Paradox difficulty Slime Only. This is my first Paradox difficulty run. I have only beaten the game on Hard before with Ilias. This is my 2nd run. I have some affection on Alice, since I played until Gnome with her. I begin the run on the highest difficulty with a single plan. Beat the main story (up to garuda to hellgondo) only using slimes. Only other character allowed is Luka, however he is to be benched as soon as possible and is not allowed to attack once I acquire my first slime. (I will keep him to spam defend command, and nothing more. He is not allowed to do any damage, or provide anything else useful to the team.) I considered having him on 1HP with the life orb, but it will quickly get tiresome to menu over and over again after every reset, so I decided against it. To add to it, I will be equipping accessories on him for convenience sake, since I am effectively using Luka as a bait anyway, may aswell embrace it. In addition, I am allowed to change races of slime characters (ie. slime-->beast after promestein event with Bunni), What really matters is the original race when they got captured. That means I cannot do it the other way around, beast-->slime. Awawa will be considered a slime. I am allowed to recruit other characters so long as they do not get used in combat. I am allowed to gift them items to get affection awards. It is also important to note, I am to get my first slime as soon as possible, so no cheesing by having Luka progress the story in a Luka only run, then going back and picking up slimes and regrinding them. Run starts out and it's already grim. I am forced to use Luka, and he is obviously not a slime. *until I get the doppelganger I leave the village and head to the mountain to have a "Fun" time with the local monsters. Luka is pathetic on level 1, so I collect the 100G chest, and spend all our money on herbs. Despite this, slimes regularly kick Luka's ***. I grit through it knowing that things will most definitely not get better. Luka hits Level 2, unlocking Flail Wildly. Finally I can handle one slime consistently. I attempted to advance further, ran into 2 slimes and got wrekt. However I have a plan. Flail Wildly deals 1% more damage per missing HP I have so I grind my HP to 3hp farming slimes, then advance further. Flail Wildly now one shots slimes, letting me somewhat consistently kill 2 slimes at level 2. This doubles my farm speed at level 2. All good things must come to an end though, I die after an especially unlucky flail wildly against 2 slimes. However, I reach level 3 before this. With level 3 and double slash in hand I defeat Bunni with ease at the cost of my fire stone. At the village, after the baptism, I decide to go with Alice, simply because my last full run was with Ilias. I also get our first slime--Lime. She deals bonus damage with throwing and boomerang skills, increasing if the target is slimed. I best get familiar with Lime, since she and one other slime will be our only slimes for a long time. I am forced to accept Sonya since I am greedy, but I will remove her shortly. Before that however, I go and spend all our money on candy at the shop. I leave the village and immedietely remove everyone from the party. I go to Lime, and feed her candy to get a slime core. In addition, I talk with Alice, getting the dark stone and dusk ring from her. (affection from a previous run, sorry not sorry for cheating.) I go back to Iliasville, sell the dusk ring for 7500G and rescue the guard. I go to Ilias Temple and turn Lime into a Martial Artist. I immedietely run to Iliasburg, equipping a Monster Ward Bracelet (prob some affection reward, no idea from who) on Luka. From there, I run to Harpy Village. I die a few times to bad RNG, but I make it on my 3rd attempt. There, I purchase a Moonring boomerang for Lime, the strongest martial artist armor I can get, and whatever other upgrades I can + some harpy feathers. I make sure that Luka has nothing equipped so he is as bad as possible as a tank. Decked out in strong items for my stage of the game, I decide to use a harpy feather to go back to Iliasville and grind some levels at the mountain for Lime. After getting level 2 Martial Artist and level 2 Lime, I grind the overworld for Bunni, getting her on my first attempt by some miracle. Bunni is the second of our slimes, and the only other early game slime. Her trait increases her agility by 30%, and lets her always use Beast and Slime skills. In addition, Beast skills do +100% damage to slimed foes. She starts as a Martial Artist, which is fine for me. I buy 200 carrots and feed them to her (with an autoclicker of course.) This gets me the bunny girl band, but more importantly, the slime core. I sell the bunny girl band immedietely, and gear the new slime girl out at Happiness village. I grind until level 3 for both slimes. (Tip: Lime with this good boomerang can one shot all of the slimes on paradox difficulty. HUGE time save.) With this, I head out to the Cave of Trials. I rush through it, running from encounters I can't handle. I grab Pilate and instantly bench him, mostly since I wanted to see his affection rewards. (He has none.) For now I decide to grind a bit. I manage to recruit the slug girl, give her 5 candies and get her sticky mucus. I doubt it will be useful, but its cheap enough. The real reward is at 2000 affection, the slimed crest, but for now its way too far away. I continue to grind until level 4, then I grind the cave of trials until I recruit the imp. Using the Imp, I recruit the other 2 imps in Iliasville, and I am done with the starting area. I go through finding Amira and start the mission to fight the 4 bandits. I beat the Goblin Girl easily using my double martial artists with leg sweep spam. However, the Tiny Lamia turned out to be a unsurmountable wall. Her tail sweep deals 120 damage which is enough to one shot my entire party, and she seems to be immune to leg sweep (in 10 attempts it failed 20 times). It seems I am in big trouble. This is the first of many big bumps in the road. I are simply too weak to progress. I changed Lime to become a warrior and bought a poison dagger at happiness village, and got to grinding. Goal is atleast level 5 warrior, and level 6/7 rest of party. I turned Bunni into a magician. https://files.**********/2l0vp5.PNG After trying to fight the tiny lamia a few times with this set up, I didnt stand a chance. Change of plans. I head south to P*rnoff village, aiming for the casino. With my autoclicker set up to spam Z, I head to the slot machine and leave the PC for a snack. I come back to 4000 chips with a nice cup of tea, ready to keep grinding. I considered my options and noticed that Magicians at level 6 get blind, so I could try to blind the lamia, then beat her down. While here, I also purchase 2 bunny suits for later and 2 beautiful tiaras since they are a flat out upgrade on what I have now, and head out to grind for magician level 6. Before that, I head into the local forest, only to become elf food in 5 steps. I suppose reaching Enrika like this is not feasible. I might come back here later, since I remember there was some nice loot in the forest and on the beach. https://files.