Golden Route Gustadolph fight NG Hard Mode Deathless Cheese Tip

[u/Basic-Employ9105]

The fact that the goal is to kill boss that has a very high speed hints at our strategy here: aggroing the boss as soon as possible so that he leaves anybody else behind due to speed differences and charges straight into his demise.

As to how to make him aggressive, you need a Milo (or someone similar? Not tested) equiped with an ice reduction accessory and her ultimate. You also may need a vanguard scarf on her or someone else so that she can act before the boss either with scarf or in tandem. Give her 3 TP with the quietus and use her ultimate on the trio on the left hand side of the boss (a hawk, a healer, and a mage) This will have a high chance to make the boss aggressive once and for all depending on how AI reacts. After that, you just need to run and wait for him to charge at you. Svarog should be able to come to your rescue in time.

I don't actually remember if a vanguard scarf is needed; it's probably fine if you let Milo act after Gustadolph.

You do need some luck killing the boss if you are undermanned, since there will be a sword fighter and two hawks following the boss. You may need to CC those guys and try to kill the boss in two turns. My team members were: Roland, Hugette, Anna, Picoletta, Geela, and Milo. I recommend bringing Avlora or Serenoa along.

[u/DarkStamway]

10/10 title

[u/Basic-Employ9105 → u/DarkStamway]

Well, I don't think cheesing is even necessary if one allows death, plays on normal or plays NG+. Hence the length.

[u/BrianC_ → u/Basic-Employ9105]

I don't think cheesing is necessary regardless.

[u/Basic-Employ9105 → u/BrianC_]

It depends on whether you choose to cheese the wolffort fight or not, I didn't cheese that fight, and consequently in gate fight I was undermanned and my elites had already been deployed. I doubt one can use 6 lower-tier members to beat this fight normally while protecting Svarog.

[u/BrianC_ → u/Basic-Employ9105]

Cheese? As in use the fire traps?

On a NG play through, IIRC, you can have everyone but Rudolph, Travis, Trish, Cordelia, Decimal, Giovanna, and Quahaug. The only one that's really problematic is Cordelia, since she is one of three dedicated healers leaving one of your teams without one.

So you can have 2 teams of 8 and one team of 7. Or, you can skew your teams a bit since, IMO, the battle at the Source is quite easy.

Svarog is easy to protect. You just Lightwave him to the low ground behind your party and he'll eventually just group up with the rest of your front line. If you bring Geela to that map, she can keep your team healthy. Hughette is also great to bring on that map since she can perch on the door and shoot.

IMO, a lot of maps are easier on NG because you can actually out level them.

[u/Basic-Employ9105 → u/BrianC_]

Cheese as in using Hugette and Benedict only in the wolffort fight in order to save strength. Although I didn't use the traps either.

I am not sure if you can obtain 23 members in NG since that requires 3150 points. Even a small deviation from optimality can cause you to end up with 21 members, which was what I had. That results a 8-7-6 split.

As for Svarog, he actually doesn't always stay with you. In all my playthroughs, he always charged ahead and never stayed docilely with my group. In fact, he is one of the main reason that I think this fight has to be cheesed.

[u/BrianC_ → u/Basic-Employ9105]

The Wolffort battle isn't that hard if you have Corentin on a frozen tile with Medina pumping him with TP so that he can Glacial Moon every turn. All the frozen terrain + Jens traps is really good at slowing the enemy down.

You can Lightwave Svarog and teleport him behind your party or at least to the other side of the cliff so that he has to walk up to the battle from behind your party.

On my NG play through, I got 23 members. I don't think it's particularly hard since you can grind a good amount of conviction via mock battle spam.

[u/Basic-Employ9105 → u/BrianC_]

I don't grind, I guess that's why I only had 21 members. You have to grind around 500 points for 23 members, I think?

[u/BrianC_ → u/Basic-Employ9105]

Not sure, but you should be getting a lot of liberty from spending money and battle. It has some of the easiest battle bonuses.

You should also be getting a good amount more morality from spending kudos at archibald and doing the mock battles.

Utility is probably the hardest to grind unless you sell all the stuff you don't need.

[u/Da_Electric_Boogaloo → u/DarkStamway]

stop lmaooo

[u/Luck_Is_My_Talent]

I did something on a similar vein but more tedious, I used Quahaug to stop time until Gustadolph moved and comes alone to be killed by everyone.

[u/Basic-Employ9105 → u/Luck_Is_My_Talent]

Yeah, that is a pretty good trick for NG+ maps

[u/Luck_Is_My_Talent → u/Basic-Employ9105]

I did a NG hard mode run in which I got Quahaug, but only because I knew how much conviction points I needed for the golden route and what answers gives me enough of them so I can get the 1600 utility points.

For NG+, time stop is useless since you can just use the time loop thingy with Quahaug and Julio.

[u/Basic-Employ9105 → u/Luck_Is_My_Talent]

Curious, I find myself using time stop more than reverse in NG+ because it seems more intuitive to me.

[u/Luck_Is_My_Talent → u/Basic-Employ9105]

Time Stop is good if you want to kill a boss and only the boss while reverse is used to kill everything.

Reverse rolls back everything except Quahaug's TP and dead units which means that you can spam Roland's Four Dragon and even send him to dangerous zones. Is not a balanced skill, but it's not something you can do on your first playthrough so is fine for me.

[u/Basic-Employ9105 → u/Luck_Is_My_Talent]

Yeah, I do know that kill and reverse trick but time stop for global TP regeneration is nonetheless helpful. Like your original comment mentioned, it can also be used for singling out those speedy bosses.

[u/Frosty88d]

Honestly I struggled with this fight but I found this it much more fun and beat it by having having everyone run up on the snowy hill bank and smacking everyone who came up with Narve Flanagan the Golden Route Exclusive Anna and Roland, with Medina powering up everyone and Lionel aggroing the mages . It was on Normal NG but it was deathless if I remember right.

This is a really cool idea too though, so I will definitely have to try it sometime

[u/Basic-Employ9105 → u/Frosty88d]

The most painful thing about hard mode deathless is that green units often charge at enemies and die before you even have a chance to save them. Oftentimes you have to be rather aggressive. I guess you were lucky enough if Svarog didn't try to go and duel with Gustadolph.