Game:

God of War Ragnarök (2022)

Duration: 12:29

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2

I've been working on a challenge I call the ultra low-level game, or ULLG. The rules are as follows:

* Don't gain experience.
* Don't use capsules.
* Don't use Magus.
* Don't use Arena items other than the Workman's Wallet.
* Don't use the Elemental Aegis.
* Don't use the Apocalypse Arm except against inner Lavos.
* Don't use the HP overflow glitch.
* Play in a new game +, but don't use any equipment or gain any stat boosts beyond what you can get in a single playthrough. For example, you can only get two Red Plates in one playthrough, so don't use any more than that. The easiest way to follow this rule is to start a new game, then immediately use the same file to start a new game +.
* Don't complete any Dimensional Vortexes or use any equipment from one (other than the Apocalypse Arm) until after beating Lost Sanctum, the Black Omen, all of Gaspar's sidequests, and Lavos.

The primary rule in a regular low-level game (LLG) is to not gain experience. It's also common to include some of the rules I listed above, like not using Magus and not using extra Arena items. The main difference between a ULLG and a basic LLG is that the ULLG does not allow the use of capsules. In a basic LLG, even though you can't level up, you can use capsules to massively increase your strength and speed. The inability to do this in a ULLG increases the difficulty considerably.

I tried to beat inner Lavos without the Apocalypse Arm (and following the rest of the rules written above), but it seems impossible. His unsurvivable whole-party attacks are simply too frequent. In a basic LLG, the standard strategy to deal with these attacks is to cast Lifeline repeatedly. This works fine when you've used capsules to max out everyone's speed, but without capsules, you get killed before you can cast Lifeline a single time. Without Lifeline, you can't kill Lavos fast enough to stop him from killing you.

Reluctantly, I relaxed the rules to allow the Apocalypse Arm. This weapon is inside the 2300 AD Dimensional Vortex (DV). In a new game, you can't enter the DVs until beating Lavos. This was a problem, since Lavos was the very enemy I was stuck on. So, I started a new game + from my file and played up to inner Lavos again. In a new game +, you can access the DVs as soon as you can reach the relevant parts of the world map. I didn't want to gain any advantage from new game + other than the Apocalypse Arm, so I added the last two rules listed above.

Even with the Apocalypse Arm (AA), inner Lavos is by no means easy. In the first battle, it seems the best option is to kill the right arm ASAP. This prevents the arm from attacking and prevents the body from using its devastating laser attack. Still, if you take too long, the body will kill you with a different whole-party attack. I ended up memorizing a strategy to get critical hits with the AA. The game's RNG is such that if you perform a sequence of actions, reset, and perform the same actions again, then you will typically get the same results. I say "typically" because the results sometimes diverge for reasons I don't know. For the most part, though, randomized outcomes are fairly predictable. This is why I do an apparently useless regular attack with Ayla at 1:05. I did this by accident once and it just happened to result in an AA crit soon afterward, so I started doing it every time, with very consistent results. Depending on the state of the RNG at the start of the battle, the strategy I use here may not work, and perhaps no strategy would; in that case, fighting another battle might advance the RNG to a more favorable state.

In the second battle, I tend to focus on killing the auxiliary pod first, then the body. If I can make these kills close together, then I'll have lots of time to attack the core before it revives the other parts. The body is the most dangerous part; it has a number of unsurvivable whole-party attacks. The Green Dream can revive Ayla once, but I didn't end up needing it here. I got quite lucky with AA crits and finished the battle pretty quickly.

Party and equipment:

Frog: Masamune, Haste Helm, Dragon Armor, Speed Ring
Robo: Apocalypse Arm, Haste Helm, Moonbeam Armor, Dragon's Tear
Ayla: Fist, Haste Helm, Saurian Leathers, Green Dream

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