**********/114wgs.PNG After finishing my grind, I head out to fight the Tiny Lamia. Using a few Pheonix feathers I bought at the harpy village, I manage to beat her first try. I tried the same strategy vs the vampire girl and got absolutely trounced. I changed to double martial master again only to lose a few more times, I managed to snag a earthworm girl for my troubles though. While at the castle, I realized I was capped on fish, so I fed 80 fish to Lime, getting me a boomerang scroll. I don't think this will be very useful, but for now I equipped it over the slime check, since I am using the moonring which is a boomerang. With a few more attempts, I wasnt making any progress. My best result was getting her to 40% hp. With enough time it's doable, but I get a good idea. I reequip the monster ward bracelet on Luka, and head back to Pornof. I rush through the mine running from all encounters and grab the iron lump, then buy 2 iron claws. Then I harpy feather to Happiness village and upgrade them both to Wind Claws. This effectively doubled my damage output. Now to throw my body against the vampire until it works. And on my 10th attempt it worked. Luka came in clutch with a defend blocking 2 hits from the vampire girl after both Lime and Bunni got hit by a seduction. Then Lime broke seduction and got lucky and managed to knock her down. From there a streak of good luck continued and she didnt get to attack anymore. Onto the Dragon. Her fire attack simply one shots you. So does her scream. Double Martial Artist wasn't consistent enough, so I changed Bunni back to magician, and had her cast Blind at the start of combat. I restarted until Lime knocked the dragon down on turn 1/blind hit dragon girl and dragon girl didnt one shot both Lime and Bunni, and it was just luck from there. If I got unlucky and she managed to hit one of my characters, I would just revive them with a feather. Many times she hit both and one shot them both through blind. After 20+ attempts, I managed to kill her with a lucky crit/condition bonus (i didnt read) on the slime draw, doing a ridiculous 1700 damage. With 4 hours of play time (counting casino afk, excluding save file loading), I have finally met Amira. She tells us to investigate something about pheonix feathers in the slums. Well alright, but first, lets recruit the local monster girls. I am finally strong enough to handle dog girls and earthworm girls. First I recruit the 3 of the 4 bandits. I grab Gob, feed her some cookies and get a seed of power for our troubles. Lime grows stronger yet. Dragon gives us a nice Life Nut, I chose to feed this to Bunni, since she'll have to take the magician role sometimes. Not that it will do much. It turns out I forgot to do the mission at Talus Hill, so lets head on over there, so I can recruit the vampire girl and finally unlock the store. I pull on the mandragora and Lime gets paralyzed!? How is that possible? Lime clearly has Paralysis Immunity??? https://files.**********/m4k4sa.PNG I save the merchant, and recruit the dog girl while I'm here. This looks like a better farming spot than the mountain, but for now I dont need to farm. I grab the vampire girl and do her side quest as far as I can. I imagine I might need the items from the shop later. I also grab the Iliasburg BF getting a necklace, that might be the crucial difference maker against the succubus on the ship/against harpies. I keep the seed of magic from vampire girl for now, I'll use it later when I think I have a good target. Bunni is meant to only cast blind for now anyway, and if I blind, scratch seems to do more damage than spells. I really wish I had a third unit. Having a 2nd martial artist would make life so much more consistent. Our main plan is for one enemy that can be stun locked with leg sweeps/blind, and I can just keep running away from trash mobs until I reach the boss. I finally head out to the Nameless Slums. On the way there, I grab Ratty and the Wolf Girl, one shotting them somehow. They don't have anything useful in affection, but I do give 4 fish to Wolf Girl to get a beast fang for crafting purposes. Just in case. At the Nameless Slums I do a bit of investigating, and get Don's key to a warehouse. I go to the shining pot after collecting one more seed of power and feeding it to Lime. I get absolutely destroyed by her fire breath without any chances to fight back. Ilias's evaluation tells us she is durable against physical status effects. It seems our plan has completely fallen apart right after I outlined it. It gets worse. According to the wiki she is completely stun immune. Fortunately, both Lime and Bunni can survive a hit from her wind attack, and she sometimes tackles Luka instead of either Lime or Bunni. This critical fact allows me to just abuse harpy slayer in Martial Arts and slay her in 3 turns (She only acted twice), with a bit of good RNG having Bunni dodge a hit. After like 10 attempts, I beat her and recruit her. With this done, I can finally finish Amira's mission, and get pheonix feathers in my local shop. After a chat with Amira, she sents me to *ornof. I port over, chat with the bunny girl at the inn, and she sends me to the Tartarus. I already get the sense that Luka is about to be ridden to death. I rush through the Tartarus, running away from any encounter with 2 or more mobs. I reach Nuroko with ease, and manage to leg sweep combo her down to 60%, only to die. I decide to farm atleast 1 more level in the cave of trials, since I've gotten tired of the slime mountain. Leaving the cave with 1 new level, I get sidetracked and run to the forest to try to reach Enrika again. To my surprise I manage to run away from the first encounter. I try a few more times, but it does not happen again. I didn't get any valuable equipment from this unfortunately. Since I am doing busy work, I decided to go back to *ornof and get the three girls I missed: Leech girl, Bunny girl and Sheep girl. Then I go to Cave of Trials to grind out Martial Artist level 6 for roundhouse-- my first AoE skill. This AoE skill does enough damage to one shot wolf girls and rat girls in the cave between Iliasville and the slums. It's not enough for leech girls yet however. I need one more level up for that, so I plan to grind to level 9 in the caves. I'll need lots of martial artist levels anyway so I don't mind. At 50xp/encounter, this shouldn't take long. With this I end the first day of my attempt. With 5.5 hours into it and a clear plan to progress the main quest for now. Before I leave, I grab the machinist license. I know machinists are really strong early game, but I am unsure if I'll get a chance to use them simply due to the sheer insanity of damage enemies do in paradox difficulty. With dread, I think about some of the future encounters. I have no plan currently on how to survive the ship to Port Natalia. I doubt I can get tanky to live more than 1 hit/sustain with slime skill and counter her to death with martial artist passives/slime check, so its probably gonna have to come down to the succubus slayer attack in martial artist and being overleveled. Unlike Mini, I cannot rely on being overgeared for this point in the game, it's not going to be easy. Nanabi will also be difficult, I think she has many AoE attacks that will just one shot my team on paradox difficulty. I might need something ridiculous like a time mage to stop her. I also wonder about the rakshasa palm skill, I think some bosses aren't immune to it, so I'd really like to get a higher level martial artist. It's also likely I'll have to grind apprentice hero/hero for the slimes for the revive. The way fights are going now, I need to go glass cannon, so this could be a huge durability boost. I really need a thief aswell. Maybe I shouldn't have imposed a stupid limitation like this on Luka, atleast then I could decrease grinding a bit. Are there even any good throwing skills that can exploit Lime's trait? Does throw gold from merchants count for Lime? I don't think that skill is very good though. [Day 1 End. Total play time: 5.5 Hours.] https://files.