Chapter 5 - Blood in the Water

Walkthrough

Chapter 5 - Blood in the Water

Warm air, cool sea, and a not at all ominous chapter title. We'll have several cutscenes of the group getting used to their maritime voyage; including a couple of surprising familiar faces, and when we're given control we'll see Aerith and Tifa head into a room. Take note of that room for later, but for now we can't go in since the girls are changing and probably talking about boys. (or rather, boy. That is, you.) Explore each of the rooms in the 2nd class cabin. Another of the doors is locked, a familiar voice screaming and begging to be let out and apparently she's stuck in there with the Reunion boys. Oh well. Nothing we can do about it. Check the rooms here for two chests containing 2 Antidotes each. One of them is right next to the door when you walk into the room, easy to miss.

When you've had your fill make your way to the main hall where we'll get an announcement about a Queen's Blood tournament. Now, I personally highly recommend you take part in this and try to win. There's achievements and cards to be won after all. But if you really don't want to participate the counter on the right will allow you to forfeit. At least up to the finals. If you make it that far no going back. Talk to each party member about their prospects in the tournament and then talk to guy at the counter to join in yourself. Again, if you want out you can just skip it, but there's a lot of great character moments you're leaving on the table by avoiding this tournament.

Queen's Blood Tournament

So, if you've been keeping up with Queen's Blood this tournament will most likely be a cakewalk. You likely don't need my advice and you probably already have a deck you like and have been winning with. As such my advice for this section will assume a novice player who has yet to touch Queen's Blood but wants to win this tournament. If you need to know how to play [Click Here].

Now, since I'm taking a position of assuming you've never played Queen's Blood before that means there's a few key cards that many good decks would have access to at this point that you don't. Cards like Chocobo & Moogle, Titan, Midgardsormr, and so on. Not ideal, but we'll make do. Supposedly each character here has their own deck and general strategy, but I generally found all of my opponents wound up using the same tactic of relying heavily on buff cards to power up their somewhat weak cards in order to set up for powerful hitters like Chocobo & Moogle. The deck I recommend here actually counters that strategy pretty well, so if you want the easiest win then choose the opponents I chose.

We're using Ignilisk to power up our cards because it's just that good, but we're also going to use Capparwire, Archdragon, and maybe Hellrider II to weaken or even destroy our opponet's cards. Many of your opponents will rely heavily on cards like Crystalline Crab that have low independent power but strong buffs for other cards their place. By using Archdragon to kill off those cards and take the territory that card was standing on you'll deliver a 1-2 punch that most of these AI can't recover from.

The opponents I chose were Wize (Who could resist playing a card playing robot that admits it has a 0% win rate), Aerith, Madam M, and then the rest are no longer up to your choice. The first three rounds are pretty easy, but if you make mistakes don't worry. If you think you're going to lose, you can pause and select Retry to start over. The deck I've listed is probably about as good as you can get without rare cards, but that doesn't mean you're guaranteed to win every time. (Even with a good deck you aren't) If things don't go your way just retry and start again.

Some other general tips. It can be worth it to skip your first turn. The player who goes second has a slight advantage but you always go first by default. But passing your first turn you essentially steal that advantage from the opponent (and increase your hand size as well). This advantage comes from the fact that when a card places a pawn on a tile that already has one, it will flip that tile's control. When you're going first this means you are often the one placing cards in positions where your opponent can flip your spaces. But if you delay a turn and reverse the turn order then you are now the one in position to flip the opponent's pawns instead.

Take this board as an example. Because it's my turn, playing any card in the second column would advance a pawn to the middle column. Virgil in this scenario would almost always choose to play a card which flips that pawn to his control, significantly harming my chances at winning. The correct move here would be to play Titan in the top left, or pass my turn so that Virgil is inclined to take the middle space, at which point I can flip it to my control.

Chadley and Regina are more significant threats, but I'm going to focus on the Champion here. Regina has access to one of the best cards in the game that support the buff playstyle, Ifrit. This card scales it's attack by +2 every time a buff card does its job. With Chocobo & Moogle as well this gives her two devastating heavy hitter cards to work with. But again, the deck I've built is designed to capitalize on such opponents. Popping holes in lines by destroying the buff cards will massively nerf her board. Killing a crab won't remove 1 points worth of power off the board. It'll also remove the 2 point buff she was receiving from that crab. Chocobo & Moogle will lose a point as well, and Ifrit will lose 2. Killing one crab will gain you 3 points and cost her 6. That's how you destroy Regina. It might take a little luck to get the cards you need at the right time and in the right place, but with a bit of patience she should fold. Don't be afraid to retry if you need it.

Once you win the tournament a surprise guest will arrive and demand a match against cloud. This curious individual will make kids cry with their horrific appearance, but Cloud will eventually agree to the showdown. This mystery opponent is easily the toughest of the bunch, but if you've made it this far they're definitely beatable. Unlike all of the other opponents though they'll be more than happy to use power down cards to try and kill yours off, so don't think you've won just because you score an early lead. Play cautiously, destroy the challenger's cards when you can, and you'll eventually come out on top.

Victory earns you the Card Royalty trophy, An in-game Shinra-8 QB Tournament Trophy, Card #095: Ifrit, Card #115: Terror of the Deep, and a pair of Assess Materia Earrings. With the day's excitement over with the group will start making their way to bed. Split off from them and head to the Port (South) side of the lounge. You can step outside here for a Fortification Materia. We could have grabbed this before the tournament, but I got too excited about Queen's Blood and almost forgot. Whoops.

Now follow after your party. This time head into the room the girls slipped into before to change. There's a chest in here with a Celeris. After that return to your cabin and get some sleep.

