will be our only source of healing until we get the Shield of the Great Tree far, far down the line. We don't need the Potion Belt right now, but since the other groups are too strong for us, we'll take the opportunity to grab a few levels while we roll for those skins. We'll also want to craft the Fireproof Armor, which is made from Salamander Skin + Bear Skin.


For the salamander skin, simply repeat what we just did until it drops. For the Al-mirage's skin, head into the dungeon with the Old Priest's Robes with 12 defense. Take the single and double jackalope groups using a staff and robes, by simply casting firewall and then guarding. Before taking the group with the unique, swap to the Armor of the Forest Beast for maximum defense, and open by summoning the imp. Make sure to guard when the unique casts entangling vines. It won't hit the imp because he's flying. Refresh stamina when it's low. If they're all trying to hit the imp, cast a firewall on him. It should be an easy fight at this point. I was level 14.


Now that we've crafted the Potion Belt and Fireproof Armor, we'll need to address the mobs blocking our progress. Basically they're doing too much damage to us (you could try fighting them, especially the last group with the slime king), so we need iron for armor upgrades, and more importantly, levels. The best source of levels is the highest-level mob there is, so right now, that's the bear back in B1. I ended up beating that poor sod a couple of hundred times. Remember to fight him using a staff, not the voulge! If you get too many bear pelts, just craft the Bear Leather Armor and disassemble each for about 400 iron. Don't even try the lvl32 phantom. If the exp starts slowing down, don't worry. At some point, the bear will qualify for shinies. If you don't know already, mobs below a certain level can spawn shiny. This makes them stronger, but they also have higher drop rates and exp rewards.

When I got to lvl16-17, I went to the Hollow Below the Cliff, because we can facetank the triple-skeleton group using potion belt only, which means we can start the boss fight with 20MP after swapping armor. However, the sword that the boss drops isn't better than the voulge, so we don't actually need to fight him now. I believe the skeletons here are the fastest source of iron we have access to, at least until the bear turns shiny, but unfortunately they won't give us exp anymore.

I managed to beat the triple salamander group guarding a chest immediately beside them at level 19. The chest only contains 300 iron or so, but it's better than nothing.

For our upgrades, I did the following:

• Cavalry Hunter's Voulge to +5 (so we can 2-shot the slime king)
  
• Potion Belt to +4 (16 DEF)
  
• Fireproof Armor to +10 (26 DEF)
  
• Armor of the Forest Beast to +10 (46 DEF). This is for later, but you should have enough iron from the bear for it.

Our next step is to actually make progress in the dungeon. I attempted this at various stages, and succeeded only at level 24. At some point, the imp will be able to one-shot the salamanders with its melee attack, which really helps. First, equip the Voulge and Potion Belt before coming into the dungeon, and engage this first group from the side (if your imp can one-shot salamanders, sword + shield is better, but we don't need them). Make sure to use the water bath! Our priority is to survive. Start by summoning the imp, then one-shot the slime when we get the chance. Coordinate with the imp to take down the salamanders.

Re-use the water bath. If your level is high enough, keep the Potion Belt on because you're probably still above 20MP, and engage the three salamanders from the side.

Re-use the water bath and equip your Fireproof Armor +10. Now for the last and most difficult group. Don't bother with the imp as the Slime King has banishment, which insta-kills the imp the moment you summon it. Open with Demon's Skin. Then attack the Slime King twice to take him out.

Once he's out, we'll need to refresh our stamina. Then summon the imp immediately to take the pressure off our HP. It may take a few tries, but if everything goes right, we're finally past this group. Activate the lever to raise the portcullis, so we don't have to go through this again. Talk to the knight NPC nearby, and you can buy a trophy from him for 400 iron if you wish. Nothing else is notable in his inventory. Turn the fish so that water pools in the west.

There should be a pulley next to the knight, and there's yet another one of these later on, on the same floor. These two lock out treasure chests on the floor below. You'd want to mark these on your map. You need the two weights from before, which should still be weighing down the south-western and northern pulleys from the first floor. We'll take care of these later.

Now open the southern door, but don't engage the groups. Go to the dead end and reveal the secret area. These three level 40 mobs are the best source of iron in my main party, because we can take them out in 2 turns or less. We'll come back for them later. For now, let's head back to town.

Chap 05: The Burnt-out Lantern

Now put on the Potion Belt and keep the Voulge on. Most enemies on this floor are immune to fire so we're going to be playing spellblade for a while. Return to where we left off. Use the water bath and engage the double wizards from their flank. You should be able to one-shot them with the Cavalry Hunter's Voulge +5.

Next group of 3, from the front. You should still have the water effect from the bath. Open with Demon's Skin and just smack them down. We don't care if they cast Firewall because the Voulge counts as range 4.

Now there are 2 groups ahead of us, but first, there's a side room to our right that has two treasure chests in side, and another group of 4 which we can take from behind. I'm not entirely sure what the first chest is (probably some iron) and the other one contains a battle guide.

Now engage the group of 4. Remember we don't have the water effect for this fight because it's too far away. I managed the fight using the Potion Belt, but you'd probably want to use the Fireproof Armor +10. Start by one-shotting one of the wizards, then cast Demon's Skin. Finish off the other wizard, then the slimes. Unlock the candle door.

Note: These wizards drop the Smoldering Staff, which increases Fireball damage by 20%.

Return to the water bath, and take out the wizard+slime group from the front. You should still have the water effect. You'd want to use the Fireproof Armor for the next fight. Engage the double wizard+imp group from the side. One-shot a wizard, then cast Demon's Skin, and summon our own imp. Take out the enemy imp last.

That's it for this section. That was so much easier than the last.

Open the door and open the portcullis with the lever. Turn the fish so that water pools in the south. There should be a door nearby that leads to a fairy. You should already have the Bear Bell from crafting all the armor with the leatherworker, so it'll let you pass. Unlock the shortcut behind the fairy. Open the door behind the fairy. Immediately outside this door, turn left and pick up a little bit of iron. Look around, and viola, there's the other lever. Pull it to unlock the eastern portcullis. Thanks to the fairy, we could bypass the entire southern section if we so wished. A better idea is to open the back door and take out the groups from behind. But first, return to town because you're probably low on mana. If you look around a bit, you can find the second (and last) pulley system on this floor. You'd want to mark that on your map.

Now engage the group of three lizardmen with the unique, from behind. These guys use fire but they aren't resistant to fire themselves. I swapped to Armor of the Forest Beast. The clubmen hit quite hard, but they're fragile themselves. I used the Voulge because we need to conserve MP. Try using the Fireproof Armor if you keep getting set on fire, because we really can't afford that MP loss. Start by summoning our imp. The clubmen will one-shot themselves on our Firewall, and the unique himself is a piece of cake since we're level 24.

Next, a group of 2 club lizardmen+slime, from the side. Same strategy. I didn't bother with the imp this time just straight up firewall. The chest contains a cosmetic. There are two doors in front of us. I started with two lizardmen blocking the door on the East (our left). The chest behind them contains Apprentices' Robes. Not bad, but our Potion Belt is better at the moment. I'm out of MP at this point, so I returned to town.

Now, the other door from before just leads to an empty room with a mob group, which is directly accessible by the front door to this lizardmen gauntlet. You can see this if you just open the door east of the southern water pool. We need to take care of one last group of lizardmen, and that's the door west of the southern water pool. Take out these two clubmen. It's the only fight we're taking, we don't care about MP. The chest behind them contains the Sniper's Longbow. Head back to town.

Now put on the Fireproof Armor, and return to the fish contraption and fill up the water pool at the east. Use the water bath. Head into the eastern portion and there'll be three scarecrow groups. First, take out the group with 2 slimes+scarecrow. We could just straight up one-shot all of them with the Voulge, starting with the scarecrow. The scarecrow's flame melee hurts like hell, but not if we take them out first. They can also cause a bleed effect.

Now take out the group guarding the treasure chest from the side. Just use the voulge. The chest they're guarding contains a medium armor Thick Gambeson, but we have two +10 medium armor with us already.

Use the water bath again and take out the group blocking the door, from the front. Same deal. Just use the voulge. Now light the torch and re-use the water bath. There's two more groups to take care of. Take out the group of three just before the corner.

Now for the last group with the unique. Make sure you still have the water effect and the Armor of the Forest Beast +10 on. This group is not any easier than the Slime King group, so be prepared.

We need the Armor of the Forest Beast in order to survive all the melee attacks coming our way. However, this means if the boss uses any fire spell, we're instantly dead. His flame slash also hurts like hell, so in the first turn, we need him to normal attack. If one of the minions uses a fire spell, take him down first.

Take out both minions first so only the boss is left. On our third turn, we need to summon our imp, so the boss has 50/50 of attacking the imp. If he uses a fire spell at any point, we're dead. After summoning the imp, we'll need to refresh our stamina. The imp will be attacking the boss with a fire spell, which will do nothing. If the boss decides to attack us instead of the imp, we're dead.

If we're not dead at this point, we win. In the next round, the imp will melee the unique, and we will have the stamina to make a melee attack with the voulge. If the boss takes out the imp first, just attack him again with our voulge.


If we manage to win the fight at all, it'll be on a razor-thin edge. I really don't have any better advice, so good luck. You can try going back to the bear for a few more levels, but it's really not going to help very much. I made it through the fight at level 24.

If you're lucky, the unique scarecrow can drop the Airtight Armor, which is a heavy armor with 19 defense, and 20/30 fire/poison resists. Might be useful in the water dungeon, but no biggie if it doesn't drop, and I sure as hell am not going through that RNG-fest again just to chance for a roll.

After all that, pick up the documents after climbing up the short ladder. Then cross the drawbridge. Make sure to pick everything up because there's no way to come back here unless we fight those scarecrows again. There are two chests here. One contains 400 iron. The other contains the Workshop Key (工房の鍵) critical to progression. This key unlocks a door on the west of this floor, but we have a few things to take care of first. Head back to town.

Congratulations on soloing the floor designed as a hard counter to our Sorcerer class.

Chap 06: The Salamander King

Alright, first things first. Head to the Hollow Below the Cliff. There should be a door that's now unlockable near the jackalopes, with two chests nearby. The first one contains: viola! A set of Airtight Armor, in case the scarecrow didn't drop it earlier. The other contains a trophy. The golems at the west end are probably still too tough for us, so let's head back to town.

Now, put on the Potion Belt, but keep the Voulge. Head back to B3 of the main dungeon, via the route we've taken so many times thus far, and unlock the door at the west side, mentioned earlier, using our new Workshop Key. The Salamander King is just inside.

We'll be taking the fight with the Potion Belt because we really need the healing. He's immune to fire so we'll be using our trusty Cavalry Hunter's Voulge again. Open the fight by summoning our imp. If he attacks us, guard. If he attacks the imp and we're not at full HP, use the Cheap Potion skill from the Potion Belt. If we're topped up, attack him with the Voulge. Don't bother healing the imp because re-summoning him also costs the same 2MP but he comes back with full health.

The main thing to watch in this fight is our MP. If you're running out, try maxing Magic Reserve for a bit more MP. If you've gotten this far, this fight won't be any trouble at all.

The boss drops a 2h-sword called Tail Slicer. Nothing special. He can also drop his scales, which are used to make the Citadel Scorcher medium armor. It has 50 fire resistance but some negative physical resistances. I don't think it's going to be very useful to us, at least for the time being.

But first, head just past where the boss is, turn right into the dead end and pick up 400 iron. Likewise, on the east side (our left) in the room further down, there's a cosmetic in a set of drawers. Finally, talk to the gnome to unlock a new dungeon By the Mountain Stream.

At this point, I headed back to the blacksmith and enhanced our Voulge to +8, so we can one-hit the mobs in the next area.

Chap 07: By the Mountain Stream

Alright, new dungeon! Know that if we die or otherwise have to restart in this area, until we pull the final lever, we'll need to pull all the other levers in the same order each time we come back here, which means beating all the mobs blocking them all over again. This area is an endurance test. We need the Armor of the Forest Beast to survive, so all we have is 20MP to work with.

Start by talking to the chief, and then the gnome a bit further in. The gnome sells Plate Armor, Apprentice's Robe, and Thick Gambeson, all of which we picked up a copy earlier. He also has a Greataxe+5 and Winged Spear+5, but nothing beats our Voulge right now.

The door beside the gnome is sealed, but pick up a trophy by the barrels just next to it. We're heading south. Compared to the area we just went through. All the enemies here are weak (as hell) to fire, but the trees also hit very hard. If you're still on the Potion Belt, change into the Armor of the Forest Beast+10, but keep the voulge. Take out the groups with our voulge. We should be able to just shrug off their attacks with our armor. None of the 3 groups blocking our way to the first switch should be any trouble. Just guard when the bee uses its paralysis attack, because we wouldn't be able to attack for 3 turns otherwise.

Now unlock the shortcut and pull the switch, which drains the area to half water level. We have two things to take care of. First, in the area to our south, we can find two more groups of (different) trees along with a unique. These dark-brown trees can drop 900 iron each.

Against the unique group, I opened by taking out the dark tree (which heals), and then the light tree (which just attacks). Then smack the unique until he goes down. This guy drops the Wild Club 2h-hammer. Its damage is comparable to our voulge when upgraded, and it does crushing damage. It's a keeper. If he doesn't drop it, feel free to come back to him until he does. The chest behind him contains 600 iron.

Now head back to where the gnome is, and cross two flights of stairs. There's a group of 4 bees blocking our way to the next switch, but taking them head-on is a bad idea. First, take out the two groups of trees. That bypasses the bees, which we can come back for later. For now, the water is flooded again and we need to take on the mushroom mobs.

Start by taking out this group of two. Just use the voulge. Obviously take out the ones trying to poison us first. Now beat the other group of two just to the side, just because we can. Now take out the group of 3 mushrooms from the side.

Open the two chests behind them. One contains 600 iron. The other contains the Heavy Tower Shield, which replaces the Blue Heater Shield as the shield with highest DEF that we currently have.

Now we need to take out the group of three bees. They have high evasion, so let's let the imp do the heavy lifting. Equip the Heavy Tower Shield, and any 1-handed weapon. I just used the Flanged Mace+4 we found a while ago. Open the fight by summoning the imp. The imp's fire spells should just one-shot the bees if they don't manage to dodge.

The last thing to take care of is a group of mushrooms (with a unique) standing between us and the next switch. Change back to our Voulge. Now I know it's been easy so far, but don't underestimate this group. It can kill us easily if we get careless. The unique has plenty of HP and it can double the poison damage that we take. The key is to know that this unique mushroom cannot poison us. Only its minions can.

Start by taking out the minions. Just run away to reset the fight if both of them try to poison us. The boss can double our poison damage taken but double of zero is zero if we're not poisoned to begin with, plus we have Demon's Skin to halve it right back. Once the minions are down, just wail on the unique until he goes down. Don't waste your MP summoning the imp. We have a long way to go still.

The unique mushroom can drop the Soaked Tunic with 19 DEF and 30 fire resistance, which is probably the best light armor we'll get in a while.

Chap 08: The Basilisk

There are a few things to pick up. First, pick up a shiny at this location. It's a Continental 1h-Axe, which replaces the Flanged Mace+4 as the highest damage 1-handed weapon we currently have. Now turn around 180 degrees and open the treasure chest at the end of a short corridor. This contains the One-Hit Warhammer, which is another new high-damage 1-handed weapon, but its HP and DEF penalties make it pretty much unusable in a solo setting.

Now let's open the chest which we saw earlier. To get it, first, we need to flick these switches in order, then jump down to the chest. The chest contains a Continental 1h-Sword, which does less damage than the Continental 1h-Axe, but consumes 5 stamina instead of 6.

