Tales of Destiny DC - Ilene [Philia Solo/No Damage/Chaos Mode]

[@Muctales]

It's time to finally beat the run killer. Ilene is by far the most anticipated fight of any Destiny run due to how ridiculous it is. This fight has pretty cheap stuff, and yet it still feels quite balanced in a way. It's simply a very overwhelming fight but I have to say... I had a lot of fun recording this one. Let's detail what makes this boss particularly challenging. Ilene is protected by a magic barrier that grants her a ridiculous defense and resistance to every single element. Hitting her doesn't deal much damage despite her low HP. The way the game is designed is that you are supposed to kill the Fidelits enemies that she spawns in order to lower her HP. In fact, she sacrifices around 100HP each time she summons one of them. At the beginning, she will keep 1 of them on the battlefield but as her HP goes down, she will prioritize summoning more of them to be sure at least 2 or 3 of them are always present. While the mobs are attacking you, Ilene can still be a nuisance. She has access to powerful spells. Thunder Blade and Ice Wall at the beginning of the battle and later on she gets Tractor Beam, Air Pressure, Maelstrom and even Tidal Wave. She can almost all instant cast them, so interrupting her is particularly difficult especially if you are managing the Fidelits at the same time. Ilene also has a blast spell called Guilty Resolver. It's a massive AoE field of lightning that takes half of the battlefield and if you want to flash it, you will need at least 2 charges... which probably means you will get hit by the Fidelits. She can even use it as a regular spell towards the end of the fight. So if you don't prevent Ilene from coming closer, you will get it by the spell. And the thing is... she WILL get close to you. This is the only reason the developpers gave her short range spells like Ice Wall, so that she can run accross the battlefield and destroy the whole party with one single nuke. The other problem with her being able to roam across the whole battlefield is that she can thus summon Fidelits anywhere... and the issue with that is that the mobs have i-frames for a good second when being spawned and they can almost attack instantly. If Ilene summons in front of me, I am almost guaranteed to be damaged because, with only spells, I have no way to prevent the enemy from attacking. And if the game wasn't mean enough with the mobs that shoot sleep lasers from afar, at low HP they gain the ability to shoot 3 lasers at once and from FURTHER than usual. It's a battle of attrition where you have to survive Ilene powerful spells, the wave of Fidelits and kill those to progress through the fight... At least that's what everyone does because the game tells you so but I don't really like doing what I'm told to. Don't be mistaken by what you see, my real target in this fight is Ilene herself! The fidelits are simply collateral damage. You see, despite all her resistances, Ilene still doesn't have that much Magic Defense, but more importantly... There is a spell she can't resist at all. Meteor Swarm can deal insane damage to Ilene. One single unguarded Meteor deals around 700 damage (around 2100 damage at best when 3 of them hit like at 0:24). Being able to deal so much damage significantly shortens the battle. Even Big Bang deals 900 damage despite the resistance. The problem with this is being able to cast those spells with all the BS the boss throws at me. This is where the insane strategy starts and it made me appreciate a lot how all my offensive spells can be used for defensive purpose too. At beginning of the fight, I will always start with Lightning and Wind Arrow. Not only those spells are very fast to cast, which is necessary to build up casting speed, but lightning can hit the Fidelits' weaknesses and kill them while Wind Arrow pushes the enemies far away. My goal is to be able to cast Ray and send one of the Fidelits into it. For this, I can either use Wind Lance again and Thunder Blade. Thunder Blade is an amazing panic spell when something gets closer but its added Paralysis bonus makes it particularly useful here since it's very likely to trigger on the remaining Fidelit. It also has very good range for hitting flying enemies and prevent any of Ilene's actions (Remember she will likely come to cast a spell next to you since there's one Fidelit alive). Doing all of this will prevent the Fidelit from doing anything against me for a short time, which I use to start casting more powerful spells but using Ray also triggers the beginning of the Definitive Strike chain. Thanks to that, that Fidelit will never be able to be killed until I stopped my chain. The reason I do that, is that keeping one Fidelit alive transforms it into a Criticals fodder: an enemy that guarantees my spell can hit something and make me recover CC as much as I need. With that Fidelit out of the equation, it's finally time to deal with Ilene directly. The problem is that since there's an unkillable mob, she can pretty much do anything she wants until her HP goes down and prioritize having 2 Fidelits on the battlefield. The goal here, and it's the hardest part of the fight, is to deal massive damage to lower her HP so that she starts summoning again. There are 2 problems with that. The first one is that Ilene casts faster than me. Thankfully, since she slides instead of walking back, the momentum makes her fail to trigger her range spells at the right time, making her miss them completely in the process. This gives a lot of time to cast high level spells. The other problem is Ilene's position. Since she is in front of me, if she summons at that place I won't be able to prevent the Fidelit from reaching me. I then used a mix of different spells to push Ilene back to the right side. Ground Dasher can not only hit the Fidelit's weakness, it's also the 4CC spell that has the most horizontal range. It's very useful to push the Fidelit back and hit Ilene at the same time. Black Hole gets a very practical use here. By targeting the Fidelit behind Ilene, the tractor effect can aspire her very quickly to the other side of the battlefield. Once that ridiculous setup is ready, the fight becomes very satisfying. Ilene is too far away to hit me with her Blast. Her summons will need time to reach me. It's time to finally start my final plan. Since Ilene can summon more Fidelits, I use Stop Flow to prevent them from moving and prevent Ilene from doing anything else. By timing the hitboxes of Big Bang and Indignation, I can make sure they kill the newly summoned Fidelits just after they loose s. Indignation and Big Bang being light spells, they will instanly erase the mobs from existence while triggering critical hits on the unkillable Fidelit, replenishing my CC in the process. Once the Stop effect is over, there is only one Fidelit left on the battlefield and thus, Ilene will summon another one. Yes, Ilene got trapped in a loop where she is forced to summon more fidelits as she recovers from the Stop ailment. She can't move forward. Her Fidelits can't reach me. She is getting damaged constantly by high level spells. All she does is sacrifying her own HP till death. To be entirely honest, the game still cheats and allows her to cast spells even when stopped (which happens rarely but still...) so I had a Flash material equipped just in case. I didn't need it in the end. Once the final wave of Fidelits is summoned (which I denied too), a simple poke is enough to end the battlefield. I'm sorry Ilene but I'm taking back this world.

