A comprehensive guide on how to beat the post-game boss to unlock the True ending or get that last achievement. This applies to version 1.2.5 (current) and will be maintained for future releases if the “superboss” has any more changes to it
Willkommen
Congratulations to everyone that survived Pandemonium and got to the lower stratum, enduring the crimes against humanity this dungeon dishes out is no small feat. Leider, it doesn’t get much better for us, as it becomes even more dire with the final boss/encounter. If you continue reading this, consider this a last warning (offensichtlich) as I will go through strategies and sleepers I found best equipped to deal with the final encounter and this will spoil strategies/mechanics for you. After this section, i will start referring to final boss Shinki by their in-game name. This guide was created based on what worked for me, and what consistently beat the boss with a mix of sleepers ranging from level from 86-94 with both Physical and Magical Sumireko builds
Jedoch, there might be better or unique strategies yet that I have not considered, and I welcome anyone with those ideas to fill in the blanks and I am more than happy to add and expand this if you are happy to contribute or collaborate
Shinki breakdown & Exp/Money guide
The fight against Shinki is brutal and simply having higher stats does not give you a meaninful advantage. She will abuse Paradise lost and she will make you suffer. My first 5 attempts were me misunderstanding how the fight fundamentally worked, leading to a beatdown where I spent 24 turns baffled as to why none of my attacks worked. Playing blind, I was starting to think Shinki had no weaknesses and I needed to elapse an arbitrary number of turns before I could attack, however even when you figure out whats going on, Shinki will beat you down and turn this fight into a grueling endurance contest
Paradise Lost is her bread and butter, which is possibly the strongest spell in the game. How it works for starters is not immediately obvious. Lets quickly summarize how Shinki will attack, debuff and look at the mechanics of this final battle:
- Shinki gets 3 actions per turn, where she uses Focus/Charge every 2-3 wendet sich
- Shinki will always use a Physical/Magical attack and its AOE version after Charge/Focus
- Shinki will remove her debuffs or player stat buffs every 2-3 wendet sich
- Shinki will always have 25, 000 PS und 90, 000 MP with base 60 stats across the board
- Shinki will retain base weaknesses on Turn 1 (Gun and Lightning)
- Shinki will always cast Paradise Lost Turn 2
- Shinki will then continue to recast Paradise Lost every 6 turns afterwards
- Paradise Lost will lower player party stats to the lowest, whilst buffing user stats to max
- Paradise Lost will always grant full immunity to elements and shuffle a singular weakness
- Paradise Lost induced immunity can be negated with “Pierce Command” und “Yuddha-Samira”
This might seem very difficult to overcome, because it is. From turn 2 Shiki has immunity to all forms of attacks bar a single weakness that shuffles at random. By now everyone should have the “Affinity display” upgrade purchased from the terminal, by slicking elemental moves, you can quickly check and cycle your moves to find Shinkis weakness, instead of having to analyse her and wasting SP
Throughout the battle, Shinki now absorbs instead of resisting attacks, rendering spells like Hiphani-Kopa/Jala irrelevant, which was my first attempt of cheesing her. Trying to reflect her attacks to cover your sleeper weaknesses will also punish you by replenishing 400-800hp of her health. This is the only fight where the game tells you to get better instead of absorbing or deflecting attacks you are weak against
Jedoch, as any long time SMT fan will know, Gods and Demi-gods are overrated and its time to take this god down. Before we do that, lets get the money and exp grinding spots out of the way
Geld: Persönlich, I found the Shinning Needle Castle the best spot to farm yen. Für Starter, equip the “Negotiation” grimoire to avoid having to waste time with Hijacks. The sleepers there are level 60 oder so, meaning they cant touch/damage you at all. Here you look for Seija. Keep her in mind, as she is probably the most important sleeper in this entire strategy. Seija hands out a generous 2990¥, which is the highest I have seen so far in the game. Due to level differences, initiating hijack should have 90% capture rate and you can defend to quickly regain SP.
