Hello! I have Lucia’s Mad Minute (MATK Down) and Red XIII’s Sleek Collar (MDEF up for all allies). Used Aerith for healing and relied on materia for everything else. Was able to clear the fight at 116k CP. My strategy was… ignore the adds the whole time. The AOE MDEF up, combined with Red’s Lunatic High, was enough to make sure I had shields even with the adds up once the boss AOE went off.

Thank you, this was very helpful!

Great video. Matt with heals and Core Defender made the fight much easier.

Thank you. This guide helped me defeat Dark Army Leader EX1. However, I only have a four-star Fairy Tale, which only has a single target cure ability instead of a group cure, so I had to use the event weapon instead.

great breakdown as usual

Thanks for the guide on ex 2.

There is 3rd way: IGNORE the adds, just hit the boss - Get MATK down + 2 (mid) weapon - MDEF or PDEF down + 2 (depend on your DPS setup, but target only 1 of them) The first is to survive big hits, second to increase your DPS .

I did it with a 115k power team Aerith [Fairy Tale/Prism Rod], Red XIII [Sleek/Junk], Zack [Falchion/Cutlass], no OB on anything except Fairy Tale which doesn't really matter.. Red was definitely the MVP at lv43. Your trick on playing on Semi was all the difference, I was having to micromanage too much but after watching your video it was smooth, thank youuuuu

Thank you. That made it infinitely easier

Manually selecting the boss so no DPS goes on the adds at the start and making sure everyone was DPSing(including the healer) at the end were the two make or break things that helped me with the DPS race. I had the Chocobo staff and manaward for the def up and got everyone raised up to -2 on mag defense or better. They all lived. Two having 4700 health and the other with 5500 health. Very tough fight for 127900 power. My power is 126,600 and I barely killed him.

2:10 "not so much of what the stats are over here" say the mf with 4.5% MATK on 4* Materia hahaha love it Octo ❤

Everyone has different setups, but for me Tifa as healer/debbufer with her LB sommersault to lower boss pdef/mdef by 2 tiers did the job. And i let Cloud and Sephiroth go full Dps, my strategy was kill the ads first and focus the boss with sommersault (it's fine if u use sommersault before having the other LB's ready because sommersault has a fast charge so u should have it again pretty fast). Be ready to have sommersault and the Summons ready as soon as the sigil break phase starts, make sure sommersault targets the boss and let the summons do the aoe attacks (u need Hellfire and Diamond Dust, or Ramuh AoE atk), if for some reason the ads survived, finish them off quickly and focus on breaking the sigils. My setup was purely debuff boss defenses and full Dps with no barriers, so it's wise to manual Tifa in case someone needs healing (U need her summer outfit and weapon though). Did this as a F2P. Good luck.

None of the magic defense weapons protect the entire party if they aren't gold or better, but Barrett's never does, no matter how high it gets. Barrett won't have time to cast the MATK down and three single target MDEF before the boss casts the multi target attack.

Loved the honorable mentions list up front! But, why use Shiva over Blade Beam if they all resist ice?

i did with. tifa for def + mdef lb break. she still lv 50. cloud dps lv 55, aerith 2nd dps with event weapon + lv 60 wind staff. i tried 3 times. to learn boss mechanic. at 1st. i kill his minions first. if not, boss will consumed them to increase his mag, and sigil break phase will not showing. after kill 1st minions phase. my team focus on boss. make sure your team had 117-120 mdef, +-4500 hp, and ice dmg reduce on sub.

I just spammed chi attack with tifa and made sure both her and aerith were on healing duty. Completed it in auto.

great vid but it was too complicated to me, I had Tifa with AoE heal, magic attk dwn and somersault LB, Aerith Fairy Tail and chocobo staff (for stats bc i had it 10stars but didnt even use its buff) and Cloud with Aero Blow (instead of Septh bc boss casts mag atk down and cloud is physical).Ignored minions and spammed Mag Atk Dwn with Tifa, for some reason Boss never got that huge Mag Def Down on me. had only 1-2 arrows down but he did have all 3 phase and never did more than 3.5k dmg. When I tried to kill minions at my first attempt- i failed. So just ignore them, target boss and dont forget to break him everytime he summons them bc he dispels debuffs then.

