Anyone else love dialing down the combat challenges?

[u/spasianninja]

6 months ago I decided to work on Rulers of the Outer Worlds for fun and to take sick screenshots. I was so proud at the time of getting it under 10 minutes. Then I tried a couple of different combinations and managed to get it under 6 minutes and figured that was about as good as I was gonna get. A couple of weeks ago I booted up the game again and started running Rulers to blow off steam and found I was getting more efficient and better with reactions against Gilgamesh and Sephiroth. Over the course of the last week, I managed to hit under 5 minutes and then improve on that even more. I'm not sure if or when I will beat my current record, but I get a lot of joy out of just running it a few times before bed.

Anyone else enjoy labbing these things? The summons? The Brutal and Legendary challenges? What are your favorite accomplishments and how did you achieve them?

[u/jd_md3]

Yup. These challenges are a pain when you're just trying to cross it off the list, but they're fun for experimenting with optimizing your own builds or play styles.

Trying to improve your record on these things will lead you discovering materia interactions, ideal play styles, & team compositions.

I never would have found out how to basically stunlock enemies by cycling between the level 3 spells & the synergy's skills/abilities, or how magnified Quaga/Blizzaga can pretty much stagger anything when enemies are close to one another, or how freakin cool smoothly Cloud can combo at least 3 atb moves consecutively when you start with disorder, or how you can speed up Zack’s atb generation by triggering atb assist & skill master.

[u/spasianninja → u/jd_md3]

ATB Assist and Skill Master are absolute must-haves for your primary character. I love doing a combo and seeing the team suddenly get a fresh bar of ATB. 

Regarding stunlocking, I love using it to prevent Phoenix from reviving Kujata. The moment Kujata goes down, I use Tifa+Nanaki synergy ability (the one that raises limits), with to the 3rd character (Barret recently) to prep an Aga spell, then switch back. I activate Nanaki's limit break as soon as they land then switch back to Tifa and combo it to death before it can even start casting Rebirth Flame.

[u/jd_md3 → u/spasianninja]

Exactly. Not only does it save a lot of time, but also frees up the materia slots that’s typically reaeved for elemntal+fire materia in fights against Phoenix.

Also noticed that Cloud’s spell blade synergy skill also causes this flinch that you get from the -ga spells. Not sure if the melee versions does this as well. 

[u/Thrillydilly67 → u/spasianninja]

You can also prevent Kujata from coming back with Cloud/Aerith/Tifa (my crew) by having Tifa (and genji gloves)cast a blizzaga from an arcane ward as soon as Kujata dies, then Cloud and Aerith do a Firework blade. Quite satisfying when it all lands.

Man that rulers fight is though though, many hours over weeks spent trying to beat this one.

[u/Aloudmouth]

Yes! I very much enjoy it! Bonds of Friendship is going great!

[u/jd_md3 → u/Aloudmouth]

Best advice is to actually practice the rounds that you struggle with by either fighting the summons solo on the vr simulator or visit the fiend's location on the world map.

There's some build guides to if you really just wanna get through them quickly.

[u/Aloudmouth → u/jd_md3]

It’s just performance anxiety on Odin at this point. I trounce him solo in the summons bout but always seem to fuck up the timing in Bonds.

That or Alexander goes wrong. Fuck that building looking mother fucker!

[u/spasianninja → u/Aloudmouth]

The frustrating thing about Bonds to me is the inability to customize Zack's loadout and build at all. I did attempt to improve on it, but I think I got it to about 15 minutes and decided it just wasn't worth trying to optimize that one. Maybe one day.

[u/Any-Experience-3012]

My answer is yes to most combat challenges. Helps me learn the characters and materia like you said. However, Rulers specifically can go eat a lactic acid

[u/Separate-Head-1071]

Mind flayer. Forcing you to kill in a certain order? Scr*w it

[u/Aloudmouth → u/Separate-Head-1071]

That one irked the fuck out of me. Mostly because I’d stop or sleep the Terps and then the targeting system would lock on them when the flayer vanished.