ESC-A Falz Mother

ESC-A Falz Mother is an ESC-A Darker and the subject of the Emergency Quest Racing the Phantom Mother. It is the ESC-A Darker form of Mother.

Story

Mother, having absorbed Al, has gained the essences of the Dark Falz stored within him; however, her lack of control over her newfound strength has caused hostile ESC-A Darkers to appear. In spite of this, the remnants of Mother Cluster push on.

The player and their convoy reach Mother in the core of the Moon Base, who is now armed with a combination of Ether and Darker powers from the essences she has absorbed. Mother challenges the party to battle, but is ultimately defeated. Mother, vowing to take her revenge, is overwhelmed by her emotions, and a dark shadow appears and takes control of her. Unable to fight back, Mother is transformed and becomes ESC-A Falz Mother.

In the ensuing battle, Hitsugi manages to release Al and return Mother back to normal. Realizing the error of her ways, Mother agrees to return to Earth with Hitsugi and Al, but is suddenly murdered by Ardem, who absorbs her and gains her power. However, as the result of Ether resonating with the will of the human race, ESC-A Falz Mother returns as an Ether construct, a hollow, yet dangerous shell of the real thing.

Battle

Racing the Phantom Mother

The battle is split into two phases, which is further split into "sub-phases" that are triggered at certain damage thresholds.

Notes on more specific fight mechanics:

• Mother herself on XH has approximately 71 million HP. Each arm starts off with approximately 1.8 million HP each.
  • SH is approximately 13M and 330k respectively.
• Each sub-phase is passed by doing 10%, 20%, and 30% her health to her exposed weakpoint during each sub-phase (described below). She will transition to "Phase 2" when she's at 40% of her health left.
  • You can gauge how fast your group is doing damage by Xiera's notification of when Mother's health is at 50%.
  • The arms do not count toward Mother's HP pool, and thus in progressing the fight beyond exposing her weakpoint.

• Mother's weakpoint exposure time is based on the following:
  • The number of people in the MPA (more shortens the initial core exposure)
    • In a 12/12 MPA, the approximate down time for the first weakpoint exposure per sub-phase (described below) is 5/10/15 seconds. For each player less, you gain approximately 1.1x the time (which I believe is multiplicative with each other).
  • The number of times the arms have been defeated before moving onto the next sub-phase. I believe regardless of MPA size, this is approximately 5 seconds gained.
  • There is a hard cap to the amount of time the weakpoint is exposed per sub-phase. I believe the cap is set to approximately 20/40/60 seconds respectively.

• As you do more arm repetitions, they lose maximum health. Their health can be as low as approximately 30% of their starting health.
  • Personal experience says it's approximately 5% for each repetition completed.

Phase 1

• Sub-Phase 1: The fight starts with Mother deploying two Arms at random while throwing out laser arrays. During the entirety of Phase 1, Mother is shielded and will negate all damage in an area near her body. Mother will constantly teleport around the arena and throw out claw swipes or double claw swipes against players near her. When both Arms are defeated, Mother becomes stunned and exposes her weak point. The possible Arms are as follows:
  • Elder Arm: Delivers two long-ranged punching strikes.
  • Loser Arm: Grabs a blade, then stabs it into the ground with an area of effect.
  • Apprentice Arm: Summons small bug Darkers that explode when they strike players, inflicting damage. These can also cause the poison status effect.
  • Double Arm: Tosses out Toy Darker go-karts that spin around, inflicting damage on contact. The toys can leave pools of liquid that have a chance at causing the panic status effect.
• Sub-Phase 2: Once enough damage is inflicted, Mother will begin deploying all four Arms at once. Mother also begins summoning spinning plates that have a telegraph, but inflict damage when they strike a player. This is otherwise identical to Sub-Phase 1 in function.
• Sub-Phase 3: When enough damage is inflicted, the Arms will gain buffs to their attacks. They will also begin executing lethal combination attacks, indicated by two Arms flying into the air and fist-bumping.
  • Elder Arm: Extends attack to three strikes.
  • Loser Arm: Initial stab is followed up by additional daggers raining from the sky in a cross pattern, indicated by AOE markers.
  • Apprentice Arm: Far more bug Darkers are released on every attack.
  • Double Arm: The car now stays for a bit longer, and throws out an additional pool of damaging liquid.
  • Double + Loser: Double circles the arena, creating a vacuum that pull players to the arena's center. Deadwalls are summoned around the party, and one or two Deadwall gates open. If players do not exit the circle quickly, Loser summons a rain of blades in the center of the arena that inflicts massive damage to players in the circle.
  • Elder + Apprentice: Elder throws a gigantic ice crystal into the center of the arena, then Apprentice fires a laser beam that shatters the crystal, stunning grounded players while causing ice meteors to fly around the arena. Impact zones are indicated by a glowing AOE marker, and being struck by a comet inflicts massive damage. Avoid this by being in the air as the crystal hits the arena.

Phase 2

• Sub-Phase 1: When enough damage is dealt, ESC-A Falz Mother enters Phase 2 and combines with the Arms. She starts the phase by moving to the center of the arena and summoning an orb below her while large cubes appear from the outside of the arena and move inward. Players must destroy the cubes before they reach Mother; if Mother absorbs the cubes, the ensuing attack will power up. Once all the cubes are either destroyed or absorbed, Mother will activate a field-wide AOE that hits all players not under the effect of invulnerability frames; the attack's damage is determined by the number of cubes she absorbed. If all the cubes are destroyed, Mother will abort the attack. Mother then starts fighting with melee attacks; during this phase, her weak point is always exposed, but she fights with the following:
  • Elder Arm: Flies into the air while holding back her arm, which is followed by her striking the ground with an AOE. Large ice meteors then fall on varying parts of the stage and inflict AOE damage.
  • Loser Arm: Summons whirlwinds that pull players toward them. Touching a whirlwind will inflict damage while launching you.
  • Apprentice Arm: Holds out her arm, which then spawns large eggs that explode. The eggs release bug Darkers that inflict additional damage on contact.
  • Double Arm: Sends out four go-karts that start spinning around.
  • May perform a claw swipe in front of her.
  • Swipes with both arms while unleashing several laser arrays. Becomes vulnerable for a brief period of time after using this attack.
• Sub-Phase 2: When Mother is at 10% of her HP left, Mother activates a second OHKO attack with approximately double the cubes. This is otherwise identical to the first one. Resumes normal attacking phase afterwards, but has very little health remaining. It is possible to skip this attack by dealing enough damage before it activates.

Story Quest 4-7

Identical to Phase 1 of the EQ battle, but Mother has vastly reduced HP and the battle ends after Phase 1.