Final Fantasy V Walkthrough
Written by Djibriel
Contributor
3.24: Facing the Void
Enemies: Exdeath (2), Neo Exdeath
It was over thirty years ago that a tree used to seal countless evil spirits gained self-awareness. This composite soul terrorized an alien world until four brave men, known as the Warriors of Dawn, chased the vile creature to our peaceful world. Once there, it could not be destroyed, but was sealed with the power of the Crystals, the four elemental pillars of the world. They were the foundation of all life, but an unthinkable four-fold cataclysm happened, and the creature that made himself known as Exdeath escaped to return to its world of origin. It developed a plan to gain control over the ultimate power to exact its dark judgment on all its enemies. It seemed like an unstoppable plan. But it is the fate of the world that warriors stand up in the face of destruction time and again: the Ancients against Enuo, the warriors of Dawn thirty years ago and now you, here, in the Interdimensional Rift.When you approach, the prelude to this final chapter will take place; once it is over, you are free to customize your characters for the final confrontation with Exdeath. Freelancers and Mimes are what you want, as ABP gain doesn't matter anymore, and these two Jobs (likely) have awesome stats, great equipment options and (most likely) a few useful inherent abilities. If not, Summoners, White, Time and Blue Mages, Mystic Knights, Ninjas and Samurai make the best base classes due to useful inherent action abilities.
Ribbons are a must. Exdeath will throw around a large array of status ailments, so Ribbons are great. Favor Magic Defense over Defense; 
Aegis Shields are incredibly awesome and are to be applied unless Dual-Wield is very important to the set-up of your character. !Blue, !Mix and especially !Sing are very awesome support abilities for buffing; !Summon, !Combine and !Spellblade are very potent offensive capabilities.Exdeath (2) .png "Exdeath (2)") Bestiary #313 |
Type |
Level |
HP |
MP |
Gil |
EXP |
Speed |
Heavy | 66 | 32768 | 32768 | 0 | 0 | 50 | |
Strength |
Attack Mult. |
Magic Atk. |
Evasion |
Defense |
Mag. Def. |
Mag. Evade |
|
58 | 20 | 0 | 10 | 25 | 25 | 0 | |
Stolen Items |
Dropped Items |
||||||
None | None | ||||||
Command Immunities | Elemental Immunities | ||||||
Catch, Control |  | ||||||
Elemental Absorb | Elemental Weakness | ||||||
None |  | ||||||
Blue Magic | Status Immunities | ||||||
None |               | ||||||
Strategy | |||||||
In this form, he has only a physical attack, and an attack that sets both Death and Petrify. Anything that protects against one protects against both, so it's very possible to have to deal only with the physical attacks. Holy-elemental attacks are best, but almost any attack works well against this form. | |||||||
This is the Entropic Adversary's true form; its humanoid form was always a shell, a mask. It seems that the power of the Void is something that's not quickly harnessed; Exdeath is as of yet incapable of using it in a fast-paced battle.