**********/l20n66.PNG [Day 2 Start. Total Play time: 5.5 Hours.] I leave *ornoff and begin farming outside. Turns out I still can't one shot the Wolf girls unless I crit. Still, this is the fastest grind spot for me right now. +90 XP per fight, and I win most of the time. Sometimes I have to run to the inn to heal, but it's cheaper and faster than slimes anyway so I don't mind. After 20 minutes of grinding, I finally get level 9. https://files.**********/r71c79.PNG I head out to fight Nuroko. Here I run into a big problem. Her tentacle attack simply one shots me. Fortunately, she's an optional boss. I run past the house she is in, and run to the angel land finishing the quest. Coming back, I get through the exposition and I go to Iliasburg to recruit Amira. First order of business is upgrading our gear. I port to Happiness Village and head north to Midas Village. On the way, I check out if there is any good loot at the Medal Queen's Castle. I don't really have a plan on where to spend my 9 medals, so I decide to save them for now. Noble certificate looked tempting for the SP regen, but I don't need it yet. I don't remember how good the other items are, so I don't take anything. I head north past Midas Village to the mine to get some gold ore. After crafting the gold equipment and buying 2 ninja gears and taking the quest to exterminate the slugs, one of the guards says that slugs are weak to lighting. One anon mentioned lighting claws at Rostrum, so I decide to run over and grab them before attempting this. On the way through the caves I run into an encounter of candle girls. Is it possible this is a slime!??? She sure looks slimey. I really really want to get her, even though I am confident she isn't a slime... For now however I can't beat her so I run off to Rostrum, grab the claws and decide to try out getting through the tartarus. It works out great, I get myself Promestein (Best girl), and reach Rostrum after grabbing all the chests in the tartarus. This gives me a source for Fire, Ice and Lighting orbs. Very nice, but I don't know if it'll be useful anymore. I run to the slug tower, grab all the chests there running from all encounters, then try my luck against the slug sisters. Unsurprisingly I get absolutely *hitstomped. Well, that's ok, first let's finish the harpy quest. I talk with Nero at harpy village to get the key and go to the tower, only to be defeated by the regular harpy after she evades everything. I need more accuracy, but I don't have a way to get more right now, so I equip the wind amulet from the BF in Iliasburg on Bunni and hope to RNG my way through. Fortunately harpy slayer from martial artist does a lot of damage to the harpies if it hits, so its not hopeless. I reach the queen and start throwing myself against her over and over again. After a dozen fails, at best bringing her down to 50%. I grind out the regular harpy, only to get some pointless affection rewards. I decide to change Bunni back to a magician, and try out blind against her. Then I notice a new throwing skill for Lime. It just so happens to be a harpy slayer skill. I dont have a boomerang on her anymore, but thats ok. It still does around 1500-3000 damage unlike the martial art skill that does about 1/4th of that. My strategy is to have Bunni survive the flap oneshot with the wing amulet then revive Lime, having Bunni spam blind and poison. And on my 5th attempt with this set up I stand victorious. With this I have reached the second large bump. The slug girls. For now I decide to do some utility tasks, so I go and switch Lime and Bunni to Guards. Goal is level 5 Guard for the Bind skill. I don't know how useful it will be but relying on just stun is clearly not going to work in the long term. Plus I get to get armor break + mind break on the way. Almolst certainly tools I will need in the future. I decide to equip both slimes with boomerangs for grinding. I do the BF in *ornoff and in the slums. The slum one giving me incredible hard job wrist, just in time. I equip both hard job wrists on my slimes, remove the BFs and go to the slime mountain to cleanse the local population. It sucks, but at this point slugs are still too inconsistent and my only AoE skill required to have martial artist. I set up my clicker to spam Z every 1 ms, and just run back and forth. I should automate the running too, so I can have a true idle game experience. Getting guard level 5 took almolst no time. Since it was so fast, I decided to chance Lime to a Cook, and Bunni to a Hunter. Goal is level 4 for Cooking skills, [after the fact note, it seems for some reason I thought I can apply the buff and remove cook from lime, then run to the boss. Unfortunately it simply does not work this way.], and I'll need a Hunter in the future anyways, so I felt like I should just put some extra XP on it for the future. Bunni is a good fit with her +30% Agi bonus. If this set up doesn't work I might grind apprentice hero aswell, but for now I'll leave it for later. I switch Lime and Bunni to martial artists and try out beating the slug boss. My plan is to reset until I knock her down turn 1, then hit my guard break. After I manage to try this once I realize this doesn't do enough damage. I go back to Ilias temple, switch Bunni to Hunter and Lime to thief, and return to grinding. I really want to open blue chests. Plus, I need Land Dweller Killer from Hunter to one shot the slugs. I was considering apprentice hero, but not yet. I'll do it later. I also considered Gadabout, but I don't have a good enough AoE skill to farm it fast, 2 boomerangs is the best I've got. After some serious grinding, I went a bit too far. Hunter level 8, Thief level 8 and Slime level 10 after about 40 minutes of running back forth with my clicker spamming Z. I transition both slimes to Mega Slimes and try my luck at the slugs. https://files.**********/gj5hzu.PNG Despite what the wiki says, the slugs DON'T get one shot by guard break + land dweller slayer. It genuinely took me 1 hour and over 60 attempts due to how unlucky my stuns were. To win, I need to stun twice with one martial artist. This does not get reflected ingame time since running to the boss over and over again would make me want to kill myself. I dropped a save and kept reloading until it worked Here is how I did it. Turn 1: Luka- Talk, Bunni-Guard break, Lime-Leg sweep (hit or lose) Turn 2: Luka- Talk, Bunni-Land dweller slayer, Lime- Boost drink on Bunni. Turn 3: Luka- Talk, Bunni-Land dweller slayer, Lime- Leg sweep (hit or lose) Turn 4: Luka- Talk, Bunni-Land dweller slayer, Lime- Leg sweep (doesn't matter) Turn 5: Luka- Talk, Bunni-Land dweller slayer, Lime- Leg sweep (end of fight) https://files.