While most of my colleagues are wrapped in the clutches of Blizzards FPS in the form of Overwatch, I seem to have stumbled upon an equally endless and time sucking game in the form of Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius.
Abbreviated FFBE for ease of identification in the long running Final Fantasy series, this game features the same fantastic art of both old and new franchises – pixel art for towns and battle scenes plus highly detailed Esper animations whenever summons are called upon. The all too familiar sounds are there as well bringing long time FF players back to their roots even whilst gaming in a mobile platform. The game follows the adventures of Rain and Lasswell, knights of Grandshelt, and consequently Fina who awakens their latent powers to call upon visions.
It’s a little bit like Pokémon in the sense that there is a plethora of characters that can be called to aid the player during battles. These are gathered by breaking crystals that contain visions – reincarnated spirits from all previous FF titles and others like Brave Frontier. Each of them, once acquired, would require grinding levels and consequent awakenings… not a simple feat especially when there is a limiter in the form of “energy” (NRG) that replenishes one every five minutes. NRG is a set number which increases by one with every raise in rank.
Units can range, at present on the Global server, from 1-star to 5-star and this rarity is directly proportional to their max HP and skillset. Whichever unit you might “pull” is mainly influenced by luck which isn’t going all too well for me as I haven’t been able to pull another character that goes up to 5-star apart from the main characters (MC).
Its all well and good if all the options are made available immediately, like regular RPGs whose storylines are complete outright, but how the game is designed with all its updates and whatnot, requires a boatload of patience… or real world cash, which can be converted to in-game currency called Lapis, for one to continue even when the NRG has been depleted. And this is very important as progression through the game and grinding through character levels, requires a lot of NRG.
Within the game there is a place called the Colloseum where your party can challenge monsters in order to raise Colloseum Rank (D, C, B, A, and S); within each rank there are 5 stages with one boss each that can be challenged upon reaching 1000pts on a particular stage. Challenging the Colloseum requires a different timing as there are “orbs” which replenishes once every hour and is maxed out at three, this also refreshes with each player rank up so you can plan to complete the Colloseum while raising Rank.
At the Beginners (BGN) Colloseum – the final boss (Rank S, Stage 5) is Europa and is such a challenge because of the amount of damage it deals on characters and its superlative HP.
Europa is a Machina with 170000 HP that cannot be poisoned or petrified with weaknesses against Lightning, Water and Light
If you read up on how to defeat Europa online, there are plenty of guides stating the requirement of using at least another 5-star unit alongside Rain and Lasswell to be able to withstand its assault (Boss monsters like Europa and the White Dragon attacks three times each turn they get). And so without any of the “best” game units I think my Europa takedown is quite unique, unlikely to recreate, and is worth some documentation XP.
Here are the units I took to battle with Europa, along with their utility and key skill/equipment:
Krile / Max 4-Star / Support and Damage / Dualcast Cura and/or Thunder
Galuf / Max 4-Star / Status and Damage / Sleep Dagger and Thundara
Vivi / Max 4-Star / Damage Ace / Dualcast Thunder and Thundara
Rain / Lvl 66 5-Star / Status and Damage / Sleep Dagger, Power Break, and Water
Russell / Max 4-Star / Status and Tank / Coral Sword and Armor Break
I think this is around my eighth try against Europa and I gambled with how the status procs not having tested it out prior to the battle – it seems that in this game, equipment status change is additive to ANY physical move/skill and that is the key to how I decimated Europa. I do have a Lasswell at Max 5-star but I think triggering sleep is better when the attacker lands multiple hits. It is also important to take note that when an enemy is asleep, it only wakes up when it is attacked physically.
On my very first turn I had inflicted armor break, power break, and sleep immediately and was able to spam around 4-5 turns of Element Chained Thunder/Thundara/Water and when it woke up I was again able to put it to sleep within the next turn on the second attempt… the rest, as they say, is history. Witness our encounter below:
The reward for defeating Europa is a recipe for Remedy.
Other published methods include the use of paralysis, blind, and silence for status, protectga and barthundara for defense or just get 5-star units and grind them to max and Europa should be easy pickings.
Had you taken down Europa yet? Do let me know how you did yours in the comments ^^
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