Gravity Pleasure

Pleasure Gravity
"Pleasure Gravity" is the name of a specific combination of unusual, possibly exploitative, Skills and Abilities which allow you to defeat any enemy instantly by dealing more than 100% of their health in damage using skills which scale damage based on enemy health. Generally speaking, there are three skills commonly used to achieve this goal:

By themselves, only Death Claw can typically kill an enemy. No matter how many times you halve an enemies health using Gravity, it will never make it to zero. However, with the introduction of the Collaboration Scenario, it has become possible to give these typically Untyped Damage skills a damage type. This is only possible using a special Ability granted to the Seven Heros, called Hero of the Seven Worlds, which is available to the following characters and whose text reads as follows:

Luka, Lest, Kazuya, Hakunen, Lars, Novissa, Lauratt


 * Hero of the Seven World - Special Ability (All Attacks gain the Pleasure Attribute)

Hero of the Seven Worlds does something very unique in that it adds Pleasure attribute to EVERYTHING, including skills which were never meant to have a damage type like Gravity. The way that the game handles Untyped damage is that it literally has all other damage flags disabled. When the Pleasure flag gets added, "Untyped" is no longer an option for it to select, only Pleasure is. As a consequence, it doesn't follow the normal behavior of choosing the most effective damage type (this also happens when enemies can absorb damage; if you deal Fire and Water damage to an enemy which absorbs Water, you'll just heal the enemy, it won't auto-select Fire and push the damage through; this behavior is mechanically different, though).

When Hero of the Seven Worlds is applied to Gravity skills, the damage they do will now be multiplied by the Pleasure Resistance of the enemy. This means that an enemy with 100% Pleasure resistance (i.e. - an enemy which takes full pleasure damage) will lose 50% HP when hit with Gravity, 75% when hit with Mass Gravity, and 80% with Death Claw. An enemy with 50% Pleasure resistance (i.e. - an enemy which takes half pleasure damage) will lose 25% HP when hit with Gravity, etc. Most importantly, an enemy with 150% Pleasure resistance (i.e. - an enemy which takes 50% more pleasure damage) will lose 75% HP when hit with Gravity, 112.5% HP when hit with Mass Gravity and 120% HP when hit with Death Claw. Under normal conditions, this would make Pleasure Gravity a useful strategy only against enemies weak to pleasure attacks. However, it turns out that there is a way to make (almost) ALL enemies weak to Pleasure.

There are several skills in the game which apply the Pleasure Weakness status. This status is a bit unique, because rather than modifying the enemy's base Pleasure Resistance stat by some multiplier, it simply sets the base resistance to 150%. This overrides other conditions which modify pleasure damage, like Slimed and Horny, which both normally increase incoming Pleasure damage considerably. But 150% is more than adequate for the purposes of a dedicated Pleasure Gravity strategy. The following Ocean Skills may be used for this strategy:

One important thing to note about all of these skills is that they are Physical typed. As a consequence, this strategy can only work on enemies which can be hit by physical attacks. Put another way, they can't have Perfect Evasion (Sylph and Heinrich) and they can't have Physical Negation+Reflect (any enemy recognized as Apoptosis/armored; note that many characters that maybe should be Apoptosis are not; also one of the Hidden Super Bosses named Monster Lord Slayer). One important note is that you are not required to deal damage with the attack for it to apply the status. Enemies which takes 0% damage from Physical, Pleasure, or Water will still be afflicted with the Pleasure Weak status, and vulnerable to instant-death from Pleasure-infused Gravity attacks and spells.

To summarize: in order for Pleasure Gravity to be effective, there are three conditions: 1 - You need a Hero of the Seven Worlds user (Luka, Lest, Kazuya, Hakunen, Lars, Novissa, Lauratt) 2 - You need a character with a skill that "reduces" Pleasure Resistance (mostly Mermaids and Sea-Dwellers) 3 - It must be possible to hit the enemy with Physical attribute attacks. Evasion and Negate+Reflection will make the strategy ineffective.

