Despite the game seemingly forcing you to Dhaka Venu and hinting that you can’t leave, you can actually exit south of where you entered to do anything you want. While it seems like you’ll be going through the same dungeon as last time, you actually won’t be. Follow the beginning as before, until the first split, where you will want to go north. If you remembered the big door that was locked on your prior visit, it is now open, so head through the opening. You will be in the area right before you confronted Krom earlier in the game.

To the right is a save point and south from that is the elevator that brings you back to the area where you fought Zemrode on your prior visit. Double back to where you entered this area and look for the stairs northish to continue. It looks like there are multiple ways to go here, but all but one path is broken, so you are forced to the east. Continue along this path until you come to a small area with two ways to go, both of which lead south. The southeastern set of stairs will bring you to a chest, which contains 2 M Ethers, while the other one leads to two switches.

Hit both of those switches to create two new paths, one of which you can’t reach quite yet. Continue west and then north to find another chest at the dead end (2 Full Heals). Double back and head south this time, clearing the area of enemies before hitting the switch there to form another path leading east. This will bring you back to the starting area, so you can use the save point to heal and save your game, should you choose to do that. Remember that one bridge you formed that lead north? Well, that’s on the northern end of the area where you first encountered Krom, so cross the bridge to find a teleporter, which will bring you to a new area.

In here, there will be a fork, with left and right paths. Note that you will be encountering some new enemies here, so try and kill them all to get their info. Head left first to find a chest at the end, which contains a new weapon for Dianto, a Mjolnir. Return to the fork and go east to another teleporter, bringing your part to another “island.” Travel south a bit, hit the switch to your left, then continue south and cross the bridge that formed. The way north is blocked off, so take the path to your west and use the next teleporter there to appear on the eastern side of the overall area.

There will be another teleporter to your north, but ignore that for now and head south first. Bypass the obvious elevator and hit the switch at the end to dissipate the poison gas in the area below you. Use the elevator you just passed to descend and fight some enemies, who are guarding a treasure chest (Elixir). Return to the section above, and travel all the way back north to take the teleporter you saw a glimpse of before. Go north in the new area to find a switch at the end, which forms a bridge below you. Continue west from there to find another elevator, bringing you to the area below.

Hit the switch to your north to create another bridge just to your east, allowing you to keep going north. Use the save point to heal/save, then head east to find a teleporter. This brings you to the area where you shut down the poison gas, where you’ll find a chest at the end, containing the Mish-Mash weapon. Double back to the save point and venture west this time, taking the elevator at the end. Walk a little bit north and get ready for a boss battle!

BOSS - Emperium¶

Emperium is an annoying boss, simply because it will counter any damage done to it with Intercept, which causes around 30-40 damage. Note that if your attack whiffs and does no damage, then the boss won’t actually counterattack with Intercept. Outside of that, the fight will go through two phases, with Emperium using pretty much the same moves throughout both. Slash Attack will hit all of your characters, but if you have upgraded armor, then it shouldn’t really deal more than 20 or so damage. Gather is probably the more dangerous out of all the moves, since it will hit four times on a single character, dealing upwards of 90 damage during the first phase. Pierce involves the boss shooting four lasers in front of it

That is the extent of the first phase and at some point, seemingly low health, Emperium will use Purify to completely heal itself and start phase two. It might take a few turns, but it will then use Amplify, which boosts all of its abilities by 50%, essentially making it stronger. At this point, Intercept will deal a lot more damage, so you will really want to keep an eye on your characters’ health and avoid attacking if they need healed. After it uses Amplify, the boss will add two new moves into its repertoire, Annihilate and Destroy. Both hit all characters, but the former has a chance to instantly kill someone and the latter will always critically hit.

The first thing you should do in this battle is spread out your characters in the following manner; melee characters will go on either side of the boss, while ranged ones should go in the southeast/southwest corners. Doing this will allow you to avoid the Pierce attack, so that’ll be one less thing to worry about. Now, healing will be a big part of this battle, so hopefully you have gotten some sublimations with Love Axiom on some of your skills. Sherra will be absolutely useful here, with Heal and X-Heal, while Kanata can help out with Aura. Should you use Locke, then Potentiate is a good skill to combine with your items for party-wide heals.

