Epic Battle Fantasy 5 – Temple of Trials Guide

Here is a guide showing you how to beat some of the toughest superbosses in the game. Proceed at your own risk.

Intro

The Evil Players are some of the most challenging fights in the game, especially on Epic mode. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all of their powerful attacks and their crippling special statuses, so I made this guide to give struggling players some tips, tricks, and general info on how to beat the Evil Players (and God).

Matteus, the Hungry Golem

Overview

Matteus has very high physical attack power and a lot of health, which is a problem, since his special condition is that you must defeat him within fifteen turns, otherwise, everyone will be instantly killed. Limit Breaks are also banned for this fight, just to make your life harder. His stats are as follows:

Resistances

Here are important things to note about what he resists:

• Matteus is mostly weak to water and bomb, but ice works, too
• He is immune to curse/bad luck, but only resistant to tired/weak
• He resists Dispel
• He is immune to Stagger
• It is impossible to lower his physical defense or his magical defense, while he has a 40% resistance to all other debuffs.

Attacks

Here are important things to keep in mind about the attacks he uses:

• They tend to either be non-elemental, earth or bomb attacks.
• Matteus can doom you with his basic skills.
• He can buff his defense.
• His physical attack gets a small boost after using his limit break on harder difficulties.
• His limit break (as well as the rest of his skillset) is always physical. Even the allies he summons (Earth Sprites, Dirt Boulders, Sandstone Boulder, Leaf Wraith, Thorny Creep) mostly use physical skills.

Strategy

Before we get started with Matteus’ strategy, I want to make one thing clear: I do not like using the Virus status to kill things. It undercuts most of the strategy you’d use for the wide variety of enemies in the game, making battles monotonous and sloggish.

That said, because of how you have a very limited number of turns to kill him, not to mention his high HP stat, using Virus to kill him is probably your best option, especially since 9 stacks of virus take out almost 5% of HP each turn without modifiers. The easiest way to inflict Virus status would be Lance’s double shot with the Biohazard Blaster, or Natalie’s Spectrum with the Beholding Eye. However, this means that you need to protect your own team from the Virus, so be sure to make everyone immune to poison.

Equipment-wise, make sure everyone resists earth and bomb, as well as being immune to the poison/virus status.

Battle-wise, Keep everyone’s buffs up, Give Matteus as many viruses as you can and make him tired to amplify the damage. Poisoning him wouldn’t be a bad idea, since Tired amplifies that, too, and poison deals half as much damage as virus does (though you’ll need to refresh the Tired status more often as well as the Poison status). Theoretically, if Matteus constantly had 9 stacks of poison, virus and tired throughout the whole battle, he would lose about 146% of his HP by turn 15 just from passive damage!

As long as he’s tired, it’s going to lower his accuracy (which he never buffs), so be sure to capitalize on that and use reflex every now and again. This will be godsend for avoiding damage, especially when he uses Legend near the end of the battle. Making him weakened is another great way to do this, especially since it negates his limit break attack boost in two turns.

Matteus inflicts Doom with Swift Slash and Basic Attack, which is a problem, especially since he uses it twice in a row, and it only gives you a 2-turn countdown. Be sure to have purify or medipack ready at a moment’s notice.

Every now and again, he’s going to buff himself. If you gave Anna one status-infliction boosting equip, she’ll have an overall 90% chance to dispel him with her bomb arrow. This is convenient, but also a nuisance in the off chance that it doesn’t work since every turn counts in this battle. A far more consistent way to dispel him would be Lance’s armor crush. Though it has a one turn cooldown, it’s rare that Matteus ever buffs himself twice in a row.

Overall, this battle is about making Matteus as sick and tired as possible, literally. Meanwhile, keep an eye on your own health, and sneak in as many strong hits as you can for good measure. I would personally recommend that you catch him, since you could avoid having to lop off the last fifth of his HP if he’s suffering from enough of an evasion debuff, various statuses, and you have a dedicated capturer with one or two catching equipment (which is only helped by how the male catching armor also resists bomb).

Natalia, the Dark Priestess

Overview

Natalia uses lots of fire and holy attacks. While they are mostly magical, she uses some physical skills, too! Her special status makes you very weak to fire and holy damage, while also nullifying healing magic. Healing ITEMS still work, though, and you can technically revive your teammates with magic (though they’ll have 0 HP and will die in one hit). This is what her stats look like:

Resistances

Here’s some things to remember about what she resists:

• She resists (but is not immune to) weaken/tired and curse/bad luck.
• She resists (but is not immune to) dispel
• She is weak to water, wind and dark.
• Her magic attack and magic defense stats cannot be lowered. All other stats have a 40% debuff resistance.

