Episode 8: The Overlord’s Heir

Your treasures for this Episode can be found in 
the throne room, in Laharl’s bedroom, and behind 
the counter at the Rosen Queen Trading Company. Meanwhile, the Cheat Shop has adjusted its percentages yet again; you can now set a minimum multiplier of 20%, and a maximum of 140%. 
A new proposal is now available at the Dark Assembly, which, 
if successful, will allow you to explore Prinny Land .

Dark Impact

After the angelic smackdown of the last Episode, Dark Impact almost feels sedate. It has a sort of built-in time limit, as you have only so many turns before the Encroach Effect covers the entirety of the floor in Geo Panels that provide Evade, but you should be able to wrap this up well before it becomes a serious problem. If you can’t, it’s easy to reach the Null Symbol and destroy it to cancel out the Effect.

The Baciels are a new arrival unless you’ve run into them in the Item World before now. They’re much like Gunners, except they tend to hit harder on account of having more offensively oriented Evilities. Their buddies are Martial Artists, and as such, are most dangerous when Counterattacking.

Map Events

• Station Flonne next to Sicily.
• Station Etna next to Laharl.
• Station Laharl next to Flonne.

Dark Barren Road

This introduces Sea Angels to the mix of enemy units, and their role here is much as it will be in the future: to provide a 10% stat boost to all of their allies via the Lovely Song Evility. In the meantime, they’ll buff themselves and anyone nearby with spells like Shield and do very little of consequence.

Their Evility is just one of the many ways in which this stage wants you dead. There are some No Entry Panels that prevent you from throwing a couple of characters onto the small islands in the center of the room with two more Baciels, and the side passages are lined with Silence Panels and have a Baciel with Scatter Shot at the end. They’re both standing on an ATK +50% Panel and are just waiting to cut you in half.

The easiest way to get around this is with a tower throw. Carefully arrange your tower so that your toughest characters—ideally Armor Knights, pre-buffed with Shield and high-DEF equipment—are the guys who end up standing in front of those buffed Baciels. With nine or 10 characters in your tower, you should be able to get at least one character to the other side of the room with an available action. Use that to destroy the cluster of Geo Symbols sitting in that small dip in the floor.

The only drawback to this plan is that you’ll cause a long Geo 
Chain that also destroys the two treasure chests sitting at either 
end of the bridge. It’s your call whether the chests—which 
contain a couple of random legendary-quality items—are worth losing a couple of characters while you try to work around the Geo Effects.

However you choose to do it, the hard part of this stage is 
over once you manage to make it to the far side of the map. 
Use long-range attacks, such as Overlord’s Wrath, to dispatch 
the two Baciel on the center platform.

As with past maps, the treasure chests are gone if you revisit 
this stage.

Map Events

• Deploy Etna.
• Station Etna next to Flonne.
• Station Laharl next to Sicily.

Vile Black Crystal

You can’t stick around near your base panel due to the Damage +20% Geo Effect, so you’ve got to split up your forces and move up onto the crystal formation. It helps to equip your active party members with Jump-enhancing accessories like Falcon Shoes; to bring a couple of Mothmen to serve as mounts for your slower characters; or to bring Lanzarote or a Sea Angel along for the ride to buff your party members with Move! and Jump Jump Jump!

You do need to move fast, however, as the three Succubi on the back platform are enjoying the benefits of the Enemy Level Up Effect. They start at level 30, but they go up three levels for every turn it takes you to reach and destroy the Geo Symbols on either side of the room.

When you do get to the Succubi, you have a choice. You can either tower-throw a character over to the Mighty Enemy Geo Symbol on their platform and throw it off the Panel, thus letting you fight the Succubi normally, or you can just lure the Succubi off the platform and kill them while they’re vulnerable.

Map Events

• Station Sicily next to Flonne.
• Have Laharl pick up Sicily.
• Make sure Etna’s on the field at 
the start of the third turn.

Fallen Destroyer

The Clios and Empusae that are stationed on the platforms in the chasm are dangerous if you’re standing on open ground, and a joke if you’re standing on the green Geo Panels. The extra elemental resistance from the Geo Effects lets you shrug off the Clios and Empusae’s spells. Those monsters are on Invincible Geo Panels, so if you want to make an animated .gif about futility, just stand there and exchange fire with them.

The real issue is dealing with the Fake King, who’s a level 99 Prinny, and his Baciel bodyguards. The good news is that even a level 99 Prinny still explodes when you throw him, and if you can get a character over to him on the first turn, you can use him as an improvised grenade to take out the Baciels at the same time.

To get across the gap, you’ll need a character with a Throw score of 5 or better, like Laharl or a Warrior, and you’ll probably want whoever’s making the trip to have a full action left over when he or she lands. This allows you to run up to the Fake King, pick him up, and use him to blow up the Baciels without having to stand in his explosion radius. He does damage in a straight line radiating away from the square where he lands.