Maritime Emergency

Hmm. Now, I was starting to think that "Blood in the Water" might have been a cheeky reference to Queen's Blood but that now seems to definitely not be the case. Darn. Here I was hoping for a nice relaxing voyage where nothing bad happens at all. Head along the prescribed path back to the lounge area and the captain will request your aid securing the ship. From here go outside and you'll be attacked a few waves enemies. Scrutineye will auto-dodge everything you through at them until they attack but are weak to Lightning and extremely fragile when you do get a chance to fight back. Experimental Varghidpolis have no weaknesses whatsoever and will after a time start spamming Defeaning Screech which stuns. You need to kill these quickly before they can blow themselves up. The final grouping is a mix of the earlier two. Prioritize the Experiments so you have enough ATB to fire Thunder at the scrutineye.

More enemies will swarm the boat, several of which will move beyond us into the lounge. Aerith and Red XIII stay behind saying they handle things out here. Go to the lounge and save the sailor from the two scrutineye. He'll urge us back down into the 2nd class area as the fiends have breached the metal doors. Head on in and we'll bump into Tifa dealing with a couple Varghidpolis. Take care of them then move towards the cabins. The reunion boys will come pouring out and the experimental fiend will latch onto and fuse with them. This has gone from an emergency to a full on horror show. The Nectrotic Entity is a lumbering creature with strong resistance to being staggered or knocked over, and is generally pretty strong. Attacking them during like half their moves will cause them to be pressured and so will dodging the other half. So just keep attacking and dodging and you'll break through.

Cloud remarks that the robed men are being clearly targeted. We'll get a cutscene here where the captain tries to call Hojo for help. No surprise, Hojo cares more about the scientific potential of this discovery than he does the safety of those on board and orders the captain to go down with his ship. Back to Cloud continue through into the belly of the ship. At a large open square we'll get a new enemy. A Daemonic Entity. It's a faster, stronger, frailer version of its necrotic cousin. Hitting it in the back will pressure it, and you should take this frailer enemy down first so you can focus on the big hitter one on one. You probably saw it already during the fight, but just ahead is a purple chest containing Tifa's Kaiser Knuckles. These have a high bias towards raw attack power and should be equipped right away.

Continue through the ship following the flying fiend. Crawl under the debris and head into the next room. The blue arrow points right, but we're going left up the steps for a Mega-Potion. That's the last item here. Step into another large room for another fight. This time against a Necrotic Entity and another new monstrosity, a Shrieker. The Shrieker is just like the Screamer from way back in Chapter 1. In case you don't remember, this thing will swing a mace around and around. Parry it to knock it into the air and take it down quickly. With it out of the way you can one again focus on the big guy.

Continue through the dungeon. Rest and stock up at the rest stop when you reach it, and make sure to save. When you enter the last room we'll get a cutscene. Barret has done his best to protect the black robes, though one of them looks a little different. Regardless, once the party links p Captain Titov will storm in threatening to shoot the robes. He knows the monsters are attracted to them now and plans to solve this problem his way. Barret tries to protest but the captain shoots one immediately. One of the robed individuals reveals herself as Yuffie, and begs the captain not to shoot her since she's not actually a Reunioner. Cloud will pull Yuffie aside as the captain kills the remaining robes. He apologizes to the party, and says he did what he had to do for his crew and passengers. Honestly? Fair.

With the captain gone though, we'll suddenly see the robed men start crawling around. Reaching for what looks like a piece of flesh. When they grab onto dark shadowy energy pours out and Sephiroth appears. He begins talking about a woman, who can make you see things. Strange, alien things. She can make you see your worst fears, you greatest loves. And they called this women, Jenova. Just then, a massive burst of energy shoots forth and it's boss battle time.

——————————Jenova Emergent——————————

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All of its attacks are unblockable. Vengeance is a single target laser beam with a slight telegraph that makes it pretty easy to dodge. Pestilence produces a vaporous cloud of disease that has very high tracking and can inflict a whole host of status ailments if you stick around in it for too long. Do your best to dodge this and don't worry about the laser. It has an aoe version of Pestilence called Pestilential Reckoning. You can use aerial moves to slip over this but otherwise run away from it. After doing enough damage to the thing it will automatically become Pressured. When this happens discrete parts will become available to attack. In this case, it's the head. Attack that and it'll near instantly become Staggered. Lay into with some attacks but don't get too excited, this enemy as it turns out will actually gate your damage if you do too much so you can watch all of its transformations.

Speaking of, at around 50-75% of its HP it will fall of the ceiling and transform. It's attacks get a little more intense here. Extermination is just vengeance but now it's a slow sweeping beam across the room. Roll through this and you should be fine. It also has Exaltation, which is a lot like Vengeance except this time there's a lot of lasers and it drags them upwards towards the ceiling. It's not too hard to avoid either. Once again when you do around 5-10% of its health it will become pressured. This time it's shoulder will become targetable so deliver a few attacks into that to stagger the boss. Feel free to go all out this time as while the boss might be HP gated again you need to bring it down to 25% of its health this time around.

At the 25% mark it changes once again. This time growing multiple tentacles all over the place to harass the party. It's attacks will once again upgrade, but you're in the final stretch. If you have any Limits charged or Synergy Abilities to use dump them into them now to try and expose it's body parts and stagger it as quickly as you can.

As soon as the boss is dead the chapter will end. We'll hear Sephiroth tell cloud not to be fooled; presumably by Jenova, as the room returns to normal. The captain calls out over the broadcasting system that all is well abord the ship and everyone can return to their nice, pleasant voyage.

Achievement Unlocked

	Cryptic Cameo	Complete Chapter 5
	Card Royalty	Win the Queen's Blood tournament held on board the Shinra-8.

Another short chapter.