**********/x98u8m.PNG THANK F**K ITS OVER. I probably should have just farmed out apprentice hero and saved myself from this suffering. With this over, I grab the maid license, I come back to get the bee girl, the high slug, and the slug nun. Before ending the day I check out the library to see the next Slime girl. It's Bess, right at the start of Sentora. Very nice. I think candle girl is a ghost or some sh*t. For now though, the next goal is Enrika, and then Iliasport. I shudder at the thought of the cave of treasures. I don't think it will be possible without something ridiculous. Future me problem. I plan to grab the Apoptosis from the first tartarus first thing next day. I also plan to get the sparrow girl, and the harpies when I get the chance. [Day 2 End. Total Play time: 9.5 Hours.] https://files.**********/qz8d8s.PNG https://files.**********/p2ewgk.PNG [Day 3 Start. Total Play time: 9.5 Hours.] First thing I do when I return to the game is I run to Ilias temple, switch Lime and Bunni to apprentice hero. I've had enough. I know I need the revive, if not now then soon. After 48 minutes of Z autoclcking as I run up and down the mountain, I got apprentice hero level 8 on both slimes and Mega Slime level 6. With apprentice hero finished, I switch Lime and Bunni back to martial artists and make my way to Enrika. I can run away from the local encounters finally so I reach Enrika without any difficulty only to learn Micaela isn't here anymore. While here I upgrade my golden claws to fire claws getting a small boost in stats and grab the quest to go to the beach for a seashell. I run there, grab all the chests and the healing shell, and get out of here. I can't handle these monsters yet. I collect my reward from the dark elf for the shell and head to Iliasport. Right before entering the town there is a camping scene. I make sure to collect my free fish from Lime, talk to Alice and go to sleep. Shan't interact with the others. Luka learns a new sword skill (that he will never get to use). First thing I do in Iliasport-- I run to the university. I hand in the Elficilin and get 2 new makinas. The electroflux generator in particular seems notable. It gives many immunities and might be one of the future avenues for cheese. For now though, we don't have anyone levelled to use it. After exploring the town and getting whatever upgrades I can at the shop, I talk to the sailor, learning that the sea has been blocked off by winds, so the ship wont set sail. What a shame. I really really need Bess. I try to run to the cave and die on the way there. I need more levels so I decide to aim for level 11. While farming levels, I thought it's a good idea to also recruit the apoptosis in the first tatarus. You have no idea how big of a difference the revive made in my grinding speed here. I could 2 turn the apoptosis with roundhouse kicks and the revive reset before each fight. Adding in walking time, this pretty much 4xed my grinding speed. After recruiting all of the apoptosis and leveling up my slimes to level 10, I also fight Nuroko. I easily beat her thanks to the revives and the good old perma stun leg sweep spam. The revives make the fight way easier since I can apply the armor break at 0 risk, and I can even basic attack letting me charge a bit of SP for leg sweeps. After this, I find all of the Amiras (total 8), and grab the BFs I can handle right now. (up to the maid at midas village), grab the unfortunate trio, grab the fortune teller license and recruit Nuroko after bringing Sonya to her. Before I continue grinding XP I buy one more gold claw, and upgrade it to lighting damage, since 2 of the 3 apoptosis seem to be vulnerable to lighting. (while here I also give Papi the ability to craft gold equipment and finish the vampire girl side quest up until she can sell echo grass.) At this point Luka has become completely useless in normal mob encounters. He dies in one hit and he doesn't even help tank since my slimes 2 turn everything with higher agility anyway. This kinda sucks since it means Luka will need a seperate level grinding later for the BF rewards. I grind at the first tartarus until I get level 13 on both slimes. I feed the 3000XP seed from finding Amira to Bunni to make up the perfume XP boost gap. I would have equipped the perfume on Bunni too , but I didn't have a 2nd one + the 20% agi boost from gold bracelet plays a big part in my damage. While here I also grab the blue chests for the Makinas. I doubt I'll need them, but it's in the way so may aswell. I checked the wiki for what slimes I'm getting and when, and feel happy knowing that against Adramalech I'll have a full team + several extra. I'd rather have Mitsuko and Naho over Luka, even though they don't start as slimes. Originally the goal for that rule was to just make sure there aren't any units who have slime as one of their other races in the early game. (In particular, I was worried about some units who have like 8 basic races or something. I didn't realize that there are basically no units like this.) List of Slimes I can use before Adramelech: Lime, Bunni, Bess, Mitsuko, Naho, Vitae. A full team +2. Very nice! I buy 2 more gold claws and upgrade them to fire claws. Why? Candle girls. The Rostrum cave only spawns candle girls so this could be a good farm spot soon (I'm just barely short in being to farm it consistently. The claws weren't enough but thats fine, worth a small detour to check it.) I equip both slimes with slave to ple*sure from apprentice hero. Completely forgot about this, since I get one shot anyway this is just a 50% xp boost for free. Very nice. Before progressing I go and recruit the girls I missed- the slug boss, sparrow girl, harpy sisters, orc girl. Having done what busy work I can, I decide to progress the story. Atleast to see what I need. With 4 more levels under the belt surely I can make some significant progression. I run to the cave, open the mimic chest and die. Well, this went about as well as expected. Fortunately I don't really have to open this chest so I run back to the cave and run past it. I explore grabbing some chests and run into an another mimic. I get lucky, manage to leg sweep combo it and survive the encounter. I don't get so lucky the 2nd time right before Nanabi. I manage to recruit the spider girl Rachnee after two shotting her with the slimed debuff. She is a level 2 time mage!???? I didn't know you can get a time mage at this stage in the game, she could be quite a good tool in future runs, if atleast for recruiting Nanabi. I wouldn't be shocked if you recruited Nanabi before leaving the starting continent using her. I recall time magic is insane against her. I engage with Nanabi and to my absolute surpise I don't have to do X amount of damage before the fight is over. ??? Am I