With that done, you can swap out the Invincible Geo Symbol for Enemy Weaken, then use your archers, casters, and gunmen to plink away at the Clios and Empusae.

On subsequent visits to Fallen Destroyer, everything’s the same except that the Fake King is missing. This actually makes the map much harder, since you can’t use him to instantly dispatch the Baciels.

Map Events

• Attack an enemy with Etna.
• Place Laharl next to Sicily.
• Have Flonne on the field at the start of your sixth turn.

Shadow of Misfortune

At the start of the first enemy turn, the two green Geo Symbols on the other side of the map will uproot themselves and walk onto the aqua Geo Panels. This causes Super Encroach and Enemy Boost +50% Effects, which will rapidly spread to most of the floor and turn this stage into your own personal apocalypse.

Since we would prefer for that not to happen, have a character waiting there for them by means of a tower throw, whether it’s the standard version or the Special Skill. You can take one or both of the mobile Geo Symbols out preemptively, which makes this stage a straightforward brawl with a bunch of high-DEF Axe-wielding Heavy Knights, or wait for them to move.

Destroying one Symbol while it’s on the aqua Geo Panels takes them both out via the ensuing Geo Chain, but also covers the center platform in the ATK +100% Effect from the two green Symbols. That, in turn, changes this stage into a game of King of the Hill, except with more stabbing and larger numbers. The Heavy Knights are slow enough that you should be able to get at least a couple of your front-line fighters onto the center platform before they get there, and then knock them down as fast as they can run up to you.

Map Events

• Station Laharl next to Flonne.
• Station Etna next to Sicily.
• Have Sicily deployed at the start of the fifth turn.

Utopian Abyss

You have five turns to defeat Barbara, three Gambiels, and four Clios. The complicating factor is the presence of a new Geo Effect, Ally Lonely, which prevents more than one of your units from standing on the red Geo Panels at once. You can cross them without difficulty, but if you’ve got a character that ended its turn standing on an Ally Lonely panel, no one else can enter. Unless you’ve spent the last forty hours grinding the Item World and you’ve got a level 600 wrecking ball to throw at Barbara, you have to get rid of Ally Lonely before you stand a chance.

Deploy a couple of characters with a high Throw stat, like Laharl, Warriors, or Valkyries, then have them throw spellcasters or archers right off the base panel toward the two closest red Geo Symbols. Dispose of those on your first turn, then use your other six character spots to take out the Gambiels.

Lanzarote comes in handy here, assuming you’ve put a few more levels on her and she’s using an upgraded Bow. You can use her to destroy the No Lifting Symbol, then have her buff herself with Move! on your second turn while she’s moving toward the Ally Lonely Symbol. On her third, she should be able to reach and destroy the Symbol and thus turn the fight in your favor.

Once that’s gone, you’ve got two turns to rush in and take out everything on the platform. The Clios are, as usual, speed bumps; they’ll actually attack if cornered but they’re very fragile. Barbara has been working out and can dish out a lot of damage with moves like Order: Chaos Dance, but if you can catch her in a long Combo Attack, she’ll drop. It helps if you send a character into the Ally Lonely panels on the second turn to lure Barbara down the stairs and toward the bulk of your forces so that you can set up that combo.

This sounds simple, but it’s a test of how much damage you can put out on demand and how far ahead you can plan. As a general rule, if you can’t kill at least two of the three Gambiels on your first turn, you don’t have the firepower to win this fight. You’ll need to get a couple of upgrades first, probably through spending time in the Item World.

If you lose this fight, whether because Barbara wiped the floor with you or because you ran out of time, you’ll receive one of the alternate endings; there are two slightly different versions of that ending based on whether you lost to Barbara or couldn’t beat her in five turns. If you win, you’ll get the Uniter, Not a Divider Trophy.

Map Events

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

Second Visit

If you revisit Utopian Abyss later on, Barbara’s gone, but the Gambiels remain. There are eight level 25 Clios in Barbara’s place, put there as the retinue of a single level 30 Thalia.

The Ally Lonely Effect has been replaced by Fusion, which covers all the red Panels on the central platform. On the first enemy turn, one of the level 25 Clios will disappear and another will gain 25 levels; on the second, another despawns and the same Clio will go up to level 75. This will continue until you interfere with the process or until the last Sea Angel is level 230, who will proceed to toss icebergs at you until you die.

Thankfully, Sea Angels have such low DEF that you can probably still take this level 230 monster on head to head and win. If you apply EXP and Mana multipliers via the Cheat Shop, it’s a slow but potentially rewarding process to come into this stage and let the Fusion Geo Effect create a single super-Sea Angel for you to kill.