Disclaimer: Morrow and Shelke were not harmed in the making of these runs.

Let me start off by saying that as a whole, I enjoy Magicite dungeons. The time attack feature was something I used to try and push myself to do better and better in each dungeon. One thing I learned via Magicite dungeons was to learn how to push damage faster, and this meant weaning away Lifesiphon BSB strats that I was used to for a very long time.

I have poured a lot of resources into these fights (many Major Dark and Ice Orbs were sacrificed for this achievement). I did it purely for the satisfaction of saying I managed to beat these dungeons in under 30 seconds.

Beware that a large number of them are rather relic and/or RNG dependent, for those who want to replicate. I will list out my thoughts tips for each one as well.

Quick glossary:

• Fabula Guardian is otherwise known as Urara Wall. It's basically Wall with a 30s duration instead of 25s.
• Fabula Raider is also known as Urara OK buff. It gives ATK/MAG 30% for 30s instead of 25s, and comes with party Hastega. However, due to Urara's low MND (devs pls), the Hastega will usually run out at about 22s or so if not refreshed.
• As an aside, aim to have your Magicites be at least Level 65.
• If the names of anything don't immediately make sense, please refer to Enlir's amazing spreadsheet for more information. I didn't want to bloat it with more detail than I am already going to put in (and I'm pretty bad at keeping things short).

Sealion

Drop: Major Ice Orb x2

RW: Fabula Guardian

Magicite:

• Main: Mombomb (IV)
• Subs: Enkidu (V), Wendigo (XII), Salamander (III), Sealion (IX)

Thoughts:

This was the first of the eight Magicite bosses I downed in under 30 seconds, and in my honest opinion, was the easiest for me. The easiest Magicite for each person will differ based on their relic collection - I was blessed with a lot of Fire-elemental BSB's as you can see above, as well as a large number of Fire gear.

Echo and Onion Knight's BSB provides the party with two stackable MAG 30% buffs. Echo then casts Faith on Papalymo and Ace before she throws in some random Firajas to help with the damage. It is important that you try and get Papalymo's MAG as high as possible so that he can reach 6 hits on his BSB C1 - note that his C2 gives him a third stackable MAG 30% buff, as does Ace's.

Ace's gimmick is that his fast cast C1 does 5 hits if he is put in the front row, so do that for extra damage. His BSB grants the party Physical Blink, which keeps your party relatively safe against Insanity: Wing.

It is relatively important to have at least a 20% Fire damage gear on OK, with 40% being the best. This is because his RM is locked to Dr. Mog's/Mako Might, and ninja magic scales off damage increases better than MAG increases. Cast Mombomb whenever the opportunity presents itself to give Sealion Imperil Fire 1, and thus allow you to cap with Smoldering Fire much easier - 6 uses of 9999 x2 should take off a large chunk of his HP.

Allegro con Motto allows Papalymo and Ace to cast spells faster, build their bar faster, and in turn, deal more damage overall. It is relatively important, but you are unlikely to need more than 2 casts for a sub-30 fight.

This was a fight I managed to sub-30 once, and didn't go back to re-do with a better setup as I already had all Ice Magicites at the point I beat it. I can probably shave off a few more seconds by replacing Echo for Porom (MAG/MND buff, dedicated healer for easier survival), and having Sarah focus purely on supporting the party with Devil's Anthem and Allegro con Motto instead.

RNG on this fight is low as well - I didn't have anything reliant on RNG like double casts. It might be tough to sustain with one healer if he starts spamming Insanity: Blizzaga though, as the Imperil Ice can really add up to a lot of damage taken.

Kill shot

Bismarck

Drop: Major Summon Orb x2

RW: Fabula Guardian

Magicite:

• Main: Hydra (V)
• Subs: Enkidu (V), Wendigo (XII), Enki (XIII), Bismarck (VI)

Thoughts:

I honestly think Bismarck is one of the hardest. On paper, he attacks you with 4 different elements. But what kills runs is back-to-back Insanity: Bubble Blow spams. Bismarck also becomes a lot faster the lower his HP becomes.

The key to this setup is somewhat similar to above - by utilizing a combination of Devil's Anthem and Allegro con Motto to provide faster damage casts for both Shantotto and Ashe, you can attempt to just keep zapping him. Ashe's LM2 allows you to dualcast her BSB C1 - which in conjunction with all the damage increments she gets from Record and Legend Dives, allows her to potentially zap Bismarck for 9999 x8.

Shantotto is also a key player here - use the Sudden Hell Thunder combo to build yourself a bar (shouldn't take you more than 2 uses each), then pop her USB, and watch the damage fly. I didn't attempt to purposely trigger her Play Rough mode here, but if you do get it triggered, Bismarck should go down a lot faster.

