This hideous glacial monstrosity has a few killer tricks up its sleeves. Firstly, it can inflict a new status ailment, Freeze, that does exactly what it says, stopping your characters from moving. Secondly, it gets bigger as it attacks; in its largest form, it can unleash a devastating attack.

Snowcap can use Blizzaja, the ultimate water-based spell, Dispel to remove buffs and Snowstorm, a powerful water-based physical attack that hits all combatants and causes Freeze. Characters afflicted with Freeze cannot act and take poison damage each turn, until they are KO’d.

Each time Snowcap uses Snowstorm, it will heal itself and get bigger. At the start, Snowcap will be in its “medium” form and two Snowstorms later, it’ll be in its “largest” form, which can be identified by its ice skate blade going well off the top of the screen.

In its “largest” form, the murderous mountain on wheels can use Avalanche, a massively powerful water-based magic attack on the party. After using Avalanche, Snowcap will shrink to its “smallest” form and require four more Snowstorms to reach its full size again.

However, if you deal significant damage, Cave-in will trigger, reducing Snowcap’s size by one stage. The bigger Snowcap is, the more damage required to trigger Cave-in. Also, if the damage is very significant, multiple Cave-ins can occur simultaneously.

After Snowcap’s HP falls, it will start playing dirty and use Ice Fang to damage one character and steal 3 BP from them. On the next turn, it will Brave three times to use Snowstorm four times in an attempt to bury your party and reach its largest form in one fell swoop. Yikes!

There are a few things you can do to make coping with this terror a bit easier. First, Freeze is a new ailment, but it can be stopped by the Astrologian’s Status Barrier. Second, most of Snowcap’s strongest attacks are water-based, so Elemental Barrier will shut those down.

If you don’t have Status Barrier, you can attempt to ward off Freeze by putting your characters in jobs with high Mind and giving them equipment that boosts Mind. Characters that are frozen can be thawed out by hitting them with fire-based moves. However we strongly recommend waiting till you have it.

From here, the only thing that you need to worry about are Snowcap’s regular attacks, which still hurt a fair amount, and Ice Fang, which has the potential to jeopardise your survival, especially if it chooses to bite your support character who’s casting the two Barrier spells.

A good idea is to try and make sure your support character always has reserve BP by the time Snowcap’s HP drops. Since both Barrier spells last for 4 turns, you should have two turns where your support character doesn’t need to do anything, allowing them to gradually accumulate BP.

Additionally, you could have a character with Performer as their primary or secondary job to feed BP to your support character. Not only that, but if this character is fast enough, they should use Zero Sum on Snowcap once it has 3 BP to drop it to -3 BP after it uses Snowstorm four times.

For your own offense, Snowcap has average defences, so it’s not hard to deal damage at all. We like using the Fencer’s Bloody Wolf combined with the Astrologian’s Limit Breaker to consistently hit 9999 with Wolf Fang and Goring Aurochs–cheap and effective.

Another thing you can try is having a Patissier feed Snowcap an Ice Cream Cake to remove its resistance to water. That way, the bumbling Ba’al will hurt itself each time it uses Snowstorm. It will still grow in size, but it’s nice to see it lose HP, rather than gain HP.

Oh and of course, the Ghost Mage Onslaught works wonders too. If you haven’t seen the strategy, refer to our Recommended Builds section, a few pages back. You can unleash your own avalanche of Meteor Rains to topple Snowcap in a single turn if you use your tools well.

Neo Version¶

Naturally, Neo Snowcap has up to 9999 Physical Defence and Magical Defence, on top of better stats compared to its regular version. If you’ve faced a Neo Ba’al before, this is nothing new in the slightest.

If you haven’t (or to refresh your memory), you can deal with the insane defences with moves that bypass Physical Defence like the Hawkeye’s Harpoon, Thief’s Godspeed Strike, Templar’s Desperation, so forth. Or you can equip the Black Mage’s Pierce Magic Defence.

Since Neo Snowcap doesn’t mess around, you probably shouldn’t either. One way to topple this souped up killer mountain is to rework the Ghost Mage Onslaught, replacing Chainspell with Pierce Magic Defence so you can actually inflict some damage.

In addition, your tank should be geared for optimal Physical Defence. So the standard Knight’s Dual Shields, Freelancer’s Physical Defence 20% Up and Catmancer’s Purrfect Stance combined with the Astrologian’s Limit Breaker and Prescience.

With high enough defences, your tank will take no (or next to no) damage from Snowcap, but you still need to protect them from Freeze. Therefore, your Ventriloquism Wizard should have the Astrologian’s job command and cast Status Barrier Dart every now and then, but not when attacking.

As before, the main concern is Ice Fang, which Snowcap can use after falling below half health. However, so long as Snowcap doesn’t bother using Dispel, it doesn’t matter if your tank has negative BP. If you think Purrfect Stance will run out, have your Wizard cast Physical Ward to extend the timer.