Etrian Odyssey 4: Boiling Lizard (5 Imperials)

For the most part this fight is straightforward, aside from one part which I'll elaborate on later.

Boiling Lizard actually has a scale puzzle you have to solve in order to weaken it, halving its HP and severely lowering the power of its skills. If you don't do this, you're up against a behemoth that will utterly overkill you and takes ages to put down. Most parties won't be able to take it on without doing so.

At the start of the fight and every 4 turns after that, it'll use Scorching Fire, an AOE fire attack that actually hits really damn hard without the right defensive measures, forcing me to use the fire resistance accessories. Boiling Lizard can hit decently hard with its other attacks and can poison you, so bring some Theriaca Bs for that.

Its main mechanic is the scales. Every 4 turns it'll shed some scales, which will chase the lizard's fire attacks, adding up to a bunch of unnecessary damage you don't want to deal with. The only way to get rid of them is to use Ice Stakes. Most other attacks will not do anything to them. Ice elemental attacks can deactivate them, but they won't actually get rid of them and they'll just reignite in a few turns. Stock up on Ice Stakes before the fight, there's an item point nearby that gives a bunch of them.

When Boiling Lizard's HP gets low, this is the part that gets really annoying without the proper defensive measures. It'll buff itself, and has 2 annoying defensive buffs to deal with. One is a regeneration buff that heals a good bunch of HP if you can't outdps the healing. The other is a counter buff. Every time you attack the Boiling Lizard while the counter is up, it'll smack you with a fire attack. Which the scales can chase. Yeah there's nothing you can do about this other than getting rid of the buff, it'll counter every single attack, not just physical ones.

Unfortunately, unlike most other EO games where there's a buff you're expected to get rid of in a boss fight, EO4 does not provide a single Metopon at this point! You can't buy them until Land 4 either. It pretty much expects you to use Kibagami's Roar to deal with the buffs and offers no alternatives if you don't feel like bringing him along. As good as having skills are, only having like access to 70% of a Landsknecht didn't exactly give my party the burst needed to just skip past that phase, and basically made it drag out the fight. So Kibagami offered a bit of help.

As for Kibagami himself, he's an alright attacker. He might look mighty here, and while he does a decent enough job, that's mainly cause I'm using a team of weakened Landsknechts. An extra party member is nice either way. Just don't bother with his support skills unless you absolutely have to. He doesn't have a lot of TP and will burn through it fast. Oh and don't bother with his healing skills at all. It's atrocious and you'd be better off having him throw out items instead of having him blow away a good portion of his TP pool on a 18 HP heal. Him having a Medic subclass is more for flavor really.