retar*ed? I thought I need to actually do damage to her before I get rescued. I was dreading the idea of having to go up against her AoE skills that will one shot me and her strong immunities. I was fully expecting to grind for a time mage for slow/stop. Well, it's good for me I guess. I survive the encounter after getting rescued by Neris and get myself the poseidons bell. Onto the final boss before I unlock my third slime. Morrigan. Honestly speaking, I'm screwed. She has all the tools to completely roll my slimes over. Her resistance to ple*sure attacks completely destroys slimed debuff+ple*sure attacks. She is Stun immune, Bind immune. She has extreme speed, so even using something like a Time Mage to inflict stop/slow wouldn't work. She's completely decked out in AoE attacks (which in paradox difficulty just one shot my slimes.) She even uses ple*sure and elemental attacks, from which slimes take extra damage, so even grinding some levels for HP is gonna be limited in usefulness. For now, I decided to give it an attempt with Bunni as a hunter and Lime as a martial artist. The plan- Slime my opponent-->Use Slime Splash which deals 1160% of my Dex if the target is slimed as untyped damage. Lime only exists here to apply the slimed debuff and revive, so I need her to have lots of agi which is why she's a martial artist. This doesn't work. I missed that she is immune to the Slimed debuff in the first place. This is the absolute worst matchup possible. Realistically my options are to grind a ridiculous amount, or look for a way to cheese. First thing I do-- I port over to Ilias temple. I switch Bunni to guard so I can get the bonus that lets her equip shields, and switch Lime to be a magician. I equip them both with Hard Job Wrists and get ready for a long grind. I kind of regret having Bunni be a magician but it's ok. I didn't want to make the same mistake so I didn't make either of them a Gadabout. It's not like I can really handle any mobs with a gadabout casting lucky song on turn 1. I need every point of damage I can get. Slimes are easy at this stage but they're also awfully inefficient at only an average of 3 job xp per encounter with the hardwrist on. With this in mind I change my grinding spot to Talus Hill. Why? On average I can run into more mobs here. Slimes are also immune to mandragora scream so in theory this should be a bit faster. It turns out I also levelled up once while grabbing all the monsters I missed. Very nice! [Day 3 End. Total Play time 12.5 Hours] https://files.**********/0rfo7p.PNG [Day 4-??? Start. Total Play time 12.5 Hours] First thing I do, I change my grinding spot. I realized there is a place on the continent that I can handle and that always has encounters with 3 mobs-- the area right outside the Nameless Slums. I can handle it thanks to two things. 1) Beast Slayer ability from hunter (I didn't expect it to be so useful already.) 2) Slime Splash, a 4SP AoE skill that doesn't need a class. It's not as good as roundhouse, but it's the first AoE skill I have that doesn't need me to be a martial artist. I switch Lime and Bunni to Gadabbout as anon suggested to speed up my grinding, as the anon suggested. After getting level 2, I switch Bunni to Warrior and Lime to Guard. For Lime, the goal is level 8 for equip shield. 20% evasion is huge. I plan to combine this with Magician and silence Morrigan, then break her armor while Bunni does her best to buff up and then nukes with Dragoon. I further optimize my grinding. By holding A as my autoclicker clicks Z every millisecond, i almolst double my grind speed becaues it stops playing the animations for attacks. 3 mobs = 50% increase. Faster grinding technique = 80% increase. I grind 2.7x faster than before using this. For future runs I also made a macro that automatically grinds the slime area (it's kinda shit and breaks every 15 minutes forcing me to reset it). I won't use it this run but it's for future challenge runs should I ever decide to run them. All this said, I get back to grinding. Running up and down, holding A while my auto clicker spams Z. This is such a fast way to farm compared to what I was doing previously. In less than 20 minutes, Lime is level 10 guard, and Bunni is level 10 warrior. I switch Lime to Magician and Bunni to Dragoon. I need magician level 6, and some levels into dragoon. I end up spending about 10 minutes getting magician level 7 and dragoon level 6. This is what my first attempt vs Morrigan looks like: https://files.**********/40gdv6.PNG >mfw silence is level 9 magician not level 7. Back to grinding, but I noticed the wind resists were only slightly short from letting Bunni survive a hit. I decided to farm her up to level 18 while farming, + change her race to carnivorous slime for the better stats. I also noticed I have the action duplication available now. I change Lime to a Heal slime for now. After grind I attempt it again. Unbelivably I bring her down to 10% hp before she wipes me out with two back-to-back AoE skills. After silencing her, she is a sitting duck and keeps skipping her turn, letting me beat her down. On my second attempt she goes down like a complete pushover to Slime division+having Bunni spam one of the 4 cost spear skills twice a turn while having Lime feed her boost drink after boost drink + breaking her armor/agi. Honestly, Dragoon wasn't even necessary. Any class that could do lots of damage was fine, even martial artist could probably do it just fine. The real secret was having a level 9 magician Lime who can silence her + the Division skill helped a lot. Luka even survived this fight without having to do anything since turn 1 Morrigan used a hit on Bunni, killing her and proccing her revive, while Lime silenced her. From there, I just played normally and completely rolled her. Still, with this done, I can finally gain the third slime. Before that, first thing I do is I run to Sabasa, stopping by at San Ilia and Rubiana on the way. I need some large upgrades before I can handle even the weakest mobs around here. On the way there I die to some Watermelon girls, but that's OK. Decked out I grind the area outside of Port Natalia. Unfortunately, the mobs here are strong and the Slime Bess encounter is really rare. Still, after around 20-30 minutes of grinding, I manage to finally recruit my third slime. I can't describe how much this means to me. https://files.**********/rwd7qy.PNG Her trait is quite bad honestly. She has 15% digestion strike and her slime skills do 30% more damage (100% if target is partially digested.) It's kinda useless since I think digestion isn't a very strong debuff. Still, just having a warm body that I can grind up to become something useful is a big deal. With new gear, a new character and seemingly the biggest roadblock over, I feel quite optimistic for the future of the run. I already have some plans for my route from here on out. Expect more sequence breaking since next obvious place to go to is the casino under the Saki place. I also have a plan to recruit my 4th slime soon [She might be vulnerable to a cheese strat :^)]. This would finally give me a full useful party. Unexpectedly, my 4th slime should also prove to be a huge speed up to my grinding. You'll see what I mean next update, if this is the route that ends up working out for me. For now, I'm very satisfied at ending part 4 of my slime run here, despite not so much playtime. Next update will be whenever I run into the next significant roadblock, or if there are no large roadblocks, either Sylph or Gnome. Not sure how much blogposting is too much. Please provide feedback so I know which is better. [Day 4 End. Total Play time 15 Hours] https://files.