Attacks

Here’s some things to know about her attacks:

• Natalia’s attacks take full advantage of your crippling status ailment. This means that she attacks with ONLY fire and holy attacks.
• She can dispel your party, and can dispel stat debuffs from herself.
• Many of her attacks inflict burn, scorch, or weaken.
• Natalia has two moves where she sends orbs into the air, and they’ll crash down on you the next turn.

Strategy

Natalia has superb magical defense, so be sure to enter this battle with physical damage as your main priority. Natalie will most likely be playing a support role as a result.

Getting as much fire and holy resistance as possible is very important, but only getting 100% resistance for all characters pre-battle (giving you a net resistance of 0) is also acceptable.

Dispel resistance is highly recommend. Burn and Scorch resistance is also not a bad idea.

Natalia’s orb attacks can be effectively dodged if one character has an equip that gives them the enchanted status on defend as well as an equip that gives then target status on defend. Keep in mind that you may end up stacking status effects on that character, and that they aren’t completely safe from Eruption and Seiken.

Inflicting Curse, Tired and Weaken on Natalia isn’t a bad idea, especially since she has a tendency to dispel herself when her buffs drop below -10%. This can give your team quite a few breathing turns.

Lancelot, the Killer Android

Overview

Lancelot has insanely high physical defense, making magic the only reliable damage source. He also gives your party the permanent Repulsion status, which prevents you from using summons or using passive skills between turns (though skills triggered from certain moves tied to the user’s weapon still trigger, as well as statuses granted from equipment). His stats are as follows:

Resistances

Here are some things to note about Lancelot’s resistances:

• Lancelot cannot be poisoned or burned.
• Lancelot has no resistance to being weakened, tired, cursed, or given bad luck.
• Lancelot has partial resistance to being dispelled
• Lancelot is mostly weak to bomb damage, though he’s also vulnerable to fire, thunder, earth and holy damage.
• His physical defense and his accuracy cannot be lowered.

Attacks

Here are some things to note about Lancelot’s attacks:

• Most of his attacks are bomb elemental, though he likes using fire and thunder, too, most notably in his limit breaks.
• Lancelot can use Giga Drill on all active allies.
• Many of Lancelot’s attacks tend to debuff a player’s stats (most notably Bullet Hell and Plasma Field).
• Lancelot can stun players with some of his attacks, though he can also disable and confuse them, mostly near the end of the fight.
• Lancelot’s shooting attacks have a high chance of instant death.

Strategy

The biggest elements you’ll need to resist are bomb, fire and thunder. While he does use a dark attack, it’s not the strongest one in his arsenal.

Lancelot is the easiest boss to weaken, curse and tire. Use this to your advantage, both for keeping his offensive stats low and for multiplying holy damage. While he does give himself a massive buff every now and then, Lance’s armor crush should make short work of it.

Lancelot loves using debuffs. This sounds pretty bad on paper, but it will prevent his summoned turrets from reversing your stats. He never debuffs magic defense, which is good for resisting most of his attacks (and both his limit breaks), but keeping his physical attack low through weaken is important for avoiding the inevitable physical damage. Mostly, it is important to keep your physical defense low for when he uses Giga Drill to avoid a total party wipe.

Lance inflicts instant death and stun a LOT. Be sure to resist those statuses. He starts confusing and disabling your party near the end of the fight, which can make things very tricky. Using equipment (Scottish Cap, Leafy Hairclip, Summer Kimono, Lucky Clover) and skills (refresh, cleanse, Mother Earth) to get the blessed status in this last leg of the fight is important.

Annabelle, the Horned Demon

Overview

Annabelle’s fight has a large focus on crippling your party. For instance, her permanent status effect is that any positive buffs are immediately converted to debuffs, while debuffs remain the same, effectively making it so that your buffs can’t ever be positive. Her stats look like this:

Resistances

Here are some things to note about what she resists:

• Annabelle is most weak to holy damage, but wind and water damage are also effective.
• Annabelle has no resistance against being burned or poisoned, but she absorbs both fire and bio damage.
• Annabelle’s attack and magic attack stats cannot be lowered, all of her other stats have a 40% resistance.
• Annabelle is completely immune to being weakened, tired, cursed, or given bad luck.
• Annabelle partially resists (but is not immune to) being dispelled.
• Annabelle has no resistance against stagger.

Attacks

Here are some important things about Annabelle’s attacks:

• They are mostly dark or wind element. Sometimes both, since some of her skills unleash Whirlwind or Hurricane.
• Many of her attacks can poison you, or even give you virus status. Poison resistance is a must.
• Her limit breaks include Annihalate and Black Hole. Needless to say, you may need some protection against that.
• Annabelle has many moves with debuffing effects.
• Annabelle can dispel, but only one player at a time.

