As 's first real boss fight, the Mantis Ant won't put up a ton of r♋esistance. Even so, it's possible to get trapped in a bit of a loop whereby Mount Gala's biggest threat consistently keeps you dead-center in its area-of-effect attacks. Needless to say, it's best to avoid that.

Here, we'll go over the basics behind this beastie, give you our recommendations on 🧸which build to bring to the sortie, and provide insight into our own experience. If nothing else, far tougher battles await, and what you learn here may come in handy later in your adventure.

Preparing For Mantis Ant

You'll encounter Mantis Ant at the end of Mount Gala, the "dungeon stage" when Careena joins. Since it's at the tail end of the map, use this time to acquaint yourself with Careena, both in her default class and in the Dancer class, as she's great in the fight.

We gave her the Wind Elemental's Dancer class, which meant Val had to stick with Guard over Rune Knight. In the early going, the Dancer's abilities outweigh the Rune Knight's, we've found: Defenseless is particularly savvy for lowering the enemy's physical resistance.

Our party was leveꦜl seven before the fight, although we reckon it can be completed with relative ease at level six.

Use Elemental Points to crank Dancer's abilities to their current max in the Elemental Plot. If you want to use Val rather than Careena for the Mantis Ant boss, grab the Shuriken ability from the northern section of Aery Passage so he can tap into his strength from afar.

Finally, familiarize yourself with target-locking, which can feel a bit tricky to get used to at first. We're going to want to lock on to a specific body part in the upcoming fight.

Battling Mantis Ant

Mantis Ant's main attacks involve slashing its scythes forward and leaping into the air to commit to powerful AoE (area of effect) skills. This won't change as you strip its health bar, but it gains a speed boost around midway into the battle.

In the first half, Mantis Ant is generally sluggish enough that so long as you move out of the way of the large red circle denoting an incoming AoE, and keep your distance from its scythes, you'll do just fine.

Use the Dancer's Cyclone ability and target Mantis Ant's belly, which appears to be its weak spot. We were constantly hitting with criticals against it, tearing its HP to shreds at a reasonable clip. We also cast Defenseless - all of this is via Careena's Dancer class.

If the going gets rough at any point, there are plenty of health and magic pots along the edges of the stage.

Once Mantis Ant speeds up, there's a bit less time to dodge the AOEs. So long as you keep moving, you'll have just enough time to avoid them even if you're smack-dab at the center when the circles first appear. Finish it off with a class skill and Mantis Ant's done and dusted.