**********/rwd7qy.PNG [Day ??? Start. Total Play time 15 Hours] I ended up taking a long break before continuing my slime run. On top of that, hit by a goddamn range ban. First order of business with my third slime is to get her up to par. Considering what I learnt from the previous slimes and how fights play out for me, first goal is apprentice hero for the revive. This'll make her 2x more durable. The secondary goal is to get the first AoE skill for slimes so she can help farm even when her class doesnt have an AoE skill. A big question is what role should Bess from here. One option was to get a 2nd dragoon but it's way off and I don't want to waste that much XP on Bunni, who is already dragoon and is 70% of my damage. A second option was to go the magician route. Time mage in particular is a strong goal but the other magician classes aren't too bad either. Third option was the priest route. With how strong Bunni's trait is for AGI its not out of the question that her using Dragoon skills + agi/atk boosts from priest buffs can absolutely one-two shot all bosses in part 1, maybe even part 2. The 4th option is to level her as support. In particular, Gadabout for lucky song. Dancer also look very tempting for same reason as priest buffs. The final option is to level martial artist and attempt a strategy that I was alluding to earlier. To do this strategy I need 4 things. 1) 2-3 martial artists at level 8 or above for rakshasa palm. (almolst done, Bunni is a level 7 martial artist) 2) A high enough level (23 or so should be securely enough, but less could work) 3) Willingness to save-scum (more than enough if it saves time) 4) Medications (not taken, but I'll manage) Obviously I went with the final option. If it works it saves a lot of time and martial artist has a lot of good passives so even if it fails its not a complete waste. Plus levels are gonna be helpful for the base stats. There is an another reason the final option is tempting. With my newly unlocked gear from Sabasa, Rostrum mines are now available for grinding. The mobs here are decent xp and can spawn 4 of for more job XP, a new grinding spot just makes me want to try it. After grinding out the last martial artist level Bunni needs, and apprentice hero for Bess, since I got in the groove of it, I head over to Grandour. I go to the casino, get some chips and buy 3 hypnocrowns for my slimes. Not a big upgrade but its still nice. From here I head out to Magistea Village, only to learn I cannot start the side quest. Unfortunate. This means I can't do the strategy I was planning to do. That said, I could still go grab better gear further. I run to Saloon hoping to get crystal equipment but sadly this isn't an option yet. I try out getting mythic equipment at San Ilia, but to do that I'd need to beat the book boss and progress the main story which I'm definitely not ready for. I decided to explore the cave right below Saloon with the idea to find crystal gear in barrels. I find a crystal armor and a spiked shell, both of which are minor upgrades, but more importantly I found a completely unexpected surprise: Honey Pot Girl. I didn't even know she spawns there. I was fully expecting to only get her at the administrator tower. She's a slime I can actually beat with leg sweep abuse since she isn't stun immune, despite her level being way out of my league. After intentionally dying to her after a really long fight to spam as many talk actions as possible, I realized 3 martial artists just wont cut it with their pathetic damage. I switched Bunni back to a Dragoon, upgraded her Divine Halberd+ (found on Saloon Hill) to Raging Fang making it get an additional +35 agi and +20 atk + having it do earth damage which deals bonus damage vs the Honey Pot girl Level 1 martial artist gives Bess Leg sweep. It gives me double odds to stun her. My plan is simple- T1 Divide on Bunni + stun the honeypot girl using either Lime or Bess. T2 Guard Break from Bunni + Boost drink --> Double sweep again. T3 Use 2 buffs on Bunni + have Lime Leg Sweep and Bess use a boost drink on Bunni. T4 Nuke with division + stat boosts, have Lime/Bunni continue leg sweeps. T5+ Use strongest spear skill I can/use a boost drink if not enough SP After about 5-6 attempts to recruit her I managed to recruit her. I got myself the single most powerful slime of the run. Mitsuko's trait allows her to always use slime, tentacle and co*pse skills, and her slime + tentacle skills execute twice but cost 150% SP. But more notably, she has the Slime and Scylla races which are some of the strongest in the game and the Mimic race is quite good at this stage of the game aswell. She also has strong starting skills and is a high level summoner from the get go. Her level of 26 immedietely makes her my highest level character by far. The fact that she has magician skills at a high level is really convenient. She immedietely has access to some nice AoE skills, and the summoner skills are not half bad. The level 8 summoner reward- Dragon, in particular looks nice since I'll be facing some enemies vulnerable to fire. I use her to retire Luka permanently, at the cost of having no more talk-bot. From here on out it's a real slime only run. Having a full team is so nice, especially since the newest member is even stronger than my main team of Lime and Bunni on paper. Bess who is underleveled and ungrinded can only be a leg sweep spammer as she is now. Mitsuho can apply the following debuffs-- Stun, Blind, Silence, Bind, Slimed, Poison, Zombie, H*rny, Death. Hugely versatile. For the time being I switched race to Mega Slime so I can get Division ASAP. This skill is a huge help. With this I also decided that I'll be making Bess my support. I switched her over to gadabout, hoping to turn her into a dancer/singer some time soon. Originally the plan for me was to take Naho and turn her into the support since she starts with gadabout and maid at lvl 10 but since I have to get through Sylph and Hild to do that, potentially even past Sabasa, It's probably more efficient to just have Bess do it. It's not like I'm losing much considering how useless Bess's trait is. That was the secret plan I was planning to do-- use rakshasa palm to one shot Naho and save scum until she gets recruited. Sadly this is not an option anymore, but I did get blindsided by the unexpected lucky encounter with the honey pot. Still, with a full party now I can finally be happy knowing I've gotten through the worst of it. I didn't feel the need to grind yet, so I decided to progress the main story as far as I can right now. I ran to finally beat Neia, then talked to the pope, and beat the book boss while I was there. Neither boss was much of a