TL/DR This boss kicked my butt continuously and forced me to contemplate burning a UOC just to defeat it. I even had to go to the Daily Help for suggestions on how to address this. Yet at the end i felt they finally made a really good boss fight for an event.

Ok, now for those who want more than just a quick overview. It took me well over 4 days and close to 600 nrg to beat this mission on hard. And like everyone i went in pretty much blind on day 1 thinking that it would be not much harder than previous event battles for week 2. Boy was i wrong. I went in with my team from the event, 2 7* Christine's, a 7* Kryla, Pirate Jake and Xon. Such a disaster. i quickly realized that i needed to go elemental-less if i was going to have any chance.

So i quickly built my at the time most optimal team to take in. Hyou (who i lucked into 7* recently), A. Rain 6, Rem 7, CG Nichol, and 7* Loren. For much of the rest of my attempts this is my team going in with the exception of one time finding a friend A. Rain at 7* i thought could carry me. for battles 2-6 i could get down its HP to around 50% by round 10 before struggling and failing. So i backed out and let my energy build back and did some info grabbing from here.

I had to wait on day 2 because i was gaming much of the weekend, and decided to ask for advice on either day 3 or 4, because i was lacking a way to prevent stop from wrecking my team. Luckily after some discussion on the help thread, instead of asking for a carry, i could easily fix it with leveling up my Lakshmi who was 3* but was only up to lvl 4, i need to build up her points and sadly had to use a reset to get it just right. But now i had a way to get and keep everyone protected the entire fight.

Battles 7-14 were much better runs against it. i would occassionally find myself it down to below 30% health but then by the end of the 4th fire hit watch my team just get wiped out. the closest i came was able to get it down to was 6% with a lucky burst of damage before all of a sudden she would go massive damage and some how despite having stop protection i would find a party member suddenly afflicted with it, or somehow the enemies attack would no longer be broken and i would lose key characters despite A. Rain being procc'ed for drawing the hits. (honestly this fight really needs a second tank or a tank who could both cover and draw, but i couldn't find room on my team and be able to reliably get enough damage through). Finally luck smiled on me on attempt 15, a Hyou who was not equipped with an elemental weapon. So many Hyou's i had to pass on because i would some how find them either with lightning weapon which meant they did nothing, or fire and would kill the party off in 2 rounds of fighting.

Having a fight where its not just difficult, but challenging to make it through made this by far one of the best events of 2018, a real step up after last years failure of a Christmas event. If they keep doing more battles like this where its not just luck or OTKO it, but actual skill and setup to make it through a simple event challenge. We might be in store for a good 2019 here on FFBE. So Happy New Year and good luck.