Etrian Odyssey 3 HD: Narmer

Easily one of the most pathetic first stratum bosses in the entire series. (Only really beaten out by EOU Fenrir). Narmer just doesn't do a lot of damage compared to the other first stratum bosses. All it really has propping it up is theatrics. It does pick up Whip Ripper in the 2nd half of the fight which makes it a bit more dangerous, but too little, too late.

Narmer has a whopping 3281 HP, which sounds like a lot by this point in the game, and compared to the first two games. But in practice, that amount of HP isn't as big of a factor as you'd think it might be.

Narmer's main mechanic is Marsh Dive. It'll start doing this once its HP drops to 70%. What this does is place 6 holes on the battle field. 5 of these holes are dummy targets that do nothing, where the last hole contains Narmer. Attack the correct hole, and Narmer will pop out, and you can resume the battle from there. Unlike in Nexus, it doesn't use a body part here, so you can't leg bind it to stop it. Only way that's happening is by using a hard disable such as Confusion or Sleep.

Each turn you fail to fish out Narmer, it'll either use Submerged Move to move to a different hole, or will punish your lack of fishing skills with Earthquake. Which is a big almighty AOE attack that will likely cause a party wipe at this point. Don't let it happen. And the lower Narmer's health is, the less time you have to find it before it decides to use Earthquake.

There are quite a few ways you can deal with Marsh Dive or counter it entirely. The easiest method of course is by using an AOE attack, or simply an attack that can hit multiple enemies at once. By this point in the game there are plenty of options for that. If you have a Ninja, they can use Ninpo: Double to give you 6 party members, and by that point if everyone attacks a different hole, Narmer is likely to be fished out. Why likely and not guaranteed will be elaborated on in a bit. Or you can just gamble on the 5/6 chance by having everyone attack a different hole.

Be warned that the hole that contains Narmer still runs accuracy checks! Meaning that it's very much possible that you could attack the right hole and still end up missing due to bad accuracy. In fact that's why Narmer has Mud Throw, to inflict Blind to make that more likely. If your party members get blinded, clear that off immediately when Marsh Dive comes into play! Assuming those party members are your main fishers. "Face tanking" the blind is incredibly ill advised as starting from this game, it multiplies your accuracy by 0.33x! And unlike in EO2, you don't have a lower bound accuracy of 20% (A fact this game makes sure to take advantage of later.) Yeah don't do it, just purge it off with a Theriaca B or something.

Oh yeah the first time through, Narmer will run away once it drops to 1673 HP. You can actually kill it without it running away, but that would involve getting extremely lucky with a Confusion proc and having it last for the entire time you're DPSing it down (or RNG manipulate it like speedruns do). Once this happens don't bother damaging it further, it won't matter unless you can kill it within the first fight. It'll run away and send a buncha Bog Lurkers out to roam the boss room. You can kill them, but it's best to avoid them. I just did so since one was in my way.

Leaving the floor after this point will despawn the Bog Lurkers, but it will reset Narmer's HP back to full, forcing you to start the fight all over. Instead you must recover within the labyrinth itself. The game does provide some Amritas at this point, but if that's not an option, resting using a tent is the intended solution. You can use as many tents as you want before taking on Narmer again. I didn't need to do this since my party was strong enough. Once you get into a battle with Narmer again, it will always be set to 1640 HP. Any damage dealt in the previous battle won't matter. Essentially you just have to fight Narmer twice, and resupplying properly in-between makes its seemingly large HP pool not that much of a factor since you're actually dealing with around 1640 HP, not 3281.

Narmer's conditional drop is to kill it with 1 party member. Which uh. Is not happening at this point unless you started the game doing a solo run. Just pick it up later. Hell in this release you can lower the difficulty to snag it sooner, though you won't be able to afford the weapon it unlocks for quite a while.