Summons and Eureka boss plans

Odin, Leviathan, and Bahamut are all optional bosses, as are the 5 Eureka bosses. Defeating Scylla unlocks Sage and Ninja which is a net gain. I could either skip 4 of the other 7 bosses, or try to make some concessions.

In the end, I decided to treat Eureka as one big boss gauntlet, because many of the bosses are only one screen apart. If I fight all 5 of those bosses with the same job, then the plan to swap after all the other bosses works out perfectly. I opted to do it this way instead of treating all 3 optional summons as the same “gauntlet” because each of those are in their own (albeit very short) dungeons across the world. I’ll only be using the jobs for those bosses very briefly, but at least the dungeons have their own identity. After all, not much space separates Salamander and Kraken, or Goldor and Garuda, and they get their own swaps.

Job and boss pairings

Below is a list of all the bosses, the jobs I plan to use to fight them, all the jobs that were available for me to choose from, and a short description of my reasoning.

Boss	Chosen job	Available jobs & segment description
Land Turtle	Onion knight	Available jobs:
		Onion is the only job available here!
Djinn	Monk	Available jobs:
		This segment isn’t very critical. Monk was mostly chosen because others are more necessary for the other segments, and he has decent HP growth for the short grind here.
Giant Rat	Red mage	Available jobs:
		We need access to white magic to use mini, and we also need damaging spells to defeat Giant Rat. Red mage is better suited for this task than white mage.
Medusa	White mage	Available jobs:
		We need access to white magic again for toad before *and after* the Tower of Owen. We have to use toad after defeating Medusa in preparation for the Subterranean Lake, and then can switch to Warrior. Most enemies in the tower are weak to bonking, so white mage is conveniently quite strong here.
Gutsco	Warrior	Available jobs:
		We only had two options here, and I feel that black mage has a slight edge against Salamander. Both of them are quite strong at this point though, so you can’t miss.
Salamander	Black mage	Available jobs:
		Black mage doesn’t have access to fire resistance, but he does get blizzaga and ice rod! Should be a fun damage race, and pretty efficient clears in the cave.
Hein	Scholar	Available jobs:
		Scholar has the potential for very funny solutions later in the game, but I value these other three jobs more. I decided to use him here for his thematic fight.
Kraken	Ranger	Available jobs:
		Again, I need to save Knight for later, and I think Thief has my best answer to Bahamut, so I unfortunately need to burn Ranger (and light arrow!) here against a free fight.
Goldor	Viking	Available jobs:
		Surprisingly, I am burning Viking in this segment. Viking is one of the most potent single jobs in the game because of the ridiculous critical health damage reduction, but that scales on job level and it is wildly inefficient to invest such time into one job. His offense is not great, so we’re using him here before he gets outscaled too hard.
Garuda	Dragoon	Available jobs:
		Dragoon is strong against birds! Birds like Garuda. Hey, Master Gigametz has a weird bird-shaped shadow. A bird like Garuda. Anyways, here’s a wind spear. Wind is good against birds.
Odin	Black belt	Available jobs:
		It’s a bit awkward to burn black belt on one of the easiest remaining bosses, but this is the major grinding segment and black belt has the most efficient encounter clears and the best HP growth. After Garuda I’ll do the boss-less dungeons, obtain The Invincible, grind for awhile, and then do the summons in order. Odin is first.
Leviathan	Bard	Available jobs:
		This is a bit scary because I’ve never attacked with bard before, and I won’t have job levels to take advantage of the singing ability. However, bard gets quite good defensive gear for mid game, and even if I can’t attack for damage, I ought to be able to run away from encounters and survive Leviathan long enough to chip away. Worst case scenario, I’ll still have the items I didn’t use against Kraken and the ones I collect in Lake Dohr.
Bahamut	Thief	Available jobs:
		Thief gets a wind weapon and a drain weapon and can equip both at the same time. Bahamut will hurt quite a lot, but we will hurt him more and heal from it. We also get a free escape if the encounters here are too scary, but I think dual Orichalcum can handle things fine.
Hecatoncheir	Dark knight	Available jobs:
		Dark knight is deceptively awful, especially since I won’t be grinding job levels. I’ll be using him for his intended dungeon and a very easy boss, and I still expect a struggle.
Doga	Geomancer	Available jobs:
		Geomancer does a lot of damage with bells in the front row, and we’ll have our best weapons for these two magic-based fights. We won’t be in danger of physical attacks in the front row here and should be relatively safe to chime away. We don’t have healing for this pair, but we might be able to overpower them.
Unei	Geomancer	Available jobs:
		These two fights are done back-to-back so I don’t have an option to change jobs.
Titan	Evoker	Available jobs:
		I want to use evoker on every fight, and especially wanted to use it somewhere where reflect would be helpful, but I wasn’t confident in the ability of geomancer or bard to handle Titan without substantial grinding. Evoker should be a safe fight.
Amon	Summoner	Available jobs:
		Summoner is the chosen one to clear Eureka. Any of the jobs would be fine here, but I figured summoner had nice duality coming right from evoker. Summoner also doesn’t have any healing, so I feel the least guilty about using it for 5 fights. All 5 of these will be damage races.
Kunoichi	Summoner	Available jobs:
		Second fight! Second hardest, after Scylla.
General	Summoner	Available jobs:
		Free boss as long as I don’t somehow forget to equip ribbon.
Guardian	Summoner	Available jobs:
		Another simple one. Also right by the healing font in case I need a refresher.
Scylla	Summoner	Available jobs:
		The final fight we need to do to clear Eureka, and to unlock ninja and sage. Scylla is always really scary and I’m not sure if I win the dps race outright or if I’ll need to reflect a lucky curaja. Either way, shouldn’t take too many tries.
Xande	Knight	Available jobs:
		The primary reason I’ve been saving knight is for this segment. I intend to grind out onion gear so onion knight can kill Cloud of Darkness (at least one sword and armor), and knight is uniquely qualified to effectively kill yellow dragons, I think. He has access to a very good back row non-elemental weapon, elemental resistance, high defense, and a drain. He should be able to stay in the Crystal Tower until I have the pieces I need, and can kill Xande.
Cerberus	Magus	Available jobs:
		The remaining jobs are extremely strong, but so are the bosses. Magus has great offense but no healing besides drain, so I want to use him against the weakest boss remaining. It is tempting to use him against Echidna, but drain is often not fast enough to recover from Echidna’s damage if she gives us a bad pattern.
Two-Headed Dragon	Ninja	Available jobs:
		Ninja is the only realistic solution for Two-Headed Dragon given that we won’t have time for a job level grind and might not be a super high level. Full crystal gear with two shields, back row, and shurikens. Assuming I have money to buy 10 or so shurikens, this should be a comfortable win with only a few elixirs.
Echidna	Devout	Available jobs:
		This is going to be a staff-bonking fight, with a million curagas. Echidna has less health than Ahriman, so even though Ahriman might actually be a safer fight for that strategy (especially since he lacks drain for recovering from my bonks), I think it ought to be faster overall? Should be fine either way.
Ahriman	Sage	Available jobs:
		Sage has unreasonable damage and access to the best heals. This fight will be very satisfying.
Cloud of Darkness	Onion knight	Available jobs:
		The only proper way to finish the run. Hopefully I’ll have a sword and armor/shield or I’m likely screwed.