Even endgame sleepers only reward the player with 2000 or 1900¥, making the castle an excellent spot to farm 6,000 yen per encounter of 3 sleepers if Seija happens to be there. This leads to easy 100,000 yen in half an hour or so with a bit of luck and a few Seija encounters
Exp: To quickly level up, Sie haben zwei Möglichkeiten:
- First you may choose to farm the sleepers in Pandemonium like Sariel, Shinki, Kikuri who on average hand out 18-22 thousand experience points when sacrificed. This can be rough since they need to take some damage, before the hijack rates meaningfully increase to 80% oder so
- Or two you take the said money you were grinding prior to buy Shinki, Sariel, and Pandemonium sleepers to quickly level up. Damit das funktioniert, du brauchst 75% oder 100% database completion at a minimum. EIN 100% database completion gives you a lofty 90% discount on any Sleeper making it very easy and efficient to level up new sleepers you might need to fuse for the Shinki fight. Otherwise its the longer/tedious option of a hijack spree and fighting in Pandemonium to capture then sacrifice
Spielplan
Now lets take Shinki down for good. Up to this point, you might have used sleeper that looked cool or you generally liked yourself. Jedoch, we need may need to bench them, as we want sleepers with a high Agility stat to reliably move first. It feels terrible when you bring Shinki down to 2000-4000 health to only lose to bad paralysis or slow sleepers that give free attack opportunities to Shinki. My poor Zanmu, a staple on my team had to be switched out due to her pitiful 15 Beweglichkeit, that lead to some run-ending hax after chipping Shinki down to 1230hp to only lose as Zanmu becomes paralysed and cant hideluo. Vertrau mir, you dont want a run ending like that
Now you really want to focus on Agility, followed by STR and MAG. Even though Shinki has an Agility stat of 60, her Luck stat pushes that closer to 66, therefore having Sleepers with a minimum of 67 Ag of higher is highly recommended. She has an Arsenal of devastating attacks, including AOE Physical and Special attack of every type.
She loves spamming attacks that induce secondary effects such as Poison, Blindness or Paralysis that can be devastating.
Sumireko: Now lets assemble our team and take this wannabe god down for good. Here you have an important choice of deciding what role Sumireko plays in this fight, which can either be Physical or Magical tank. I also recommend having HP and MP spring on Sumireko and every sleeper for this fight as you will be using tons of MP. For my playthrough and all attempts, I stuck with Physical. I also recommend making her a semi-support tank and having Hideluo and Dai-atma. With Sumireko being very fast, she can always reliably heal and remove the negative stat changes of Paradise Lost before the team is taking hits under -3 Verteidigung. There is no particular reason to run Physical here, Magical Sumireko might even be better in this specific fight, but nothing is more satisfying than literally punching and then shooting down gods to the proverbial ground (I always end up with Physical builds in SMT/Dungeon crawlers). In terms of other stat management, you can dump the rest into INT and VIT for longevity alongside the healing/utility spells mentioned prior. I also highly recommend changing her affinity to neutral for every attack, which can be done using Toyohime. The last thing you want is Focus/Charge boosted attack to dish out 400 damage by hitting a weakness which will end your run almost instantly if you’re not defending
To easily transfer on the HP and MP spring on all 4 of your sleepers you can sacrifice Lily White which I had fused earlier with all buff and debuff abilities. Lily can become a cheap summon as she is only level 32 and effectively pass on utility spells to your other party members without breaking the bank
Social Distortion: Now arguably the most important component when it comes to beating Shinki is this ability right here. As far as i know only Seija has access to this, which is also a non-transferable skill. You can only transfer this skill via fusion. I’ll be frank, I have tried a lot of fringe strategies, and nothing has worked without social distortion, as Shinki simply wins the war of endurance with 90,000MP where she overwhelms you as you try to regain mp/heal your team
Social distortion inverts stat changes, meaning the sleeper using it maximises every stat whilst lowering Shinkis stats to the lowest. Now we need to get this skill onto something that has higher than 67 Beweglichkeit, good attack stats, and possibly the ability to bypass type immunities with pierce…which sounds like asking for a lot? But thankfully for us, Meira fulfills all of those and getting her is not that difficult. I did manage to optimize her and we only need 2 fusions to get there
We start by fusing Seija and Yugenmagan (found in pandemonium) to get Kokoro
We can then use another Pandemonium demon in Sariel to get Meira, which is what we’re after with social distortion
Meira & Yuddha-Sumira: Now we have Meira, our 1st sleeper that naturally learns Yuddha-Sumira and becomes the crux of our strategy. You can thankfully just pass Yuddha-Sumira onto other Sleepers, which we will be using on our 2nd sleeper very shortly. This allows any sleeper to bypass type resistances or immunities whilst also making the next attack a critical hit. This is extremely useful as this not only allows for reliable damage, but the critical hits will restore SP. This is crucial on Meira as this becomes your primary way of collecting SP to cast Social distortion the next Paradise lost cycle