I did a run-around at the bottom-most level and I don't think I've missed anything. All it did was run down my torch. The next thing to do is to head to the south-eastern corner and climb up two sets of ladders. You can talk to the masked NPC, and use the lever nearby to open the portcullis, but it floods the whole area again.

Now there's a group of two cockatrices ahead of us. We can't one-shot them with the Voulge because they're 30% resistant to slash. They're 60% resistant to blunts so don't bother with maces. Now I tried taking them on with the Continental 1h-Axe and the Heavy Tower Shield but each needs 3 hits to be taken down, so I think the imp's our best option.

That said, there are 3 groups of cockatrices, and we have 17MP. We need to take out the first pair without the imp. Fortunately, they can waste turns by casting a skill that prolongs our cooldowns. We're just auto-attacking so that doesn't bother us one bit. They also like to use their double-attack, which is super easy to guard against. It drains a ton of their stamina and barely does anything to ours. The bad thing is that they can dodge, but there's not much we can do against that. The one thing we definitely need to do is guard against their paralysis attack, otherwise we're locked out of attacking for 3 turns and we're probably going to die.

Next, a group of 3 cockatrices and 1 bee. I dont think we should be using the voulge here. Cockatrices are -30% resistant to fire, so we're going to let the imp do its thing. I equipped the Continental 1h-Axe and the Heavy Tower Shield. If any one of them opens with a paralysis attack, run. You won't get a second chance to do so. Otherwise, open by summoning the imp. The imp will one-shot the entire group with its group fire attack. Go little guy!

Pull the lever and we're ready to take on the group of 3 cockatrices past a short staircase. Same thing. Run if they use paralysis, otherwise summon the imp to finish the battle in 1 turn. Pull the switch to drain the water. There's a level 19 unique in the room nearby, but before we do anything funny, we need to unlock a door at the bottom-most level, so we don't have to go through all this nonsense again if we die.

This door to unlock is just to the west of that last lever. Now we have a straight shot to the boss from the entrance. There should be a chest nearby with a cosmetic inside. Now go back up and take on the unique, called the Evergreen Dryad. Switch to the voulge and just summon the imp. She'll try to stun it with lullaby but the imp will outspeed her. It should be a trivial fight.

She dropped the Red Scutum for me, which is better than the Heavy Tower Shield because it gives +4 to stamina. In the room behind her, the shiny near the table is a trophy. In the chest is the Verdant Cape. Unfortunately, it has negative fire and poison resistances, so if you got the Soaked Tunic earlier, it's not our best in slot.

Unfortunately, I've never seen the dryad turn shiny, so she can't replace our bear as our level pinata.

Now, at this point, I attempted to take on the Basilisk at level 24, but I couldn't get very far. My itemization was with the Potion Belt, Continental 1h-Sword, and Red Scutum, relying on the imp to do most of the damage, because we're busy enough guarding. The thing about the basilisk is that he's a damage sponge with 2k HP, and he has a stupid amount of stamina (32) and shock (14), meaning we won't get many breaks from his attacks. We need the MP and heal from the Potion Belt for sure. We also kind of need stats just from pure levels to brute force that 2k HP.

I puttered around the area picking off the mobs we've been through so far, mostly to get enough iron, not so much exp but I got a few levels from that. Focus on the bees, the mushrooms, and the group of 3 cockatrices we can attack from the side. The trees have really long animations so it's not worth spending time engaging groups larger than 2. The shells from the bees can be used to make 2 kinds of armor. The one that needs 3x shells is almost as good as the base Armor of the Forest Beast, without the fire weakness. For iron, spam the one that requires 1x shell and disassemble for 400 iron each.

I did it like this: Enter the dungeon. Take out:
- The group of 2 trees near the entrance.
- Circle around take take out the 4 bees.
- Loop around and go to the mushroom area to take everything out. Engage the unique group with the imp.
- Hop east, go through the door that connects the two halves of the bottom level.
- Climb up and take out the group of 3 cockatrices.
- Go to the boss area and take out the 3 bees.
- Repeat.

I upgraded the following and challenged the boss again at level 28.

• Potion Belt +9 (20 DEF)
  
• Red Scutum +10 (43 DEF)

Open the fight by summoning the imp. If the boss tries to poison the imp, cast Demon's Skin on him. Try to keep him alive as long as you can, but don't heal him. Resummon him if he dies, or if he runs out of MP (he'll keep meleeing the boss).

Those 4 extra levels and a +10 Scutum made all the difference. The imp's fireballs were doing 200 damage per hit, plus the imp is much tankier himself. I finished the fight with 9MP left. That's quite a bit of margin. He can drop basilisk's skin, which makes a medium armor with -100/50 fire/poison resistance. I don't think it's that useful to us.

Alright, first things first. Unlock the door past the boss and pick up the Flail Key (殻竿の鍵). Unlock the green door right in front of us to get back to where the chief is. Before heading upstairs, let's take care of a few things, namely, open the green doors in the other dungeons.

Chap 09: Retainer Armor

First, head to the Hollow Below the Cliff. Head west, towards the golems. There's a green door down south. Unlock it and head up the split to our left. Be careful of the lv38 mobs. Pick up the Spidersilk Cloak nearby. Not very useful to us. At the other side of the room there's a chest with a cosmetic. There's also iron on the ground if you look towards the ledge near the doorway.

Next, head to the main dungeon. Go down to B2, via the south-east staircase. There should be a big blank spot on your map. The doors leading into it are now unlockable, so let's do that. There should be a 1x1 room containing a chest, which contains a combat manual.

To go any further, we need to get past a group of 5 level 21 bees. We're still in the gear we fought the basilisk with, so swap our armor to Armor of the Forest Beast +10. Just summon the imp. Guard if they attack you. Cast firewall if they attack the imp. If you have Magic Infusion, the imp will be able to one-shot the entire group. The chest behind them contains a set of claws. Come back and beat these worker bees until we get 3 of their shells. Be careful when they're shiny because they can do quite a bit of damage.

Their shells let us craft Retainer Armor, which is the successor to our Armor of the Forest Beast +10, with a positively silly 51 base DEF. I didn't have enough iron, otherwise I would've maxed it to +10 on the spot. We'll do that later.

Alright, now let's head down to B3, via the usual north-west staircase. You should be able to see 2 locked doors on your map. The one we want is the south-eastern one. There are 3 level 21 imps inside. These imps aren't outright immune to fire, but they take half damage. On top of that, they can summon their own imps to make a big mess. Our Fireproof Armor is also really outdated, so we'll come back later, maybe with the chain lightning spear. Not sure yet.

Chap 10: Mountain Stream 2nd Floor

That's it for the detour. We should be wearing the gear we used to fight the Basilisk. Let's head back to By the Mountain Stream and go upstairs. Immediately round the corner past the stairs and head into the dead end. Open the secret door to pick up about 1.8k iron on the ground, and pick up Staff-fighter's Cape from the chest.

This thing ups our physical attack by 60% when using a staff. We're going to be needing it some time later. Also, that screenshot is from later in the game because I realized I didn't capture this item, so not all of the other listed items will be accessible at this point.

Talk to the dwarf NPC. Head through the eastern door, find the bell nearby and ring it. Now go back to the dwarf's room, open the southern door, and engage the zombies with the imp, who's going to just one-shot everything. Past the first room, pick up the Continental 2h-Hammer from the drawers. Past this room, 4 zombies. Take them out and open the door to face a unique zombie blocking our way. Right now we don't have access to the southern bell so we'll have to face him head on. Just summon our imp and guard. The imp is just going to clean the whole house in 2 turns. Past this zombie, one chest contains a trophy. The other one contains a medium armor that boosts spear attacks by 10%. Nothing special.

Unlock the shortcut to find ourselves in a corridor that leads to the southern bell, but don't ring it yet. Open the door north to fight a group of three... things. I don't know what these are supposed to be. Try to attack the front enemy to delay them so they don't take out the imp, because they hit very hard. If we head into the next room, the group faces north (us), so go back and ring the southern bell before fighting them. Past the doorway, another group of four of those things. Now the last group past the doorway, facing south (us). Don't even try to take them head on with cloth armor. Go back to ring the western bell and take them from the side.

Pick up the documents past the doorway and unlock the shortcut. Next, door to the north. A group of 4 ice slimes including a unique. Like the fire slime, this one also has banishment. We're low on MP at this point, so go back to base and return here, ringing the western bell on the way.

Summon our imp on the first turn. On the second turn, toss a fireball at the unique to delay his banishment. We're using a fireball because our sword can't reach him. The imp's AOE should clear all the other slimes before he gets taken out. Without any minions, the king will try to resurrect. Our imp is on cooldown so just attack him with our sword and clean up the minions afterwards. If you're having trouble with their freeze, you can swap to armor with higher DEF. In the room they were guarding, a treasure chest contains a trophy, and the other one contains a High-Quality Kite Shield. It's comparable with our Red Scutum, but it adds 10% evasion instead. Evasion is only powerful when stacked, so it's not immediately useful. Open the green door and pull the lever to raise the portcullis.

There are a couple of rooms here. The room to our right has the NPC, which we need to fetch several things for, in order to progress. Talk to him now and he'll ask for his sword. The northern room contains the northern bell. Just a bit to the east, a corridor leads to the eastern bell, and yet another portcullis.

There should only be one door we can open, with groups of skeletons inside. Just summon our imp as usual and clear out the rabble. Always attack the front enemy so they don't delay our imp. Unless of course they're attacking us, in which case we just guard. Past the first 3 groups, a door leading into a room with two chests. One contains the NPC's sword. The other contains some battle manuals. Group of skeletons blocking a door, facing west (us). Ring the eastern bell, then take them out. Pull the lever to raise the portcullis.

Group of skeletons, blocking a door to the east. These guys can guard. At this point I had 8MP left. Take out the group of 3 skeletons to the north. Ignore the pair. Head north and pick up a Continental Staff by the bunks. There are more skeletons to the south but we're out of MP. Go back to base and come back, but first, pass the NPC his sword. Now he's asking for his cloak. Ring the northern bell and take out the group guarding the doorway, then ring the western bell and take out the skeletons from earlier.

The group past the bookshelves, we need to take head-on. The southern bell isn't south enough to make them turn sideways. For this case, put on your best physical armor, either the Armor of Forest Beast from before, or in my case, the Retainer Armor +7 with 72 defense. Otherwise, no difference from before. Just summon the imp. Defeat the last group and open the two chests. One contains 1k iron. The other one, the NPC's cloak. Unlock the shortcut.

In the next room, there are 3 groups of skeletons, but we only need to take the pair blocking the doorway. These guys are a roadblock because they spam armor piercing attacks all day, and the imp dies too quickly. So go back to base and come back to pass the cloak to the NPC. Now he's asking for his pouch.

Chap 11: Ancient Guard

About the skeletons, we need to be able to take one out immediately after we summon the imp. The imp alone isn't going to cut it. Thus we need levels, and iron to make some upgrades. We want our Retainer Armor as highly-enchanted as possible.

The skeletons on this floor don't seem to turn shiny, but they still give decent exp at level 30. Another option would be the worker bee group from earlier, who will always be shiny. The bees are faster exp but they don't drop anything other than their shell. I also went back to check on my main party's file and looked through the entire armor catalog. We actually don't have access to any armor that resists pierce right now, so Retainer Armor is all we've got. Instead of heading downstairs, the skeletons here give good exp even when we're at level 29.

Anyway, since we're a bit stuck right now, I went back to Hollow Below the Cliff to see what the golems were hiding. I just went with Retainer Armor +7 and the sword and shield we were using. The two chests in there contain pugios which boost normal attack, and a 1h-sword that gives level 3 fireball, neither helps us out too much. The golems themselves drop weapons. The spear golem will drop a 1-handed spear which increases magic by 20%. We'll be needing it later, but I'll introduce the weapon at that point.

Next, I set my sights on the level32 phatom called Portent back in B2 of the main dungeon. I experimented for a bit, and came to the conclusion that we can take her down now, with a bit of luck. I farmed the worker bees with imp and infuse magic until we're level 32, and went in with Smoldering Staff and Retainer Armor +8. If you can max out the armor, it'll be even better because it reduces the Death Spiral tick damage.

Turn 1:
She almost always opens with Harm. We'll counter with Magic Barrier. If she uses anything else, just run away. We need her to expend the Harm on us, not the imp.

Turn 2:
We want her to use Death Spiral. If she uses freeze or life drain, run. We summon our imp. We *could* try to dodge the freeze with the skill from Retainer Armor but it's not 100% reliable like escape is.

Turn 3:
If she uses life drain on us, run away, but we're probably dead. We want her to be using it on the imp, who is non-living, so it won't do anything. Her attacking or freezing the imp is also fine. We'll just use fireball, or guard if she attacks us.

Turn 4 onwards:
We need to be nuke her down with fireballs before she decides to end the fight by using energy drain on us. There's nothing more to it.

Grab 3k iron from the chest she was guarding and unlock the shortcut to the elevator area. The crafter NPC is not here yet. There should be a group of 3 lv25 merfolk around. Don't fight them yet. Pull the lever behind one of the doors nearby and open the chest to get Soaked Armor, which we already have. If we follow the stairway towards the south, we'll see two more groups of mermen and a unique. At this point, I took out the bees and went back to base for MP.

Come back and engage the single group of 3 mermen near the phantom from before. They hit like a truck, especially their low-accuracy move. In this case, we DON'T want to equip the Red Scutum as it reduces our dodge. Use the High-Quality Kite Shield instead. It might take a few tries, but as long as we manage to dodge their heavy hits and get the imp out, the rest of the fight should go down pretty easily. Cross the drawbridge to find two chests. One contains red dye, for later use.

The other contains the Robe of Sorrow, which has sky-high DEF for cloth armor and makes the wearer non-living. (Screenshot from later point in the game)

Note: When looking through my notes much later, I remembered that these mermen drop one of the best 1-handed weapons in the first 2/3rds of the game. We won't be using it much at all but if you want to try getting it now, you probably can.

I don't think we should be messing with the unique group of mermen just yet. Let's return to the dungeon By the Mountain Stream to fight the two skeletons roadblocking us from before. It takes a bit of luck, but that's how it goes. My current level is 32, itemizing with Retainer Armor+8 and Smoldering Staff.

Start by ringing the west bell and open by summoning the imp. We need the skeletons to both attack us the 2nd turn. If they use their double hit, guard. Otherwise we need to put up our Magic Barrier. The rest of this fight really depends on what the skeletons do, but I think you know what you're doing by now. I'll just describe what happened in my fight.

3rd turn. They both decide to attack the imp, which is bad news. I cast fireball on the weakened skeleton to take him out. The imp didn't manage to fire off his before he went down. Imp cooldown on two turns. It's going to be a long wait.

4th turn. We're out of stamina so we need to refresh. Fortunately, in this fight, the skeleton is using a normal attack. 5th turn. He uses his piercing attack, which we must guard, so we guard. His stamina is low so it looks like we can summon our imp the next turn. 6th turn. He refreshes. We summon the imp.

7th turn. He uses his doublehit. Our HP is low, so we must guard. The imp uses fireball.

8th turn. Another doublehit. Imp's fireball is going to drop him, so we just guard. That's it for the fight.

The chest behind him contains the NPC's pouch, so let's return it to him. Now the 2x1 room south of where the NPC was should be unlocked. Pick up the Waterway Administrator Key (水道管理者の鍵). If you look at your map, there should be a locked door just north of where we beat the skeletons. Open it and pull the lever to raise the last portcullis on this floor. Don't head up the stairs yet. Open the secret door at a dead end to come face-to-face with 3 level 40 imps. That's going to have to be for later. Head back to town.

Chap 12: The Griffin

We just got a new key, so it's doors time. First, head to the Hollow Below the Cliff. The locked door to the east is now unlockable. Pick up a trophy in the chest just inside and turn around to face three ugly dingbats, or eyeball creatures or whatever you like to call them. Via some experimentation, we can tell that these guys go down in a single blast if we can use Magic Infusion on the imp, despite their 50% resistance to fire. So let's equip Continental 1h-Sword and our +10 Scutum.

