SEQUEL Kuu-ludge

Timestamps: 0:00 Chromea Solo 1:19 Plamia Solo 2:15 Zemlia Solo 3:22 Idea Party 4:58 Idea Solo 6:30 Hellkite Engine Party 7:43 Hellkite Engine Solo 9:18 Hellkite Engine 2 Turns 10:36 Metalzect Party 11:24 Metalzect Solo 12:49 Elegygahrema Party 13:48 Elegygahrema Solo 15:10 Combined Mechagod Solo 16:18 Combined Mechagod Party 17:15 Yolnaya Max Damage, Ver. 1.11 22:14 Kuu Max Damage, Ver. 1.00 I was going through my previous runs of Kludge's postgame when I noticed Hakika's patch notes mentioned two very interesting changes to two skills in the game. In Ver. 1.02, the Beast Stance skill's effect was completely changed, while in Ver. 1.03, the number of hits on the skill Ether Claw was modified to match the description. With these two changes, I decided to head back to my saves back when I played Kludge in Japanese on Ver. 1.00 to see what was up with these skills. Having seen what these skills were originally like, I now consider Ver. 1.00 Kuu (let's say pre-patch Kuu) to be an absolute monster in the postgame once he abuses a certain extreme interaction with Beast Stance and his AGI-based skills. He is the strongest post-Blight character without exception and one of the strongest characters Hakika has ever made in the series. Let's get into what changed between versions. Starting with Ether Claw on the most recent update in Ver. 1.11, this skill is a 150 Power AGI-based attacking skill that inflicts damage on two random enemies, with each hit having 75 Power. This effect matches the description on the current update of the game. On Ver. 1.00, this skill's description is the same, but instead of two hits, the attack can now hit 4 separate times on random enemies, effectively doubling the move's power from 150 to 300. This makes Ether Claw one of the strongest single-target skills in the game: it's low in SP cost, doesn't require pre-conditions to execute the move, and can be boosted to extreme levels through stacking AGI modifiers on Kuu. On the other hand, we have the change made to Beast Stance. On Ver. 1.11, this move applies 3 buffs at the cost of 25 TP: a +40% boost to AGI, a +20% boost to physical evasion, and a +20% boost to critical rate. This is a critical skill in Kuu's moveset when he's building towards evasion and high damage with the AGI and crit boosts. In the original version of the game, Beast Stance only applies a +20% critical buff to Kuu. In exchange, the skills makes Kuu's next attack "preemptive" when used. This sounds like an underwhelming effect, especially when Kuu has the Magic Enhancement buff in his skill tree that makes his magic attacks also preemptive as well. However, the difference between that buff and Beast Stance's effect is which speed property they modify. For Magic Enhancement, this buff only modifies his action speed for the turn without influencing his AGI, but for Beast Stance, this skill directly modifies Kuu's AGI by adding thousands to tens of thousands of points to the stat to make his next move "preemptive". Because Beast Stance hyper inflates Kuu's AGI to insane amounts, we can abuse this by setting aside a charge turn to get the boosted agility, and then we attack on the next with an AGI-dependent skill to do calamitous amounts of damage to the enemy. Based on my testing, the damage multipliers for this move made Kuu's attacks deal anywhere from 50x ~ 100x more damage than his normal usage of his AGI-based attacking skills, depending on his equipment and passive traits. It's much easier to see how broken this is in the video, so I'll let it demonstrate why Kuu has the best damage in the series. The comments will include my notes for the strategies and compositions for each boss.