Onion Knight is given Ultra Cure and Lightning Veil in this setup. Once his BSB is up, let him use Lightning Veil for some occasional damage, but if Bismarck's damage starts to go a bit too crazy, use Ultra Cure as a secondary heal to keep up with the damage. Protectga is not needed in this setup, since everyone in the party can be placed in the back row.

I can actually toy with an Ashe BSB OSB setup as I have this combo (and the initial reason I dived her), but never got round to doing Bismarck again as I have most of his magicite drops already.

Kill shot

Hydra

Drop: Major Lightning Orb x2

RW: Fabula Guardian

Magicite:

• Main: Enkidu (V)
• Subs: Shell Dragon (IX), Wendigo (XII), Sand Worm (X), Hydra (V)

Thoughts:

Hydra is also one of the easiest bosses on paper - the only real issue is good Earth-elemental stuff is relatively rare. For this one, I went with the standard Maria BSB OSB Entrust strat.

OK BSB Porom BSB Faith BSB C2 BM should easily put her near the soft cap. After that, it's a matter of spamming OSB back to back as much as you can.

In my initial runs, I found that I was often 1 OSB away from killing Hydra with purely OSB spam. This is actually where someone like Morrow/Shelke would be handy - you will easily be able to Entrust at least 1 more bar to Maria while she is under Thundergod's Might, which would have brought me across the finishing line. However, I made up for it using Shantotto - after Wall, Shellga and 2 stackable MAG buffs, my 515 base MAG Shantotto was able to cast Memento Mori on herself, hitting herself for 5.9k damage, which easily triggered Play Rough mode. After that, 6x fast cast Meltdowns dealing 9999 x3 each made up for that 1 missing OSB damage. Keep in mind that due to lowered resistance in Play Rough mode, Shantotto should be the primary holder of your Major Lightning resist accessory.

Once again, Protectga isn't necessary as Hydra's physical attacks are often single-target, and can be mitigated by simply placing all your units in the back row.

Kill shot

Golem

Drop: Major Earth Orb x2

RW: Fabula Guardian

Magicite:

• Main: Fenrir (VI)
• Subs: Golem (V), Enkidu (V), Wing Raptor (V), Wendigo (XII)

Thoughts:

Golem is notoriously difficult for non-Cloud USB/BSB2 physical parties, however in my opinion it is also one of the least relic dependent fights, if you are willing to hone multiple copies of Gust and/or Raging Storm - Wind Ninja magic really tears through Golem. Note that I do indeed have three copies of Gust R5, though they were mostly from early days when I was simply trying to beat it under 1 minute. I don't actually use up all of my Gusts nowadays.

As with ninja magic in general, damage is often almost always the way to go. With two magic buffs in the party, even a standard Air Knife (V) will do for characters like Shadow, as the Ninja magic softcap is not very hard to reach (about 389 or so to my knowledge). Once again, as with Sealion, it is especially more important for OK as he is locked out of damage RM's. Shadow and Edge are interchangeable as both have a double cast Ninja LM2, and gain a lot of Ninja damage from their dives.

Unlike the previous two fights, you do actually need mixed mitigation here. Porom should open with Protectga and OK can use Shellga after the initial BSB cast.

With this one I was actually struggling for damage somewhat. You'll want to summon Fenrir ASAP for two reasons - BarEarth reduces the damage you take from Quake and Insanity: Quake, and Fenrir's main attacks are generally Wind-elemental magic attacks. In my opinion, Fenrir is superior to Enkidu for this one if you need damage, but Enkidu isn't far off.

Fujin would use Burgle and Buff when she gets a bar, or close to it anyway, then deal damage the rest of the way with her BSB. Don't bother using C2 at all.

As per the Hydra fight, Shantotto once again casts Memento Mori on herself to trigger Play Rough, then throw fast cast 9999 x3 Meltdowns on Golem.

This fight has a fair amount of RNG to it - between Shantotto taking too much damage and making Memento Mori kill herself, or Golem stunning your party too much.

Kill shot

Liquid Flame

Drop: Major Fire Orb x2

RW: Fabula Guardian

Magicite:

• Main: Bismarck (VI)
• Subs: Mombomb (IV), Liquid Flame (V), Enlil (XIII), Bottomswell (VII)

Thoughts:

Yes, this fight is one of the few fights that can be beaten without a healer! Having Death resist on everyone negates a lot of Liquid Flame's damage, and Bismarck is an instant cast Magicite summon that gives your party 1x Fire Blink, which deals with Mad Firaja (you should only see this once, at most twice in your sub-30 runs).