If any one of them tries to freeze us, just run away. Otherwise summon the imp. Then just cast Magic Infusion on the imp. If they try to use the rock spell on us, we need to guard (or die).

Pick up yellow dye in a chest of drawers just ahead, and unlock the shortcut. There should be a chest up against a ledge that contains a set of heavy Slippery Scale Armor with high slash and pierce resistances. There's another whole roomful of these ugly things just north of here, including a pair of uniques. These eyeball guys are basically paper tigers, but we don't have a physical AOE to nuke them down with right now. You could try taking them out, but I just left them for later.

Now head to the main dungeon (you could opt to do this after we've gotten the next key, if you want to). If you haven't already, retrieve both the stone weights from the pulleys in B1. We've unlocked enough of B2 that doing this won't inconvenience us anymore. Now head down to B2 via the northern staircase. There's nothing left to unlock in B2, so head down to B3, also via the northern staircase. Remember where we marked the pulleys from way before? Put those stone weights on them. We're going to be exploring B4 soon enough. There are no doors we can unlock right now, so we're done here.

Head back to the dungeon By the Mountain Stream and go up to the third floor. There's really nothing here other than the boss. Equip the Smoldering Staff and the Retainer Armor +8, because the Griffin has -30% fire resistance. This fight is a cakewalk.

The Griffin always flies on its first turn, and every turn after he changes phases, which means we get a ton of free turns. After our fireball and the imp's fireball, his HP is basically down to a half already, which means he changes phases, which means he tries to fly again, which means we get a free turn.

Double fireball. We don't quite nuke him down so he changes phase.

In his last phase, he opens by charging Chain Lightning. A bit late for that. He dropped the Great Eagle Shield, which lets us cast Levitation. Worth keeping in mind for enemies who cast spells like Earthquake or Entangling Vines.

Before messing with the windmill, head to the campfire at the far south and pick up a trophy. Then loop around back north to unlock the shortcut, and open the chest for yet another trophy. There should be an obvious dead-end, which can open to reveal a level 40 hippogriff.

Now head back to the windmill and turn it until the blades' speed are at maximum. There's nothing more for us to do here so head back to base. I fought the level 40 hippogriff as a test, and the imp was doing 70 damage with his fireball. He has over 3k HP so it's not going to work.

Chap 13: Elevator to B4

Head to the main dungeon. The chief has relocated next to the western elevator, so talk to her if you wish. Then take the elevator down to B2 and talk to the crafter NPC around the landing area. He sells Continental weapons and a High-Quality Kite Shield, all of which we already have. We don't have the materials for him to craft anything useful for us right now.

If you skipped putting the stone weights into the pulleys in B3 earlier, you'd want to do that now. Take the elevator to B4.

The way north is blocked by a portcullis. Head south and talk to the knight NPC again. You can buy the trophy item from him if you wish. There are stairs back up, but the way is blocked by blue doors at the moment, so no point heading there now. Unlock the red door in from the knight to head into a place full of elementals.

Find the single fire elemental near the left. It's immune to fire, so take out our Voulge and just hit it. Now it likes to prevent us from regenerating stamina on its 2nd turn, so refresh on the second turn, and hit it 2 more times to drop it. We need materials from him to craft the Staff of Sparks that shaves 1MP off fire spells, and this one guy is the easiest to farm it from. Get the material and craft it via the NPC in the B2 lift area.

This is now our preferred staff, unless I indicate otherwise.

* Note: I just double-checked and the English version calls this the Fireworks Staff. I really think this is a mis-translation. 火花 (hibana) means sparks from a flame, as in flying embers. Fireworks is 花火 (hanabi). I'm tempted to call it the Staff of Embers, but the rest of this guide calls this the Staff of Sparks, alright? I'm sticking to the literal translation of the original name to not add any more confusion.

Instead of engaging the ice elementals like we normally should, head north and explore a bit. There should be a minotaur axe warrior blocking a doorway. He's got 1k HP, but he's not resistant to fire. Time for the imp. I fought him using Retainer Armor+8, Continental 1h-Sword, and +10 Scutum.

Guard if he uses his special, and summon the imp when we get a chance to. He loves focusing on the imp for some reason. Instead of casting firewall, since our magic is low, use Infuse Magic to support the imp instead. Watch your own stamina don't let it drop too low. Now, he has a move where he makes himself fire-immune for a single turn. Use that opportunity to refresh our stamina.

At some point, he'll switch phases and use a ground pound. Since the imp is flying, it's harmless to it. We could just guard ourselves.

The imp's probably out of mana at this point. Resummon it and finish the fight. He drops the Rocksmasher Axe, which has high damage but is otherwise unremarkable for a Sorcerer. Past where he was, there should be a cul-de-sac with Transparent Crystal inside a treasure chest, near a group of 3 fire elementals.

If you head towards the west side, you'll find the first treasure chest behind a portcullis which we opened from B3 earlier.

Open it for the Evening Star Shield with 55 base DEF and level 2 resurrection. (Screenshot from a later point in the game)

Unlock the shortcut back to the lift, and you should see a single earth elemental to the north, guarding a chest. Take it out by summoning our imp. The chest contains the Warrior's Shotel, a 1h-Sword with 34 base ATK which cannot be guarded against. It replaces the Continental 1h-Sword as our base 1-handed weapon. A bit to the east, there'll be two chimera.

Anyway, we're out of MP so there's not much we can do. Head back to base. Change into light armor (Potion Belt / Robes of Sorrow etc.) for MP, and the Voulge. Return to B4 via the lift.

We still need to explore the area. There are plenty of ways to do this. Let's try to open this chest in the south being blocked by two air elementals. Take out the single fire elemental as before.

Now change to any staff and take out the air elementals. Start by one-shotting one of them using our own fireball. Next, summon our imp, because it would have casted its +100% evasion buff. If it charges chain lightning, use the first turn to refresh, and the second turn to guard. The chest contains Heavy Spiked Shield. Not useful to us. Now take out the other pair of air elementals the same way.

Now turn 180 degrees and you should be able to see some earth elementals just past a doorway. Since we're floating, lets try to take them out. Change our armor to Retainer Armor +8 first. Their earth spell hurts like hell, so Magic Barrier if we have to, and try to find an opening to summon our imp. Earthquake and Entangling Vines won't do anything to us since everyone is floating.

There are a pair of ice elementals just ahead guarding a chest. Just nuke them down with a pair of fireballs. I had just enough MP left to do so. Otherwise head back to base and try it again.

The chest contains a Reinforced Quarterstaff, with an astonishing 60 base ATK. It readily outdamages our Voulge+8. Again, this screenshot is from later in the game because I forgot to snap this item.

There's a chest to the room in the east containing a trophy. Then head to the chest of drawers in front of the triple fire elementals (which we've just bypassed) to pick up the heavy Armor of Misery. Head back to base to replenish our MP. Equip a staff, but don't need to change back into robes.

Our next goal are the two chimeras from before. They use fire moves, but they aren't resistant to fire themselves. If they open with their firebreath (which hurts), just run away. Otherwise, start by summoning the imp and just use fireball on them when they're not trying to evade. Then take out the next chimera from the side, doing the same thing. Turn west. Towards the right of the doorway, pick up Green Dye.

Head east and unlock the portcullis with the lever. There's a chest in the room to the north containing a cosmetic. Further north, there's a room with 3 earth elementals. Ignore them for now and head further north to find the dyer NPC and talk to her. She sells the Red Scutum. Unlock the shortcut to the east that leads back up to B3, and a red door to the west. Zombies are blocking the way further in so we'll have to come back later.

Head back to base, and go the the blacksmith. I enhanced the Reinforced Quarterstaff to +3 and equipped it. This is so we can 2-hit fire elementals. I would push it higher so we can 2-shot shinies too, but I ran out of iron. Now head back to B4 and beat the western chimera again.

Now, the doorway to the west is blocked by a triple ice elemental group. We can't tell but they're not actually facing us. Start by summoning the imp. You should be able to take out the group via fireballs without running out of mana. There's nothing in this area, but we've revealed the main area.

Chap 14: The Reaper

Now return to base, and return to B4, via the trapdoor at the northeast of B3. Equip the Shotel sword and the Scutum+10, or any good shield.

Start with the group of 2 zombies to the south. Just summon the imp and let it do its thing. Open the chest nearby for a 1h-Axe with 40 base damage. It's the same tier as our Shotel, but the Shotel can't be guarded against. There are some bears to the south, and more zombies to the north. Let's finish what we started with, so fight the group of 3 zombies head-on. Same idea. Summon the imp and let it do its thing. These zombies drop 2k iron, so they're a good spot for that.

Instead of fighting the last group of zombies, which aren't in our way, head south and engage the bear guarding the way west. For this guy, swap to the Staff of Sparks. We're going to nuke him down. He's just a stronger version of the brown bear we fought back on B1, so there's nothing to the fight that we don't know already.

Head west and open the portcullis with the lever. Our way to the boss is now clear.

We kind of just walked past all those manticores. Head back to base and return here (via the elevator) and fight them to get a feel for them. Start with this group of two closest to the boss, now accessible from behind. Just summon the imp and watch him one-shot everything. Second group of two, just ahead. Drop them. Turn right, and before heading through the doorway, turn right again to face the bunks and pick up a trophy. Now head through the doorway and turn right to face a single manticore guarding a chest. Open the chest for an unremarkable 2h-Lance. The manticores and the earlier chimeras can turn shiny, so they're good spots for exp.

At this point, I just went around farming the zombie and manticore groups, since my iron stores were really low. For the manticores, double fireball for speed. Zombies, just imp. Finally, take out those two chimera to the east with imp+fireball. We don't need heavy armor, so I used the Robes of Sorrow for MP.

From all the skin drops, we can craft medium Chimera Leather Armor, that gives 50/50 resistance to fire/poison but -100 resistance to slash, and light Lion's Cloak, which can be disassembled for a cool 2.8k iron.

Having found a better source of iron, I enhanced the following:

• Retainer Armor +10 (84 DEF)
  
• Robes of Sorrow +8 (50 DEF)
  
• Reinforced Quarterstaff +5 (79 ATK)
  
• Staff of Sparks +5 (33 ATK)

I did not upgrade the Shield of the Evening Star because I'm holding out for the Shield of the Great Tree later.

Alright, let's take on the boss. I'm currently at level 37 with 6 free skill points. Equip the Robes of Sorrow and the Staff of Sparks.

The Reaper always begins by summoning his skeletons. So let's open by summoning our own imp.

His skeleton summons don't do too much damage, so feel free to chuck a fireball at the boss himself.

Once there are at least 3 targets on the field, the imp's AI will always use its AOE blast if it has enough mana to do so.

This cycle will repeat until he changes form, upon which he starts summoning in melee skeletons instead of archers. Your imp should be low on MP at this point, so we need to resummon him before he runs out.

Now he decides to use Energy Drain on us. We're wearing the Robes of Sorrow, which makes us non-living, which means it's not going to do anything. Since he's not summoning anything, it means we'll have a free turn next, to refresh our own stamina.

Now he decides to use Harm, but on the imp. Our imp is still on a 3-turn cooldown but there's nothing we can do about this. If he uses harm on us, we'll need to throw up Magic Barrier.

We're Sorcerer, so you should know that Energy Drain and Harm eat tons of stamina. He's refreshing, so it's a free turn for us to nuke his face with a fireball.

Phase change. He always uses Reap, which will instakill us if we're below 50% HP. We started with 234HP, so 117HP means we're safe with a great, stonking, 0HP margin. In hindsight, it was a good thing he used Harm on the imp before.

Correction: That was what I wrote before. Reap only works on the living, so we're safe using the Robes of Sorrow.

Next turn. He uses his bleed attack. He has too much HP left for us to take him out with a fireball. We still have our magic barrier if he tries anything funny. We have more than enough HP left to tank the move. I think the best choice here is to summon our imp, so that's what I did.

Now he decides to bleed the imp, of all things. He must've given up already. Fire off a tandem fireball with the imp to end the fight with fireworks.

He drops the Great Scythe, which does a sick 72 base DMG, but only works against the living. Open the chest behind him for the Bookrest Key (見台の鍵).

---

「ね、死神さん、私、死なないのか」
「…どういう意味？」
「さっき、死神さんの魔法、効かなかった」
「ああ、そうだよ。その『悲哀の衣』のせいだよ。何なんだその服は。まるでチートじゃないか」
「でも私、今までこの服と関係なく、もう何度も何度も倒れてしまったよ」
「倒れた？今ここに立っている喋っているじゃないか」
「だからわかんない。もうダメと思っている時、私はこう x.x しながら意識を失くなり、いつか拠点で目覚める。いつも同じ事。あっ、いつも姉ちゃんにすぅぅっごく、叱られたんだよ。でもそれ何度繰り返しても、私いつもこうピンピンしているんだ」
（ピンピンと言ってくれたなこいつ。俺の方は全身創傷だけど？）
「ああ、そりゃ『プロットアーマー』というんだよ。クリエイターの恵みの一つ。あなたは死ぬけど死なない。あの人から聞かせば？」
「死ぬけど死なない…？えぇぇ？私はもう死んだのか。姉ちゃんはきっと、悲しいよ…謝らなきゃ。でも私も死なないと言ったよね。じゃぁ、姉ちゃんはきっと…喜んでくれる？あっ！だから姉ちゃんはいつも泣いたり笑ったりしているんだよね、なるほど！ようやく、わかったよ！ありがとうございます、死神さん！」
（………はぁぁ…こいつ、頭が打つかり過ぎたかも）

"Hey Mr. Reaper, am I... beyond death?"
"...What do you mean?"
"Just now, your magic didn't work on me."
"Yeah I can see that. It's those 'Robes of Sorrow'. Just what's up with those? That's cheating."
"But... I've already fallen many times before. It doesn't matter whether I'm wearing these."
"Fallen? You're standing right here talking to me."
"That's why I don't get it. When I think I can't go on anymore, my face goes like this x.x and I pass out, and then I wake up some time later in the base. It's always like this. Ah, and the chief, she always gets sooooo mad at me. But then I'm back up on my feet, lively as a spring chicken."
(...Spring chicken, she says. Meanwhile I'm all gashed and burnt up.)
"That's something called 'plot armor', a blessing of the creator*. You die, but then again, you do not. Why don't you try asking him?" -------- * creator means developer
"I die... but then again I do not? Ehh~~? You mean I'm already dead? The chief's gonna be so sad. I gotta go say sorry to her. And then you said I'm also not dead? So the chief's... gonna be happy? Aaaa! So that's why she's smiling and crying all the time! I finally understand now! Thank you, Mr. Reaper!"
(.........This one's... hit her head one too many times.)

Chap 15: Way to the 5th Floor

We know the drill. New key, means new doors! This time it's blue.

At Hollow Below the Cliff, there are no doors to open here, but I tried checking out what those dingbats were hiding. We can't quite take out the pair of uniques quite yet, but you can walk up to the pair of normal eyeballs and one-shot them with the Reinforced Quarterstaff +5. They drop materials which we can use to craft with.

Now, By the Mountain Stream, F3. There's a blue door here. Open it, then put on a face-covering cosmetic before talking to the ghost. You should have the greathelm, which if I remember correctly, is a guaranteed loot from a chest way early on.

Start by looping back via the right to unlock the shortcut. There's a cosmetic in the chest inside the 1x1 room. If you walk around this room, you should be able to spot a bit of iron (1.7k) on the ground nearby. There's a group of 6 level36 frogs to the east, and 3 level35 gargoyles to the south.

There are also a pair of knuckles here. I don't know how to best describe the place, so here's a screenshot.