challenge for Bunni with a little bit of prep. After getting mythril ore and talking with Micaela on top of the mountain for the job change item, I accepted the mission to the next significant challenge-- Hild. Hild is really strong. With multiple Auto-hit AoE skills, A high HP pool and invulnerability to almolst every single status effect I can currently inflict, she's sure to be a huge challenge. On paper, she's sure to be worse than Morrigan, but to be fair, having 4 members instead of 2 is a huge upgrade. The first attempt against her went surprisingly well, I got lucky and managed to drop one Bunni nuke on her (see: the honey pot girl strategy), doing about 80% of her life bar, but I couldn't finish her off after she used gatling gun twice, wiping my buffs and my team. I figured the way to beat her is to just get one more buff and I happen to have a complete dead weight in my team in the form of Bess. Mitsuho is also surprisingly weak right now, despite being multiple levels above Bunni, so I figured I'll get her a utility role with time mage. I go back to grinding the Rostrum cave. Goals are Level 2 Dancer for Bess, Level 10 Time Mage for Mitsuho and Level 10 Overwhelming Fist for Lime. I decided to max out Guard and Royal Guard for Bunni, which I ended up getting to level 7 before being done with the other tasks. (I chose these 2 because I need Bunni AoE to actually farm, and these classes can use spear/heavy spear so she can continue using dragoon skills, while not wasting job xp) In addition, I got to level some of the races. Lunatic Beast for Bunni is nice for the good stats, plus berserk might come in handy later. With this grind done, I attempted Hild again. This time, having a Time Mage came in handy, but honestly, it's not a big deal since I already out speed her with my encouraging dance. T1- Division on Bunni, Slow on Mitsuho, Encouraging dance on Bess, Armor Break on Lime T2- Power Charge + Mental Concentration on Bunni, Stun on Mitsuho, Boost drink (target, Bunni) from Bess, Lime can fill in any task needed, usually she'll just lower dex, or use a pheonix feather or replace Bess to feed a boost drink T3- Nuke from Bunni, rest don't matter. For this to work, all I need is for Bunni to not get AoEd/targetted for 2 attacks. This worked out for me since Hild ended up only using single target attacks on T1 and T2, plus the Slow managed to hit her, letting me win more or less uninterrupted. With Hild out of the way with relative ease (just get lucky with her attacks while Bunni one taps her lol), I had to rethink my general strategy. In particular, Lime could replace Mitsuho as my magician, while I slowly turn Mitsuho into a basic attack/tentacle attack user. She might even be worth turning into a secondary dragoon to enhance my damage output. Since my most important fighting unit is Bunni, the rest are honestly dead weight/item users/buffer/debuffers, and Bess can still level up dancer, I decided to switch Mitsuho over to a Guard and Lime over to a Magician. If a fight is particularily hard, I'll switch them back to my strongest team. With this I head out and clear the haunted mansion getting Chrome. The Chrome-Frederica fight actually turned out quite difficult. Fortunately, Lime's Blind comes in handy again, blinding Frederica and letting me set up a Bunni combo that wipes them all out. With this I head over to Sylph. I believe its important to reach Witch Hunt Village and final Tartarus of part 1 as soon as possible to unlock 2 more slimes. The faster I get to level them, the less time I will waste later when I inevitably need to grind. Sylph falls quickly to a single stacked up Bunni spear skill. After that is the Armored Berserker. Honestly speaking, with really good RNG my Bunni might be strong enough to face him, but considering that I just want to get it over with, I just let Nero handle it. I suppose this means this run isn't slime only, now it's Tank Luka (early) + Nero Slime Only... (its over)... With Sylph, I can finally do the Sabasa quests. First, I visit Monte Carlo, and improve Vanillas Shop. While here I also beat up Eva and do a BF vs Kaiser for an accessory. The real goal of this BF is to check my level. Kaiser is level 22 which is only slightly below my team, so I know I need to step up my game. Eva herself also wasnt an absolute push over, having removed Bunni's buffs twice by targetting her and oneshotting her. While the Bunni set up does a lot of damage and one shots her, it takes 2 turns to set up and kills on the 3rd turn. The moment I run into a boss like Hild with heavy status resists and many team wide sweeps it's hopeless. For now, I rely on debuffs like paralysis, blind, bind, stun and silence. They work great but some enemies in the future might be immune to all of them. In addition, Bunni is nearing the cap of Dragoon, fortunately I can just switch her to Royal Guard when that happens in exchange for a small decrease in fighting power. Less waste is probably worth it, even though I don't think royal guard has that many desirable passives/skills. Continuing the Sabasa mission, I talk to the Assassin at the oasis, run over to sphinx, get the monster blood and fight Sara. Sara turned out to be an absolute breeze. She kept using single target hits, so all I needed was for them to not hit Bunni while she sets up. However, I discovered a new issue. Sara can survive one full combo from Bunni. I had to take one more turn after that. Grim. I hope the enemies don't scale up too fast since believe me, I don't want to grind. If I get past Adramelech I could improve my items alot and push the grinding down even further. I could also get a few more slimes for more efficient grinding (more team members). Next fight is Astaroth. If Morrigan is anything to go by, I shouldn't need much, just silence her and win with a big Bunni set up. When I fought her, I was expecting an easy fight and it was even easier than I expected. Turns out Bunni reached level 10 Dragoon from Sara and unlocked a new skill. Wyvern Dance, which basically doubled my damage just like that. (You) have no idea how much relief this gave me. Astaroth got absolutely nuked with over 50k damage to spare. Next fight is Saki. I do want to unlock Superstar for Bess later. The dance buffs and sing buffs are very useful. The fight ends up quite messy as she debuffs me, but De-L*st potions came in clutch. She also doesn't do that much damage, whenever she kills someone I just res them up and its no big deal. With this I can run over to the Witch Hunt Village. Finally, my 5th slime is within reach. While I don't know if she'll have much use, considering her high level pro*titute when you recruit her she might see some minor use as a secondary support. If he passive is good, she might replace Bess as Dancer/Singer, and I could turn Bess into something else, maybe a chef or thief. Though Vinum from what I recall is a max level master thief, so she's more of an obvious choice for thief than Bess. At Witch Hunt Village, I obviously side with Lily. I want to fight in the tower as soon as possible and recruit her. I start grinding. I did level up Lime to be an informant, and Mitsuho comes in handy