05B: No Rules

05B: No Rules

Lightning's Gift to Hope

It is more of the same as we work our way along the path, fighting mobs and being manly men!  Err, wait...  A Manly Man and a Girl of Prowess?  Whatever!  Working your way through the lower area and completing fights to unlock the barriers will net you decent CP and spoils - and a Star Pendant from the first Treasure Sphere!  After you grab the Star Pendant you jump back up on to the raised platforms and follow the light trail to a CS.

There is a branch blocking the path and Lightning uses her sword to destroy it - Hope is impressed and asks her if he can use one of those (swords) but she dismisses the possibility, pointing out that it would be "a bit too heavy for you."  Hope plays with his knife instead.

The CS cuts to the Day 12 flashback, taking us to Lightning just after Serah tells her that she became a L'Cie and she plans to marry Snow.  Not sure what Serah and Snow were expecting, but Lightning's reaction was probably not what they were hoping for.   Maybe Snow has a better handle on this than Lightning does - at least in the then-there...  Obviously something changes.

After Serah and Snow storm out Lightning opens one of her gifts to discover a knife - the one she ends up giving to Hope.  As she is looking at it a news announcement is broadcast featuring none other than Serah - and then we flash forward to Lightning in the here-now who regrets not listening to her sister.  Harumph.

Now that the branch is gone and the flashback's are over let's go play with the kitties and crawlers shall we?

This is likely to be the first battle you have where both of your party members are poisoned.  You could use Antidotes here - but you do not really need to.  A simpler method is to switch your Paradigm deck to Medic and heal you both up.  Yes you are still poisoned but once you complete the fight the poison status is removed!

The next fight will introduce a new mob - the Barbed Specter - so you may want to use Libre on it to help identify its stats and weaknesses for your journal.  There is an Edged Carbine in the Sphere behind the Specters so remember to get that!

The platform ahead is blocked by a barrier due to the presence of a Feral Behemoth - and you know what that means?  That is right - it is time to kick some Behemoth butt!

This should be old hat by now, but the trick to taking out heavy targets is to get them in a staggered state as quickly as you can - which means changing to dual Ravager as that is the fastest way to stagger them.  Once staggered you want to switch back to Commando to deal damage wholesale, and that should net you a five-star battle and some decent spoils!

After this fight you jump back down to the lower level - and you will note a convenient save point here as well - so go ahead and use that now!