I tried engaging the gargoyles but they have 64 fire resistance, so I didn't get anywhere. Maybe we can try again when we have Harm later. For the frogs, you pretty much need to one-shot the entire group. They have -20 fire resist, so we'll come back later when we have maxed Flare (our fire AOE), as well as the 30% fire damage increasing staff. No major rewards in this dungeon, but at least we know what we have to do.

Okay, so main dungeon.

First thing, head to the crafter NPC at B2, and craft the Jeweled Staff that gives +4 MP and +5% MAG. Believe it or not, that 5% MAG will help out in just a moment. If you can't craft it, the first material is a drop off the level32 phantom in B2 of the main dungeon. The second is a unique material called the Transparent Crystal that we picked off a treasure chest a while ago.

Now head down to B3 via the elevator, then to the northwestern corner, via where the Salamander King is, and unlock two blue doors that lead back up to B2. Then turn around and head down the staircase to talk to the chief, and unlock the third blue door, and head down the staircase to B5.

You want to make sure you have skill points in Flare, our AOE fire spell. It's going to make the next section much easier. Initially I explored half of the entire floor without it. It's doable, but I don't recommend it. Just to give you an idea, the paragraph below shows how it generally goes without flare.

Reference only: Engage the pair of light ghosts. You should be using the Robes of Sorrow and Reinforced Quarterstaff+5. There are lots of ways this fight can go. These guys lock us out of using skills if we take them out, so start by summoning the imp, which can one-shot them even through their magic barrier. BUT, if one of them tries to use its earth skill, cast our own fireball on it. If both of them uses it, cast Magic Barrier. We're using the quarterstaff so we can 2-shot the remaining one even if we can't use skills at all.

Anyway, starting from the landing room of B5, the door west doesn't lead anywhere, so head east. Take out the two groups of ghosts with Flare. Keep going ahead, and you'll see a group of 3 ghosts guarding a chest. Take them out. Open the chest behind them for the Hunter's Bow. A splendid weapon, but alas, we're Sorcerer. Now look below and you should see a group of 4 ghosts guarding another chest. Take them from behind and open the chest for a Greatsword of Protection. All these ghosts drop tons of iron, so remember this spot for later.

Now jump down but don't open the chest, because it's a mimic. Mark it on your map for later. Stick south and there should be a corridor with an unlockable shortcut at the end, that leads back to where we started from. I still had 13MP left, so let's keep going for a bit.

There should be a group of 2 slimes and 2 ghosts nearby, beside a staircase going up. When fighting these red ghosts, we need to switch to the Jeweled Staff, because without that 5% MAG, they're left with a sliver of HP after our Flare cast. If you prefer higher MP efficiency from the Staff of Sparks, you could also just finish them off by smacking them with your staff. Open the chest behind them for the heavy Armor of Devotion. It's my preferred armor on tanks, but we're sorcerer so it's not much use to us.

We have enough MP for one last cast of Flare. Head towards the west and there should be a group of 3 blue ghosts in front of a treasure chest. Blast them and open the chest for the Beastmaster's Jerkin for Ranger.

If you head a bit east and look down, there's another treasure chest we could get to. Open it for 2.8k iron. Head back to base and come back, since we're out of MP.

Go through the shortcut from the north, and loop all around until we hit the west wall. There's a chest a bit north of here that's also a mimic, so mark it. Now take out the group of ghosts towards your south in front of the drawbridge. Open the chest beside them for the Acrobat's Buckler, which gives +30 to EVA. Jump down towards the east, to find a door we can't yet unlock.

Remember the chest towards the north that's a mimic? Head there and take out a group of 3 ghosts guarding another chest.

Open this one for the War Staff. I dont know why it got translated this way, but the original is (腕力の杖), which is more like the Strongman's Staff, or the Staff of Ogre Strength if you're familiar with DnD. This thing is meant to go with the Staff-user's Cape we got earlier, that boosts staff damage by 60%. (Screenshot is from a later point in the game)

Now loop back and hop off this ledge to proceed. You'll find a group of 4 ghosts guarding a chest towards the south. Just cast Flare, and if you can't take out the red ghost (like me), just guard until you can attack again and smack him with the staff. Open it for the Sharp Stilettos, which are a pair of daggers which do piercing damage.

Chap 16: The Nimble Assassins

Before we go any further, we need to enhance:

• Staff-User's Cape +10 (27 DEF)
  
• Shield of the Evening Star +8 (81 DEF)
  
• Reinforced Quarterstaff +5 (from before)

We're using Shield of the Evening Star because of its high DEF, and low enough EVA penalty for backstab to be a 0% hit on us later.

If you don't have iron, farm the chimeras and manticores and zombies from earlier, or the ghosts on B5. Equip the cape, as well as the War/Strongman's Staff. The rest of the mobs we need to take on via physical melee damage, and this is the build for that. We don't need to enhance the Strongman's Staff (yet) because this is good enough for what's to come.

You could try to take these guys on to get at the treasure chest but I didn't get very far, because they do too much damage. We'll come back when our Strongman's Staff is at +10 and we can 1-shot the rats while wearing heavy armor.

Instead, hop down the ledge and take on this group of 2. Just smack them with the staff. If we get shot by both of them we're going to die, but they're most likely to shield.

For the next group, same thing. Smack all of the rats first. When they're down, use Magic Barrier against the slime's attack. Remember that slime takes half damage against blunt attacks so we're not going to take it out before it takes us out. The staff we're using also reduces our magic by 50% so don't bother with our own offensive spells.

It should be out of stamina next turn, so summon our imp to take it out.

There are a couple of ways it could go. As long as we survive, we win.

Okay, time for the miniboss. It's more of an RNG-fest than anything. These guys have under 700HP, each. So we're not going to one-shot them. They have -10 fire resistance so we're going for fire damage. They have a shock rating of 6, so we want to go with a shield. Itemize with Retainer Armor+10, the Shotel, Shield of the Evening Star +5. 20MP is all we've got, so make it count.

The best thing we could hope for is that they use their backstab on us the first turn, as shown. Otherwise our only option is to guard or run away until we get an opening to summon the imp. This is when they use backstab or refresh their stamina. There's no other opening. At all.

Once the imp is out, we need him to get off as many fireballs as possible to take out one of the assassins. It takes 3 fireballs, or 1 normal and 1 infused fireball, or 2 normal fireballs and 1 of our shotel attacks (if it hits) to take one of them out. Once one of them goes down, the fight becomes much easier. Try not to get poisoned because it hurts like hell, and we probably won't have the chance to use Demon's Skin. Remember, we do have the +70% dodge skill from the Retainer Armor, if it comes down to the wire.

There are many ways this fight can go. I'll just describe what happened in mine.

Both of them attack us. We have to guard. Imp decides to nuke the other guy. Oh well.

There's a lot going on in this turn. Imp is targeting the one with higher HP. It'll die if we infuse the imp. However, the other assassin is using poison throw on us, which is going to poison us if we don't guard. Infusion costs 1 stamina. We have 2, which means we're going to have enough to cast Magic Barrier next turn if he other assassin tries something funny, like flurry of blades. Therefore I opt to eat the poison and infuse the imp.

Literally called it. Blade Flurry. We throw up Magic Barrier. Imp nukes him and takes him out, before dying to poison himself. Thanks little guy.

Now, we want to be careful here not to drop off the cliff. Look over to our right to pick up the painkillers the goblin NPC was looking for, from way earlier in the game before we even reached B3. Grab that first.

Now if you turn around, you can see a group of slimes and their king. I tried fighting them right now but it didn't work out. We'll come back just a bit later.

Head back to base and find the goblin NPC at the northern end of B1. Give him the painkllers and we'll get the foldable stairs in return.

Chap 17: Loose Ends Part I

Just a note: I'm going to do exploration first before taking fights, to keep things organized. I'm also working without foreknowledge of what we can defeat and what we cannot, as I'm writing this guide as I go along in my own game. You can streamline this a bit if you're willing to do both at the same time. Just read ahead to know what to expect. I'm trying groups of enemies one-by-one to see which ones we can beat in order to get gear progression, so this part is less "directed". Feel free to do things out of order.

B1 main dungeon. First place we can go with the stairs is just north of where the goblin NPC is. It's a group of 4 wisps. We're going to come back here in just a bit.

B2 now. There should be a raised dais to the east that we can now get to. It should be the only blank spot left on your map. Open the chest up there for a trophy.

B3. There's a spot to the south-east, so let's check it out. 6 level 35 crabs. Nuking them with Flare didn't work, although they aren't resistant to fire. Later then.

Nothing on B4, so back to B5. First, check out this spot for a Rune Halberd. Then there's that really obvious spot near the minic to the east. Open that chest for a trophy.

Then come up north for this chest for 3k iron. Move up east again to the treasure chest the rats were guarding earlier. Open it for the Survivor's Chainmail. You could take out the two groups if you want, since we're behind them now. Now step south to see another two group of rats, but don't engage them. Just open the chest in front for the Spinning Room Key (紡績室の鍵). There's another chest behind the group of 4, but I don't think we stand a chance right now.

Now move to the north-easternmost corner of the map. The chest in the corner is a mimic. The other one contains a cosmetic.

Now we can drop down and take the group of slimes from behind. Remember the king has banishment, but we're going to want to summon the imp anyway, for the flare. Go in with Retainer's Armor +10, and the Staff of Sparks. Start by summoning the imp, then fireball, and then fireball again. Open the chest behind them for the Retiarius Gladius, or a more literal translation would be the Net-Fighter's Gladius, a 1h-Sword with an active that reduces dodge. Good to keep in mind. Probably more useful than the Shotel, too.

We can now unlock the door at the south-west corner, so let's do that. Once you open the door, immediately turn right, and pick up 2.8k iron from the rack. The Efreet has over 4kHP and he is completely immune to fire, so it's going to be a test of our demonic magic. Either we go for a respec, or I'm leaning on just getting the levels needed for the skills, so let's do other things before fighting him.

First, the dungeon By the Mountain Stream. There should be a dais on F1 that's still unexplored. Open the chest up there for 2.8k iron. Nothing we can do on F2, so head up to F3.

North-western corner. Group of 4 harpies. I certainly wasn't expecting to take them out, but I did. Go in with the Staff of Sparks and Retainer Armor+10. Start by summoning the imp, then cast Flare. If everything goes right, they just die on the spot even if they had their buff on. The chest behind them contains the first [BALLISTA BOLT]. We probably need all four of these. Nothing else we can do here.

Now for the Hollow Below the Cliff. We can open the western door now. You can try fighting the silver demon but I don't think it's a good idea until we get Harm at least.

There's a now-climbable ledge near the unexplored spot in the middle. Climb up using the foldable ladder, and cross the drawbridge. One of the chests contains a trophy, the other, the light Tunic of Evasion (+20 EVA).

That's the exploration done. Now I set my sights on the 4 wisps near the goblin NPC. I went in with Robes of Sorrow+10 (I've upgraded it), the Gladius, and the Shield of the Evening Star+8. The shield will let us resurrect the imp, which bypasses the summoning's cooldown.

They decide to cast Harm on the imp, so we counter with Resurrection. If they cast it on us, use Magic Barrier.

Now when these guys die, they're going to self-destruct. If low on stamina, use Magic Barrier, otherwise just guard.

Open the chest behind them for the second [BALLISTA BOLT]. Their material drop is for a staff, but not one that we can use. However, we can craft it and disassemble it for 4.5k iron because it's top-tier equipment. They're also pretty decent exp even if they don't turn shiny. Just remember this exp spot as an alternative to bashing up the rats in B5, but there's nothing left for us on the first floor.

Now for B2. Remember in the south-east, there's a group of anchor-wielding mermen that we kind of left alone, so let's take them out now. Equip the Staff of Sparks but keep the Robes of Sorrow on. They do more damage if we're wearing heavy armor. It may take a few tries, but just open with our Flare. Even if we don't make it, this spot is literally right in front of the elevator. Before you fight the unique group, light the torch and pick up 1.7k iron on the ground.

Now for the group with the unique. Cast Flare and Fireball. That's it. The chest behind them contains Ceramic Armor, which has 30% resistance to pierce. If you haven't already, go beat the level 17 merfolk unique nearby, which we bypassed early on, if only just to register him in the beastiary. Just Flare and Fireball. It's funny because if you only fought him now, the chief will say something like we're still newbies and we don't stand a chance. Uh, we're level 40 haha. If you know what's she's gonna say when we fight the Efreet, it's a funny juxtaposition.

Now for this group of imps in B3. Come to think of it, we haven't made a good piece of armor that resists fire, besides the Fireproof Armor that's way outdated now. For this fight, I put on the unenchanted Chimera's Leather Armor, which gives us 50/50 fire/poison resistance, but -100 to slash. Equip the Jeweled Staff. You can probably tell that we're just going to brute force the fight.

Start by summoning the imp. Then chuck our own Flare.

Use Magic Barrier here because we want to save stamina.

Another double Flare and that's it. The chest behind them contains a cosmetic item.

Now let's head to B5 to nab ourselves a mimic. They drop a key item called the Bag of Greed that doubles the drop rate of anything that we haven't yet seen. They also drop around 5.5k iron but it won't be faster than farming the ghosts.

We want to be wearing the Robes of Sorrow+10, and the Smoldering Staff. They love to open with demonic spells, which do nothing since we're wearing the Robes. Their mana drain would work though.

The second turn is a toss-up, but we want to be summoning our imp. Then simply cast Fireball after Fireball until he goes down.

Chap 18: Loose Ends Part II

Now, let's take the group of 6 red spiders in the south-eastern corner of B3. There's a bit of RNG to this one, but I managed within 5 tries. First, equip the Jeweled Staff and Retainer Armor+10. We're just going to brute-force the fight.

In the first turn, we can only hope that not too many of them tries to attack us. They have two moves that do no damage, so it's a pretty decent chance. We need to summon our imp.

Next turn, just throw a Flare and hope it hits them and interrupts them first, before most of them hits either us or the imp.

Then all that's left is to clean up. The chest behind them contains the third [BALLISTA BOLT]. These guys are called something like 'young of giant spider'. I love how the game suggests a giant spider fight further down the line.

The material they drop makes the medium Spidershell Armor with a sick 70 base defense. Its only weakness is a -50 crush resistance, so I think it's going to more-or-less replace our Retainer's Armor+10.

Okay, what about the other group of 6, the toxic frogs on F3 of the water dungeon? Let's take 'em. Equip the Jeweled Staff, approach them from the side (from the north) and just cast Flare. Boom. These guys drop a copy of the painkillers the goblin NPC needed earlier, which we have no use for.

Okay, that felt really cheap. Them dropping the painkillers suggests that fighting them head-on should be viable. To do this, we need to equip Chimera's Leather Armor, for 50% poison resistance. The most important thing to know is that if the first 3 frogs use their instant poison skill (that's the one with the frog symbol), it's going to hit us first before our Flare comes out. With the Chimera's Leather Armor, we're going to be able to tank a single hit from this. It does over 300 damage unmitigated. If you end up retrying, it comes down this skill only. It's almost just as easy.

Unlock the shortcut. Then open the two chests. Each contains 4.5k iron. Now head down the staircase to the north. It's got one of those annoying wards that make your movement all backwards. Try to just walk back and forth on 2 squares until it wears off. Cross the drawbridge past the door. One of the treasure chests contains a trophy.

The other chest contains the medium Mystic Armor with:
- 56 base DEF
- 50/50 pierce/fire resistance
- -100 poison resistance

Contrast it with the medium Chimera's Leather armor
- 43 base DEF
- 50/50 fire/poison resistance
- -100 slash resistance

And the medium armor called Subversion (番狂わせ) that we can craft with the venomous frogskin that we can get from those frogs we just fought. It has:
- 56 base DEF
- -50 fire resistance
- 50 poison resistance

Each Subversion armor requires a single skin and disassembles to 4.5k iron. I think we've found our new iron / exp grind spot.

