ladyabaxa ◾ ◾ Phantasy Star 4 Raja Solo (part 5)

With the defeat of Sa Lews Raja had one last task to accomplish and that was defeating the final boss.

First, though, he was going to have to finish the long grind. I didn't have any illusions that Raja was going to have an easy time with the Profound Darkness. In fact I wasn't sure he could win even at level 99. More hit points would definitely be better as would all the Agility Raja could muster.

So after Sa Lews Raja returned to Motavia and continued junking machines in Vahal Fort thanks to the Thunder Claw with the inexhaustible battery. The Tornado Dagger saw use when the Browren486s used Barrier unless Raja was trying to take out a Life Deleter. In that case even with Barrier up the Thunder Claw did more damage thanks to the multiplier rather then trying to get through the Deleter's high physical defense. It also made it easy to blow up Vopalspheres. Usually I don't bother with the Spheres because their Cyanic Bomb is always fatal when triggered (if the resistance check fails). Hitting them with magic attacks doesn't trigger Cyanic Bomb and they never attack otherwise so they were an easy source of experience for this character.

The grind was interrupted when Raja was close to hitting the meseta cap. I knew Nares wouldn't fully heal him from critical health once he was level 99 so I went to Meese and spent 600,000 meseta on Sol-Dews. Raja has been an extremely cheap character to play. He can't equip much and most of his gear is found. He also doesn't need healing items since he is the best healer in the game. He had to make frequent trips to inns but those are cheap.

With a stash of Sol-Dews squirreled away Raja returned to grinding until there wasn't any more grinding to do, ever. Even at level 99 he couldn't get within sight of the Agility cap. He also earned back 500k+ of the meseta he had spent. Well when the game is over Raja will have quite the retirement nest egg.

It was time to challenge the Profound Darkness.

The final boss's first form is a grotesque mountain of mouths and fangs. It has three abilities and all three are breath weapons: Shadow Breath, Fire Breath, and Ray Breath. Two of those seriously hurt Raja, one does not.

Profound Darkness 1:

8240 hit points, 194 Strength, 76 Mental, 45 Agility, 61 Dexterity, 232 Attack, 0 defense, 0 magic defense, immune to factors 8, 9 , 10, 11, 12, and 14, weak to factors 6 and 13 (x3)

PD1's high Strength was the first problem. Two of the three breath weapons (Fire Breath and Ray Breath) use Strength as their modifier and are resisted by magic defense. Shadow Breath uses attack power for its modifier. Shadow Breath is factor 1, Ray Breath is factor 2, and Fire Breath is factor 3. Of these three breath weapons Shadow Breath has the highest base damage (112), followed by Ray Breath's (72), and Fire Breath's (32). As indicated by the screenshot above showing Raja taking 207 damage from one Shadow Breath it still held the title of 'Biggest Ouch'.

That doesn't mean Fire Breath was a slouch in the damage department. It might have the lowest base damage of the trio but drawing upon PD1's high Strength and Raja's factor 3 multiplier made it a force to be reckoned with. This combination had me worried as two of PD1's attacks would drop Raja almost halfway from full life even at level 99. This was the primary reason I decided to grind so much. He was going to have a tough time just getting through the first form.

I carefully considered whether or not to try to burn through PD1 as quickly as possible by using St. Fire. It has 8240 hit points total but it and the next form have a conditional behavior flag set to trigger when they reach 50% remaining hit points. This trigger then shifts the battle to the next form. Why 50%? Because that leaves a 4,000 hit point buffer and the check is run at the end of the round (or when the Profound Darkness's turn comes up, either way ends up being the same in solo play). Endgame parties in the vanilla version can easily crank out 2k+ damage per round so the buffer has to be larger then a five party team could possibly dish out in one round. Otherwise the script could potentially break down. With all that said the sooner Raja inflicted the needed 4120 damage the sooner he could move to the less-risky second form.

But (there's always a but, isn't there?) Raja would need those same St. Fires for the third form. Death by being breathed all over or death by various things I will discuss later? It was a conundrum. I ultimately decided to use several St. Fires against the first form while saving most for the last leg of the boss rush. Between that and using Sol-Dews when Nares couldn't fully heal him would have to get Raja to phase two without burning too many tech points.

As for offense I opted to stick with the Thunder Claw. It was high in Raja's inventory list so there was less scrolling to reach it. There was otherwise no particular reason as the Thunder Claw, Flame Sword, and Tornado Dagger have the same damage values for their various effects and all forms of the final boss have zero defense and zero magic defense.

With some care Raja made it to phase 2. This form has a physical attack so Raja's first action had to be casting Blessing to protect himself from it.

Profound Darkness 2:

9240 hit points, 149 Strength, 152 Mental, 45 Agility, 254 Dexterity, 352 Attack, 0 defense, 0 magic defense, immune to factors 8, 9 , 10, 11, 12, and 14, weak to factors 6 and 13 (x3), basic attacks deal factor 2 type damage

Abilities: Another Gate, Distortion, Light Shower, and a basic attack (with Another Gate weighted to appear less then PD2's other options)

Where form 1 concentrated its firepower on one character, the second is all about group attacks. With Blessing up the big threat comes from Another Gate and even that would never do more then 180 damage to Raja in one shot.

PD2's unique ability, Distortion, is a factor 4 attack with Strength as its modifier. It has a base damage of 128 and checks against magic resistance. It was no great threat to Raja. In fact there was nothing PD2 had that wasn't countered by simply casting Nares when Raja got to the 180 - 200 hit point range. He could get in two attacks or other actions between heals regularly and used that lull to refresh his tech points with Ataraxia. Then he could take his time working down PD's 4670 hit points with only the Thunder Claw.

If there is anything Raja excels at it is stubbornly refusing to die to anything that doesn't simply do massive damage.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PFlTXnXSbw

Then it was time for the main event. Raja could at last unleash the barrage of St. Fires he had saved for the Profound Darkness's third and final form.

Profound Darkness 3:

12999 hit points, 99 Strength, 199 Mental, 45 Agility, 251 Dexterity, 354 Attack, 0 defense, 0 magic defense, immune to factors 8, 9 , 10, 11, 12, and 14, weak to factors 6 and 13 (x3), attacks do factor 2 type damage

Abilities: Evil Eye, Cancelling, Megid, and a basic attack (with Megid weighted to appear more then PD3's other options)

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZyPLIOh4D0

PD3 also has a conditional behavior flag set that prompts it to always use Megid as its first action. Megid does a decent chunk of damage to Raja but it too cannot break through his formidable magic defense. Keeping Blessing up was a necessity to prevent PD3 from using that 352 attack power to flatten the frail old priest. Every Cancelling had to be met with a refresh of Blessing as soon as possible.

Raja might have been able to go without it were it not for the bane of all solo Humanoids in this fight: Evil Eye. Try as he might with his Mental of 104 and a Psy Shield to provide factor 11 resistance Raja was never able to prevent the effect from taking hold. Twice he had close calls where he was put to sleep and battered down to 44 hit points before waking up. Blessing saved the day!

The St. Fires took out the first half PD3's health pool but it took a long, tense barrage of Thunder Claw Tandles to eliminate the remainder. All three forms have the same Agility but there was always a possibility the Profound Darkness could win the initiative roll and act first. It happened on battles that ended with Raja's Evil Eye-induced demise but was fortunately not the case this time. I'm not surprised it didn't happen - it was a once-per-whole-boss-rush thing in those unsuccessful attempts.

With the destruction of the Profound Darkness Raja proved he didn't need those pesky kids and their insistence on never listening to his sage advice to save Algo by himself.

THE END

Part Four | Index