Early LoC
In the Early LoC stages, you are mostly trying to overcome the fundamental problems inherit to the LoC. These include: enemies acting first, surviving enemy attacks, and having terrible equipment, among other things. For the sake of setting things up in the future, it is recommended that you start with a team like this:

---Frontline: Luka (Pleasure Gravity User) El (Pleasure Resist Debuffer) Laura (Aqua Pentagon spammer, Pleasure Resist Debuffer) Est (Tank, Support for various things) ---Backline: Nuruko or Mukuro (for Time Stop quality of life in the late-game build) Nemea (for Skill Haste: White Magic application of Aqua Pentagon once you find a trainer to teach it to her) At least two characters with Legendary Weapons associated to them. Candidates include:

Promestein, Hild, Nuruko, Sonya, Alice, Ilias, Micaela, Lucifina, Eden, Alicetroemeria, Morrigan, Alma Elma --- The basic strategy is to have everyone start the battle with deflectors using the High Psychic Ability Psycho Armor, then to have El and Laura apply Pleasure Weakness, then have Luka use Mass Gravity, with Est providing relevant support. Laura can also use Aqua Pentagon to further support by applying more deflectors to other party members. Avoid apoptosis looking enemies like the plague. Early on, you can just have Est kill them, but eventually they'll be too strong for her, and you'll just have to take a loss and start over again.

In this basic setup, your goal is farming several critical items. Early on, the most important stats you can find on items are: Skill Haste: Time Skill Haste: White Magic Skill Use: Ocean Skill Haste: Ocean (optional but very useful until you're fully geared) Crisis Double-Action Double Action Crisis Triple-Action

Some important notes: -Skill Use: Ocean will be used to incorporate non-mermaids/sea-dwellers into the lineup for the final stages, and won't matter much until then. It is reliably available on a somewhat common Unique body armor. -The double actions stack with one-another. Because it is impossible to modify the accuracy of Pleasure Weak inflicting moves, as well as Death Claw, particularly evasive enemies like Harpies, Fairies, Beasts, etc. can be a bit annoying to deal with. This will let you have multiple chances to hit them, improving your time to kill against these difficult enemies. -Skill Haste: White Magic on an item Est can equip will allow her to apply Aqua Pentagon to the entire team very quickly. Getting her to 4 actions through equipping Cards, double-action items, etc. will allow her to give everyone a new pair of deflectors every turn. Also works with Monster Lord Cassandra, but Est has the benefit of being immune to most damage, and is easily available to everyone.

In addition to those item stats, there are some important trainers that you need which are LoC Exclusive: 1 - Crab Girl - She teaches the skill Ultimate Bubble Bubble Hell, which lets a single character apply Pleasure Weak to multiple enemies at once. Eventually, you'll want this skill on some non-Mermaids, but the first time you find her you should give it to El, or whoever your main debuffer is. 2 - Laura - She teaches the White Magic Aqua Pentagon to other people. I recommend teaching it to Est first, so that she can keep the rest of your party alive by giving them Deflectors. I recommend teaching it to Nemea second, since she has Skill Haste: White Magic from her Trait. You can reverse the order if you wish, but Est is generally more survivable than Nemea, owing to her immunity to nearly all damage in the game.

Late LoC
By this point, you will have a somewhat consistent approach to using Pleasure Gravity in combat. The late-game approach will refine things further, and implement Time Stop as part of the strategy, mostly to speed things up by denying the enemy the opportunity to take turns at all. However, this requires some special setup.