I don't think poison is that big of an issue throughout most of the game, so I think the Mystic Armor is a decent candidate to fight the Efreet with. I'm still looking for a light armor because I really want to go into his fight with more MP. Remember he's immune to fire and he has over 4k HP.

Next, I set my sights on the group of 3 gargoyles on F3 of the water dungeon. I want the Shield of the Great Tree. It isn't a guaranteed drop though so we probably have to do this a couple of times. I had to take them out a total over 7 times before they dropped a single shield. There's also no shortcut behind them so we're always going to have to take them from the front. Little buggers.

To do this, first, I farmed the frogs to level 43. Now equip the Staff-User's Cloak+10 and the War Staff aka Strongman's Staff+10 and fight the gargoyles. The first few turns are the hardest, but once one of them goes down, it becomes much easier. Two whacks with your staff and the imp's attack brings down the first gargoyle.

Start by summoning the imp, and depending on what they do, either whack them,refresh, defend, or resummon the imp. Remember you have Spell Barrier available; it's more stamina-efficient than guarding. Just don't hit them when they're in stone form because it triggers a counter. I don't think there's much else to describe, so I'll just post a whole series of pictures.

... and so on.

The chest behind the contains the fourth [BALLISTA BOLT].

Next, the pair of lv30 unique ugly dingbats in the Hollow Below the Cliff. I went with Lion's Cloak+0 and the Jeweled Staff. Finish off the other two groups with Flare and engage them from the side.

Start by simply casting a Flare. On the next turn, prioritize the enemy using either freeze, or the earth nuke. If both of those come out at once, we're dead unless they decide to use their normal attack next turn. Otherwise just double fireball and we're done.

Now unlock the shortcut, then the blue door ahead. Open the chest ahead for the Pilgrim's Black Attire, then the chest right up the stairs for a cosmetic.

Chap 19: Loose Ends Part III

There's one miniboss I want to take care of before the Efreet, and that's the Hippogriff.

I'm currently at level 44 from farming the frogs, itemized with Robes of Sorrow+10 (for MP), Shield of the Great Tree+10, and the Chilled Spear, which drops from the guy above.

I believe it's the only 1-handed weapon that adds as much as 20% to MAG. You can probably already tell I intend to let the imp do most of the work. The Shield of the Great Tree has a shock resistance of 8 and it heals us by 20% of our MAG when we guard. This spear amplifies our self-heal, on top of making our Fireball and Firewall still do 2/3rds of the damage we expect to do when using a staff. It's my preferred setup for a defensive spellcasting build.

At this level, our imp's normal fireball does 270 damage to him in a single hit. That's with his wind guard up (halve ranged damage). The imp's power and HP scales to our level, which is why I've been grinding levels.

Here's our battle plan. We guard against his attacks if he attacks us. If he attacks the imp, we can refresh our stamina, resummon the imp, or put Firewall on the imp. The imp is the DPS in this fight, make no mistake, so most of our MP pool should be used to keep him on the field.

Start by summoning the imp. More likely than not, he's going to fully buff himself at the start of the fight. Just keep our stamina up and help out the little guy if we have the movement to spare. Be prepared to tank a hit to re-summon him if he runs our of MP, or if he gets focused down, which is why it's very important to keep our HP up. Remember that we have Spell Barrier available.

The imp is all out, so I resummon him.

Now, when he changes form, he's going to drop his ranged resistance and evasion buffs. This is the only time we nuke him with a fireball. It eats through our MP faster but it hurts like hell.

At 1/3 HP, he's going to enter his final phase and immediately cast Wall of Air, which cuts ranged damage by 90% for the next 6 turns. When he casts this move, cast our own fireball at him to reduce his remaining HP as much as possible. The plan is to wait for this buff to run out, and finish him off with the next fireball.

In this particular fight, unfortunately he took out the imp the turn just before, and resummon still has 1 more turn to cool down, so only our fireball is going to hit him.

I decide to resummon the imp immediately because our HP is topped up and he's using a normal attack, which doesn't hurt that much. Our stamina is low but we have Magic Barrier available. It's very important to have the imp up because he draws attention away from us.

He has one tick left on his Wall of Air. He took out the imp the turn before with a double-attack. Obviously we're supposed to guard this turn; I'm just showing that the imp summon is available.

Fireball takes him out.

The chest behind him contains the Moonlight Roundel, a shield with low 33 base DEF and 6 shock resistance, but adds another 20% to MAG. It looks like a great pairing with our spear right now, but actually it pairs better with a sword later on that regenerates us for 10% of our MAG every turn.

Okay, with that done, let's handle this mob which we didn't have any choice but to leave alone. We already know how to take out the triple archers. Just equip War/Strongman's Staff and Staff-User's Robe.

Before engaging the group of four, equip the Chilled Spear, Shield of the Great Tree+10, and Spiderscale Armor+10 (I've upgraded it)

The key to taking out the assassins is via Firewall. They do have knife-throwing moves, so we can only hope that they don't do it. Firewall comes up before anything, so we're going to cast that in the second turn. For the first turn, we're just going to nuke one of those archers with a Fireball, simple as that.

Second turn. Firewall. We're lucky the throwing knives aren't the poisoned version, but at 340HP and regeneration of 41HP, the poison ticks aren't really a big problem. The assassin on the left is going to vaporize himself in 2 hits.

The assassin on the right thinks what his friend just did was pretty fun and decides to do the same... and vaporizes himself in 2 hits. We just guard, so ended up healing HP.

There's nothing left to this fight. We can try to end it early by summoning an imp, or wait until he runs out of MP to refresh his buff, then cast a fireball on him.

Jump down west to open the chest for the Stone of Healing. You can use it at the crafter NPC to get a staff that adds 60% to our outgoing healing. Pretty much useless to us.

Chap 20: The Efreet

I was pretty close to level 45, so I made a few runs to the poison frogs to get to level 45. We've kept the Efreet waiting long enough, so let's take him on next. I've been putting together all the gear that we've been getting so far to come up with something sensible to take him on.

Here's the thought process: To begin with, we need a source of healing. The regeneration sword is in the extra dungeon, so not yet available. Potion Belt has fire weakness. So we only have Shield of the Great Tree as an option, which is why I was trying so hard to get it.

Next, we need a suitable piece of armor. Efreet is all fire damage and nothing else. We do have armor with 50% fire resistance, but the best light armor (for MP to keep the imp out) that we have is the Lion's Mantle, at 39 base DEF and 30% fire resistance.

The one that was vexing me is the 1-handed weapon.

So I looked through my 100% save file on my main party and found a good 1h-Hammer, which drops from these guys. Is this meant as a 2-handed weapon? Because I really think so, lol. The stats are ridiculous for a one-handed weapon found at level 20. Anyway that's the best we can use. Efreeti, meet anchor. Anchor, meet EFREETI!

I had a bit of iron left, so I enchanted our weapon and armor to +5. We haven't used them before until now.

Also, if you've been following the skill build, we haven't used any new skills since a while ago. I've put points into the demonic skill tree which we haven't used at all. Right now we have auto-suggestion and a single level of Harm available. I don't intend to use them but they're an option. Let's not keep the genie waiting.

He always begins the fight by shrinking himself. This raises his evasion considerably, so much so that even the imp can't hit him reliably. This means summoning the imp is a waste of MP. We want to play defensively by just guarding until his buff runs out, then we summon in the imp. His fire breath hits us for 60 damage without guarding, which means it's a comfortable fight in this phase. If you're patient, you can just slowly smash him down with the anchor without the imp at all, expending zero MP points.

Our imp's own fire resistance is stupidly high, so we don't need to worry about him getting killed for once, which is a good thing because once he runs out of MP, he's going to just keep meleeing the boss, which is what we want. Smack the boss when he attacks the imp, and guard when he attacks us. Nothing else to it.

Second phase. Now he grows bigger, which makes him easier to hit. If he keeps killing the imp, nothing we can do. Just resummon him when he's off cooldown again.

Third phase. He channels a 3-turn fire spell. Free turns for our anchor to make friends with his face.

When the spell explodes, guard. It did all of 20 damage, woo! Just keep hitting him during openings, but make sure to guard when he uses his special melee.

He decides to charge up his 20-damage spell again. I summon the imp to speed things up a bit. I was saving the 5MP for an emergency Magic Barrier.

Spell explodes again, did 41 damage to the imp.

Imp disappears because we're out of MP. I decided to trade a hit with him and ate his special attack to the face. Next turn I hit him again with the anchor and the fight ends.

Move towards your left and pick up 2.8k iron from near a spinning wheel. Now head through the door in the south and the chief kindly reminds us to not forget the portcullis. Do as she says and pull the lever, then open the door to the west for a way down to B6.

This place is pretty big, so walk around. Find the knight NPC to the northeast. Make sure you talk to him thoroughly. The third dialogue option unlocks a new dungeon. I'm not sure if you unlock it still if you skip the dialogue.

Now unlock the green door to find your way down to the final boss. Come back up to find the new (eastern) elevator. Head up to the second floor and unlock the portculis, then head up to the first (ground) floor and do the same.

Now what you want to do is head back to base and the chief will get a surprise visitor in the night. The game doesn't say anything about it, but you'd want to head to where the chief is now, by the first (old) elevator and talk to both her and the new NPC.

Now let's head to the new dungeon called Overgrown Abandoned Land.

Chap 21: Overgrown Abandoned Land Part I

New dungeon! This is a self-contained dungeon with pretty linear progression, so I can be slightly more organized here.

Just to recap, we're currently at level 45. Start by equipping the Spidershell Armor+10, Shield of the Great Tree+10, and the Chilled Spear. Talk to the chief, and there's really only one way forward for the time being. There are a couple of types of enemies here.

At a high level, there are a couple of notable things we want from this dungeon.

• There are two spellcasters. The dark one is the sorcerer, and the light one is the cleric. The sorcerer drops 4 different elemental ores, that make 4 different staves that boost the corresponding elemental damage by 30%. We're looking for the fire one.
  
• Dragonhunter's Sword. A 2h-sword with 50% to EVA when wearing light armor. From swordsman.
  
• Oil-soaked Armor. Light armor with 50% slash resistance. Shiny behind area boss.
  
• Ancient Sword of the Oasis. 1h-sword with passive +2 stamina regen. From skeletal swordsman.
  
• Protector's Sword. 1h-sword with HP regen (10% MAG). From skeletal swordsman.
  
• The Immovable. 1h-axe with fire+poison immunity. From axeman.
  
• The Axe of Tenacity. 1h-axe with stun+freeze immunity. From axeman.
  
• Hammer of the Sacred Mountain. 1h-hammer with lvl3 Freeze. From cleric.

Plenty of other very interesting weapons, but I think these are the important ones.

Alright, so start by engaging the axeman from the front. Open by summoning the imp. One fireball + one infused fireball takes him out, for maximum MP efficiency.

Next group. Spearman and cleric. Remember we can't use Firewall against spearmen. Start by using fireball on the priest to take him out immediately. Then summon in the imp. Two infused fireballs take him out.

Cross the drawbridge and pick up a 1-handed mace that's not useful to us. Before moving on any further, drop down near the drawbridge, and you should be able to unlock a shortcut (the southern door in the first room). Refresh our MP at base.

Equip the Robes of Sorrow+10 and Jeweled Staff (+5% MAG) before returning here. Now there are two pairs of enemies ahead of us.

Start by engaging the dark spellcaster + archer pair to the south. Just cast Flare to take both of them out.

Turning round the doorway, there should be two groups in front of us. For a nuke-heavy class like our Sorcerer, the group of 3 on the left is actually easier. Swap back into Spidershell Armor+10 and take them from the front. We have 20MP and 360HP to work with.

The deadliest thing to us here is the armor piercing move from the spearman. We need to guard if he uses this move, and if we're unlucky, he can chain it over and over, but if not, it's not a difficult fight, because we can facetank pretty much everything else.

The spearman is a knight, so he loves to start with a taunt, or some kind of guard skill. If he tries to cover one of the guys in the back, just run away and fight them again. Start by casting Flare to take out both guys in the back.

Once only the spearman is left, finish the fight however you like.

Now move beyond the doorway and check the banner on your right for the Lightweight Scimitar, which I believe is the 1-handed weapon with the lowest stamina drain in the game.

Before going any further, raise the portcullis to the south. Then talk to the fairy (the green dot that's not the chief). If you've crafted enough things with the NPC down at B2 near the lift of the main dungeon, you'd remember that he'd have given us some white incense (frankincense?). It's the same case as the bear charm, for the other fairy on B3 of the main dungeon. If we have this incense, this second fairy would let us pass.

Unlock the door behind the fairy and turn left to find a chest containing the Mountainbreaker 1-handed axe, which cannot be guarded against. Now walk around the area to reveal the map, but everywhere else would be blocked by enemy groups, so head back to base. Change back into Robes of Sorrow+10.

There are a couple of ways we could try to push further, so feel free to do this out of order. For me, I started with that 2x2 blank square in the south-west. It's got to be hiding something, right? Two groups. Rogue+swordman, and hammer+priest+sorcerer. The swordman is dangerous because we're wearing robes.

Engage the pair from the front. We want the swordman to be using Parry, as shown. If he doesn't, just run away and fight them again. Cast Flare to take out the rogue immediately.

Next turn. If you're following the skill build, you should have a single level in Harm. Since we don't care about MP efficiency in this fight, use it to take out the swordman. Otherwise, just use your fire skills.

Next group. No equipment changes necessary.

Start by casting Magic Burn (魔力燃焼). It's the first time I'm actually using this skill, but it should be available if you're following the skill build.

Next turn, cast Harm on the hammer user. There won't be anything left of him. See that priest? He's channeling a higher-level AOE version of banishment to try to do damage to us, because we're non-living from the Robes of Sorrow. Now there's a chance the hammer guy can use Endure, which cuts damage taken by 90%. In that case, just run away and take the fight again. We lose only the 2MP from the Magic Burn.

Cast Flare to finish the fight.

There are two treasure chests in the room beyond. One is a cosmetic. The other one is 2-handed Hammer of Exorcism. Time to head back to base.

Okay, time to take on this group further up north. It looks like we're only going to have to take on a single group, so change into the Spidershell Armor+10. Spearman+archer+priest. Open with flare, guard against the armor pierce, and finish off the spearman. Run away if the spearman tries to cover the guys in the back. We know the drill already.

Hop down the ledge and open the chest nearby for the Great Tree Bow, my preferred weapon on Rangers. But we're not Ranger. Now loop around west past the next room and raise the portcullis.

Just a bit further on, there's a double-height ledge where we can drop down. Search the ground near the ladder nearby for the Anti-Air Pike, a 2-handed polearm with 50% increased damage against flying types.

Keep exploring and eventually we'll arrive at the other side of the northern door that leads back into the first room. Unlock that shortcut and return to base.

If you haven't gotten the Staff of Fire that increases fire damage by 30%, farm sorcerer mobs until you get the flame ore and craft that staff. The material is pretty rare, so I just kept going to that sorcerer+archer mob near the start. This is now our preferred staff unless I say otherwise.

Chap 22: Overgrown Abandoned Land Part II

Okay, now let's try to find out what's in the center of the map. Looks like only one group is blocking the way, but it's a nasty group of 4 we have to take from the front: Axeman+swordman+sorcerer+rogue. But we already know what the weakness of the swordman is (Parry). Switch into Spidershell Armor+10. We have to take out the guys in the back with Flare, so we have to be using a staff. For this fight, the Staff of Fire is necessary.

Now I believe for this group of four, the number of initial patterns seem fixed. I was running away until the swordman uses parry and the axeman is not trying to cover anyone, but it doesn't seem it can happen at all. Either that, or it's very unlikely.

