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The Qadistu, the new villains introduced viaShin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance’sall-new Canon of Vengeance story route, succeed in pulling off both things that any SMT antagonist must do: look cool and give players a rough time.
Indeed, the boss battle against Eisheth in the Shinagawa region sets the ball rolling with fast attacks that can quickly chip away heaps of HP. Eisheth is swift and deadly; the key to survival is to outpace that alacrity with an even faster barrage of your own. While plenty of party compositions can make it happen, our guide will fill you in on how we went about it.
Preparing For Eisheth
A little background first:Eisheth is fought a little of the way into SMT 5’s Shinagawa region, and, as the game mercifully does on a routine basis, it will warn you ahead of time that the going is about to get rough.
Before you get to it, avoid bringing anyone along who focuses on fire- and dark-based attacks, asEisheth is resistant to fire and dark. On the flip side,Eisheth is weak to force attacks.
Eisheth’s innate skill isQadistu Savagery. This willraise the odds of her inflicting critlcal hits, and it’s compounded in deadliness by Eisheth’s+6 affinity modifier for her slew of physical-based attacks.
The biggest challenge with Eisheth, at least in our experience, is the fact thather unique ability, Voracious Salvation,is already aheavy HP-draining movebut it’sthat much more dangerous when the target has an ailment.
In true Shin Megami Tensei fashion, this is designed to synergize with something scary: namely,Toxic Cloud. This party-wide moveaims to inflict your team with poison, which, yeah - it’s an ailment, all right.
All of Eisheth’s other attacks can hit hard. Put together, then, she’s a simple-to-grasp sort of boss who you nonetheless donotwant to lose momentum against.We want to bring force-dealing alliesand obliterate her health before things get frightening.
We also want Phys Dampenersif possible. You cansometimes find them as buried treasurefor your demon guides to point out to you, and they’re occasionally drops after fights.You can only hold threeat a time, but that’ll be plenty.
Battling Eisheth
If you’ve got thosePhys Dampenershandy, start out by tossing one out there to soften the earliest blow(s). This willnullify one physical attack for all allies.
We broughtAnahitawith us, and usedWind Breathto take advantage of Eisheth’s force weakness. Since we hadTao and Yokowith us to also use items, we tossedForce Shardsas well.
That said, maybedon’thave them both inyourparty. We didn’t know what we were getting into at the time, and whileit’s worth having two people who can use items,Yoko’s offensive output wasn’t especially useful here.
You’ll probably run into a situation in whichsomeone is going to need to serve a consistent healing role, becauseEisheth, once she gets going,will likely strike for 50+ damage several timesto a single target with some of these attacks.
It’s best, then, to head into this with the expectation that you’re going to lose at leastsomeonebefore it’s over. Here’s how it went for us -we got Eisheth’s HP down to about a third with relative easebefore her little bout of payback began in earnest.
Since you’ll be better prepared than we were, you’ll likely fare better -whittle away that HP with an Omagatoki: Criticalright from the jump, launching force-based attacks.
If Eisheth doesn’t go down fast enough to avoid suffering losses,then at least she’ll be close to bowing out once you’ve gotten replacements in,and you’re back in the zone.