[@Kevassa]

This almost feels like a culmination of your knowledge over the years with pattern manipulation and spacing for this absurdly functional loop to work! It's insane how much you considered between the Fidelit being kept alive to which spells to use to properly start the loop. That was fricking beautiful!

[@Muctales]

Thanks! I'm really happy about this take, and the learning process was very fun. This fight has so many small things that you have to take into account that it felt like solving puzzle.

[@HorangiTiger]

Awesome! From reading the strategy, it seems like a puzzle that you managed to solve perfectly. I've heard horror stories about people trying to solo this fight so seeing this is amazing.

[@Muctales]

Yeah this fight in particular is the one that ended many Destiny runs. It's just very overwhelming.

[@MrLemmy82]

Watching the fight was already incredibly impressive on its own, and reading your explanatory comment only made it even more impressive!

[@Muctales]

Thanks! I'm glad the description added something to the experience haha

[@ViktorForslund]

As if all the ridiculous planning and strategizing for this dumpster fire of a fight wasn't enough, you then went on to not only execute it so beautifully but you finished the fight with a normal attack. That right there is a next-level show of domination lmao Beautifully done, you really utilized every little advantage you could get from the spell properties and even the Definite Strike system. Incredible!

[@Muctales]

Thanks! I'm super happy with the result because I wasn't expecting to have an answer to everything Ilene can throw at me. And yeah the normal attack at the end always feels right x)

[@Jamesaga]

Wow, what an amazing use of the properties of all of those spells! After how Forcefield and Blast heavy the last run was, I was really interested to see what would happen here. Was not disappointed! Stop Flow continues to surprise me with how powerful it is with smart usage!

[@Muctales]

Stop Flow is definitely the spell that got a redemption arc thank to this run x) I never expected it to be that useful.

[@joshuabradford8206]

I love these solo runs you and other tales of KZbinrs do. I was wondering if you ever thought of starting up a patreon or other tip type service.

[@Muctales]

Many thanks for the support. I really appreciate your idea of a patreon but I'm a very small channel with less (than it looks like) time to afford on content. Asking for people's money without the guarantee to upload consistently what people are looking for doesn't fit my convictions and would be too much pressure.

[@JohnRambo1947-July-6th]

You did it!! This fight sucks for me with 4 members.

[@Muctales]

Thanks ! I'm not surprised you had some difficulties. Like I explained, it's a very overwhelming fight. With so many lasers, spells, status effects and everything going on, it's very challenging to know what to do. Especially on a first playthrough

[@JohnRambo1947-July-6th]

@@Muctales battle of attrition on my first playthrough. 😆

[@orelas167]

I should play the original again. I really like Philia's "hah!" attack.

[@GreyVictory1510]

I was wondering how you managed to perform so many high level spells while preventing the boss from moving. Aaaaand why that one summoned drone didn't move. The explanation comment was very insightful!

[@Muctales]

Thanks, I'm glad that the description was useful in the end x)