Cie'th Stone Mission 55: Can't We All Just Get Along?

[ScottyRedXIII]

Ok, i've tried following the guide book to beet this..... allas i've had no luck, it seems he dosen't want to die at the hands of vanille's death......... any sugestions?

[Loony BoB]

My advice: If it doesn't die after 20 attempts at death, go back to your save and try again. After a certain number of casting attempts I noticed that Death will basically never work, but it seems to be more likely to work in the first five to ten castings, so just keep trying. I tried once and cast Death maybe 50-100 times to no avail, being really frustrated. I was going to show Danielle how it wouldn't work so picked the fight again, and... first time, it worked. Go figure. xD

[G13]

I haven't picked this game up in a while but back when it was new we compiled all of our personal battling experiences to make a detailed gamer's guide for gamers, or whatever the technical term that the Site Staff use is.

Missions ( http://forums.eyesonff.com/final-fantasy-xiii-site-content-project/130774-missions.html)

I'm not sure if we ever finished the missions guide but it's worth a look to see if 55 is in there.

[BG-57]

Additionally, gamefaqs.com has a five star mission guide that worked for me.

[Jessweeee♪]

It's been a while, but I think what I did for this one was keep Snow as a Sentinel and Hope as a medic for the entire battle, and then had Vanille alternate between whatever roles were necessary. Or it may have been Snow and Fang, both as Sentinels the entire time. In any case, two of my party members never ever switched roles when changing Paradigms. It was a slow fight.

Vanille's magic stat affects Death's success rate, so it's good to have a maxed out Marlboro Wand, which has an ability that improves the success rate of Saboteur abilities. Also, Snow has a nifty weapon (I can't recall the name) with the ability Improved Guard II that's worthwhile in situations where you never take him out of the Sentinel role.

[ScottyRedXIII]

Did it, lady luck was on my side as i killed it on the 2nd death try :)

[Jessweeee♪]

Hooray!

[ZeroFusion]

Vanille's magic stat affects Death's success rate, so it's good to have a maxed out Marlboro Wand, which has an ability that improves the success rate of Saboteur abilities.
I disagree. Vanille's magic stat affects the damage Death does if it fails to kill the target. The success rate of Death is completely unaffected by it.

Beladona Wand has the ability called "Improved Debuffing", which affects the success rate of Vanille's debuffing spells / abilities (and similarly, Marlboro Wand, an upgraded version of Beladona Wand, has the upgraded "Improved Debuffing II"). However, Death is not a debuffing spell / ability (it isn't considered a debilitating spell / ability either, which is the other "category" of Sabouter spells / abilities). That means equipping Beladona / Marlboro wand does not improve the success rate of Death.

Now what does help you to successfully land Death on the bastard Neochu? Basic success rate of Death is 1% (that explains why it sometimes seemingly won't kill the enemy for a long time). This can be further boosted by a presence of other Saboteurs in your party (the higher their level, the better). I've read somewhere that three level 5 Sabouters give you a success rate of 1.75% (can't confirm that, I don't have access to level 10 Crystarium yet).

Another thing you can do to further boost the success rate of Death is quite simple to achieve: for every status ailment you stick on the enemy, the success rate of Death rises by 1%. That's why Beladona / Marlboro Wands are prefered in conjunction with Death - they help you to successfully land Vanille's debuffing spells and thus improving Death's success rate indirectly. The bad news is that out of all status ailments Vanille can cast, Neochu is susceptible only to Imperil.

I killed Neochu after beating chapter 11 boss and maxing out my basic roles Crystarium with the following strategy:

My party was Vanille - Snow - Hope. Since Neochu's screech pretty much one-hits both Vanille and Hope (you need Vanille to be your leader), you need only one Paradigm: SAB - SEN - MED to kill it. However, to kill all the Pikochu, I recommend four other Paradigms: RAV - SEN - MED, RAV - SEN - RAV, RAV - COM - MED and RAV - COM - RAV.
Equip Vanille with Beladona / Marlboro Wand, Snow with the weapon tha improves the effectiveness of Steelguard (Paladin?) and Hope with whichever weapon you like.
Snow's accessories should be any combination of Clay Rings, Black Belts and Royal Armlets (or any other combination of Earth and Physical attack resistance accessories).
Before entering the battle, use Fortisol. With this setup, you could easily kill Neochu (slowly, but ultimately) - only if it couldn't use that stupid Screech. This way, you have to pray a little.
As soon as you enter the battle, use Librascope. That ensures Vanille won't try to use other debuffing spells than Imperil. Alternatively, you can cast it manually, but if takes more time.
As soon as Neochu is inflicted by Imperil, start spamming Death and hope it dies before it uses Screech. If you're lucky, you can interrupt its Screech by hitting it at the time it thries to screech, but it seldom works. Better way is to use you summon when Neochu is about to use Screech, but when Hecatoncheir leaves, you have only few seconds before Neochu finishes you with another Screech / plug-my-vines-into-the-earth attack. So if you can't kill it before it uses Screech, hit Startm then Select (which takes you just before the battle - the Fortisol and Librascope you used will be back) and try again.
This can take like 5-10 tries, but after that, Neochu dies and you just have to deal with Pikochus. Don't be fooled - their attacks are relentless and can kill you quite quickly. You can either try to Death them as well, or swith to RAV - SEN - MED and pound them with elemntal spells until there are only three of them left. Switch to RAV - SEN - RAV and kill another two - if you need healing, quickly swich to RAV - COM - MED or RAV - SEN - MED. Kill the remaining Pikochu with RAV - COM - MED or RAV - COM - RAV.
The target time for Misson 55 was around 20 minutes for me (no weapon upgrades, only 1 accessory upgrade, maxed out level 9 Crystarium), which is realy generous as I was able to kill Neochu a his Pikochus in less than 5 minutes.

Hope this helps.

[Jessweeee♪]

Interesting! I was just repeating what I'd read. Thank you for correcting me!

[ZeroFusion]

You are welcome. Rereading my post again, I realized I forgot to mention that the success rate of Death also rises while the enemy is staggered (every ability is more effective when used against staggered enemy). Not that staggering Neochu is easy task if you ask me (unless you get a lucky random instant-chain).

[Loony BoB]

Is there any evidence to suggest something that would stop Death from becoming effective after a certain amount of time and/or castings in a single battle? I've had a lot of battles that went on to about 100 castings that never worked before I just gave up, and I've had a lot of times that Death worked in the first 10-20 attempts. But never have I had it work after about (estimating based on memory) 20 attempts. Never ever ever. I did a lot of those adamantoise battles, too. =/ I was upgrading all the weapons, so yeah.