u/Necessary-Will6918

Lately, I’ve been enjoying casual playthroughs where I don’t spend extra time grinding levels, money, or additions and just play the game at its natural pace. With that said, the game is naturally more difficult when you decide to play this way. Dragoon forms and magic become much more important for defense and attack damage.

As I’m sure you all know, you typically take 1/2 the damage in dragoon form as you would in your base form for any given attack. However, once you get to chapter 3, there are 3 very powerful main bosses that will completely trivialize your dragoon forms if you stay in dragoon form for longer than a single turn. These bosses are:

1. Grand Jewel - activates the Dragon Block Staff which greatly lowers your attack and defense while in dragoon form.

2. Divine Dragon - the battle is started with the Dragon Block Staff already activated, reducing dragoon form attack and defense greatly immediately.

3. Lloyd - uses the Dragon Buster Sword, which instakills anybody in dragoon form on Lloyd’s next turn.

Being limited to a single turn per transformation completely negates the dragoon defense buff considering you are forced to transform back into your base form at the end of your turn. However, there is a way cycle Rose Storm in a way that buffs your party’s defense continuously throughout the entire fight for each of these bosses if you use your turns effectively.

Explanation and Strategy:

For those who do not know or may need a refresher; Rose Storm is Lavitz’s/Albert’s second dragoon magic and allows the party to receive a 2x defense buff that lasts for 3 of Albert’s turns after he casts it. As long as you have Albert at dragoon level 2 and an addition that gives you at least 34 SP per completion, you can use this strategy.

You will want to start each fight with exactly 1 dragoon meter and full MP with Albert. It doesn’t matter how much dragoon meter the rest of your party has because they will not be transforming at any point. As soon as Albert gets his first turn, you will transform and use Rose Storm, granting the party the defense buff. Albert will immediately transform back into his base form, which will not allow the effects of the Dragon Block Staff from the Grand Jewel or the Divine Dragon to effect him, and Lloyd will not be able to use the Dragon Buster to instakill him on his next turn. Because the duration of Rose Storm is based on Albert’s turns, it is wise to choose a third party member that has a high speed stat so that you get the most out of the Rose Storm duration. This works especially well because of Albert’s comparatively slow speed stat to the rest of the cast. For the next 3 turns, Albert will simply use his additions to refill his dragoon meter back up to 1, and then repeat the process with his next transformation. You can use the other party members to refill his MP with items when he starts to get low.

Cycling the strategy correctly will allow you to keep Rose Storm active throughout the entirety of each fight without worrying about the repercussions of the Dragon Block Staff or the Dragon Buster.

I’m not sure if anybody else uses this strategy, but I wanted to pass my experience on to the next player!

I’ve always been a little bothered by the fact that Dragoon’s are framed as having the “right” to rule over dragons, yet our party keeps killing them rather than controlling them.

We see that Graham was able to rule over Feyrbrand, and Lenus was able to rule over Regole, but our party always opts to kill the dragon rather than take control of it. Rose must have certainly known that Feyrbrand could have been an incredible asset to ending the war during chapter 1 if they were able to gain its loyalty, but it’s never addressed.

Considering that the dragoon spirits themselves seem willing to abandon their former human master once a more suitable one is found, (Like with Shana and Miranda, and then Zieg with Dart), I imagine that the actual dragons would be willing to make that same determination once their master is defeated by another dragoon. Of course, the divine dragon is a special case and needed to be killed.

Just a quick thought.

Just finished LoD again and started thinking about some of the things that I wish were fleshed out a little bit more or would have liked to see. One of those things is how easy (or difficult) it was for Rose to defeat Claire as the Black Monster when she attacked Neet.

We all know that Claire was supposed to be the successor to Haschel at the Rogue School and that she had the potential to be significantly stronger than him (as seen on the Moon and in flashbacks). I know that she abandoned being a fighter after she left Rogue, but I wonder if she was strong enough to pose any challenge to Rose while defending Neet. I always thought that it would have been cool if Rose recognized Haschel’s fighting style during the Hero Competition and later realized that it was the same style as the strong woman who defended Neet all those years ago. Considering Haschel’s feats in the game, I think it is possible.

Just a quick thought.