Boss Overview: Hollow Queen

Hollow Queen is the first boss fight to introduce something that a handful of other bosses will use: adds! Yes, for all the (deserved) criticism EO2U gets for its overuse of boss adds, EO4 does it too. At the start of the fight—and I mean literally the start of the fight, before you can even select your actions—Hollow Queen will summon two Hollow guards to the front row, moving her to the back row.
These are basically souped-up Hollow roamers, and their purpose is to waste your time. You'll, realistically, need to kill both of them before you can start properly dealing damage to Hollow Queen. You can try to hurt it without killing the guards, but Cover will make that a lot more annoying, since each guard has a 30% chance to use it on any random turn. Their HP's fairly high, but runemasters can make short work of them, with the likes of Lightning Rune and Flame Wall, aided by Hollow guards having a 50% weakness to all of the elemental damage types. Snipers and arcanists (so, in a regular playthrough, Wufan) can also render Hollow guards completely helpless by binding their arms.

On the turn after you kill both Hollow guards, Hollow Queen will summon two Hollow seers.
These things are much more dangerous than the Hollow guards. Dark Healing sounds scary, but the actual heal is pretty miniscule, so I wouldn't worry too much about that. No, Shadow Bind is the big problem here, since that guarantees that, if Hollow Queen uses Dimensional Cut, it will hit anyone who doesn't have their legs bound, and it will almost certainly kill all but the bulkiest characters. Icy Blast can also deal heavy damage to low TEC-characters, too, which is a dangerous thing when you have a much larger enemy capable of dealing a good amount of damage on its own.

Thankfully, both types of adds are very vulnerable to ailments, and especially vulnerable to binds. Even if you don't take Wufan into the fight for some reason, a sniper can still go through each target and bind whatever body part they need for their skills. Either that, or disable their evasion so that the rest of the party can quickly kill them. Either works.

Hollow Queen itself is not to be trifled with, though it does get less dangerous after the adds have been taken care of. Dimensional Cut is the major threat here; its damage is extremely high, enough to one-shot most anyone that isn't a fortress, and it can hit everyone. Its base accuracy is only 50%, which is worse than it sounds due to AGI/LUC adjustments. However, 50% is higher than many deadly skills that rely on player characters' evasion being disabled have. It's safe to assume it will hit at least one person, and that is a nasty reality to deal with when you're talking about 200% damage on an enemy skill. Don't ignore Darkness Wing, either, that deals almost as much damage as Dimensional Cut, and while it is only single-target, it has the standard base accuracy of 99%. The best solution to both physical skills is simple, at least: bind Hollow Queen's arms. It's got a 100% vulnerability to it, and like every Hollow we've met so far, it does not build accumulative resistance to binds, so you're free to just keep slapping on whatever binds are necessary as they fall off.

Hollow Queen's skills that use the head are nowhere near as dangerous as its arm skills, though that does not mean they pose no danger. Dark Erosion is only used if the battle goes on for 10+ turns, and is only repeated every 10th turn after that, but if Hollow Queen gets to use Dark Erosion, you need to have counter-measures in place, because it will turn all of Hollow Queen's attack skills into one-shots. Metopons from treasure maps, Charm Eye if you're bringing Wufan along, one of landsknecht Break skills, you need some way to either purge the buff off, or keep it from being applied in the first place. Tread lightly with Dazzling Eye, too, as it can potentially inflict panic on everyone. Even if that disaster scenario does not occur, even one panic infliction can be annoying. Two inflictions is a problem. Three inflictions is a disaster.

Hollow Queen has one final mean trick it can pull: after it drops below 50% HP, it starts using Lovers' Breath, which cures disables from all enemies. While it's not difficult to reapply binds, at least, that does still leave at least one turn where Hollow Queen can do something potentially brutal, a turn where it can use Dimensional Cut or Dazzling Eye. Keep an eye on its HP, and possibly prepare a binding circle to go off at the end of the turn when the time comes.

That should give you a good idea of what to expect on the enemy side of things. Let's look at how each party member fares in this fight— Wait, nope, I almost forgot, time for me to mix things up! I will be bringing the following two characters along as part of the party, in addition to Wufan. Voting will be to determine the remaining three party slots.