As of the Final Release Version of Part 2 (2.41), there are no Mermaids with unique items that let them act during Time Stop. This is unfortunate. Owing to this, a requirement to execute this strategy is access to Skill Use: Ocean. It is readily available on multiple Unique Body Armors, one is a shell called Praesepe, the other is a Breastplate called Buccaneer. You will need these for characters who can't become Sea-Dwellers through the Miracle Elixir so that they can use Ocean Skills to apply Pleasure Weak. For the sake of Example, your team may look like this:


 * - Note any character could fill this role so long as they are immune to Time Stop. These characters are: Promestein, Hild, Nuruko, Sonya, Alice, Ilias, Micaela, Lucifina, Eden, Alicetroemeria, Morrigan, Alma-Elma

In an ideal setup, Nukuro will have the highest Agility, and will start the fight with Time Stop. Then, Hild* and Sonya* will have the next-highest Agility, and will use Ultimate Bubble Bubble Hell. If you can get Skill Haste: White Magic and Aqua Pentagon together on one of these two, they can also reapply deflectors during combats where the enemy is immune to Time Stop. Because applying deflectors every turn can be important, I also recommend trying to give your Aqua Pentagon user the most turns per combat. They can use Ultimate Bubble Bubble Hell to apply Pleasure Weak as often as possible to evasive enemies, and spam deflectors on your party as necessary. Eventually, both debuffers will fill this role. Finally, Luka will use either Mass Gravity (no magic reflector enemies) to wipe the whole enemy crew before they can act. If you're against Carbuncles or other magic-reflecting enemies, instead you must use Death Claw several times to finish the fight. Giving Luka lots of extra actions through cards, LoC items which grant Crisis Double Action, Double Action, or Crisis Triple Action is highly recommended, since Death Claw has a fixed 120% accuracy, and is prone to missing.

At any point, dispelling the enemy buffs may be very helpful, since, for example, harpies may buff their party's evasion, which is very annoying.

Enemies to Avoid
There are some enemies which are completely immune to this strategy. They will be catalogued here: 1 - Any enemy which is classified as an Apoptosis. This is because in the LoC, Apoptosis monsters negate and reflect all physical damage. Which monster counts as an Apoptosis can be a bit counter-intuitive, because some monsters have multiple races when joining the party. As a general rule, if they join as an Apoptosis or Doll, the game regards them as one. This includes Luxuru, Jaide, Vetala, Valto, Shinifa, Jellaila, Ribo-Ribo, and Twinkell. There may be others I've forgotten, so as a general rule, just avoid anything with an Apoptosis sprite; you will begin identifying them very quickly. 2 - Any enemy with so-called "Perfect Evasion". These enemies can only be hit by attacks which have the Auto-Hit property, none of which are Mass Gravity or Death Claw, or any of the Pleasure Weak inflicting attacks. In this category are one normal boss (meaning it can appear in the multiples of ten boss room in normal LoC and multiples of 5 boss room in the Carnage LoC) and one super boss (meaning it can appear in the multiples of ten boss room in the Carnage LoC, as well as in the Special Floor boss room in both normal and Carnage LoC). The normal boss is Sylph. The super boss is the ghost of Heinrich. Pleasure Gravity attacks simply can't hit them. 3 - In addition to Apoptosis enemies, there are some other enemies which can Negate/Reflect various skills. Against fairies, you must hit them with Death Claw, because they reflect all magic. Because they also have high physical evasion, hitting them with Death Claw may take awhile, so avoiding them is recommended (but admittedly difficult on many of the maps where they appear). 4 - One more Super Boss which is not vulnerable to Pleasure Gravity is "Monster Lord Killer". This is because he negates and reflects all Physical attacks. Generally speaking, he's quite a nuisance in general.

Ethics and Other Considerations
As of version 2.41 of the game, Pleasure Gravity is without a doubt the strongest strategy in the game. The list of enemies which it doesn't work on is very short, and most of them can be avoided. It is highly unlikely that ToroToro, the creator of Monster Girl Quest, intended for the specific interaction between Pleasure Weakness and the way that Hero of the Seven Worlds interacts with the %HP damage skills in the game. Consequently, it is likely an exploit, and may be removed from the game either with the initial launch of Part 3 or in a subsequent patch to Part 3. This guide was created to chronicle and detail an interesting strategy that may not exist forever in the game, but which can allow for some interesting and very deep exploration of the Labyrinth of Chaos. If you find it to be exploitative or cheating, you are encouraged to avoid using it.