One of the biggest things you can do to make this battle a lot easier is use Kanata’s skill, Holy Force. If this manages to seal Amplify the first time you use it, then the boss can never use it, and you shouldn’t have to worry about healing as much. Outside of that one thing, Emperium resists all elements, so you won’t be dealing as much damage as in other battles. Physical skills are key here, or equipping Null Boost on those skills with elemental properties. The basics to this battle is try and seal Amplify with Holy Force, then the battle becomes a lot more manageable. Otherwise, Love Axiom to complement healing skills and non-elemental skills are the way to go for this boss fight.

Inner Dhaka Venu¶

With that boss now out of the way, head through the doorway behind where you fought it to delve deeper into Dhaka Venu. There will be new monsters here, so head straight north at the beginning until you come to a big room with paths to the left and right. Go left first and drop off the bridge, where you’ll land in some poison. Use Spring Waters (you should have plenty of them) or Sherra’s Refresh to cure it, then head south to a room with three chests, which contain a Gold Coin, a Sinclair Hilt (this is a locked chest and probably what the Red Key that came off of Emperium is for) and 3 Silver Coins.

Instead of trekking through the poison again, head left from the chests and then left again, bypassing the teleporter, to come to a dead end. Clear the enemies out of the room, then loot the sparkle there for the Pyramid artifact knowledge. Take the teleporter, if you want, which puts you along the eastern path from the beginning, but there’s nothing but some enemies before you rejoin the main path. Return to the room to the right of the left teleporter and go north this time, taking the platform at the end.

Continue north to another split, going right first to find a chest at the end (Last Elixir). Double back to the split and head west to find another block, which will take you down to another area below. Keep following the path in this direction to find stairs leading down into the cocoon-like end, but there is another path to the right of that. Unfortunately, there’s nothing there but some enemies, so return to the fork and go into the dome-like structure.

The first room inside of the new area will have a teleporter and a save point. Use the teleporter to appear in a section with a button in the lower right corner, and a sparkle in the upper left. The sparkle will yield the Den of Peace artifact knowledge and the button creates a bridge to the right of it. This path will bring you back to the beginning of the inner sanctum of Dhaka Venu, allowing you a chance to exit Dhaka Venu completely to restock on any items or do anything else. When you’re ready to continue, return to where the save point was and head north for a boss fight.

BOSS - Krom¶

It goes without saying that Krom is going to be a tough boss, as pretty much all of his attacks hits hard and most will hit all of your party members. One move you might see often is Take Flight, where Krom will fly into the air, damaging characters on take-off (110-120 damage). Note that you won’t be able to attack Krom while he’s in the air, so you can use this chance to buff and heal. On his next turn, Krom will use Black Dive to get back to the arena, which will smack everyone twice, for around 100-110 damage total. Note that upon landing, any character close to the boss will take some minor damage (around 30 or so) and be pushed back.

In addition to the above combination, Krom can use Get Lost! to get rid of any debuffs on him, plus he has Shield of Fury/Hate to help him evade any physical/magical damage, respectively. He also has Slash, which hits in front of him (a small sweeping motion) and Stab, which will hit straight ahead, and Rolling Tail, hitting everyone for around 60-75 damage. At some point, when his health starts getting low, Krom will use Last One Heal to completely recover from all damage.

It’s unclear when Krom will start using the following attack, but he can shove his tail into the ground with Earth Impact, and damage everyone for around 130 or more. You might see a skill called Vanish!, but it’s unclear what this does exactly, as it doesn’t remove any buffs or debuffs. Luckily, you don’t have to worry about not using any skills of your own, since Krom will take full damage from all elements. When Krom is near death, you will probably want to inflict Physical/Magical Mar on him (just to be safe) and heal all characters to full health. This is because Krom will use Final Big Bang as a last resort to deal some massive damage (200+) to all characters before he perishes for good.

Kanata is a good character to have in this battle, since it’s possible to seal Take Flight with Holy Force, which not only gets rid of that attack for good, but it also removes Black Dive. It may take a few tries, though, but you can continually use the skill until that particular one is removed. Just as with the Emperium fight, healing will be of utmost importance, so Sherra’s Heal/X-Heal is vital, as are skills with Love Axiom paired up to them. Position your characters to the left/right of Krom (unless they get pushed back from his landing), then keep your ranged characters to the bottom left/right. Keep an eye on your health, heal when necessary and continue pounding Krom until he finally goes down for good.

Krom is finally finished and a number of scenes will happen, leading to some credits? Wait, the game is over already? Hmm, after the credits are over, be sure to save your game when prompted, load up that save on the title screen to be in a new area…