Yumeko/Other Sleeper: The 2nd sleeper should ideally be any sleeper that hits hard with either Magic or Physical attacks and has good longevity. Yumeko is a great candidate, as she has a strength stat of 82 alongside excellent Agility of 75. I picked a Physical Sleeper for this slot and she is excellent combined with her Gun damage immunity. Hivya-atma casts +1 evasion for all allies can almost trivialise Shinki after the -3 accuracy from social distortion. This leads to a lot of free turns as she misses her attacks until she eventually cancels all the debuffs on turn 2-3 (des 6 turn Lost paradise cycle)
Yumeko is also capable of effectively using Yuddha-Sumira after raising the teams evasion. She can afford to attack or simply cast hideluo as needed and is very consistent in conserving MP and overpowering Shinki. You also want this third sleeper to always be faster than your 4th sleeper, which in my case was Elis and Louis for a few fights (4th always needs to be slower and above 67Ag and ill explain below)
Elis/Louise: The Final member of the team needs to have a high MAG stat, Oben 67 AG and Strong magic move that covers every attribute in the game. Personally I find Elis to be excellent here, as she has a monstrous 91 MAG stat which translates to 280 Matk. She can also be found in Makai, meaning you really dont need to grind and can easily recruit her. You really dont want to be passive and her role is essentially strong attacks as Shinki keeps changing her immunities and reverting -def debuffs after rest of the party attacks shinki
You may also choose to use Hipuri-Atma that increases defence by +1 for all allies over dai-para. Hipuri atma allows Elis to negate the -1 defence of your team after attacking Shinki who will always lower your defence by -1 due to debilitating aura.
Attacks from Elis will always go 4th just before Shinki due to her Agility of 69 making her very versatile. If Lost paradise flips the weakness to Guns/Physical, Elis can better use Hipuri-Atma over dai-para, which also has the benefit of giving you a +1 defence if your party only heals and defends in any given turn since debilitating aura never procs.
Alternate Playstyles and final thoughts
Sumireko: In my primary and most consistent build, Sumireko is a physical tank and does not utilise Yuddha-Sumira. Jedoch, you can slap that on and use Sumireko more offensively. A full special build is also very viable, just swap the roles of Sumireko with Elis and follow my 3rd sleeper guide to proc massive damage on Shinki. You do need to shuffle Dai-para onto a different fast sleeper but a full Magical build with solo Physical Meira with level 89 sleepers did beat Shinki on a few attempts
Sumireko really is the most flexible member and consider putting her in the back for your fight against Shinki. I just find the mixed Physical tank build to be the consistent for my playstyle but you really can go wild with her
Shinki: There are no two ways of cutting it, she is hard, and sometimes she will simply beat you with status effects and a bit of bad luck. If your sleepers are all blinded, using a Hideulo stone to conserve MP is a smart call. Try to conserve your MP and use more items if you are having a bad time or losing when she only has a thousand or so health left. Gesamt, she is a very fun and a good final hurrah and i did not expect her to be this memorable. She clearly did earn the title of God, but I hope its not a Demi-urge situation, after reading her database entry
Sleepers: Meiner Erfahrung nach, fast sleepers, mit 2 party members having Dai-atma and another 2 with Hideluo seems to fare really well against Shinki. Allgemein, slapping on Yuddha-Sumira to break, and having Social distortion is a must the final fight. Full Physical and Magical builds can beat Shinki, but as i detailed in my Guide, a combo of having dedicated roles with a Physical, Magisch, Support and Social Distorition user feels very reliable, with consistent free wins.
I have actually gotten close to beating Shinki without social distortion once, eventually loosing due to low MP and having to constantly debuff her was the issue.However with quad Yuddha-Sumira I did get her to 987Hp before she killed Sumireko ending my run. Im thinking of a non-distortion guide as it will work but be much less reliable
Artikel: You can easily abuse items, where Hideulo stones and Life chunk bundles act like the spells and can be used by any sleeper. Dont hesitate to use them or simply buy a ton of them. If you need cash, you can follow the money grinding guide to top up on yen. Jedoch, if you slap MP spring on every sleeper as i suggested, I think you can get away without needing to rely on them
Slow Sleepers: I am looking into all <60 Agility builds, which seem to fare much worse against Shinki. I did get a Zanmu win, which really is one of my favorite sleepers this game walling almost every boss, but the best I have managed is a win with Sumireko Magical, Yumeko, Meira and Zanmu build. A team of quad <60 Agility gets wiped by status and game almost becomes luck based