Exdeath will use but two attacks; a physical attack and White Hole, a single-target magical attack that sets both Death and Petrify to a single character. Characters that have protection from either status ailment will nullify the entire attack; this means that party members with
Ribbons and Aegis Shields are safe (or 
Bone Mail, as well). With !Mix, you can combine some Holy Water with some Phoenix Down to create a Life Shield. This will grant the targeted character immunity from Death-setting attacks, including White Hole. Since White Hole requires 99 MP to cast, destroying Exdeath's pool of MP by means of Dark Ethers (Mix some Ether + Dark Matter) and Lilith's Kisses (Mix Ether with a Maiden's Kiss) can eventually put a stop to White Hole forever and also stop the damaging spells Exdeath will start casting as the fight continues).This is the perfect moment for you to buff yourself to the skies; physical attacks are quite powerful but easily nullified with
Blink spells, Golem's Earthen Wall and 
Mighty Guard. White Hole shouldn't have any effect if you listened to my advice. If White Hole does manage to hit a character, the two-turn revival process is admittedly bothersome. Use to protect against White Hole if you sent a character without proper protection into battle.!Blue gives you
Mighty Guard, the ability to take only half damage from both physical and magical attacks, while giving the characters vulnerable to White Hole increased odds to avoid the attack. This is extremely helpful. !Sing gives you the ability to set Regen on all those not equipped with a 
Protect Ring; Hero's Rime increases your level over time, greatly increasing your offensive Power. Mighty March isn't normally that great, but, with Stamina pumped super high, it'll heal about 300 HP every time: not bad at all. !Mix gives you the ability to raise your level through Dragon Power (Potion + Dragon's Fang), mix up your own Goliath Tonic (Elixir + ) to double your HP. Elemental Power (Eye Drops + Holy Water) is great to set on those that can use !Combine, !Black or !Summon; normally you'd want to use weapons that boost elements, but, if you know you'll take care of that within the battle, this method opens up the possibility to equip a weapon such as the 
Defender, 
Sasuke's Katana, Enhancer or Man-Eater: weapons that provide strong passive benefits rather than elemental boosts.While Exdeath has no elemental weakness, he also has close to no Defense or Magic Defense, meaning that you can simply dive into your strongest attacks. !Rapid Fire, especially when combined with Flare spellblade effects and/or Dual-Wield, is particularly powerful. Note that the
Man-Eater deals critical damage to Exdeath, but it cannot be enchanted with Spellblade effects. With !Dualcast, you can cast two spells simultaneously; post-Element Might Leviathan summoning is most powerful. 
Meteor strikes four times and is independent from your level, which essentially means that the higher your level is (or boosted) the likelier it is that Meteor does less damage than a single 'normal' spell. Exdeath cannot avoid Aerial attacks, so Whips, Bows, the 
Rising Sun and 
Thor's Hammer will never miss. You know, it's a tree. If you can't hit a tree, trying out for this whole world-saving business was probably a bad idea.When Exdeath starts taking damage and is pushed beyond 30000 HP left, it will resort to the raw power of the Black and White schools of magic;
Flare and Holy will start making appearances. They'll deal around 2300 damage, which is probably enough to one-hit kill any character not protected by the Shell or Reflect status. In its final 10000 HP, it'll start casting Meteor; this is easily its most dangerous attack, especially against those wearing Heavy Armor or Clothes.Finally, after 49001 HP has been depleted, Exdeath loses control. Like Enuo before it, when faced with the warriors with the Legendary Weapons, the Void turns against those who foolishly attempts to control the uncontrollable, and it envelops Exdeath, resulting in...
"I am Neo Exdeath! All memories... dimensions... existence... All that is shall be returned to nothing.
Then I, too, can disappear...
...forever!!!"
Neo Exdeath  Bestiary #314 |
Type |
Level |
HP |
MP |
Gil |
EXP |
Speed |
Heavy | 97 | 55000 | 55000 | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
Strength |
Attack Mult. |
Magic Atk. |
Evasion |
Defense |
Mag. Def. |
Mag. Evade |
|
99 | 19 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
Stolen Items |
Dropped Items |
||||||
None | None | ||||||
Command Immunities | Elemental Immunities | ||||||
Catch, Control, Scan |       | ||||||
Elemental Absorb | Elemental Weakness | ||||||
None | None | ||||||
Blue Magic | Status Immunities | ||||||
 | |||||||
Strategy | |||||||
Made up of four targets, each with distinctive stats and attacks, it's best to get your strategy for this monster straight from the walkthrough. | |||||||
The abomination that calls itself Neo Exdeath has no place in this world, but what the heck is it anyways? It seems to be a combination of all that was sealed in the Void at some point; evil creatures, dragons, seductive succubi, warlocks, all driven to fulfill the philosophy of the Void, if any exists in the first place: that all must become none. And so we become complete, for the five great elemental manifestations are Wind, Water, Earth, Fire and Void...