Honestly I wasn't trying too hard with this setup, but this is the same ol' Wrath/Entrust En-OSB strat as I used for Hydra. Since there's no 3-hit equivalent of Meltdown for Water-element, I couldn't really use Shantotto here, not to mention that this was a physical centric party. Yuffie provided the damage, and Rikku provided the Imperil to let Yuffie hit harder. In all honesty, I could probably have gone with Mako Might on Rikku for the early Imperil, as her damage is relatively pitiful even with a 20% damage RM.

Kill shot

Mist Dragon

Drop: Major Holy Orb x2

RW: Fabula Guardian

Magicite:

• Main: Enkidu (V)
• Subs: Mombomb (IV), Sealion (IX), Enki (XIII)/Phantom (VI), Mist Dragon (IV)

Thoughts:

The strategy to this fight is mainly using Shadow's USB Chase and dual cast Ninja to deal a lot of quick damage to Mist Dragon, forcing him to phase faster. Mist Dragon has 3 phases, and goes into Mist form at 6, 8 and 10 turns in each phase respectively. What this means is you want to deal 30% of his HP in the first 5 turns, another 30% within 7 turns, and finish him off. This gives you roughly about 25 seconds to kill Mist Dragon.

Sephiroth opens with Dread Weapon, uses Crimson Cross every turn once Shout goes up and uses Dread Weapon if he is low on HP instead. When the opportunity arises, he will use BSB2 then move onto C1 spam instead.

Damage mainly comes from Shadow. Mist Dragon only uses physical attacks during the first 2 turns of the fight, so Shadow with USB is really awesome for this fight. Use Shadow Mirage twice to get two stacks of Physical Blink. Ramza opens with Shout, uses Wrath once, then Entrusts it to Shadow, who immediately uses USB as soon as he can. By the time Shadow has his USB up, he should have 2 stacks of Physical Blink, which allows you to spam 4-hits of Dark Seal with impunity. With just 20% Dark damage from gear, my Shadow was hitting about 5.5k x4 with a 9999 x2 follow up every 3 - 4 seconds of the fight.

The other collateral damage comes from Alphinaud's Radiant Shield. Mist Dragon is a big fan of AoE attacks, and often reflects something like 2 - 2.5k x5 to himself every turn. I struggled with skills to give Alphinaud, and opted to use him to deal damage instead of being a secondary healer. Drainga can probably be replaced with a honed Ultima Weapon, but Drainga also has some self-sustain - it's whether you feel 5.3k damage 1.6k HP of Drain or so is worth the slot over Ultima Weapon which might deal more damage.

Since my healer cannot have Dr. Mog's/Mako Might, I opted to use Enkidu as my magicite of choice for one turn of emergency instant party heal. This often buys Vanille enough time to get 1 bar when I need it, and she can keep using C2 the rest of the fight to sustain the party.

The fight can be RNG dependent - Mist Dragon is quite fast, and if he focus early Holy on one character, it could lead to death. Also, if Shadow's Ninja dualcast doesn't proc enough and he enters Mist form, be often ready to see 3x Mist counters (1 for each hit of Shadow's dual cast chase mode).

Elemental resistance here is more or less useless - Mist Dragon has dual Holy/Ice elemental abilities, so if you gear for Holy resist, you'll simply get hit for Ice damage instead, and vice versa. I also beat Mist Dragon in under 30 seconds without a single Dark-magicite as I opted to not touch Shadow Dragon until I had sufficient levels on Unicorn and Kirin (see below for more detail).

In the kill shot, I placed everyone in the front row as a sort of experiment, as I noticed that Insanity: Holy hit the three people in the back row (Alphinaud, Ramza and Vanille), so I thought to try and bring them to the front row and see if it let them dodge that attack entirely (apparently it would then target three random front-row characters instead. D'oh!).

Kill shot

Shadow Dragon

Drop: Major Dark Orb x2

RW: Fabula Guardian

Magicite:

• Main: Enkidu (V)
• Subs: Mombomb (IV), Enki (XIII), Unicorn (VI), Kirin (VI)

Thoughts:

The strategy I used was very similar to what /u/CareerSMN used. The idea is that you will need to deal 120k damage within the first 10 seconds of the fight to force Shadow Dragon to enter Weak phase. In his Standard phase, he uses Black Fang every 4, 8, and 15 turns, which is an auto-hit instant kill attack. What this means is no Last Stand or Death resist will save you here. As such it is imperative to dodge it so that you don't waste turns and time turtling.

