I'm going to TRY to write a shorter report now that I've been over the bosses and mechanics several times, but not sure if I'm capable.

Lucius slashed through the Wind Shrine like any melee character with a broad sword. For Karlabos, I grinded up to level 12 and attack multiplier 7 (White's was 5 at level 20!) with three Elixirs, which was enough to win after about ten attempts. Lucius's great speed definitely helped, sometimes getting to act twice in a row against Karlabos. Siren went down easily to physical attacks, burning Lucius's one remaining Elixir for a heal.

A Long Sword purchase in Carwen brought Lucius's offense to 180 per hit -- more than White was doing at *Atmos* at level *64*. This was enough to kill Magisa rapidly, then heal with potions in the back row, then kill Forza too. Garula was zero threat, literally, his 12 attack unable to punch through a 15 armor rating as with every character who can wear heavy armor, see the 0 damage he's dealing there.

A Mythril Sword purchase in Karnak boosted Lucius even more. Copying Batman's strategy exactly, he made sure to kill LiquidFlame in the whirlwind form in order to score a Flame Bow drop for use against Byblos.

And Lucius had the strength to win all the fights and claim all the important chests in the Karnak escape (skipped the Shuriken and Heal spell.) I never realized this before, but the Cur Nakk enemies just run away if you beat all the other enemies in the fight, so that saves time. Lucius did however go through an entire stock of 99 potions in the Steamship dungeon and castle escape. Might have to keep an eye on how much damage he takes.

Lucius arrived at the library at level 20, so had to grind a few battles outside to avoid L5 Death, no way around that. Ifrit in the library took a few tries until I got the Elixir timing right, his Fire 2 made a big dent in Lucius's mediocre life total. Byblos was Plan Flame Bow and hope that it hit while all his nasty stuff missed, which happened after around 15 attempts. Needed 4 Elixirs on each library boss, but got them done at level 21 without any extra grinding.

Lucius learned his next ability, Long Reach, in the Sandworm fight. Pretty useful. It's roughly like Double Grip against physical bosses, granting the hero a 2:1 damage advantage. Unless otherwise stated, you can assume that Lucius went into all boss battles with Long Reach equipped and standing in the back row.

CrayClaw actually had Lucius in a bad situation. He had no Elixirs left after the library bosses and one on Sandworm, and there's no place to get any more while you're stuck in that underground area. I had made sure to pick up a Thunder Bow in Crescent ahead of time, and fortunately Lucius had just leveled (on literally the last fight before this) for an attack multiplier to get the kill in two hits. I still had to retry several times to get the right sequence of boss attacks and no kill combo.

I should have done this before CrayClaw but remembered for Adamantimi: take advantage of Lucius's weapon flexibility to go get a Doom Axe weapon from the enemies outside Crescent. Dead in one hit, although it took several tries at the fight until the Death spell went off.

Lucius had been flying through the game up to this point; the only time I had to stop and grind anything was Karlabos. He was only at level 25 with no Elixirs going into the Flamegun and Rocket Launcher battles. I didn't want to go save up for a Flame Ring, so employed Arylon's tactic for the Rocket Launchers. They only deal percentage-based damage, so the only way you can die is from a confused self-hit. According to Arylon, equip a weapon that can't punch through your own armor, and you'll never kill yourself and inevitably kill the opponent.

Except this doesn't work. The Rocket Launchers have 20 defense and the most Lucius could assemble was 21. This meant Lucius needed a weapon of *exactly* 19 attack value, because most weapons roll an attack value between A and A + A*1/8 for each swing, which would come out to 21 max. There exists no such weapon. Using an axe-type weapon for its defense piercing would pierce Lucius's own defense too. Sullla said he should have thought of the weak weapon "solution" sooner than his Dancer playthrough... but it ONLY works for the Dancer because Sword Dance doubles the weapon attack value. A couple other classes can make it work, like the Blue Mage or Chemist cutting down their defense, but most characters can't.

I next tried to beat Rocket Launchers using Lucius's speed. At 41 agility to their 33 speed, he SHOULD be able to keep the Knife in hand (to hit himself for 0 if confused), wait until just after they act, swap to the Trident lightning-element spear for a hit, then get the turn back before they act again to swap back to the Knife. This didn't work either - the Rocket Launchers would get their next turn many seconds before Lucius would. I don't understand what happened here. It was as if they were Hasted, but the algorithms guide doesn't list that.

Lucius could beat Rocket Launchers the direct way by retrying; he could kill each in three hits with his lightning spear, so would just need them to avoid using Rocket Punch for six rounds. That worked to win two battles eventually, but the RNG went screwy again as it often does in the GBA version. I couldn't get the RNG to reliably spawn any more Rocket Launchers no matter what I did; it would be Flameguns on 9/10 attempts. Eventually I just got through by farming Elixirs to burn three per Flamegun fight.

And for Sol Cannon, there was no way around needing the 50k gold for the Angel Ring. I tried once to kill Sol Cannon directly with the lightning spear damage, but could only get halfway there before Lucius aged into nothing. Sullla makes it sound like grinding up the 50k gold is this huge lengthy task, but it took under an hour of game time, half hour of real time. My favorite place was the plains by Karnak meteor, where most enemies would die in one hit, Zuu birds in two, and the turtles would drop Turtle Shells to sell for 125. Anyway, Angel Ring donned, the Launchers blew up quickly and then it was a matter of drinking five Elixirs through five Surge Beams.

The Ronka Ruins encounters hit hard as always. After just playing White with the healing staff, I wasn't used to this, Lucius had to keep track of his potion supply. 99 Potions barely lasted the whole dungeon, even with frequent retreating to a save point and Tenting. But Lucius had to fight through every encounter with the Brave Blade in his future.

For ArchaeoAevis, Lucius made use of his weapon mastery again. Tool #1 was a Dark Bow, which fortunately had dropped from a random encounter in Ronka or else I wouldn't have remembered about it. Each form of the boss is vulnerable to blinding, so Lucius hit it once with that bow. The game gives you a graphical flash when the darkness status hits, very important. Tool #2 was the Doom Axe/Death Sickle, as the most powerful axe to pierce the defense of the first few forms. Tool #3 was the Ancient Sword to use for more reliable damage against the last few with less defense. It took until the third try to not get wiped by a paralyze-Maelstrom combo and Lucius had to use all three of his remaining Elixirs, but that worked.

I was actually finding that Elixir supply was the limiting factor more often than anything else for boss battles. Big change from the White Mage of course. I kept in mind the Flame Ring + Flametongue self healing combo for the future... wait, Lucius could do that right now with the Flame Bow. Haha, I could have avoided quite a bit of Elixir grinding before this point by picking up a Flame Ring.

Chim.Brain/Manticore and Titan were killed to death by sword hits from Long Range. The Purobolos posed a bit of a problem. I really didn't want to have to go level Lucius over 1500 HP to use White's solution, but neither did I want to take forever on retrying until the right ones exploded at the right times.

First I tried using the Doom Axe to at least kill one out of the way, but somehow it was able to revive ITSELF after that! If only there were some way Lucius could hit all the Puroboli at the same time.

Hey, look at that.

And I got exactly the perfect results on the first try. I swapped down to a weaker weapon than the Ancient Sword for the third Bladeblitz so as not to surpass 1500 damage to kill any. The three front Puroboxen exploded for less than 100 damage each while the back three stayed put. Two more Bladeblitzes and Lucius waited for them to harmlessly self-destruct too.

Lucius continued to round up the cash for a Flame Ring, then headed to world two.