For the opening turn, we need the axeman to be using his taunt. Hopefully the swordman isn't using Deflect. We cast Flare.

In the second turn, as long as both of them doesn't use their special on us, we're pretty good. In this case, I cast Firewall to take both of them out with 50HP remaining. If the axeman guards the swordman, I think our best option is to use Magic Barrier to buy a turn, or to summon the imp if the swordman is also not attacking.

Raise the portcullis to find the boss of this area. First, go back to base and equip the Robes of Sorrow+10 and Staff of Fire.

The most important thing is that we need to take out the two squishies in the very first turn. The ranger always uses his fire attack on us, and that burns 50HP per turn, and we don't have any healing. The second objective is to take out the spearman, because he will keep guarding the boss. The weakness of the boss is that he LOVES to use buffs, so he ends up doing no damage. That's a good thing too because his attacks hurt like hell.

There are a million and one ways this fight could go, so I'm just going to show how my fight went with a whole series of pictures.

Turn 1
Turn 2
Turn 3
Turn 4
Turn 5
Turn 6
Turn 7
Turn 8
Turn 9
Turn 10
Turn 11
Turn 12
Turn 13
Turn 14
Turn 15
Turn 16
Turn 17. The last fireball empowered by Magic Burn did over 1,200 damage (I think it was 1,247) and took him out immediately.

He dropped the medium Veteran's Armor, which is probably the best armor for warrior or ranger types who use weapon skills all day, but we're Sorcerer.

Head up the ladders to find two treasure chests containing 4.5k iron each. Cross the drawbridge to find another two chests. Before that, turn right and there should be a shiny on the ground. This is the Oil-Soaked Armor with 50% slash resistance. I've been looking for this to try to take on the two blades in the Hollow Below the Cliff. I'm not even sure if they're possible with this armor, but at least we have it now.

The two treasure chests ahead of us contain a cosmetic (the wolf-ears) and a trophy. Woot woot. I thought this guy is impossible to beat solo, but here we are.

Make sure you pick up everything past the boss's area before heading back to base, because there's no shortcut back here without going through him again.

Chap 23: Overgrown Abandoned Land Part III

Alright! There are three 2x2 blank spots left on the map, and these are all guarded by nasty skeletal mobs. Let's clear the spots clockwise. Equip the Spidershell Armor+10 and keep the Staff of Fire equipped.

Engage the group of three head-on. If he lead enemy uses paralysis, run away and try again. Start with Magic Burn.

And then Flare for a big boom.

Open the chest they were guarding for the Bardiche of the Squall, a 2-handed battleaxe. Unlock the shortcut, and it's back to base.

Second area. Another nasty group of 4 we have to take from the front. Swordman+swordman+axeman+spearman. At least there's no blunt damage incoming. At first I tried taking them out with Firewall, using the chilled spear and Shield of the Great Tree, but they love to just buff and not attack, so let's just nuke them. Keep the Staff of fire Equipped.

Magic Burn then Flare. If the spearman uses paralysis, run away and try again. 1HP remaining. No, that wasn't deliberate XD

The chest they were guarding contains the Bonecrusher daggers, which increases damage to the living by 50%. Rogue's equivalent of the Hunter's Bow I guess, but not useful to us. Unlock the shortcut, back to base and here we go again.

Group of 4 from the front. Swordman+axeman+spearman+spearman. We'll use the same strategy.

Magic Burn then Flare. But the swordsman decided to guard.

He wants to attack, but he's a swordsman, so Firewall to deny. We have 8 mana, so more than enough. It did over 650 damage to him, and that's it for the fight.

Two treasure chests this time. One is a cosmetic, the other, the Faussar of First Blood, a 2h-sword. Unlock the shortcut, and that's it for the area!

Before leaving, I focus-farmed the weapons mentioned in the first part, because I need them to experiment with strategies. Feel free to farm them later if they end up being necessary.

For the swordsman and the axeman, I used the group of four closest to the entrance. Equip the Spiderscale Armor+10 and the Staff of Fire. Start with Flare, then Harm on the axeman, then fireball on the swordsman.

For the hammerman, I used the group in the far west, because that is the only group which is not a complete pain in the ass to fight. Flare and Harm.

For the skeletal swordsmen, I used the group of 4 in the far northeast. Magic Burn and Flare.

Chap 24: Demonology Part I

Okay, we have the pieces we need. Let's head to the Hollow Below the Cliff.

Funnily enough, although we're a spellcaster, this red demon on the right turned out to be the easier fight.

This is what we look like right now, with 70 base EVA. We want to be using the Tunic of Evasion (+20 EVA) and the Dragonhunter's Sword (+50 EVA). I've enchanted the sword to +5 beforehand.

This is the most straightforward boss fight ever. Just smack his face. It'll go a bit better if we manage our stamina properly. You see, the gimmick of this fight is that he places a 9-turn buff on us that doubles our physical damage. Each of our swings eats 6 stamina, so we want to swing 3 times before a refresh.

In the first turn, just guard (basically pass the turn). Then keep hitting him while refreshing. If he gets lucky, he'll hit us through our evasion, but we really need to go all-out offense, because sometimes he goes too crazy with his own specials and runs out of mana to cast the 9-turn physical buff on us for the second time (it costs about 1/8 of his MP pie). When he's out of MP, his normal attack has 30% chance of hitting us, which is not good at all. Besides, we'd be doing half damage without that buff.

If he gets lucky, he'll be able to hit us enough to kill us. In that case, just do the fight again. If it's happening more often than you'd like, upgrade the weapon and armor. This guy is by far the easiest of the three to farm for the material drop (the big guy at the back just drops iron).

Open the chest he was guarding for the Muddy Armor, a light armor with 50 base DEF, and 50/50 blunt/poison resistances. Now open the chest just past it for a trophy.

We have to take two boss fights back-to-back to unlock the shortcut.

Now for this guy. He boosts TEC skills (throwing knives, cheap potion etc.)

This is the setup we need. Ancient Sword of the Oasis (passive +2 stamina regen), Shield of the Great Tree+10 (passive HP regen @20% MAG), and the Potion Belt+9 (cheap potion). Just so you know, the shield will be healing us for a stonking 7HP per turn because the boss's buff works by setting our STR, INT and TEC. That's why we're using the potion belt.

In the first turn, either just do nothing or cast Auto-Suggestion. Then guard every single turn until he refreshes. Don't even try to tank his skills without guarding when his buff is up. They do over 400 damage.

When he refreshes his stamina, use Cheap Potion. In my case, it heals 161HP because of his TEC buff. Our goal is to run down his entire MP bar before taking the fight to him.

In the middle of the fight, when the TEC effect runs out, he'll always refresh it. In this case, guard! This turn only, the Shield of the Great Tree will heal us.

Now when his MP runs out, it's OUR turn to bully him. First thing to do is to use Cheap Potion if your HP is low, because the TEC effect is probably still active. Otherwise, summon the imp. The imp will not have this debuff on him, so his spells will hit for full damage. Meanwhile, although we still can't cast spells of our own, we could certainly cast infuse! That's the most straightforward way to finish the fight. I just cast Auto-Suggestion so that our infusions are free, and let the imp do the work. Remember that we can heal the imp with Cheap Potion.

Also keep in mind the ultimate sorcerer combo Magic Squeeze (4sta) --> Magic Burn (3sta) --> Harm (10sta). In this case, after Magic Squeeze, under the TEC effect, we can instantly top up our hp with Cheap Potion (5sta)! Remember to time it such that the debuff has worn off when it's time to cast Harm. The actual combo is Squeeze-Potion-refresh-Burn-Harm, which needs 5 turns. If your MP is low for some reason, cast Auto-Suggestion first. Just remember this guy has high evasion so Harm has 50% chance to hit. The imp should be more than enough to finish the fight, so why not finish with a flourish?

Here's how it went.

Magic Squeeze
Magic Burn
Refresh
Harm
BOOM!

Now unlock the shortcut so we have access to the big guy at the back.

Chap 25: Demonology Part II

Time for the big guy. Our strategy for him is the same as the first demon: Dragonhunter's Sword (+50 EVA) and Evasion Tunic (+20 EVA). It may take a few tries because he has 6000 HP, and our luck with evasion might not last, but this time we have spells at our disposal. Tip: If you eat a big hit early, like if something takes out half your HP before he runs out of MP, just restart the fight.

Our first goal in the fight is to run his MP down while playing as safe as possible. Nothing else to it. Safe turns mean when he's refreshing his stamina, he's buffing himself, or when he's using a skill with negative hit chance. Definitely slip in the damage when we have the chance to, but take no risks.

Our most mana-efficient DPS option is to make use of Firewall, because this guy isn't a spear user. The advantage of firewall is that we can do other things i.e. attacking while he also damages himself. On top of that, we can guard on top of our evasion, so it's as safe as it gets. Firewall is quite expensive, so make sure you have auto-suggestion active before casting it. One auto-suggestion will fuel two firewall casts, but remember auto-suggestion itself has a cooldown.

Start the fight with auto-suggestion. Keep this buff up before using spells.
- If he uses a hit with negative hit chance, it's our best window for Firewall.
- If he uses anything with 30% hit chance, GUARD! We don't have any healing at all.
- Instead of attacking him with the sword, Fireball is more stamina-efficient.
- Keep your stamina close to full to block the most dangerous hits. We can deal damage later, when we have our imp to help us.
- Mana Burn into Harm is our main nuke. It deals close to 600 damage, about 10% of his HP.
- If you NEED to guard when stamina is low, use Magic Barrier.

When he runs out of MP, summon the imp. Our MP will start draining now, so make sure to keep auto-suggestion up before using your big spells. His HP will start dropping much faster. With the imp out, firewall is less efficient, because he splits his attacks between two targets. I just use Magic Infusion. We're not using a staff so our fireballs are much weaker than the imp's. Two infused fireballs do just as much damage as our Magic Burn + Harm, and it's also far more stamina-efficient, so don't go out of your way to cast our own spells. Just keep yourself alive.

At 33%HP (I think), he'll cast Gravity Field, but we're in light armor so we're fine. Make sure your stamina is full by the next turn because he'll be throwing AOEs non-stop. This is when you want your HP to be as high as possible, because outside of turns where he refreshes his stamina (or recasts Gravity Field), there will be no breaks at all. If he takes the imp out it'll be pretty bad. However, if you did everything by the numbers in the previous phases to stack the odds in our favor, It shouldn't be difficult to bring him down.

He drops Dexterity Gloves (手練の手袋) that give us 3 extra skill points, so now we have a total of 4 points above our level.

Okay, so one last demon to take care of. This guy drops our STR and DEX and boosts our MAG. Boosting MAG means the Shield of the Great Tree is going to heal us for tons of HP.

If we look at his beastiary profile, we'll see that he has both Death Spiral and Ignition. We can equip the Robes of Sorrow against Death Spiral. For ignition, we'll use The Immovable axe, which makes us immune to getting set on fire. All that's left is to guard against his fire spells, because of the -30 fire resistance from the Robes of Sorrow. He has Harm available, but we have Magic Barrier for that. I tried taking this fight initially without accounting for Ignition, and the fire damage ticks are too much.

Alright, so here's the plan. He's a mage so once he's out of MP, he'll be sitting ducks, so let's try to make that happen.

Start the fight with Auto-suggestion. Why? Well, it's because he has to refresh his own stamina at some point, most certainly within 6 turns. That's when we can land our own Harm. Thinking ahead really pays off in this game; I find it super refreshing. When he uses Death Spiral or Ignition DOTs, that's when we cast Magic Burn, then Harm, which is now at level 3 from the gloves.

That just happened.

Magic Barrier to counter his Harm.

Refresh Auto-Suggestion when he refreshes the field buff.

Second Harm cast finishes the fight. That's the last of the four demons.

Chap 26: Ballista Guardians Part I

Now it's time for those bosses on floor 6 of the main dungeon. Let's take them counter-clockwise, because I think roughly, they get more complicated for our class, in that order.

First up is the golem. One of those big, slow types that will make you really regret getting hit. He has 30 fire resistance and 3.3kHP. We go in with Dragonhunter's Sword and the Evasion Tunic, like how we took down two demons with.

In the first phase, he'll have -20% chance of hitting us all the way, so I started with auto-suggestion, then magic burn, then harm. After that, firewall, fireball, refresh, and a fireball. That triggered the form change.

In the second phase, he starts using skills that can actually hit us. Note that he refills his entire MP bar every phase. First thing we want to do is bring out the imp as an extra target. 20% is one in five chance for our day to end really badly. He might kill the imp, but every time he attacks the imp is a free turn for us to re-cast auto-suggestion to setup for Harm, our firewalls etc.

Second Autosuggestion - Burn - Harm combo.

At some point, he'll shut down and start regenerating every turn until he gets attacked. With the imp out, basically this is a two-turn rest. Otherwise, max your stamina and re-cast autosuggestion before waking him.

In the third phase, he will start off with a body slam. You can choose to chance the 20%, or in this case, I just brought up Magic Barrier because I had MP to spare. In this case, he actually hit me for 22 damage through the barrier, which means it would've done 220 damage without.

He pasted the imp the turn before with another body slam, but I've already finished setting up the third cast of Harm. It easily took out the rest of his HP.

He drops the Rock Wall shield, which has the highest shock resistance in the game (14), but comes with -90 evasion. The chest behind him contains a trophy. Unlock the portcullis and head downstairs to install the ballista bolt before coming back for the next boss. On the way back, make sure to ask the knight NPC to man the ballista.

The Wyvern. 5kHP, no fire resistance. Damage type piercing. He can cause freeze and 狼狽 (translated as disconcert), so we need to take care of those.

This is what we're going with. I'm currently level 46 from farming some iron. We go in with Shield of the Great Tree+10, and Lion's Cape+5, and the Axe of Tenacity.

Open with Auto-Suggestion. Then summon in the imp when we get the chance to. The Wyvern is a status-ailment fight, but we've nulled those, so we can afford to take it nice and slow. His attacks don't hit for much damage or shock, so guard them and wait for openings to resummon the imp. The imp will get at least two fireballs out, which takes out at least 20% of its HP. The wyvern is somewhat evasive, so Harm only has between 50-70% chance to land. I think fireball is better in the average case. Infusing the imp is even better because our MAG is low from not using a staff.

In the second phase, the boss always opens with Cold Breath, which is an AOE freeze without channeling. We're immune to the effect, and the damage is really low, so free fireball for us.

In the third phase, he will cast a 3-turn channeling spell. This screen is one turn in, so 2 turns left. This one doesn't freeze, so honestly it's a spell of least concern, at least among 3-turn channeling spells. It did 45 damage through my guard. Didn't even kill the imp. Four fireballs end the fight.

He drops wyvern scales, used to craft some armor. The chest behind him contains a trophy. Same thing. Open the portcullis, load the ballista downstairs, and come back for the third boss.

Chap 27: Ballista Guardians Part II

Giant Spider of the Bell Tower. 5kHP, damage type pierce. Has access to slow and instant poisons, summons, and can halve our stamina recovery. No fire resistance or weakness, despite being a spider. It's the armored type rather than the hairy type.

We go in with Shield of the Great Tree+10, Robes of Sorrow+10 (30 poison res), and The Immovable Axe (slow poison immunity). Another choice is the Oasis sword for passive stamina regeneration, but I prefer the axe.

It doesn't have a set opening skill. Guard until we find an opening. When it summons spiders, summon the imp so the imp will cast Flare the next turn. I prefer to summon the imp because it causes the boss to cast Lullaby. It stuns the imp for two turns, but wastes the boss's turn as well.

As an alternative, cast Auto-Suggestion when the boss summons, and then your own Flare when the spiders come out. Just remember, we're not using a staff, so it might not clear the whole swarm.

