Four Silver Lobos make up a sentry line at the entrance to this area behind which is a waypoint and another cutscene. After dealing with a small patrol of Corps soldiers, you will encounter a Milvus Velocycle. An application or two of Slash & Burn, followed up by Dualcasting will see you through.

After you dispose of the Velocycle, a troop of Corps soldiers runs in to engage you in battle. You may need to heal a little here if they focus fire on one member but other than that, shouldn’t pose you too many issues. Just before the Save Station is an Ethersol (instantly restores TP) which you should save for difficult boss battles in the future.

Kill the soldiers before the Velocycle when fighting the final group of enemies before the boss of the area. Symbiosis will be a necessity in the next fight.

Don’t examine the switch just yet. Prepare these paradigms:

1. RAV/RAV

2. MED/SYN

3. COM/RAV

4. MED/RAV

5. MED/MED

6. COM/SYN (default)

Give Lightning Doctor’s Code and Power Wristband , then equip Hope with 2x Tungsten Bangle (it can also help you if you switch ATB speed to slow), and examine the switch to be taken up by an elevator. A boss is incoming…

Boss Battle: Aster Protoflorian¶

This can be a hard battle which requires a lot of Paradigm Shifts. Start by tossing a Librascope and then keep attacking while Hope bestows both Protect and Shell. Pretty soon Aster opens up its repertoire by Efflorescence with which it spins its tentacles around, heavily damaging both characters (but the damage can be reduced by Protect). Toss Potions or switch to setup to heal if your HP gets dangerously low.

The boss continues the assault either by punching one character twice or throwing an elemental drop. Quite soon it changes attack affinities which means two things: the first is that it absorbs one element (and becomes weak to its opposing element), and the other is gaining an elemental attack property (a bit higher physical damage, which will still be bearable with Protect). This is why it’s necessary that you Libra the boss at the start of battle so your characters don’t accidentally recover its HP.

Don’t let any character’s HP fall below 350, as that character can be easily taken out by Efflorescence or ‘Headbutt’. This plant is also a good test to see if you grasped the basics of Staggering. Begin with setup and launch a couple of attacks (since COM is included, the Chain Gauge will not deplete quickly), then switch to setup and continue attacking (this includes RAVs, which increase Chain Gauges quickly, but it also causes Chain Gauges to reduce quickly - however, since COM was used not long ago, the Chain Gauge drop is significantly lower). As you push the Chain Gauge towards 200%, you’ll probably notice the Chain Gauge’s depletion to be faster and faster, at which point it may be necessary to switch to setup again to have COM strike the enemy and cause the Chain Gauge to deplete slower. You’ll require 2-3 Staggers to kill the Aster Protoflorian.