Disclaimer 1: This post is intended for those who want to aim for the last mission (Finish with LB) to get the Golden Badge. If you simply want to unlock Bahamut esper, there is jump/hide cheese described\* here and here and many more places on the internet.

Disclaimer 2: This post aims to give a general idea and rotation outline. You will need to understand Bahamut's mechanics well to ensure success.

If you are more of a visual person, go here for the video of the clear and come back if you want to understand the strategy better.

Introduction

I know many will raise their eyebrows when I say this: in my opinion, Bahamut 3 Star trial is by far the best trial design. It has two modes: cheese and hardcore. The cheese is specifically catered to all players who just simply want to unlock the esper. The hardcore is really hardcore and remains mostly the fun challenge whose reward is just simply cosmetic. You are not losing out anything but your pride if you decide not to go for the last mission.

What I really like about the trial design of this one is that it has a good combination between mechanics, dynamics and endurance. It breaks away from the usual trial design concepts which are highly susceptible to powercreep. I have seen many players comparing Bahamut 3 star to Aigaion in term of tankiness and its associated mindless grind. I beg to differ. First, for Aigaion , you are "forced" to go through the grind as the valuable item is locked behind a clear. For Bahamut, you dont have to if you dont want to. Secondly, the "grind" in Bahamut trial is repetitive because many players decide to go the repetitive routes that allow them to ignore all Bahamut mechanics (e.g. AoE re-raise every turn, use evokers to ignore the mitigation). The beauty of this trial is the dynamic interaction between Bahamut based rotation and his flares. The pattern has been summarized beautifully here (credit to u/togeo). If you correctly plan and adapt to bahamut rotation, you can optimize your clear significantly.

About the strategy I am describing in this post, it is built around Avalanche's Tifa. This may be a bit of an unusual choice because Bahamut randomly puts up 99% Physical Mitigation every turn. Popular strategies often revolve around strong evokers such as Tifa or Lunafreya who can completely ignore this mechanics. However, Avalanche's Tifa is that kind of powercreep unit that is still so stronk even when her damage is resisted half of the time.

Unit gear and rotation

Faisy

Faisy will be the target board in this one. All you need to do is having her elemental resistance raised to 100% for all elements. For megaflare turn, she can help to provide AoE reraise and some LB fill through her CDs.

Nichol

Nichol brings a lot to this trial. His BS LB provides 350% stat buff, 250% AoE LB buffs and 45% water amp. On top of those, he provides AoE water imbue, 25% water imperil field (25% extra damage in Bahamut context) and 100% AoE beast killer.

The major caveat is that all these skills except for the imbue are locked behind his BS form. To add in the challenge, he is locked into his BS for 3 turns and into his normal for 4 turns, making his standard rotation being 7 turns. That makes things very odd given that your DPSes need to burst once every 6 turns. To counter this issue, on the third turn of his BS, after he performs his actions, you can KO and then raise him. By doing this, you can force him to go back to his normal form and game counter will count his third turn in BS form as 1 turn in normal form. That means his rotation is shortened to 6 turns to perfectly sync with the burst rotation.

In summary, the rotation will be as follows:

1. BS: LB
2. BS: Water imbue, AoE beast killer
3. BS: evoke Leviathan > get KOed > Raised back to life
4. Normal attack
5. Normal attack
6. Normal attack

For gearing, you would want to give him a source of gut, esper orb fill, LB fill, dual wield and a source of normal attack hit twice (e.g. Aurora Scarf). By leveraging on dual wield normal attack hit twice mechanics, Nichol can give AoE 8 LB crysts per turn by simply attacking.

Lassgen

Lassgen is the tag unit of choice here because he can provide tag chaining LB for Tifas to cap, AoE dragon killer and high enough white magic affinity to learn Raise spell.

His general rotation will be as follows:

1. AoE Dragon Killer
2. Normal LB
3. KO Nichol
4. Raise Faisy
5. Raise Faisy
6. Raise Faisy

For gearing, go all out for damage in his normal form. In his BS form, you would want high LB fill, Raise, Call of the Wild and Dragon Brush.

Doctor Aiden

Doctor Aiden is the king of re-raise here. With his t-cast white magic, he can raise Faisy and re-raise her at the same time. To perform this trick, you follow this sequence Full-life (Faisy) > White Magic of Choice > Reraise (target any unit). When Faisy is raised back to life, quickly target her. Note: Faisy hit box position tends to be wonky so best is to press and hold one unit and swipe left/right until Faisy appears in your selection screen. Thanks to the fact that white magic cast time is rather slow, you can comfortably get the last re-raise to be casted on Faisy.

His general rotation will be as follows:

1. Full-life Reraise Faisy
2. Full-life Reraise Faisy
3. Full-life Nichol and Faisy Reraise Faisy
4. Reraise Faisy/ LB
5. Reraise Faisy/ LB
6. Reraise Faisy/ LB

For gearing, you would want a form of gut and LB fill gear to ensure Aiden's LB to quickly get back up.

Chun-Li

As strong as Tifa is against Bahamut, she has one major drawback: she needs to stack her LB and loses her stack (43% damage loss) when she dies. There are two actions of Bahamut that guarantee a KO for Tifa and cause her to lose her stack: (1) 4x Atomic Ray and (2) Teraflare. (1) happens one every 6 turns or so and Tifa needs to burst 2 turns after that which is not enough time for her to stack her LB back. To counter this issue, you can use Wind Drake Horn to give her 1 turn jump and jump before the 4xAtomic Ray or Flare turn.

Her general rotation will be as follows:

1. Land
2. LB
3. Normal atk/ jump
4. Normal atk/ jump
5. Normal atk/ jump
6. Jump

For gearing, you go all out for damage in her BS form. In her normal form, equip her TMR for gut. Give her LB fill gear, Wind Drake Horn and dual wield and a source of normal attack hits twice (e.g. Aurora Scarf). Tifa's normal atk gives her 8 LB crysts so the dual wield normal attack hits twice mechanics can give her 32 LB crysts per turn by simplying doing normal attack.

Final words

This strategy is RNG-dependent as it relies on Bahamut being resistant to magic damage on Tifa's burst turn. Here to give you some odds:

• Perfect RNG: 30-40 turn clear with gearing shown in the video
• Average RNG: 60-80 turn clear with gearing shown in the video
• Screwed up RNG: go back to one corner to cry. Pick yourself up and redo the challenge.

Cheers.