Final Fantasy V Walkthrough

Written by Djibriel

Contributor

2.21: The Fight with the Dark Warlock Exdeath

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"Believe what you wish. Simple-minded fools such as yourselves could never hope to understand my motives. It matters not. I will tolerate no more interruptions!"

Exdeath Bestiary #285	Type	Level	HP	MP	Gil	EXP	Speed
	None	66	32768	32768	0	0	50
	Strength	Attack Mult.	Magic Atk.	Evasion	Defense	Mag. Def.	Mag. Evade
	58	17	0	10	25	25	0
	Stolen Items			Dropped Items
	Common: Judgement Staff Rare: Elixir			None
	Command Immunities			Elemental Immunities
	None
	Elemental Absorb			Elemental Weakness
	None
	Blue Magic			Status Immunities
	Doom, Level 3 Flare
	Strategy
	Summon both Golem and Carbuncle for protection against physicals and magic. Use the latter also to reflect your own magic onto Exdeath. !Mix can go a long way for both offense and defense, and released Yellow Dragons can end the battle quickly.

Exdeath will be a supreme test of your strength and wisdom; its HP is by far the highest of any enemy you've had to defeat so far, and its attacks vary greatly. Its broad array of attacks are employed from the start. You've seen most of them, though Exdeath uses them with great effect.

Doom is a Blue spell you can learn from the fiend; it sets a Countdown on a target. When the countdown reaches 0, the target dies.

Doom doesn't work on Heavy targets. 100 Gs removes the Float status. Zombie Breath is a multi-target barrier-piercing non-elemental attack which, should it kill any of your characters, will turn he/she into a Zombie. If the character is wearing an Accessory

Angel Ring or is otherwise protected against the Zombie status ailment, he or she will just die. So, y'know, good news there.

The effects of

Doom are annoying, and there's no way to get rid of it. It's possible to defeat Exdeath before the timer runs out, but you'll need to be powerful indeed. Setting Haste on any person with a Countdown will halve the number (setting Slow will double it), but that shouldn't stop you from using

Hastega. If you really want to learn it now,

Return is a good spell for that; since Exdeath will cast

Doom 66% of the time on his first turn but almost never later in the battle, you could simply cast

Return until he has cast

Doom on your Learning character. This is a big battle though, and

Doom is neither important nor difficult to obtain later in the game.

When Exdeath hits 16000 HP (around halfway), it'll get more offensive but also more linear. It'll use physical attacks, !Vacuum Wave and the third-tier black elemental spells only, though it'll often take two actions in a row. In this stage, a combination of Golem's Earthen Wall or the Image status and the Reflect status completely nullify all of its attempts of damaging you.

Upon reaching 7000 HP, it'll seriously weaken and stop taking two actions in a row; as a last resort, it'll try his hand on the ultimate Time magic,

Meteor. This is an extremely powerful attack that hits four random targets on your side for powerful, barrier-piercing, non-elemental damage. Reflect status is ignored by

Meteor.

An interesting point is that Exdeath here was supposed to have inherent Regen set, but it isn't active in this battle. Its regenerative abilities are even an important plot point if you remember the reason he was sealed in Bartz' world in the first place; oh well.

There are a few tactics you can use. Heavy Armor characters, I'm sad to say, won't be all that useful in this fight. Their physical attacks will cause Exdeath to cast

Dispel more often than is necessary. Their damage will be sub- par. Mystic Knights with Dual-Wield or Two-Handed can cast

Drain on their weapons and become self-sustaining throughout the fight. !Blue is a worthwhile ability on Knights and such;

White Wind and

Goblin Punch benefit greatly,

Vampire,

Dark Spark and

Off-Guard are nice benefits as well.

Yes! Mages are the best in this fight. Boosted third-tier elemental spells deal around 2000 damage. When you have a party covered in the Reflect status ( Accessory

Reflect Rings or Carbuncle's Ruby Light) you can cast the spell on all four targets. 3000 damage divided by two (due to multi-target casting) bounced off to Exdeath four times (due to there being four targets) equals double damage. This also works with the Blue

Aeroga spell, though even boosted this'll only get you 1500-3000 damage-ish.

Anybody with the !Mix ability also is able to deal a lot of damage, and this one doesn't depend on the Reflect status. First, drink a Goliath Tonic. If you lack the !Drink command, you can mix an Elixir with a Dragon Fang for the same result. Now, mix a Dragon Fang with some Holy Water to produce the Holy Breath attack, a Holy-elemental attack that deals as much damage as the caster is lacking in HP at that point. Your characters temporarily bloated amount of HP paired together with the fact Hoary Water deals double damage as it's Holy-elemental... again, around 4000 damage. This works best on those with high Stamina, so Monks are ideal for this. !Mix also grants you the ability to revive fallen characters completely healed (both HP and MP) by combining a Potion with a Phoenix Down, and completely heal themselves with a Drain Kiss (Turtle Shell + Maiden's Kiss). !Mix really rocks, never forget it.

Clothes characters can keep themselves busy in this battle, sure. First, the Beastmaster's !Catch ability allowed it to capture a Yellow Dragon before the fight. When released, its Lightning attack will deal exactly 25% of Exdeath's maximum HP, 8192. You could even - when you disregard the party ethics I've been wanting you to follow - have four Beastmasters release four Yellow Dragons for a quick win. Adamantite Golems are also very powerful. Dual Boomerang

Twin Lances are quite efficient as well; set

Berserk with the White Mage or through !Mix and watch the damage fly. Exdeath has some Defense though; you can remove some of it with

Off-Guard or Split Shell (Mix an Antidote with a Turtle Shell).

Never set slow, as Exdeath will retort with a

Haste spell every time.

Slow and

Slowga spells are out. You could theoretically, dunno, !Catch a Tarantula and get it to use a Thread attack to set Slow and not have Exdeath counter it. In addition, you can set Reflect on Exdeath, bounce the

Slow spell from one of your Reflective characters, have Exdeath bounce his

Haste spell off his own Reflect barrier onto one of your characters. Man, fun stuff.

Summon Golem for physical protection and Carbuncle for magical protection and an offensive increase for your black magic casters. Have your physical characters do whatever they wanna do and cast heavy elemental spells on all four characters to deal massive damage. Exdeath should be a walk in the park if you have the abilities to pull this one off.

Anyway, Exdeath is one of the tougher battles you've faced so far, but nothing extremely difficult. When you've defeated Exdeath, the three crystals of Galuf's world shatter...

...

......

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Caves of Narshe: Final Fantasy V
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