In The Proving Grounds dungeon, you will have to navigate through a maze of corridors and upon reaching the end, do battle with not just one set of bosses, but two. The second set of bosses will pit you against both Hurstwine and a mysterious woman named Narungarde. This page will focus on the strategy for defeating this pair.

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Hurstwine and Narungarde will be waiting for you at the end of the Proving Grounds.

Hurstwine and Narungarde Boss Strategy¶

First and foremost, both of your enemies here will have two actions per round of combat, so you will want to be careful. Hurstwine is very quick, so he will likely be going first, but Narungarde isn’t as quick, so she will likely be going last in any given round. She is also in the back row, so you won’t be able to reach her with all of your attacks, depending on your party, of course. One last thing is that both enemies in this battle will have some armor, so your attacks might not deal their full damage.

Only blunt-type attacks will get rid of the armor, although it doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily have access to those. Nowa will likely have Chain Smash, though, so you can use that attack continuously to deplete the armor. Moving onto the actual attacks from the bosses, Hurstwine can put characters to sleep with his Sleep Attack, but his other attack does more damage. Shotel Barrage hits a single character twice for some good physical damage and it can be annoying if he targets the same character with it twice in a row.

For Narungarde, she has a normal attack that has her shooting a projectile at someone. Rock Thrust will have her shoot some rocks at a single character, which will deal some good damage to them. The only other move besides the above that Narungarde uses is a defensive one, called Land’s Armor. This doesn’t appear to do anything on the surface, but it actually increases the enemies’ shield rank. This means it will be tougher to remove those shields, which can affect your overall damage.

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(1 of 3) Hurstwine can put characters to sleep with his Sleep Attack skill.

Overall, the battle might seem challenging because it comes right after another set of bosses. However, it can be a little easier, since both Hurstwine and Narungarde can only damage single targets. Don’t let that fool you, though, as their damage can be pretty significant because they have two actions per turn. At this point in the game, you should be able to have a good supply of Quality Healing Herbs, which heal a character for 100 HP, so you can have someone dedicated to using those each turn if needed.

For defeating them, you will receive a Rune of Sleep Slash, as well as a Rune of Earth Enchantment. That’ll wrap up the Proving Grounds dungeon, too, so you will finally be able to move on with the story.