Trails in the Sky The 3rd: Low Level Game, 100% completion, Nightmare Mode

Chapter 3 finally shows it's face and I'm sweating bullets: Our whole team needs to split up into two parties to get past this particular place, which has a boss at the end of both sides.

Since I cannot purchase quartz/slots without hurting my endgame (or even making it straight up impossible) I must abuse a really funny thing about the inventory: All items/quartz are available to both sides until someone equip said thing.

the teams are:

Golden team: Kevin/Julia/Mueller/Josette
Silver team: Ries/Joshua/Kloe/Tita

Battle wise, both sides have a somewhat easy forced battle which I decided to end up fast since the sepith there wasn't worth the pain of waiting sepith up turns.

I decided to go Golden Road first if only because even without extreme optimization, Grail Sphere can carry any team at this point in the game (and maybe everywhere if you stack enough speed on Kevin).

Ries? and her mirrors can potentially become a pain in the balls if you don't check which thing reflect both mirrors, so the real solution is to pop your s-crafts to remove the magic reflecting ones so you can focus on both destroying the remaining mirrors and slow down Ries? on her rampage (good thing she decided to hate Josette, she can have her after she spend her S-craft).

Even with both spacing my team and giving the doppel a scapegoat sometimes, I was SO CLOSE to get smoked that I wouldn't be mad if I got an useless quartz as drop (good thing it was Defense 4: I need those for earth walling later down the line).

After removing everything from Kevin's team, I get Ries & Co ready for their ride against The 3rd meta game: Kevin? will straight up pull out Grail Sphere to negate two instances of damage for every enemy on screen, which is kind of problematic when you have a timer on your head without it.

All cannons are capable of both dish out tremendous damage or straight OHKO someone if they score a deathblow proc, so our first order of business it's to buy time for the team via petrosphere and clock down. After that, Tita will use her quite charitable smoke cannon to remove that pesky barrier while the rest of the team try their best to remove as much enemies as possible before the other tanks reach our hideout in the corner.

after we get alone with the doppel, just sit tight and keep the pressure since unlike the other one this one's a chore since he's slower and I got Joshua to send his turns to gehenna.

Chapter 4 it's a reality and Ries decided to take a nap in the duration of it, which means Joshua will tag in until further notice.

Battles are quite simple: Wererats are quickly dispatch and even thought I would like to farm for sepith along the werewolves, these annoyances summon reinforcements until there are five of them on the battlefield so alas.

At least I can feed some experience to Josette to avoid her use in the near future.

Time for some clone wars: Anelance it's our next addition to the dream team and of course we have to win the rights to have her.

This Doppel comes with some aids and all of them are irrelevant if only because Clock Down & Evil Eye destroy any kind of chance for them to be actually dangerous, Hell she can even reposition the party with one of her crafts if they get knocked out of position.

We get Jinu and Anelance attached to it as prize (What? Did you really thought I would deal with Anelance WITHOUT Jinu? you wish).

Here, have a filler fight for a NPC that I will only thank because I can farm time sepith without the fear of reinforcements.

The birds which follow the boss are quite susceptible to confuse so chaos brand will be abused with good reason: Doppel Schera is fast as hell, can interrupt casters while dealing good damage, Aerials that can shave off more than half of everyone's hp and immunity to both status effects and stats downs makes her quite annoying if you don't peg down her adds.

Obviously we get the real deal after that and sadly, Heaven's Kiss will not see the light of day until CH6 rolls in (thanks for the quartz thought).

Hands down the hardest battle until now. Doppel Agate and his bulls are simple yet surprisingly effective: Group up and whack them till they die is the name of their game and unlike most bosses, they have the stats to consistently delete any caster of the team without max HP, which is a problem when Agate also sport stuff like Spiral Edge (AT delay with 9000+ damage), Draguna Edge (Linear arts cancel craft that will smoke Tita if he gets to her unprotected), Flame Smash (The only reason my entire team is running for the hills) and later down the line he can even toss Dragon Dive to straight out kill an unsuspecting party. All of this is joined with the neat fact that you cannot reduce his stats outside of move so yeah... better to split up the team.

Once I get setup, Petrosphere & Clock Down are put on good use to delay those brutes while Kloe/Kevin use Ascension to remove them with Tita/Joshua keeping the walls for Agate's onslaught until I get him alone so I can kill him without issues.

We get the man himself and he will be an asset to the fight....once CH6 kicks in *sigh*

After the whole deal with Agate just outright moping the floor with me, I welcome Astarte and his rather simplistic approach with open arms.

Yeah, he can totally smoke the whole team if I dare to face him without earth wall, but since the cut-scene powers are set to the max in this one, I can be quite negligent in my strategy here.

Kevin's new S-craft does tons of damage here and since I'm forced to equip it as S-break, my best bet is to boost his STR as much as I can while Joshua tags in with Phantom Raid to remove the Exiles from the picture. Once that's all said and done I pull out clock up ex along dark matter and start buying time while Kevin recharge his CP to keep thrashing Astarte and the rest just pelt him to keep things going as fast as we can before he summons more adds (good thing they just disappear without granting experience after his death).

After a long time, Estelle makes her grand entrance into the party which would be amazing...if it didn't mean Kevin is out of commission for the entire chapter 5 with Ries taking his place.

Thanks god Ch5 only got one mandatory fight which is just yet another chance to farm some sepith while giving the experience to my leftovers and while the highly expected Devil lurking at the end is quite the challenge, the problem lies more around speed/movement issues and Grail Sphere is no required in the solution of any of those.

The two party members got after this are endgame material: Richard has some of the best crafts in the game and really decent arts casting potential with his orbment resembling Kevin. Renne is also quite the boon since she's the only member to come with her orbment fully upgraded which means no investment needed until the very end.

Sadly both will not be touched until said endgame (outside of a special battle) but alas they are welcome nonetheless.

Time to do some plague control: the arachne sisters (Evros, Thaleia & Graia) are without a doubt the most annoying bosses in this game outside of optional stuff if only because the first two minutes are entirely up to the RNG.

Let's see... Graia & Thaleia can interrupt arts, check...Evros & Graia can use devil eye to either petrify or AT delay the poor fool, check.... Evros & Thaleia can reduce either STR or SPD (god forbid your earth wall user get hit by the SPD one), check....ALL THREE CAN MOVE AROUND THE WHOLE MAP AND ENSURE AoE ARTS ARE LESS EFFECTIVE, FRIGGING CHECK. 

In terms of what to do, there are two little spiders trying to intimidate you, but sadly for them I did the nasty and Chaos Brand them into my team (with mixed results). Next I try my best to clock down the sisters & earth wall the party to ensure my clock up ex/dark matter casts don't get throw into oblivion.

Once things are under control, I make sure everyone's has clock up ex & earth wall active before separate them and kill Evros last. Why? Because the darn thing summons her big momma and if I dare to kill it before the others that's a reset since the big one plays dirty.

Arachne Zigma is capable of do all the stuff his daughters can...but with a small AoE effect which makes keeping the walls up quite the challengue because even with cast 2, the wall won't come out before the big devil can suck someone's life to regenerate his own (most of the time this also kills said target).

After some shenaningans, I managed to defeat it and thanks god I received an useful quartz (sadly no Gold Gem) because hell if I'm gonna dare touch that battle in a LONG TIME (I expended the WHOLE last weekend getting plastered).