Harper: All three of the guaranteed characters here can bind enemies. Harper does it differently from Ray and Wufan: while she can only target one enemy at a time with binds, she's much faster than Ray and Wufan, and when no binds need to be applied, she can finally demonstrate the power of Squall Volley.

Ray: Ray is far, far slower than Harper, even with a dagger equipped, but has the benefit of being able to bind both Hollow Queen and its adds all at once. She can also throw out ailments, too! Easy to forget those in a battle where binds are so powerful, I know, but they have some pretty good value here. Poison Circle in particular can really do a number on the Hollow guards and Hollow seers, as they have a 150% vulnerability to poison. ~140 damage a turn is quite a lot when the enemies have maximum HP values of 690 and 420.

Wufan: Wufan can do much of what Ray can, though her skills are not quite as potent. She does have access to a few skills that Ray does not, however, and the two can work in concert to more efficiently inflict disables using circles, remove them with Dismiss skills, and apply new circles, in a much shorter span of time than one arcanist could alone.

With that said, your job now is to pick whatever three characters you want to see alongside these three. One thing to consider is that the three characters that are guaranteed to be in the party absolutely do not have the durability necessary to safely be in the front row. You can use this knowledge to either give me a reasonable party, make me absolutely miserable as I have to put backliners in the front row, or some combination of the two!

Shelly: Shelly already has a leg up in the fight due to Harper's presence—Squall Volley is one of the premier skills for causing Link follow-ups. She, unfortunately, will struggle in dealing with the adds, but can deal considerable damage to Hollow Queen once that's taken care of.

Merula: Hollow Queen is a rare fight where ailments are pretty clearly weaker than binds, but that doesn't mean Merula can't do well here. Hollow Queen's vulnerabilities to blind and paralysis are quite high, for a boss, and once Merula lands either of those, she can immediately deal hundreds of damage to Hollow Queen each turn. One downside for her to keep in mind, though, is that Hollow Queen does still build accumulative resistance to ailments.

Ace: Ace is in kind of an awkward spot with the Hollow Queen fight. Their multi-target defense is weak right now, and this is a fight where multiple people will get hit quite often, at least while the adds are alive. She also offers little in disabling utility. However, if I am to put one or, gods forbid, two backliners people in the front row, her usefulness shoots up drastically, as she can take damage for them.

Eine: There's not a lot for Eine to do in this fight. Knockout Blow can be a way to inflict sleep on Hollow Queen, but there's not many disables for Eine to purge. Once the Hollow seers are taken care of, all he'd be able to cure is panic from Dazzling Eye. His HP-restoring skills aren't even that necessary here, since both Ray and Wufan have Dismiss Heal.

Xiaohu: Xiaohu provides top-tier damage for this fight. Importantly, she is the best user of the Flame Wall burst skill, and has Lightning Rune to lay the hurt on the Hollow guards at the start of the fight. If Shelly is brought along, too, Glacier Rune provides Link fuel. Her major downside is that the back row is already full, so bringing her along would require putting someone very fragile in the front row.

Marlin: Regen Waltz is useful, as it always is. Attack Tango's also great if any of Shelly, Merula, Naijou, or Waylon get voted in. I wouldn't say Marlin is a top-tier choice, but he's solid.

Naijou: Shockwave is incredible for killing Hollow Queen's adds as quickly as possible, especially the Hollow seers, due to their weakness to physical damage. Hell, since Shockwave deals ranged damage, it'd even deal full damage to them! Aside from that, Naijou deals consistent, reasonable damage, and can inflict head binds with Skull Crusher. His DS is poor, sure, but that only hurts you so much when the boss you're fighting has a 100% vulnerability to head binds.

Waylon: Waylon is not very useful for killing the adds, but once they're down, he can brutalize the Hollow Queen, and end the fight very quickly. If Xiaohu is brought along, she can even create an artificial weakness to (in all likelihood) ice damage, which Waylon can use to inflate his damage even further.

Vote for three people to be in the party, same as usual. Voting is open both in my Discord server, in the Something Awful thread, and the LP Beach thread.

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