Neon Valhalla ACES 0 AP (Level 24) - Epic Battle Fantasy 5 v2.0.4 (Beta)

Описание: Oh boy, THIS boss fight. Neon Valhalla is the infamous newbie brick wall that heals just enough that the natural inclination to play safe and slowly chip away at foes will fail. This is made worse by running both ACES and 0 AP challenge runs at the same time. This boss goes from being a fairly straightforward lesson is how to damage stack and quick kill to a grueling battle to take out its turrets and bombs, to not die which is easier said than done, and to hurt it in large enough chunks and often enough that it doesn't heal back all the damage you do to it. One of the biggest turning points was realizing this setup was geared to let Anna hit so hard against Valhlla's Earth weakness that she can also one--shot the turrets and bombs with their Earth weaknesses. This builds SP AND wastes fewer turns than applying Wet and Chill. With turns freed up to actually run offense it goes from nigh impossible to fighting against the usual ACES and 0 AP restrictions, most of which I had figured out by then.

What is ACES? ACES is short for All Challenges Epic Steroidless. Challenges are extra difficulty options new to EBF5v2 which allow you to make the game harder, MUCH harder. Steroidless already makes the game harder overall by not using the permanent stat up items to boost your characters' stats and therefore slowly making them less durable, less powerful, less likely to hit things, and less likely to dodge relative to using all steroids. The various challenges makes foes more durable, more powerful, more evasive, they resist status effects more than usual, and several other things. Since they go first it's very common to have characters die before you even get a chance to move. It is incredibly unfair so assume anything under the ACES umbrella has a lot of RNG to fight no matter how consistent the strat is. One of the more interesting challenges is Combo Cap which puts a hard ceiling on how far you can damage stack against a foe. That this cap is here already makes it difficult to stack into the kinds of quick kills you'd normally do against Valhalla but then there's the 0 AP run part.

See, normally speaking when you play EBF5 you spend AP to learn new skills or upgrade existing ones but the 0 AP run instead spends absolutely none of the AP that builds up over time. The resulting run features five nearly useless players that can't hurt anything with their under powered skills. This wouldn't be viable were items and bonus skills not available. You don't get much for elemental coverage but throwable items have good damage output in the really early game and once you gain equipment that boost Thrown Item power they outclass your regular skills for a good few hours even in a normal run. The v2 buffs to them especially help. The other thing that makes 0 AP possible are weapons such as Earth's Whisper (featured in this video) having a bonus skill to unleash Cataclysm and its full 210 power. If you upgrade it you get end-game power even though you're maybe halfway through the game when you first get the harp. This ended up being the best source of damage available to me which combos well with Pet Rock, Schoolgirl Uniform's +80 Attack on Defend, Good Luck, Brave, and Cursing Neon Valhalla to lower her Defence. Neon Valhalla still takes AT LEAST 8 hits with full damage stacking and given her regenerating HP she's more likely to require 9 or more.

There are several characters that just can't afford to die and between first turn character wipes and the RNG Machine Guns it takes a lot of patience and luck to pull this off. Still, this run manages to keep trucking along despite running into massive walls like this and Neon Valhalla still serves as a good prep for the shenanigans either or both runs will be throwing at the player. Here's hoping this is the worst of it until the Evil Players show their faces.
Edit: Apparently I lowered the volume on my recording software and forgot to adjust it, so this video is quieter than the other ones. Whoops.