Unlike other Wrath/Entrust setups I used, Orlandu seemed to be less reliable on having immediate Entrusts. My general strategy was to have him build up bars until Beatrix got her BSB off for Imperil 1, then Orlandu would spam his OSB as much as he can, and hoped Shadow Dragon died. Since I didn't have to immediately keep Entrusting bars to Orlandu, and he seemed to build bars pretty easily between fast cast Saint's Cross spam and the AoE damage in this fight, OK was able to use his BSB to add some more oomph to Orlandu's OSB in the last 10 seconds. I haven't experimented with immediately entrusting Orlandu and having him OSB a couple of times before Imperil 1 went up yet, but it could potentially be faster than how I've been doing it at the moment.

To deal 120k damage, I needed to have a Mako Might OK immediately Entrust his bar to Orlandu. Orlandu would open with Hailstorm and OSB on the next turn. Beatrix's Legend Dive in particular was also important - Divine Cross did 9.3k x2 after Shout and Guard Bringer did 5.8k x3 after Wall and Shout. At least one of these would need to be dual casted in order to skip the first Black Fang. Unicorn and Kirin at 65 minimum provided some amount of EnHoly passive damage to help boost the damage from Orlandu's OSB and Beatrix's abilities. In my very first clear run, I required Beatrix to dual cast twice in order to skip Black Fang, since I didn't have Unicorn and Kirin back then.

Orlandu is capable of using both Dark Bargain or Hailstorm to boost his ATK. The choice boils down to whether you can deal without Shellga or Protectga, as due to the rigid nature of the setup, it is impossible to fit both. I went with Hailstorm as I decided to use Shellga to cover the drop in RES, and I wasn't running Protectga, so I didn't want to risk Dark Bargain lowering his DEF when Shadow Dragon's Insanity: Black Fang attack deals a large amount of damage without Protectga up. Conversely, /u/CareerSMN chose to run Protectga and Dark Bargain, and skipped Shellga in his run.

The fight (and strategy) can become RNG reliant to a degree. Sometimes, initial turn orders would go out of whack (there were rounds were Orlandu would go first, then OK, and then there were rounds where OK and Vanille both went ahead of Orlandu, which costed me my timing), which created an inconsistency in when attacks would go out, and sometimes left me a few milliseconds short of getting the first Orlandu OSB off. Other times, Beatrix refused to dual cast either skill, leading to a death as well.

Kill shot

Fenrir

Drop: Major Wind Orb x2

RW: Fabula Guardian

Magicite:

• Main: Wendigo (XII)
• Subs: Mombomb (IV), Taharka (IX), Enki (XIII), Fenrir (VI)

Thoughts:

On paper, Fenrir should be the easiest boss as he has the lowest HP, and his moves are very straightforward and easy to deal with. However, much like Hydra, good Ice-elemental SB's are rare, and the hardest part of Fenrir is dealing with his physical blink, if using a physical party, along with praying you don't get unluckily Slowed at crucial moments.

I had tried various setups, and after pulling Fran's USB a couple of days ago, I decided this would give me the edge I needed to beat Fenrir in under 30 seconds.

The idea was that there wasn't too much healing necessary in this fight, therefore Vanille had the duty of being able to use instant attacks via her RM. If needed to mass heal, an LM2 empowered Curaja would be more than sufficient, given that Fenrir's attacks are mainly single-target physical attacks.

The faster Squall got to use his BSB2 the better - Fran opens with Wrath, Entrusts to Squall on her next turn, then her pattern is to mainly Wrath until she gets to use her USB and cast that every time she got to.

Ramza was mainly a sitting duck for this fight - his role was only to provide Shout for Squall, apply Affliction Break, remove Fenrir's Haste when he uses Howling Moon, and otherwise summon Wendigo. Other than that, he was only there to upkeep Affliction Break. Removing Haste wasn't overly important per se, but he didn't really have much else to do. Maybe I could run Lifesiphon on him, so that he can try and Tailwind for heals.

The fight mainly boils down to how often Squall's empowered C2 procs doublecast - the more it procs, the faster he dies. Ayame didn't contribute too much damage, but I don't think I have any other better option at the moment. Perhaps Cloud USB Hailstorm/Omega Drive?

Some other RNG factors include:

• If Fenrir attacked Squall and/or Fran (but not anyone else) in his opening two turns, Squall was able to get a bar after the first Milennial Decay, after using Snowstorm Strike once. This leads to a 10 seconds BSB2 cast.
• If Fenrir attacked neither or only one of the two in his first 2 turns, then Squall would have to use Snowstorm Strike once more to get his bar, which would lead to a 13 seconds BSB2 cast.
• If Fenrir Slowed someone that isn't Ramza after the first Milennial Decay, it is pretty much an S/L.

I probably will not be attempting to optimize this fight further, as I already have all of Fenrir's magicite drops. Perhaps until I need Major Wind Orbs I guess.

Kill shot - forgive the bad timing on when I took this screenshot >.<