Dragon Quest VII Reimagined - Low Level (Tough Going) Part 4: Tinpot Dictator & Slaughtomaton

Challenge playlist:    • Dragon Quest VII Reimagined - Low Level Ha...   Party levels 7/7/7/11 before the start of the first battle. Absolutely brutal three consecutive battles without a chance to save in between. Once again, getting to the end of all fights, including the final one against Slaughtomaton, isn't impossible, but if you want your party to gain experience from all the battles you're looking at very low odds of success. Our means of revival at this point are just the single Yggdrasil Leaf (I erroneously thought there were two of them... apparently, there's just one) and a Kerplunk Bracer, which is actually a really overpowered accessory - it resurrects the rest of the fallen party members when its wielder dies, breaking the item. I'll probably be banning it in the future boss battles, considering you can get enough copies to equip everybody in the party with it from Lucky Panel soon enough, but here it's almost a necessary safety measure to make it to the end without losing the exp. Kerplunk Bracer is nigh perfect on Ruff, the new party member, whose level advantage towers above the old guard. Ruff may not have many skills despite being job level 6 and he barely beats Kiefer in max MP, but claiming a Let Loose! ability that doubles the number of turns he takes, over 20-30 HP more than the others in the party and rock solid raw stats after putting in the top gear from stores is reason enough to celebrate having a 4th party member for some time - he isn't just a warm body. I also spent some amount of time farming Coagulants from blue sparkly spots on the overworld map and in dungeons, enough to have several thousand Gold necessary to have everybody equipped with the best gear. The results are very apparent, especially when taking regular strikes from automatons - they don't just deal single-digit damage, but can be seen doing 1-3 damage at times! 0:00 3x Automaton The first battle is an easy one, but these automatons, much like any other ones, CAN crit you, so defeating them fast is imperative. You could rely on slime stick proccing the king slime of glorious glory, as usual, but that won't work much of the time. If we activate Ruff's Let Loose ability, we can more reliably rout the first three battles and advance to the tougher ones ahead. Auster here only has one turn before he needs to decide - set up Ocean's Devotion and waste it now, or not use it at all. It's a short battle either way, and unless he procs king slime on his first attack we're not carrying it over to the Tinpot Dictator battle right ahead. 2:29 Tinpot Dictator The fun begins. The boss's shtick is summoning the now familiar automaton minions to both of his sides, making them untargetable until another pair is summoned. He only does this twice. You can't AoE damage more than two of them with Ruff's attacks, so king slime procs shouldn't be underestimated in making the battle so much easier. The automatons have also been buffed, no longer taking unresisted damage from fire skills, which is all Kiefer and Maribel currently know and will know for a while (I think in Kiefer's case, he's never going to learn anything else at all lol). The boss can in fact be defeated without touching any minions at all, but they're a huge threat with four of them attacking at once and it being incredibly likely that one will crit, which threatens OHKO on a half of the party and can pick off and KO the healthier party members when they're not at full HP. Ruff kinda laughs off the crit damage if he's the one who gets targeted, though. These conditions make it wise to focus on taking out the automatons, one at a time, attacking with Kiefer and Maribel when they can afford to do so at that, and healing when somebody gets in danger. The MC being equipped with a golem heart to prevent a KO (seemingly only once; can somebody confirm?) is helpful to an extent but the luck largely remains against us here. When the boss is alone, he's hardly toothless either. Sap followed by an attack against one party member can indeed OHKO them, which happens sometimes. At the end of the day, you're most likely looking at one or more characters being KO'd before the end of the fight. You can deliberately lead Ruff to be the last one to fall, triggering his Kerplunk Bracer and reviving the party. If you want the exp from the mandatory fight, you're much better off playing the later battles "fairly", when there aren't three of them in a row and there's a stack of Yggdrasil Leaves you can use when the bosses are overstaying their welcome. The first three party members level up thrice when the battle ends. 9:34 Slaughtomaton Honestly, not too bad of a boss... if you could save before fighting him, that is. When he gets angry and announces his scapegoat, Defending is the cleverest thing to do. Pretty hard not to lose any party members, but it's Kiefer who ends up dead on this attempt, and you all know what happens to him soon enough.