Neo Exdeath is composed of four targets which you can think of as completely separate entities. Though some sprite-related tricks have been established to make it seem as if this is a single composite being, all four targets have different stats, different attacks and different weaknesses to exploit. All four targets are rather slow and have big gaps in their AI script where they do nothing, so they won't take as many turns as most creatures. In other words, they won't act on every turn that's presented to them. When they do act, though, they have the capacity for great destruction. When only a single target remains, that target will assume the consciousness of the other three targets and continuously attack with most of the powerful spells available to the four original targets.
The front target points to the front-most and largest creature, a thing with the appearance of a muscular man with red horns and a painted face. This creature is the only one out of the four targets with a specific nature, and, since it is the one most fond of using physical attacks (including !Vacuum Wave), I have dubbed it (Vacuum). It will use only physical attacks under normal conditions: more specifically, until it dies or is the only part left (I'll talk about Neo Exdeath's desperation attack after discussing all four parts). (Vacuum) is mainly vulnerable to
Slow and Darkness (Stop doesn't last long, Silence doesn't hinder it): Slow is best set with Slow Cannon from the !Combine command, and Darkness is best set with the unblockable Dark Sigh (Eye Drop + Dragon Fang). After a successful Dark Spark spell, it'll become vulnerable to Level 5 Death as well, but getting Dark Spark to work on a level 81 target with 76% Magic Evasion is nigh-undoable.Behind (Vacuum) is (Dragon); the pointer here indicates the part with a snarling red demon's face on a coiled body. This creature is the one responsible for the lines "The laws of the universe mean nothing!" and the Grand Cross attack. Grand Cross sets one out of 18 effects: it can inflict Death, Petrify, Toad, Mini, Poison, Zombie, Darkness, Old, Sleep, Paralyze, Confuse, Berserk, Silence, Stop, Slow, Doom, Sap or reduce a target's HP down to a single digit (but not when the target is Heavy).
Stop has twice the chance of being set as any of the other 16 effects. The Ribbon stops most of the more dangerous ones (including Death, Petrify, Toad and Berserk), but there's still plenty of nasty stuff you'll be vulnerable to. If Grand Cross fails to set whatever random status ailment it selects, it won't try to set something else; you'll often see Grand Cross do nothing in a party with characters sufficiently protected by Ribbons or Genji gear. Besides Grand Cross, (Dragon) may also use Dispel very rarely as well as Meteor, which just sucks. Meteor doesn't make an appearance before (Dragon) is brought down to 15000 HP or below, however. !Combine's Dragon Cannon, 
Dragon's Whisker and 
Dragon Lance are all quite powerful in combating this specific target, as is the 
Apollo's Harp.Far in the back row, hiding below where the marker designates a human skeleton, is (Human), the spellcaster of the four. Whenever a powerful spell is seen on-screen, you will have this thing to blame for it. It may use any of the powerful spells from !Black, !White and !Blue in addition to Delta Attack, which sets Petrify. Whereas all other monsters needed two additional casters to perform this thing, (Human) can do it whenever it isn't alone, regardless of surviving allies. (Human) is quite notorious for not being Heavy, opening it up to all kinds of silly shenanigans. !Flirt, !Iainuki, Odin's Zantetsuken, Dark Elixir; it all works (provided it gets past the impressive Magic Evasion). Odin won't normally use Zantetsuken since there are other, Heavy targets on the field; when summoned from the Magic Lamp, though, he will. Odin will arrive and attack the entire thing, but the remaining three targets will remain immune. Another especially humorous attack here is