In the second phase, the boss will start with Wall of Webs, which causes melee attackers' evasion to drop to zero. Not much concern to us.

When it uses the instant poison, GUARD! You should remember how painful this skill is when we fought the frogs.

In the third phase (33%HP), the boss will open with Fatal Poison. It will cause a full party wipe in the next 4 turns, so it's a damage race.

Keep infusing the imp every single turn and he'll go down. The spider drops materials for crafting armor. Again, chest containing trophy, portcullis, ballista downstairs, then time for the final boss on the floor.

The Black-Robed Abyss and the Armored Wraiths. Damage type slash. 5k + 2x800 HP. The wraiths can stun, but it won't matter if we can take them out fast enough, or we could choose to mitigate with the Axe of Tenacity.

I went with the Chilled Spear. Then Shield of the Great Tree+10 as standard, with the Oil-soaked Clothes+10 with 91 base DEF and 50 slash resistance.

Our priority is to take out the wraiths as fast as we can. Magic Burn -> Harm will do it, but it also absolutely destroys our MP pool without Auto-Suggestion, so we need to survive somehow until we can pull that off. The boss prioritizes buffing, but he will occasionally attack. Watch it if he has his attack buff on himself because that will basically one-shot us if we don't guard or use Magic Barrier.

This opening isn't the best because the boss is attacking rather than buffing, but I took it anyway. Start by summoning the imp as a distraction. One of the knights will keep using its special, while the other one will keep guarding the boss. They'll keep doing this until they run out of MP basically.

Follow up with Auto-Suggestion. It's the greedy choice but we need our MP to last. Besides, failing early means we lose less time. After this, try to focus down the knight that's attacking. Magic Burn into Fireball would work, but the greater concern is whether we'll have enough HP to work with.

Once the attacking knight is dead, the pressure on our HP will be off. Take this time to use guard to heal our HP back to full. The imp should be dead (or soon will be) so our MP stops draining. Alternatively, if you have the dismissal skill (I think it's called Farewell Visit), you can dismiss the imp manually. The defending knight should be out of MP so he'll be attacking us every turn, which means he won't be defending the boss. Each of his hits do 8HP/45HP guarded/unguarded damage to us so we'll be gaining HP.

When ready, start by casting Auto-Suggestion, then summon imp. In my case, I had to cast Magic Barrier in between, because both of them decided to attack me. Help the imp take out the knight.

When the boss is alone, our job is to run his mana empty, to let pressure off our stamina gauge. When his mana is empty, his normal hits do 4 damage to our stamina bar. Each hit deals 14/80 damage guarded/unguarded, while our guards heal 45HP. There's no way he can kill us so we want to bring our HP bar back to full before we push the fight any further.

When ready, start with Auto-Suggestion, then summon our imp. Then Magic Burn into Harm.

The imp's fireball triggered his form change before I could cast Harm. In this case I have Magic Burn active so I don't want to use Magic Barrier.

First harm cast. We're dangerously low on stam but Magic Barrier is available. He took out the imp, and I took another hit to refresh stamina.

Resummon the imp when we get the chance. I'm concerned about our MP pool.

Auto-Suggestion is back up, so we recast it immediately.

When he enters the last third of his HP, he changes phase and uses Black Blade. It consumes 10% of his max HP but deals big damage. We have auto-suggestion so I have no qualms about using Magic Barrier. I have no idea how much stamina it will drain if we used guard against it, but I don't plan to find out. We need that stamina for fireballs. It dealt 44 damage with Barrier up, so 440 damage unmitigated. Basically a one-shot move.

Now he wants to target the imp. Harm is still on cooldown, so I opt to cast a firewall on him.

He didn't even manage to take out the imp, the poor sod.

The main boss drops the Dragonrune Heater Shield, which discounts shield skill MP by 1. The other two drop the Solid Golden Plate Armor, which reduces guarded damage by a further half. Pick up the trophy in the treasure chest, raise the porcullis, load the ballista, and we're done here.

Chap 28: High Pyromancy

Now for the last mob groups before we take on the final boss.

These guys are by and large the best source of iron in the game, assuming we can take them out quickly and consistently. They're also the best exp source if we exclude the final boss. For the first clear, it will be a bit of a crapshoot until you get used to their behavior. It's easier if they decide to halve their own HP.

Go with the Staff of Fire and the Lion's Cloak+10 for fire resistance. If we get hit, the damage is so insane it doesn't really matter what armor we're using, but the cape does mitigate the DOTs. These guys are too accurate for EVA stacking.

Start by summoning our imp so we get a free Flare and a source of distraction.

Magic Burn

Flare

Tandem fireball takes out the last one.

The chest they were guarding contains the Sunlight Roundel, which increases outgoing healing by 30%.

I don't like the inconsistency farming them as solo sorcerer, but even then nothing beats the exp and iron rate from these guys, given how fast we can take them out. The above is one example of it tends to go, but I find that depending on my current level, I can drop them between 50%-80% of the time, if I play it right with Fireball, Flare, Magic Barrier, and especially the timing on Magic Burn and Magic Squeeze. Half the fight is in understanding whether to run, risk magic squeeze, or rush magic burn. However, the thresholds depend on our level, which greatly affect how many ticks of burn we can withstand, and exactly which combinations of spells drop them.

I miss my main party's magician who can pretty much take them out in a single earthquake.

A couple of heuristics to work with. There are lots of details like countering with barrier or fireballs depending on what the imp is doing, but this is the gist.

• First turn: Summon imp. Nothing else.
  
• Second turn: If two of them use magic squeeze, use magic burn into flare. Run if they use ignition or rain of fire on us. Otherwise magic squeeze. If they cast a fireball, Magic Barrier. If they cast Blaze (3-turn charge), know that if we take the fight, we're pretty much committed to squeeze-burn-flare, which significantly reduces our options. I choose to run if they use double/triple Trance because it makes subsequent turns significantly more dangerous without committing to anything themselves i.e. variance-increasing move.
  
• Third turn: If we already have magic squeeze, cast magic burn and win next turn with Flare if the imp isn't dead. Otherwise there are too many possibilities to list.
  
• If one of them casts a fireball and he's low enough for us to drop him with our own fireball, then fireball. Our fireball after a Squeeze is very powerful. Otherwise Barrier or guard and lose half our HP per fireball. If it's not going well and you get the chance to, run!
  
• If they're trying to focus down the imp, cast Demon's Skin on him.

Especially if you want to take these guys down earlier on (not much reason to), try again until all three of them uses Magic Squeeze on the second turn. I've seen it happen a few times, but it's probably less than 1%.

If you just want to take on the final boss and then call it a day without being able to beat all the mobs in the game, you don't need to do any of this. Otherwise, about 300 runs and 12 pages of magician's robes later, we're sitting at level 50 and 800k iron. These guys still give 1exp, so we could get to level 51 at least.

Chap 29: Disaster Incarnate (4 Ballistae)

I wanted to finish the two remaining mobs before I fight the final boss. However, the imps are pretty much impossible due to how stupidly overtuned acid rain is. The scimitars I could beat, but it would be a fight literally hours long (regenerate net 2hp per turn, spend 200hp to do 5%hp damage. Do that twice). I'm going to come back later by farming the final boss for exp, and see if it goes any better at level 55. I'm not optimistic about the imps, but let's do this first.

Disaster Incarnate. 25kHP, 10k of which will be taken care of by the ballistae. Predominantly slash damage. Shock 18.

I'm using the standard Chilled Spear and Shield of the Great Tree+10 setup. For the armor, we don't need anything specific, so I'm using Magician's Robes+5, because we're a magician and that's fashionable. Remember, the dragon has a shock rating of 18, so if we guard his physical moves, we're going to lose 10 stamina minimum using our setup. Abuse Magic Barrier.

First phase. Boss opens with Headbutt. I just use Magic Barrier because I want to conserve stamina. If we've loaded the ballistae, the first one will land at end of turn. Try to summon in the imp when we get the chance.

Magic Squeeze - Magic Burn - Harm. It triggers his form change immediately, which means another immediate 2.5k damage from ballista followup.

Second phase. He opens with Slicing Wind. Causes bleed if not guarded, so we guard, and heal net HP from the Shield.

That was a Firewall amplified with Magic Burn for 800 damage. Imp follows up with 450 damage fireball. Triggers form change and another ballista for 2.5k.

Third phase. He opens with Dragon's Breath. Causes fire if not guarded, so we guard. And heal net HP from the Shield. I follow up with Magic Squeeze because Magic Burn is on cooldown. Remember: Magic Squeeze increases MAG, therefore when we guard, the regen from the Shield is increased.

Great Roar. Increases our skill cooldowns. Guard won't prevent the effect but I guard anyway and heal 88HP.

Bleed attack. I guard. I don't think I've ever seen the imp cast Flare on a single target (It's because his fireball is on cooldown from the debuff)

Imp summon available but we're still under the cooldown debuff, so I leave it. Summon imp one turn later, imp's fireball triggers form change and the final ballista for 2.5k.

Fourth phase. Storm of Leaves. Guard this one because it only drains 5 stamina total (with our shield). Save Magic Barrier for his special or Critical Hit.

Fire Breath. I guard. Imp's not going to take much damage.

Now he wants to attack the little guy. We're sitting on 14stam, so Magic Burn.

Harm has 80% to hit. I take the shot. XCOM anyone?

It lands, and the imp's 455 dmg fireball takes him out.

* From more testing and farming later: The fastest way to end the fight is to simply keep infusing the imp rather than using our own spells, because our MAG is low from not using a staff. It makes for a much less interesting fight though.

The dragon doesn't drop anything, but he gives +7exp even at level 50. Check the treasure chests if you want to, pull the lever, then unlock the blue door. Now, if this is really your first playthrough, I'm not so heartless as to spoil this part of the ending for you.



---

Otherwise, head to the bookcase at the far end, read the title of the books, then check behind it. I think it's amusing because it's kind of obvious from the map.

Damn straight, chief. Potatoes rule! 芋最高！

Chap 30: Peak Sorcerer

The pair of Vampiric Scimitars and those imps are easily the most difficult mobs in the game for a solo Sorcerer. I've briefly mentioned why before we fought the dragon. Therefore it's time to get more levels, because the stat growths in this game are substantial.

The dragon gives +5/3/2/1/1 exp at levels 51/52/53/54/55, so 56 is the hard level cap of the game. In order for us to get there from level 50, we need to beat the dragon about 300 times. If you can manage to beat the remaining two mob groups at level 54, it will save you 200 trips to the dragon, which is really a lot of time. I took it all the way because I want to see my sorcerer at her best.

Fortunately, we have the 4 ballistae to help out, so it takes about 4 minutes to drop him solo at level 50, 3 minutes at level 55, using the method that I'm about to describe. This includes the time it takes to get to him, so it should tell you what our power curve looks like. His fight is also so stable that I'm doing it on autopilot on a second screen. The only spells we need are Call Familiar and Magic Infusion. I swapped to Solid Golden Plate Armor+10 for additional mitigation, Protector's Sword for the passive regen, and the Moonlight Roundel to amplify the sword's regen.

When I tested at level 52 at least, we could play the whole fight by ear, actually. Guard [2] when the phase change music happens, because these cause bleed / fire which cancels our regen. The other bleed and poison moves are random, but the ballista should clear them within 2 turns. In all other cases, just keep using infusion, which is normally in first position, so [↓↓→]. Resummon the imp [↓↓→→] after the Storm of Leaves, and that's it. The tail swipe stun locks us to two menu options, and pressing the down key twice selects the correct entry anyway.

300 runs later...

"Why are you doing this to me!" 「何故貴様らこんな事を⁉」

This is peak sorcerer, without any equipment. We do have a level in Pyrolatry so we have 14 base fire resistance.

I went back to B3 of the main dungeon to test against the group of 3 pyromancers, who are still the best source of iron by the way. At level 56 with Mystic Armor+9 and Staff of Fire equipped (+30% fire damage), the imp's Flare (256 dmg) and our Magic Burn + Flare (893 dmg) will take out the entire group, which means we've achieved a consistent 3-turn takedown. We can also facetank a single fireball instead of having to guard or Magic Barrier on the second turn.

It's still not as fast as a magician's 2-turn Earthquake, but this is as good as it gets. 45 seconds per run including getting to them, up to 12k iron.

Chap 31: Vampiric Scimitars

Now we're ready to take on the last two optional mobs left in the game.

Dual Vampiric Scimitars. 2.3kHP each. Slash damage. Shock of 10. 100 fire resistance. 100 poison resistance.

We're going in the following setup: Protector's Sword+10 (for regen), Rock Wall+10 (max shock resistance), Oil-Soaked Clothes+10 (50 slash resistance)

Our strategy is simple: Run down their MP, so they are reduced to using their normal attacks. Then hit one of them when our HP is high enough to take a hit. When our HP is low, guard until we can regenerate it back up again to hit them another time. Repeat until both swords are down. Simple, boring, but takes a hell of a long time.

Now they're not called Vampiric Scimitars for nothing. They regenerate as much HP as the damage they do, so as much as you can, try not to get hit unless you're hitting back!

The slog starts when both of them are out of mana. At level 56 using our gear, these are the important statistics for the fight.

• Our normal attack does 171 damage.
  
• We regenerate 30HP per turn.
  
• Their normal attack (guarded) does 2x9 HP damage. Which means we regenerate 12HP per turn.
  
• Their normal attack (unguarded) does 2x53HP damage.

The fight is all about resource (HP, stam) management. Try to refresh stamina only when our stamina bar isn't enough for any more attacks, and don't be afraid to trade hits with the scimitar. We do 171 damage while they can only lifesteal 53 damage so we're on the winning side of the trade unless you let your own HP drop too low to go on the offensive. Basically when one of them is refreshing stamina, if you have enough HP, you should be attacking them or refreshing your stamina, not guarding.

Slowly but surely getting there.

Once one of the scimitars are down, the fight swings massively in our favor. We'll be regenerating 21HP per turn and our stam drain is halved. The other scimitar doesn't stand a chance. You could guard until your HP is back to 100% before you start the offensive, because the scimitar isn't stealing any HP when its own HP is full.

Halfway there...

And the other guy is down. They drop trophies and iron.

The chest behind them contains the Garbs of the Reckless, a light armor that confers 40EVA but disables guarding.

Chap 32: Immoral Imps

Immoral Imps x3. 1.2kHP, 50 fire resistance, 100 poison resistance. Shock rating of 10.

This is an RNG fight, plain and simple, with the caveat that all 3 imps have a big f you card in the form of Acid Rain. Our objective is to focus on one individual imp at a time to thin their numbers as fast as possible, while relying on our dodge luck to weather their attacks.

We're equipped with Dragonhunter's Sword+10 and the Garbs of the Reckless+10, for a total of 90 evasion at the cost of not being able to guard. Thus our only defense against Acid Rain is a single cast of Magic Barrier every 4 turns.

These imps run on a specific AI routine. They're highly likely to use Incinerate on any target (us or the imp) who has at least one debuff on, and all their other skills either boost their TEC or inflict a debuff. The main function of our imp summon in this fight is to draw as much of their fire away from us as possible. That said, he will get melted if Acid Rain comes out, because he cannot guard.

If none of the enemies are opening with Acid Rain or Acid Fog, start by summoning the imp ourselves.

Now, despite us using a 2-handed sword, we're at level 56, so we still have an impressive 307MAG. The imps are pretty evasive, so harm only has 70% to land, but a Magic Burn + Harm will instantly delete the frontal imp from full HP. Remember, these guys have 50 fire resistance, so Harm is our only viable magic nuke in this fight. When it's on cooldown, we're going to be using our sword or infusing our own imp.

Turn 2: Magic Burn

Turn 3: Harm

Turn 4: Refresh

Turn 5: One of them is casting Acid Rain. Magic Barrier is available so we need to use it. I'm just showing the fact that the imp will be available next turn, which is a good thing because he will not survive this Acid Rain.

