Time to burn the nihilist tree down.
ExDeath's first form is simple. It can do some physical attacks, some damage spells, and has White Hole to try and instantly kill or petrify a single character. It's not too hard.
Beat it long enough and it'll change to that total mess called Neo ExDeath. This form is comprised of 4 parts, each with their own HP. It always does the powerful Almagest attack on one of its first turns that does pretty respectable damage and can't be avoided. Among physical attacks and some spells, it also can do it's signature move Grand Cross, which produces tons of status effects on the party, or outright kill them.
My characters have learned everything because I wanted the credits roll to show all abilities, but it's hardly necessary. Bartz is my physical powerhouse, Flare Spellblade triples the damage done by physical attacks, and Rapidfire destroys single targets. Lenna and Krile have similar roles, offensive magic with some support on the side, Dualcast being really strong, and then I have Faris mostly for support with Blue Magic and Mix.
There's a billion and one ways to kill ExDeath, because FF5 is just so open ended. Chucking money at the tree until it dies? Sure. Capturing a bunch of monsters and releasing them on it? Go ahead. Dualcast Bahamut while under the effect of the Quick spell? Acceptable. Have 4 Berserkers throwing attacks on the boss? Eh... it's doable. You get the idea. This is one of the saner setups and it's still way more than enough to kill the boss.
Using Rapidfire on the final form at the start isn't very useful because it'll randomly target the other parts, diminishing damage - it's better to either big AoE all parts equally, or single target each one. This version of the boss doesn't leave the other parts dead as decoy targets, so Rapidfire destroys the last part. Haste is brokenly strong, Mighty Guard is very powerful, and coupled with my characters being somewhat defensive, the only major danger is Almagest and Grand Cross critical HP everyone - only Lenna is equipped without a Ribbon and it really bites her in the ass.
By the way, you can steal some sweet loot from the boss, like a second Ragnarok. I tried going for it on a previous run, but it took forever, and this video is already nearly an hour long. It's ultimately pointless because you can't keep the steals after the ending.
Final Fantasy V (Pixel Remaster)
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