Episode 5: The Celestial Suspicion

Reaching this Episode 
unlocks the Archer for creation
 in the Dark Assembly if you haven’t done it already, as well 
as the Weapon Maintenance and Battle Royale training methods in the Demon’s Dojo.

Your treasure chests for this Episode can be found in the throne room, at the base of the stairs leading down into the library from the throne room’s exit, and in the cluttered storage corridor below the jukebox where the Prinnies sometimes hang out. The maximum multiplier at the Cheat Shop is now 125%, and the minimum is 50%.

Lanzarote has joined your army, and comes equipped with a Wind Hunter Bow and a Magical Vest. She’s an odd character, but she’s potentially a great member of your support crew. Lanzarote knows a number of buff spells such as Jump Jump Jump, Move, and Braveheart; will go on to learn other buffs such as Only Crits and Counter Classes; and her Vocal Mind Control Evility provides a passive 4% stat buff to your team and a 4% debuff to the enemy. Lanzarote, as you might expect, begins at a two-heart Likability level with Sicily.

Sinful Road

This stage isn’t as much about offense as it is about defense, or more specifically, about being able to take a beating. Any character with a high RES and high Fire or Ice resistance is a good pick for this map, which includes Flonne, Lanzarote, Mothmen, Archers, and/or Armor Knights. It’s also worth leveling up a couple of Magical Vests in the Item World to enhance the amount of RES they provide to a wearer. Since she can shrug off elemental damage with her Evility, you can also get a lot of use out of Sicily.

Here’s the problem: the four Ghosts standing on the yellow tiles are functionally invulnerable thanks to the Reverse Damage and Silence Geo Effects, and they’ll be happily sniping at you with Fire spells all the way across the map. You could probably power through it with a couple of healers, or kill the Ghosts with a Heal spell or two, if not for the Silence effect. You may be able to kill one or two of them if you throw high-end healing items like Snake Kidneys at them, but that’s a little wasteful. Healing items that are powerful enough to make a dent in the Ghosts are hard to come by at this stage of the game.

You’re safe from most of the Ghosts’ spells if you keep the dais with your base panel between them and you. This lets you set up a tower throw to bring six or seven of your characters across the blue Geo Panels. You’ll then end up having to eat a turn’s worth of damage from both the Ghosts and the Chernobogs. Make sure the characters who are left in place on the blue Geo Panels are either expendable or have the RES and fire resistance to survive the Ghosts’ fusillade of spells, and that the characters who have landed by the Chernobogs have a high tolerance for Ice attacks.

Once you destroy the blue Geo Symbol, which converts the yellow tiles to blue and destroys the Reverse Damage effect, you can send a couple of melee units in to get payback on the Ghosts.

Map Events

• Station Laharl next to Sicily.
• Station Etna next to Flonne.
• Etna attacks an enemy unit.

Ghostly Daydream

This stage is an ambush of sorts. All the Archers on this map are initially standing on red Geo Panels that provide Recovery +20%, DEF +50%, and Attack Times +1 Effects. Setting foot on the main island will thus get you filled with arrows. Simply leaving the base panel, in fact, will get you shot to bits by the two Thieves with guns that are waiting for you to make a move.

There’s a green Geo Symbol that confers an Enemy Weaken –50% Geo Effect near your starting point. Pick it up, then throw the unit holding it onto the Warp Panel on top of the stone dais. At the start of your next turn, that character will reappear on the other side of the map, next to the Geo Symbols that are augmenting the Archers. At this point, you can either destroy the Symbols and reduce the Archers to their standard level or take a couple of extra turns and rearrange the Geo Symbols to weaken the Archers. Either way, once you’ve taken the Geo Effects out of the picture, the Archers aren’t that big of a deal.

Map Events

• Have Flonne on the stage at the start of turn 2.
• Position Laharl next to Sicily.
• Position Etna next to Flonne.

Scale of Good & Evil

This is another map with a vicious combination of Evilities working against you. Everything here can Poison you somehow, which results in your characters taking extra damage from Poison ailments that last for nine turns or longer. It comes in handy if you’ve got a big stash of Fairy Dust, which you can buy from the item clerk at the Rosen Queen Trading Company, or if you’ve apprenticed several members of your crew to Clerics, Priests, or Flonne so they can learn the Espoir spell.

Take care of the Corpses near your base panel, then put together a crew to throw across the gap to the Red Blobs’ island. The green Geo Panels have a series of effects that prevents both Heal and Espoir spells from being cast outside of melee range and which forces any character on the island to immediately repeat a successful attack. As a result, it almost makes more sense to send as few characters as possible to the Blobs’ island to minimize the damage taken from all of them inevitably getting Poisoned.