Strategy

This is probably one of the most frustrating fights in the game because of her status effect, though there are a few things to consider. Considering the fact that getting revived after dying results in having your buffs and debuffs reset, dying can be seen as almost beneficial, since it removes any debuffs you have. Needless to say, you may need a lot of coffee.

Annabelle begins the fight with a Zombie Hydra. Since Annabelle can’t summon more Zombie Hydras, you have two options. The first option is to kill it, and put up with whatever weaker enemy she spawns. The second option is to stack weaken, tired and syphon effects on it without actually killing it to render it useless.

Given the fact that Annabelle is immune to weaken, tired, curse and bad luck, the only way to effectively lower her stats is to have a dedicated debuffer with three pieces of debuffing equipment. These include:

• Beholding Eye (staff)
• Alchemy Set (staff)
• Spine Snapper (gun)
• The Deceased (bow)
• Human Skull (toys)
• Cardboard Box (mHat)
• Coat of Teeth (mArmor)
• Rubber Duck (fHat)
• Cow Costume (fArmor)

It is essential to have as much protection against poison as possible. Half of her moves inflict poison, and sometimes even virus, so it’s important that you’re immune to it.

Defending against Annabelle’s limit breaks can be tricky, but they only deal damage once, and no enemies attack after her turn, so using Stumpy Gloop to give everyone morale is a great way to defend yourself.

Annabelle never bothers buffing herself, only ever occasionally giving herself defend (and brave on higher difficulties) status.

Annabelle will occasionally syphon or curse you, but those can be cured, since she likely won’t be doing it consistently.

Her strongest moves by far are multi-Black Spikes and multi-Tentacles. Don’t be discouraged if it takes your entire turn to recover from them.

God, the Strongest Being in the Universe

Overview

As you might expect, God is the single strongest foe in the game. So much so, that it is possibly the greatest challenge in the game even after receiving the Epic buff, where all of your stats (HP, Atk, mAtk, Def, mDef, Acc, Evd) increase by 25% every turn. His stats look like this:

Resistances

Some things to note about his resistances:

• God’s elemental resistances are completely neutral.
• God resists everything to some degree other than stagger, dry/wet or weaken/heavy. Other than that, he has 50% resistance to everything except the standard freeze, stun and death immunity.
• God has lower defense and magic defense than most foes would (God = ~6, Evil Players = ~8, most foes = ~9 at level 36), but has twice as much (332 vs 166 at level 36) evasion as Annabelle (who had the highest evasion of any of the evil players), and nearly three times as much HP (God = ~9,000,000 vs Evil Players = ~3,000,000 at level 36).
• He resists all stat debuffs by 40%.

Attacks

Some things to note about his attacks:

• Like most cat-themed bosses in the game, God attacks twice in one turn.
• Every single one of God’s attacks are completely non-elemental.
• God can confuse, weaken, and occasionally dispel and stun you.
• God has two buffing moves, a defensive buff that gets rid of poison and virus, and an offensive buff that gets rid of weaken, tired, curse and syphon.

Strategy

As probably the most wholesome boss in the game, he grants you insane buffs throughout the fight. You’ll want to make use of them. Dispel resistance is a VERY high priority. If a player dies, it’ll take them a while to build their buffs back up again, so send them in backup for a while. God can’t hit players in backup without his limit break.

Speaking of his limit break, this one’s a bit unique. Once he gets it, he spends a turn charging it up. This takes up his entire turn (both his turns?), which gives you a lot of much-needed time to prepare. The next turn, he will start by unleashing the limit break, followed by one more attack. To defend against this, use the angel mirror to enchant everyone, or use either Genesis or Nine Lives to give everyone auto-revive. Either strategy has its own risks, but the safest thing you an do is to do both.

One thing to remember is that, because of the large figures of damage being thrown about, your Limit Break fills up quickly. Don’t be afraid to use your limit breaks at any given moment.

God will get rid of certain statuses if you stack them too high. More specifically, he will get rid of poison or virus effects with a defensive buff if they get to 7 stacks or higher, and he will get rid of weaken, curse, tired, and syphon with an offensive buff if either weaken, curse and/or tired get to 6 stacks or higher, or if he’s syphoned at all. While it is not recommended to trigger his offensive buff, triggering his defensive buff can be exploited for the use of Giga Drill. Keep in mind that God will occasionally buff himself unprompted, usually on the first move of his turn.

God’s attacks get exponentially stronger as the battle progresses. Make sure that your buffs stay at 95% for as long as possible.

God can occasionally stun and confuse your entire party. Make sure at least one player is completely immune to both effects so that they may cure the others, preferably whoever has Purify.