Uploaded February 2020 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
The big Rolo Solo
Lowdown on the restrictions of this challenge:
- EXP gain is only permitted in boss fights and forced encounters, and must be minimised by only having 1 character active at the end of each battle.
- Autolevelling must also be minimised as much as possible. Argilla and Roland take all XP before they leave the party to reduce the impact of this later on, and Argilla's level must not exceed 12 so it doesn't affect Sera's starting level.
- This is a cycle 2 playthrough on hard difficulty with no data transfer bonuses.
- I will be fighting all bosses rather than doing a true minimum EXP run, cuz that's more fun. And let's face it, you're only here for Satan.
- The use of Data items to permanently raise stats is forbidden for as long as possible - at least until Shiva.
A big grind is required before this battle. Serph leaves the party afterwards, and you can't do field hunts without him. He won't be back until after Vritra, so we need to get all the skills we'll require for that now. In addition we need to farm a bunch of Pink Sapphires (the best stat raising gem available at this point) to make some rings that will carry us through the rest of the story - this CAN be done later on, but it is much better to do so here as the random encounters are much safer.
Pink Sapphires are a rare (5%) drop from Gdon, and we need 10, less any you got from the previous Gdon encounter, and less 1 for the Hope Diamond you'll get from Raja Naga. So 8 in total. The only way to get them without gaining XP is via panic drops. This is a whole lot dumber than regular farming, as you need to get past more RNG rolls to get one (successfully inflict panic, Gdon actually drops an item, it's a Pink Sapphire). It took me a couple of hours to get them all on emu, but would likely take 3-4 times as long on console. If there is any part of the challenge I would skimp on, this would be it!
In the process of doing this, you should acquire more than enough money for the skill grind. The most important thing is to get Makanda on Gale, which is technically the only 100% necessary skill, but of course we're not going to waste all the rest of that AP. All in all it required about 15-20 field hunts, which took ~4 hours of in game time. Here's what I got:
Gale - debuffs up to Makanda, Media
Roland - Life Bonus, Zanma, Maragion, Mazio
Serph - Taunt, Void Panic, Void Fire, Ice skills up to Bufula, started on Mabufula
Cielo - Life Bonus, buffs up to Rakukaja, started on Terazi (mastering earth skills for the +2 magic bonus from the mantra grid)
Argilla - Taunt + Life Bonus, debuffs up to Sukunda, Atma Bonus
I also managed to finish the Jack Frost quiz while doing all this, which gives me a few useful items (Sapphires and mirrors) and I replenished some of my stock from the lootboxes in the shop.
...so with all that out of the way, what about this fight? Well, it's... hilariously underwhelming. Abaddon could potentially be quite a pain once he starts eating your characters and spamming ma-dyne spells, especially since we specifically need to end the battle with just Roland active (swallowed characters still gain XP.) So the answer that doesn't a ton of targetting luck is to skip the magic phase altogether. He switches up at 2625 HP, 75% of his health. The speedrun strat is to use an Impel Stone to finish him off in a single round, but at this level we don't quite have the damage output to pull that off - at least not without a ridiculously long and expensive grind for Zandyne.
But then I wondered - what would happen if you only had one character left? Would Abaddon still be able to swallow them? And the answer is better than I could've hoped. Not only can he not swallow, he can't even shift phase. He'll be stuck spamming physicals that Roland can take with a decent karma ring + max buffs, strike back with Zanma and then heal up if necessary.
The most satisfying thing is that this fight basically added nothing to the Vritra skill grind. So sit back and enjoy the cheese. I'm hesitant to claim discovery of anything in a 15 year old game, but at the very least I didn't read about Abaddon getting stuck like this anywhere online ;)
One final note: I equipped Serph with Tarunda which will be useful for the fight with Real/Fake Varna later on. We won't get another chance to equip him beforehand.
The big Rolo Solo
Lowdown on the restrictions of this challenge:
- EXP gain is only permitted in boss fights and forced encounters, and must be minimised by only having 1 character active at the end of each battle.
- Autolevelling must also be minimised as much as possible. Argilla and Roland take all XP before they leave the party to reduce the impact of this later on, and Argilla's level must not exceed 12 so it doesn't affect Sera's starting level.
- This is a cycle 2 playthrough on hard difficulty with no data transfer bonuses.
- I will be fighting all bosses rather than doing a true minimum EXP run, cuz that's more fun. And let's face it, you're only here for Satan.
- The use of Data items to permanently raise stats is forbidden for as long as possible - at least until Shiva.
A big grind is required before this battle. Serph leaves the party afterwards, and you can't do field hunts without him. He won't be back until after Vritra, so we need to get all the skills we'll require for that now. In addition we need to farm a bunch of Pink Sapphires (the best stat raising gem available at this point) to make some rings that will carry us through the rest of the story - this CAN be done later on, but it is much better to do so here as the random encounters are much safer.
Pink Sapphires are a rare (5%) drop from Gdon, and we need 10, less any you got from the previous Gdon encounter, and less 1 for the Hope Diamond you'll get from Raja Naga. So 8 in total. The only way to get them without gaining XP is via panic drops. This is a whole lot dumber than regular farming, as you need to get past more RNG rolls to get one (successfully inflict panic, Gdon actually drops an item, it's a Pink Sapphire). It took me a couple of hours to get them all on emu, but would likely take 3-4 times as long on console. If there is any part of the challenge I would skimp on, this would be it!
In the process of doing this, you should acquire more than enough money for the skill grind. The most important thing is to get Makanda on Gale, which is technically the only 100% necessary skill, but of course we're not going to waste all the rest of that AP. All in all it required about 15-20 field hunts, which took ~4 hours of in game time. Here's what I got:
Gale - debuffs up to Makanda, Media
Roland - Life Bonus, Zanma, Maragion, Mazio
Serph - Taunt, Void Panic, Void Fire, Ice skills up to Bufula, started on Mabufula
Cielo - Life Bonus, buffs up to Rakukaja, started on Terazi (mastering earth skills for the +2 magic bonus from the mantra grid)
Argilla - Taunt + Life Bonus, debuffs up to Sukunda, Atma Bonus
I also managed to finish the Jack Frost quiz while doing all this, which gives me a few useful items (Sapphires and mirrors) and I replenished some of my stock from the lootboxes in the shop.
...so with all that out of the way, what about this fight? Well, it's... hilariously underwhelming. Abaddon could potentially be quite a pain once he starts eating your characters and spamming ma-dyne spells, especially since we specifically need to end the battle with just Roland active (swallowed characters still gain XP.) So the answer that doesn't a ton of targetting luck is to skip the magic phase altogether. He switches up at 2625 HP, 75% of his health. The speedrun strat is to use an Impel Stone to finish him off in a single round, but at this level we don't quite have the damage output to pull that off - at least not without a ridiculously long and expensive grind for Zandyne.
But then I wondered - what would happen if you only had one character left? Would Abaddon still be able to swallow them? And the answer is better than I could've hoped. Not only can he not swallow, he can't even shift phase. He'll be stuck spamming physicals that Roland can take with a decent karma ring + max buffs, strike back with Zanma and then heal up if necessary.
The most satisfying thing is that this fight basically added nothing to the Vritra skill grind. So sit back and enjoy the cheese. I'm hesitant to claim discovery of anything in a 15 year old game, but at the very least I didn't read about Abaddon getting stuck like this anywhere online ;)
One final note: I equipped Serph with Tarunda which will be useful for the fight with Real/Fake Varna later on. We won't get another chance to equip him beforehand.
