Phantasy Star 4 Rika Solo vs. Lashiec

[ladyabaxa]

Seeing as YouTube isn't allowing me to upload videos I'll just do a text report this time and upload my recording of the battle when I can (EDIT: taken care of). For anyone unfamiliar with this format I'd suggest reading T-Hawk's Final Fantasy 1 & 5 solo character reports as well as [warning: ableist language in many reports] Sullla's myriad solo runs to get an idea of how this works (and to read some interesting game runs).

At level 45 Rika was not yet able to take on the Xe-A-Thouls maintaining the barrier to the Air Castle's lower floors. I'll go into far more detail when I get to them but suffice it to say the only real solution for her is to go level ... a lot. Anyway I wanted to challenge Lashiec before the leveling spree to maintain maximum challenge. So I used the debug menu to disable collision so I could just walk through the wall around the barrier and head downstairs. In hindsight I could have just teleported straight to Lashiec's room with PAR codes but... meh.

Here's Rika at level 45. She's already looted the Genocyclaw from upstairs and has the Silver Tusk from the musk cat cave. Love that Silver Tusk! This is important because the Tusk is a factor 6 weapon, a.k.a. holy, and thus gets an increased damage factor against many opponents in this game - including Lashiec who has a resistance value of 03 to factor 6. This means that the base damage from the Holy Tusk will be tripled. It's not as impressive as it sounds but it is vital. Rika is an amazing character for a group but her health and tech point growth leave much to be desired in solo play. She needs her buffs and heals to hold her own. She's a fragile character.

Okay, its game time. I savestate outside Lashiec's room as I always do and make a final gear check. (I know some people think savestating like this is cheating but I don't care. There are 2 full restore panels up stairs, Rika has absolutely no problems running from any encounter, and this saves quite a lot of reset time if I mess up.)

First thing's first - we have to spring Lashiec's trap by opening the chest with the fake Eclipse Torch. That triggers this brief battle. For some characters this is actually trouble and can result in a bad beginning in the battle immediately after. For Rika it was a cinch. Spector's are weak to factor 6 so it took a single attack to destroy this one. On my first attempt I wasn't sure how much damage Lashiec's heavy-hitting attack would do so I played the battle by ear. This didn't work out so well.

Umm, yeah, a quick reset and speeding through his dialogue later I played more defensively.

As soon as the fight started Rika immediately cast Deban on herself to increase her physical defense by 44. This is a vital step because it reduces the damage Lashiec deals with his Thunder Halbert to a range of 5 - 60 damage per hit and thus makes the fight manageable. The next round she cast Shift to increase her attack power by 44. Lashiec is weighted to use his Thunder Halbert more than his other abilities so he's wearing her down with it in the meantime. On round 3 Rika can kick into offense by unleashing her first Double Slash - the damage of which, 365, is pictured above. Another Gate is the big threat here so Rika heals with Gires when her health drops to 185 or less since spending an additional 3 TP on Nares is a waste unless her health is less than 100. I did this to conserve her limited tech points. If Another Gate was used I immediately went with a Nares/Trimate to bring Rika up to full or near full health. Unfortunately this meant that any uses of Another Gate back to back meant rounds doing nothing but healing and just staying alive.

I of course had to include a screenshot of Another Gate otherwise this report wouldn't feel complete. Its a deadly attack and it hits all party members but this and Thunder Halbert are all he's got damage-wise. I think this is an interesting juxtaposition between the Xe-A-Thoul trio. They have group-wide attacks with Gizan and Thunderblast but their real power (and eternal pain in my ass) is their ability to bring tremendous force to bear on one character at a time. Dealing with them, for a solo character, is thus the exact OPPOSITE of what fighting Lashiec requires. I like that about the Air Castle.

Anyway, as long as I kept Rika's health up and didn't run out of TP and Trimates there was no way Lashiec could win. That is, without his 3rd ability: Possession.

Possession is a single-target sleep spell. If it succeeds the target will be put to sleep until at least the beginning of the next turn (and any Agility buff is reset). Rika was very fortunate and the only time the sleep didn't break immediately was at the end of the fight and she only suffered 2 rounds of Thunder Halbert. If that had been 2 rounds of Another Gate it would have been over right there.

(Now that I think about it, though, Possession would be an appropriate spell for Seth to learn and use.)

Lashiec has one last ability he uses once when his health gets low. He uses Reinforce to increase all his stats. I was worried about this because if he's suddenly faster than Rika and can fire off a boosted Another Gate before she can use the Psycho-Wand he could potentially kill her. That didn't happen. Even with the stat boost Rika still acted first and his Another Gate didn't get the damage boost. Phew.

16 Double Slashes and 2 Disrupts later Lashiec perished. Rika earned 29999 experience points which wasn't enough to hit level 46. Oh well I still have to go back and level for the Xe-A-Thouls anyway so I had no plans to save afterwards.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wBH2dq_xTk