Final Fantasy XIII

Class: A
HP: 2,625,000

This is an incredibly difficult fight even with a well leveled party and, depending on how low leveled your party is, you may need to revert to the “Death spam” strategy employing Vanille in order to get past this Mission. This strategy focuses on getting lucky with one of Vanille’s casts of Death to instantly destroy the monster. Both this strategy, and the normal strategy, are outlined below.

How do you decide which strategy to utilize? You can attempt the normal strategy before switching over to the Death strategy and if you manage to survive and be able to recover from Neochu’s “Screech” attack, you should be fine to attempt the standard strategy.

Standard Fight Strategy
Neochu doesn’t have any accompanying Picochus with it which makes this fight a bit easier when compared to Mission 55 - Can’t We All Just Get Along?. Consider equipping your party members with as many defensive accessories as they can carry. This includes:

• Gaian Ring which reduces the damage from its tentacles
• Royal Armlet which reduces overall damage by a percentage

Make sure to have a Saboteur inflict Imperil on it and keep this debuff active on it throughout the fight as it greatly increases the amount of damage done by your party member’s attacks. You can also plan ahead for Neochu’s “Screech” attack by having your party members paradigm shift into their Sentinel roles.

Death Strategy
Complete the following steps:

1. Setup two Attrition paradigms which will have Vanille as a Saboteur (and your party leader), Fang as a Sentinel and Hope as a Medic. These are the two primary paradigms you will be switching back and forth between while Vanille is casting Death.
2. Equip Vanille with the Belladonna Wand which will increase the odds of Death successfully killing Neochu.
3. Equip all three characters with defensive-focused accessories that either prevent damage or increase your party member’s HP. Survival is the primary focus for both Fang and Hope while Vanille is casting.
4. Press the Button and use a Fortisol and an Aegisol at the start of the fight. All three of your party members will then begin the battle with Bravery, Faith, Haste, Protect, Shell, Veil and Vigilance cast which will help them to survive the onslaught of damage. The Fortisol and Aegisol will be returned to your inventory if you restart the fight so you won’t have to worry about blowing through your entire stockpile.

This strategy is a bit cheesy and just relies on Vanille getting lucky by having her cast Death spell which has a very small chance of instantly killing Neochu This may require you to attempt many repeats of the fight and there are going to be many instances where you will get really unlucky and a party member will die early, at which point you’ll have to restart the battle and try again.

The idea is that Fang will try to absorb as much of Neochu’s damage as she can while Hope is just constantly healing as a Medic and trying to keep her and the rest of the party alive. Obviously, if Fang is struggling and taking too much damage or if Hope is unable to keep her alive through the damage being dealt, your party is probably too low-leveled to attempt this strategy and you may need to come back after leveling your characters further through their Crystariums.

Vanille can get even more casts of Death off each attempt if you utilize the ATB Refresh strategy. How this works in battle is you would swap from one Attrition paradigm to the other just as a Death cast lands on Neochu and swap paradigms after every two casts (Death, Death, Paradigm Switch, repeat). After you switch paradigms, Vanille’s ATB bar should be completely full allowing her another quick cast, and allowing you to get more casts in for each battle, increasing your chances of success.

These paradigm swaps will also fill the ATB bar for Fang and Hope which will allow for more healing and defensive abilities on their part which will increase your likelihood of survival. You may need to time your paradigm shifts in a way where it doesn’t completely debilitate Hope while he’s trying to get a heal off or if Fang is close to dying.

Lastly, make sure to have Vanille start each fight by casting Imperil on Neochu and make sure that this status effect is active (you can see it on Neochu’s HP bar). Imperil will greatly reduce Neochu’s resistance to the instant death effect of Vanille’s Death spell.

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