Turn 6: Summon imp. Remember we have a debuff on us, which means if their Incinerate is off cooldown, they're likely to use it on us. Unless you want to chance the 50% to hit on us, we NEED to guard or Barrier this or this will take out 2/3rds of our HP with a single debuff on us, or outright oneshot us with two more debuffs. Usually these will be acid rain and acid fog.

Turn 7: Both imps recovering stamina. I take this chance to use Demon's Skin on ourselves to halve fire damage.

Turn 8: Now the imps' Incinerate casts are off cooldown. The imp has no debuffs so they're going to use them on us. That Demon's Skin is going to save our life if one of them lands, but if both land, we're as good as dead. I would guard or Barrier if we could, but Barrier is on cooldown and our guard is disabled from using the armor. We do have one last trick up our sleeve. The imp is attacking the frontal imp, so we're just going to attack the imp to interrupt him and hope the damage is sufficient to take him out.

Turn 9: Frontal imp gets taken out, and we manage to dodge the 50/50 Incinerate. At level 56, the imp has insane MAG power, so I use Magic Infusion on him instead of attacking with the sword. Barrier will be available next turn. At this point, our victory is virtually guaranteed. Infused fireball under our imp's helfire buff did 576 damage to the enemy imp, who has 50 fire resistance.

Turn 10: Second Infused Fireball takes out the last imp.

These imps drop the Glittering Meteoric Iron material, which are used to make the Demonic Staff, which reduces the MP cost of demonic spells by one. The chest behind them contains a cosmetic.

Congratulations upon reaching this point. We now have a strategy to take down every single mob in the game, which means nothing stands between us completing the beastiary and the item drop table. In case we're missing any hidden loot, we could just revisit the right location, or talk to the NPCs to buy the item from them at any time.

Chap 33: Disaster Incarnate Solo Part I

One last thing I want to do before concluding this solo run is to challenge the final boss again, but this time under the following conditions:

• No ballistas.
  
• No summons.
  
• No ambush.

First, we remove all four ballista bolts.

I'm going with the Protector's Sword+10, Shield of the Great Tree+10, and Oil-Soaked Armor+10, biased against slash and pierce, but with -70 fire resistance. This build goes for maximal regeneration, meaning we can play defensive with a cast of Magic Burn to rapidly recover our HP to full. Our weakness is in not using the Rock Wall, meaning we're going to take 10 stamina damage when guarding most physical moves.

The rest of this whole section is just a turn-by-turn record of the fight. It's super long, and honestly it's not that interesting.

[Phase 1]
Turn 1: Giant Fang. I cast Auto-Suggestion.

Turn 2: Critical Hit. We're not under defense down, so I cast Consumption.

Turn 3: Entangling Vines. I cast Death Spiral.

Turn 4: Refresh. I cast Ignition.

Turn 5: Refresh again. I cast Magic Burn.

Turn 6: Normal attack. I cast Incinerate.

Turn 7: Headbutt. I cast Firewall, because it's a low damage melee move and he's no longer under Consumption. Note: Actually, Fireball would have been better because his stamina isn't healthy.

Turn 8: Entangling Vines. It does decent damage, so I'm going to guard.

Turn 9: Refresh. We do the same.

Turn 10: Normal attack. I cast Auto-Suggestion.

Turn 11: Giant Fang. I cast Consumption to immediately punish.

Turn 12: Refresh. I cast Death Spiral.

Turn 13: Headbutt. I cast Ignition.

Turn 14: Entangling Vines. I cast Magic Burn.

Turn 15: Refresh. I cast Incinerate.

[Phase 2]
Turn 16: Slicing Wind. Low impact. Causes bleed. I guard to prevent bleed, and heal HP.

Turn 17: Giant Fang. Not guardable, so we refresh. We're under def down so it's going to take out a chunk of our HP.

Turn 18: Refresh. Our HP is under 1/3 and we have full stam, so perfect window for a defensive Magic Squeeze to boost our regen by 40%.

Turn 19: Poison Sting. High impact poison move. I guard to prevent the poison. We're going to lose 10 stam.

Turn 20: Headbutt. It's our window for Auto-Suggestion.

Turn 21: Refresh. I cast Consumption.

Turn 22: Jumping Attack. We refresh.

Turn 23: Refresh. I cast Death Spiral.

Turn 24: Poison Sting. I cast Ignition.

Turn 25: Refresh. I cast Magic Burn to hold.

Turn 26: Poison Sting. I guard against the poison and to regenerate HP. The plan is to go all the way to max.

Turn 27: Refresh. We do the same.

Turn 28: Giant Fang. Not guardable but I guard anyway to regen HP.

Turn 29: Refresh. I guard to regenerate HP using the last tick of Magic Burn.

Turn 30: Slicing Wind. I guard to prevent bleed.

Turn 31: Headbutt. I cast Auto-Suggestion. He's almost out of MP for this phase, by the way.

Turn 32: Refresh. I cast Consumption.

Turn 33: Giant Fang. Unguardable. He's going to do this, refresh, and then another attack, probably melee. At first, I was going to cast Firewall. But we have 5 turns left on Auto-Suggestion. If we cast Firewall now, we will not be able to block Poison Sting if we want to finish casting the Incinerate sequence. Therefore I choose to cast Death Spiral instead.

Turn 34: Refresh. I cast Ignition.

Turn 35: Normal attack. I cast Magic Burn.

Turn 36: Refresh. I cast Incinerate.

Turn 37: Normal attack. We're on the last tick of Auto-Suggestion, so Firewall, for the same reasons as stated before: He's going to melee, refresh, and melee.

Turn 38: Refresh. We do the same.

Turn 39: Normal attack. I guard to trade 10 stamina for some HP. Auto-Suggestion on 1 turn cooldown.

Turn 40: Normal attack. I cast Auto-Suggestion.

Turn 41: Normal attack. I cast Consumption.

Turn 42: Normal attack. I refresh.

Turn 43: Refresh. I cast Death Spiral.

Turn 44: Normal attack. I cast Ignition.

Turn 45: Refresh. I cast Magic Burn.

Turn 46: Normal attack. I cast Incinerate.

Chap 34: Disaster Incarnate Solo Part II

[Phase 3]
Turn 47: Dragon's Breath. Low impact. Causes fire. I guard to prevent fire. He got his mana back.

Turn 48: Refresh. I do the same to match. Auto-Suggestion still has 1 turn of cd to go. Our mana is good.

Turn 49: Great Roar. Unblockable, causes disconcert (prolongs cd) for 3 turns. I hold off Auto-Suggestion. The plan is to play defensive until the debuff wears off. Also waste his MP.

Turn 50: Refresh. A really defensive refresh from him. We do the same, just to ride out the debuff.

Turn 51: Bleed Attack. I guard to prevent bleed. Bleed halves our regen. Therefore I will not favor using Incinerate in this phase because the setup is too long. We'll be doing Burn + Harm or Firewall with Fireballs.

Turn 52: Bleed Attack again. I guard again. We need to drop Consumption on him ASAP to stabilize the fight.

Turn 53: Refresh. We do the same.

Turn 54: Dragon's Breath. I guard to prevent bleed.

Turn 55: Refresh. I decide to cast Auto-Suggestion. It's a bit early (and wasteful) because we could run down his MP entirely before we start the offensive, but I'd probably end up falling asleep.

Turn 56: Bleed Attack again. I guard.

Turn 57: Bleed Attack. We don't have the 10 stam to guard, so I cast Consumption. Our HP is completely full so the bleed ticks aren't a big deal.

Turn 58: Refresh. He overextended himself with all the bleed attacks. We punished him last turn by halving his stamina regen. Now he's refreshing himself, so he cannot prevent our Death Spiral with a Great Roar. So Death Spiral. I'm probably going for another Incinerate.

Turn 59: Bleed Attack. I refresh. You see, bleed doesn't do much if our HP is full. It does prevent us from healing so it's only dangerous when we're low, and strangely enough, he's not doing anything to make us low whatsoever.

Turn 60: Refresh. I cast Magic Burn. Instead of going for Incinerate next turn at only 80% amp, since he has 5 turns left on Consumption, I'm going to let the debuff be and go for Harm instead.

Turn 61: Bleed Attack. I cast Harm.

Turn 62: Refresh. We do the same. Auto-Suggestion is on 2-turn cooldown.

Turn 63: Bleed Attack. I guard. Death Spiral still has 4 turns to go, so I decide to wait for that before casting Auto-Suggestion. If we don't want to wait for it, the correct action is to refresh because then we don't want to lose 10 stam.

Turn 64: Refresh. We do the same.

Turn 65: Great Roar. Great, now he wants to drag the fight out even more. We'll just wait 3 more turns then. I guard.

Turn 66: Refresh. We do the same.

Turn 67: Dragon's Breath. I guard.

Turn 68: Refresh. I cast Auto-Suggestion. It's time to send him into phase 4.

Turn 69: Bleed Attack. I cast Consumption.

Turn 70: Bleed Attack. I cast Death Spiral.

Turn 71: Refresh. I cast Ignition.

Turn 72: Bleed Attack. I cast Magic Burn.

Turn 73: Refresh. I cast Incinerate.

Chap 35: Disaster Incarnate Solo Part III

[Phase 4]
Turn 74: Storm of Leaves. I cast Barrier. The screenshot is showing guard. That was my initial choice, but we only have 4 stamina.

Turn 75: Fire Breath. I refresh because there's nothing else we can do. We have -70 fire res from the armor +14 from pyrolatry. This is going to sting a bit.

Turn 76: Strong Attack. I guard. We're going to lose all 20 stamina from guarding this. Barrier is still on cooldown.

Turn 77: Refresh. We do the same. Notice that in the 4th phase, he burns MP extremely fast.

Turn 88: Fire Breath. I guard. We'll have every single skill off cooldown next turn. I'm just waiting for an opening to cast Auto-Suggestion then Consumption to shut him down.

Turn 89: Strong Attack. I cast Auto-Suggestion. Barrier would consume 3MP without Auto-Suggestion. Besides, we don't have bleed or def down so we can afford to take the hit.

Turn 90: Refresh. Now we have the initiative. I cast Consumption. I believe he's going to cast Leafstorm the next turn or the turn after, so we're probably going for Harm this time, otherwise Auto-Suggestion is going to run out.

Turn 91: Fire Breath. I guard.

Turn 92: Strong Attack. I use Magic Barrier.

Turn 93: Refresh. I cast Magic Burn. The plan is to guard next turn (Leaf Storm) with increased regen, then tank whatever comes after to cast Harm under the last tick of Auto-Suggestion.

Turn 94: Fire Breath. I guard. I guess he just doesn't have the stamina for Storm of Leaves. We're sticking to the plan.

Turn 95: Refresh. And I forgot Harm needs 10 stam. We have 9 from guarding last turn, so I throw a boosted Fireball instead. The damage is surprisingly close, actually.

Turn 96: Fire Breath. I guard.

Turn 97: Strong Attack. I refresh. Auto-Suggestion will be up next turn, and he's down to quarter MP. It's time to turn up the offensive. We won't be needing the HP pool. Besides, he'll be down to 1/8MP after this attack.

Turn 98: Refresh. I cast Auto-Suggestion

Turn 99: Strong Attack. That's going to be the last of his MP. I cast Consumption. He'll be dead in two full sequences of Incinerate. I think, there's no longer any need for more commentary beyond this.

Turn 100: Refresh. I cast Death Spiral.

Turn 101: Normal Attack. I cast Ignition.

Turn 102: Refresh. I cast Magic Burn.

Turn 103: Normal Attack. I cast Incinerate.

Turn 104: Normal Attack. I cast Firewall on the last tick of Auto-Suggestion.

Turn 105: Refresh. We do the same.

Turn 106: Normal Attack. I just pass the turn. One turn left for Auto-Suggestion.

Turn 107: Normal Attack. I cast Auto-Suggestion.

Turn 108: Refresh. I cast Magic Burn.

Turn 109: Normal Attack. I cast Harm.

And thus concludes the Sorcerer's journey. It was a great run.

The End

Exactly 99 hours on the clock.

---


「お牛さぁぁぁん！」
「はぁっ？またお前か。今回はなんだよ」
「芋、持って来たよ」
「芋？そんな物どこから手に入ったのか」
「数日前出来たばかりだよ！ほら、見て、こんなにいっぱい！私、今この子たちを皆に分けて行くんだ。でもその前に、お牛さんに謝罪しなきゃ。この前に私急にお牛さんを襲ったのはごめんなさい！どうか、お許してくださぁいぃぃぃ！」
「またその事を話しているのか。もういいよ小娘。今昼寝をするから、放っておいてくれ」
「ありがとう、牛さん！はい、この芋、どうぞ。牛さんのは特別だ。」
「はい？あ、どうも。俺の分も持ってきたのか。っていうかこりゃ、特別なのか」
「うん、そうだよ。この前に、牛さんは自分が牛と言ったよね。だから、やっぱり牛は生の方が好きと思ってた。お牛さんのは生芋だ！全然焼けなかった。だから特別！」
「あ、ぁぁ…」
「じゃぁ私、皆に分けて行くね。お牛さんごゆっくり！他の芋ちゃんが出来たら、私また持って来るね。お邪魔しました。バイバイ！」

「…」
「あいつ、やっぱりちょっと頭がおかしいよな…」
「…」
「でも、あのちび助見たいな人間……別に悪くはないよな…」
「クソ……これ、うめぇぇぇぇ」
「…」
「…」
「俺も、そろそろ帰るか。草原に…（笑）」

"Mr. Cooooww!"
"Haah? You again? What is it now?"
"I brought potatoes!"
"Potatoes? Where'd you get that stuff?"
"They just finished growing days ago! Look, there's so many of them! I'm going to be giving these to everybody, but before that, I need to apologize to you first. I'm sorry for attacking you all of a sudden Mr. Cow! Please forgive meeee!"
"You're still talking about that? Just let bygones by bygones, lass. I'm about to have my nap, so let me be."
"Thank you, Mr. Cow! Here, this. This one's for you. Yours is special."
"Huh? Uh, thanks. You brought mine too? And you said this one's special?"
"That's right! Before this, you said you're a cow, right? So I thought, cows must like 'em raw, right? So yours is a raw potato! Not one bit baked. Just for you!"
"I... I see..."
"I'm off to give out the rest of them. You take it easy, Mr. Cow. When the other potatoes are finished growing, I'll drop by again. Sorry for disturbing you. Bye bye!"

[picture]

"..."
"That lass... She's got something wrong with her head, I swear..."
"..."
"But human folk like her... maybe they're not so bad after all..."
"(swears under emotion)... this potato's good... "
"..."
"..."
"Maybe... it's time for me to go home, back on the surface (smiles)"


---


「ね、姉ちゃん、芋を育つのは大変だよね」
「うん、そうだよ。ご丁寧に、ゆっくりと。毎日あの子を守って、水をあげて、全ての美しさを引き出すように。でもほら、ついさっき卒業したイモの花盛り、最高じゃない」
「うん。焼き芋も美味しかった。姉ちゃん、泣いたけど」
「ああ、もうそんな事を言わないと言ったのに！」

"Hey chief, growing potatoes is hard work, right?"
"You got that right. Slowly, tenderly, giving them water and shelter every day, so that all of their beauty might be drawn out from within. Those potatoes that we harvested not long ago, weren't their flowers simply spectacular?"
"Mm. And the baked potatoes. They were so good. But you were crying."
"Aah, I thought I said not to bring that up anymore!"

---

Thanks for reading! お付き合ってくれてありがとうございます！

[arrogantandaflame]

vwey interesting to play with. thank you

[Andronius]

What a superb Guide! now I'm tempted to get the game