Defeated this without using magic attack down. Only the manaward for everyone and using 2 healers. Then combo LB the boss. Needed 7k HP and around 120 mdef with manaward to survive his full stacked AoE skill.

Nicee

YES, I TURNED THAT STUPID PUMPKIN INTO PUMPKIN PIE! 🎃

We will meet again on EX3.

Passed it with 119k power and 4,5k hp on Aerith ^^ Hardest part was to control everyone on manual, because on semi Aerith would never heal only trying to attack and Sephiroth wouldn't stop casting manaward on Cloud over and over if I switch to Aerith to make her heal everyone, regardless of stance. They tried to do it even on manual, but then I passed with full hp somehow :D

I ended up ignoring the 2nd set of adds and just broke the boss and went full dps before the AoE wipe lol

Same… haven’t been able to even beat EX1 lol

towards the very end the bosses LAST PHASE his magic attack power INCREASES PERMANENT, it KO's my enite team with 8k worth of damage crazy... so i took your advice instead of trying to heal towards the end, I just stick with attacking non stop and my cloud died but i kept attacking non theless and i won at the vest last second doing a cheering phase and pleading not to die and next thing you know. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED just just barely, NOTE: I used the same team as you but my power was lower than yours. I also did not use SHIVA OR IFRIT, I used my best limit breaks

Thank you octopus your video was a bit long but your core points got me through the fight. I used manaward,defaith & strong wind magic I won it on auto all I did was pop hellfire a few times 😅

My Matt made this much easier. Got really lucky with drops so have a great core defender and prime number. Added in gigantic shield too makes buffing for that second surge a breeze.

Chocobo Aerith is cute 🙃

Yeah I'm stuck, eventually the bosses AOE does 6-7K to everyone even with the bosses MATK down and all my guys MDEF upx3 + def sigil on. Not sure what I'm doing wrong

What if you don't have defaith ? I might accidentally use it to upgrade Materia :(

yeah i might have sold that cure

I just took this guy down. I used Aerith as my main wind DPS(Gown outfit was key), TIfa for debuffs, Cloud for healing & sub damage. I had Cloud's costume lighting boost to help with Ramuh damage, was able to get about 30k damage from him and Ifrit. Total CP was somewhere around 135k. I just barely was able to get an S rating with a score of 10,030ish

Can you show us how to do with the Alt characterw?

The way to beat it is to send Elliott in to take them down

Was wondering why the bosses big AOE went from doing 2-3K to like 7K to everyone lol. Guess I need to pay attention to my dude's mag def more

Super BOOP

Where do you get the defaith materia?? I only have debrave. Is it something I missed from events?

Haha I can't even beat EX1

*watches your stuff to beat stuff on EC lol

fml i have both weapons but my lucia is lvl 20 lmao

This is the first boss I couldn't get done. I have spent a bit and have just under 140k power but no aoe heal weapon as of yet. I have everything else recommended. Ngl I am kind of losing some love for the game its insanely grindy and just keeps scaling up harder already.

Uninstalled the game yesterday. As much as I love FF7 I can't help but feel that all the Gatcha and anti player monetisation strategies used within this game are too predatory. I think the straw that broke the camels back for me is the limited attempts at crisis dungeons, especially for a player who struggles to completely understand the battle mechanics and needs to practice to get better at said mechanics. Especially as crisis dungeons seem to be the only way to get mythril ore to upgrade weapons to max levels. I wish you well in your endeavours but this is square putting money first over good game design

He blueballs his team to make content, period.

Again, these guides seem so useless to me, because I don't have any kind of weapons or materia you possess...

Me sitting over here still not having beaten EX1 🫢 Thanks Octo! -RudaChris