with her skill that stuns all foes (from mimic). With this I unlock the 5th slime of the run. Naho. Her trait allows her to always use s*xcraft skills, and those that use her hands deal 50% more damage. (100% vs slimed). In addition her s*xcraft skills apply slimed 30% of the time. Honestly, it's mid. Definitely better than the predation passive for Bess. Maybe if there is an enemy that can get slimed, I could set up a slimed pl*sure nuke where Naho could shine. She also has access to Self-Destruct since she starts as an Evil-Maton rather than a slime. That might be OK as a last second suicide desperation attack. She's unlikely to get used honestly. With this done I head out to Saloon, quickly dispatch the bandits and get the crystal so I can make crystal items. The Lizard Boss died quite easily to Mitsuho using Ink and Lime using blind. Bunni simply buffed up and one tapped her as she kept missing. I didn't even lose a single point of HP. Having done this, I rush straight to Gnome. I don't even bother exploring the Ruins, the loot here isn't worth the time. I run over to fight Gnome, expecting an easy fight... Only to die after she casts earthquake turn 1 and turn 2. I see. Surely just bad luck. I look her up in the wiki and apparently Bind works against her. Mitsuho can bind her and I can just set up a Bunni combo with ease. How can I lose? Then I lost again. 7 75% bind rolls. Maybe wiki is wrong on this, or I got extraordinarily unlucky. Third attempt. Ilias says she uses a lot of physical attacks but says blind is unlikely to hit. If this is true, then if I blind her and then just don't get earthquaked, how can I lose? So I run over for an another attempt. And.... I win? The fight was really messy. At one point, I only had Mitsuho alive against a blinded Gnome, I needed a 5 turn long earthquake drought to win after she earthquaked twice in early game. A surprisingly hard fight after a series of absolute cakewalks. Surely this isn't a sign of things to come :^)... With this done, all that's left is the Tartarus and the Final Boss of part 1. More importantly, in the Tartarus there is one highly important monster- Vitae. The 6th and final slime of part 1. I recall she was actually quite good late game, so I really do want to see her trait. Her master thief job at lvl10 also looks mighty tempting, finally all those pesky green chests can be opened. For now, I should just recruit Vitae and go from there. I switch Naho to a Chef for the pre-battle buffs, though she isn't high enough level yet, I hope to get level 5 chef as I farm Vitae. I run to the tartarus and start grinding. In 15 minutes, I recruit Vitae. She's a pain to farm, her slime splash kept wiping my team out. I ended up using 30 boost drinks and 50 phoenix feathers. Good lord... Well, we did get a good unit for our troubles Her trait makes her deal 30% water damage (could be shockingly good) and she can always use Slime and Artificial skills. Slime Skills deal +30% damage. This can be surprisingly useful for farming rostrum mines. Maybe I can grind them without a heavy spear Bunni. In addition her artificial skills deal +100% damage to slimed foes. Honestly, from what I remember Artificial skills aren't half bad. They're good standalone damage, so this could be useful as some last second damage. She's also a level 5 machinist. If I do need Makinas, she will without a doubt be my go-to. With her under my belt, it's time to enter the final area. I decided to not grind any more for prep. I could farm out some levels in chef for Naho, guard for Mitsuho and maybe a few levels of time magician for Lime, but it's not so important. Though I do admit, I really should have Mitsuho on Guard and not Warrior. Having only Lime (and Bunni) to use armor break sucks if you need a magician for debuffs aswell. Atleast Mitsuho now has access to the maid skills that blinds, so thats one less worry. After ignoring all encounters in the tower except a few honey pots in the honey pot basement (I changed my mind and wanted lvl5 Chef for the buffs.), I start the fight with Adremelech. I was well aware that she will probably be the hardest fight in the entire playthrough. Paradox Adremelech is strong as is. Your team needs to be really strong to beat her. Having Slimes, who are vulnerable to her damages just makes it worse. For my first few attempts, I decide to go as I am to understand what I need to beat her. 1) She has multiple team wide wipes. Meteor, Holy Light are full team wipes. Tentacle Dance can wipe out up to 3 units. If she uses any of these it's almolst certainly a retry. She uses them a lot. Her single target hits are obviously one shots, so I also need them to miss Bunni. VERY GRIM.... 2) She has full debuff immunity except stop/slow from time mage. There is no way I'll beat her without double time mage. Fortunately I have Mitsuho and Lime. I fed Lime some Job XP seeds to get her Stop, and switched Mitsuho. 3) She has very high Agi. Since it's paradox, It's really hard to outrace her turn 1 for my time mages. For this purpose, I preemptive leveled Chef for Naho. Her pre-buff on Agi might be significant. In addition, I switched out my magician gear for as much Agi as I can fit in them. I don't know if Agi stacks but I sure hope it does. Never have I been hapier to have a 20% Agi buff from Overwhelming Fist for Lime. 4) Her stats are INSANE. In one of the attempts, I managed to get a half-assed Bunni nuke (I'd estimate about 40% of the actual nuke damage). It only did 20-30% of her HP bar. I might need 2 Bunni nukes for this one. We start the first real attempt: Turn 0: Apply all relevant food buffs to the team. 50% to the following stats: Evasion, Magic evasion, Attack, Agi, Defense, Crit chance. Turn 1: Bunni, Division. Mitsuho, Stop. Bess, Encouraging dance. Lime, Stop. The first stop hits Adremelech. Turn 2: Bunni, Mental Concentration, Focused Mind. Mitsuho, Quick (target Bunni). Bess, Boost drink (target Bunni). Lime, Guard break Turn 3: Bunni, Wyvern Dance x2. Mitsuho, Stop. Bess, Boost drink (target Bunni). Lime, Stop. Total Damage: Over 300k. One Shot Kill. 50% Agi, Atk from food. 50% Agi, Atk from Encouraging Dance. 150% Agi from Mental Concentration. 25% Atk, Agi from Focused Mind (also 50% crit chance boost). Another 70% Agi from Quick. On a target with 10% of their normal Def. Bunni also gets additional 30% Agi from her trait and another 20% from the Gold Bracelet. In addition she's using a Wind Shield which gives her 20 more base Agi in exchange for like 80 Def and 70 Wil that a better shield would give. She has 475 Agi and 236 Atk after the base number buffs. In abilities she has an another 20% Atk boost and a 10% Agi boost. Dragoon provides her with 120% Agi compared to normal. Lunatic Beast also does 120% Agi. If it's multiplicative on top of all these buffs, you get a 1.44x multiplier. Bunni must've had like 1500% Agi and 1000% Atk on that attack. On top of the attack itself being 144% (Atk + Agi)x3. She also is pretty much guranteed to crit with 2 50% boosters. Incredible... So this is the power of Slimes... I would imagine this can probably carry me all the way to the Sonya. [Day ??? End. Total playtime: 25 hours.]