With the Blobs out of the way, cast Braveheart or Magic Boost on your heavy hitters and send them through the Warp to the Watchers’ island. If you hit the closest Watcher hard enough or often enough, you can drop all four at once thanks to the Disperse Damage Effect.

Map Events

• Flonne takes an action.
• Station Sicily next to Etna.
• Have Laharl on the field at the start of your second turn.

The Floating Lands

If there’s a theme to this Episode, it’s enemies with complimentary Evilities that make them more dangerous than they initially appear to be. The Magic Knights are a good example, as Element Force lets their spells hit harder than you’d think they would. This isn’t a great stage for any of your units that have low RES or a glaring elemental weakness, such as Laharl or Dragons.

The Magic Knights will take some work to defeat, but they’re there to buy time for the main event. The Minotaur and Chernobog are both formidable in their own right, and every turn you spend on the Knights is a turn where the monsters are allowed to generate their own backup via the Clone Panels on their island. This can be both beneficial, in that you have a nearly infinite number of monsters to farm for EXP, Mana, and HL, and a drawback, in that they can be formidable opponents. If you’re having trouble with them, try ignoring the Knights long enough to tower-throw an attack team over to the Warp Panels, then deal with the Minotaur and Chernobog first before there are too many of them to handle.

Map Events

• Station Laharl next to Etna.
• Laharl and Flonne use a Team-Up Attack together.
• Station Etna next to Flonne.

Boundary of Darkness

This stage is a trap of sorts. The Specters are much lower-level than the enemy units in the rest of this Episode have been, but there are a lot of them. They can still bring down your characters if enough of them have the chance to cast Mega Star on the same target at once.

In the end, however, they’re a distraction, just like the Magic Knights in the previous stage. The Specters are there to run interference while the Chernobogs and Nemophilae in the back of the level buff each other and slowly enjoy the benefits of the four (!) Enemy Level Up +10% Geo Symbols. By your third turn, they’ll be around level 30; by your sixth, if you let them live that long, you’ll be dealing with level 81 Nemophilae. At that point, they know high-end Skills like Scatter Thorn Shot and can wipe out your characters en masse. The key to success on this stage, then, is in how fast you can deal with the Specters. Note that destroying the red Geo Symbols will have no effect on anything else, since they’re red Symbols on red Panels and thus don’t trigger a Geo Change.

On a second visit to this stage, the Geo Effects are gone, leaving this as a fight against a large number of unaugmented, low-level casters. They’ll initially backpedal into the red zone so the Nemophilae can buff everyone they can reach, then come back toward you to murder you with a flurry of Mega Star and Ice spells.

Map Events

• Station Flonne next to Laharl.
• Station Flonne next to Sicily.
• Have Sicily attack an enemy.

Celestial Gate

Neutral

If you’re bored or vastly outgunned, you could theoretically clear this stage by having someone stand in the back and letting Xenolith take care of business. He’s a neutral unit with backup from his Angel buddy, and between his ridiculous attack power and her Heal spells, he can clear this map by himself. Xenolith’s Evility is censored on account of its name being a mild spoiler, but what it amounts to is that anything that attacks him directly takes up to 20% of its maximum HP in damage.

Should you decide to take a hand in this, be aware that the Watchers and Mandrakes have their old one-two Evility punch again; Bad Trip ensures that any one of your units that gets hit by a Mandrake could theoretically get all five status ailments simultaneously. The two differently-colored Killer Armors in the back also have the Flames of Revenge Evility, so by the time they make it to your troops, they’ll have enough ATK to sink a destroyer.

You can help to compensate for this by using the Geo Effects on the stairs to your advantage. If you set up a defensive line of melee characters on the red Geo Panels, you’ll receive a DEF +50% bonus that makes it that much harder for the enemy to directly damage you. It also helps that the Angel will throw AoE Heal spells on your troops on her turn, whether they need healing or not.

A leveled-up spellcaster standing on the hill near the base panel can also do some serious damage as the enemies move up toward you, throwing down Fire and Wind spells on the slower enemies to soften them up. You’ll have to be careful that the Watchers don’t kill that character with Mothsplosion.

When you clear this map, you receive the Gate Crasher Trophy.

On a second visit to the Celestial Gate, Xenolith and his Angel are gone, as are all the Geo Symbols. The monsters remain the same.

Map Events

• Station Flonne next to Sicily.
• Walk Etna up to Xenolith.
• Walk Laharl up to Xenolith.