Banish, which may work. Consider this: you will, while fighting in the Interdimensional Rift, banish a part of massive conglomeration of creatures... into the Rift. It makes no sense! Anyway, calling Odin from the Magic Lamp is really the only unblockable attack you have that immediately destroys non-Heavy targets. Otherwise, Doom (from !Blue) or !Condemn) will put an unblockable timer there. Sure, they'll take a while, but they will kill at least. And hey, a use for !Predict of all things!(Magic Beast) is the last and most dangerous of the four targets, as this is the one that can use Almagest. The pointer here highlights an undead ram-like creature, grinning like an idiot. Almagest is a multi-target Holy-elemental attack that also sets Sap; it will deal around 1800 damage to all characters, assuming that no Shell status exists and that no one blocks the attack with an
Aegis Shield. This is by far the most powerful attack available to Neo Exdeath: take care with it. Since (Magic Beast) is, in fact, a Magic Beast, the 
Artemis Bow and the Beast Killer Whip will deal double Damage. This is only a triviality, however, due to the fact that (Magic Beast) is vulnerable to the Petrify status ailment! While it can be hypothetically taken out of the fight in a single attack, setting Petrify is, as always, tricky business when the target has such a high level and Magic Evasion. Catoblepas is more accurate than Break, but the best option is always the application of Break spellblade effects, then sticking the aforementioned blade into the smiling creature's gullet.At some point, you will have reduced these four targets down to a single target. Out of murderous desperation, Neo Exdeath will use this target as a conduit for all its power; all AI scripts for all four targets activate when one part is left alone. This part will take two actions on each turn: possibilities include a
Comet or Meteor spell, Attack or !Vacuum Wave, a Maelstrom attack or Almagest. Luckily it'll only use Maelstrom as a second attack.Our duty, then, is to destroy destruction itself! (Magic Beast) must be the first to go, simply because Almagest is so dangerous. Apply
Break to your blade, then swing it; as already mentioned, Catoblepas and Break spells will have a chance of hitting if you lack !Spellblade. Next, destroy (Human) with Odin, an Antilixir (Elixir + Dark Matter) or Doom. If you have !Mix, Gloom Sight (Eye Drop + Dragon Fang) helps against (Vacuum). If you don't have it, don't bother. Properly gimped, it is time to inflict damage upon the creature. Since Neo Exdeath becomes so much more frightening once it has been reduced to a single target, it is best to divide the damage across (Dragon) and (Vacuum) evenly; multi-target attacks best serve this purpose. can help in reducing the number of attacks coming your way. Slowga has a lesser chance of hitting but is an acceptable substitute. If your team is mainly geared towards single-target attacks or is, due to !Rapid Fire and Meteor spells, not really suitable to specifically targeting its violence, take out (Dragon) before (Vacuum), as the former is much more dangerous.The fight with Neo Exdeath can definitely be one of the toughest fights this game has to offer, but, since you have so much time to prepare, you should be well-guarded, buffed left and right and ultimately well suited to destroy the bane of all existence. From two mere Goblins to this monstrosity, the Wind's Quest has brought Bartz so far...
When the gruesome battle is over, you will free to watch the ending cutscenes. If any of the characters were Dead, Petrified or a Zombie at the end of the fight, they will lack the strength to exit the Void by themselves, and they will be absent from the events to follow. Krile will be the narrator if everybody made it out alive, Bartz will be the narrator if any one of the girls has fallen, and Lenna will be the narrator if Bartz was left behind. Faris is almost never the narrator, likely because she can neither read nor write. Yar!
"Yggdrasil.
What miracle is this? This giant tree.
It stands ten thousand feet high
But doesn't reach the ground. Still it stands.
Its roots must hold the sky."
Caves of Narshe: Final Fantasy V
Version 6
©1997–2025 Josh Alvies (Rangers51)
All fanfiction and fanart (including original artwork in forum avatars) is property of the original authors. Some graphics property of Square Enix.
Version 6
©1997–2025 Josh Alvies (Rangers51)
All fanfiction and fanart (including original artwork in forum avatars) is property of the original authors. Some graphics property of Square Enix.