How To Beat Mother Harlot in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse

Published on September 20th, 2016 by Gervais D.

Mother Harlot is the strongest fiend you will come across in Twisted Tokyo and she gave me a run for my money even though my protagonist was level 99. I was debating about writing guides for the fiends in Tokyo, however, some might need one to defeat Mother Harlot.

Mother Harlot in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse

How To Beat Mother Harlot in Shin Megami Tensei 4: Apocalypse

Her weakness :

First, you should know Mother Harlot is weak against force skills. This information alone is not sufficient enough to survive the battle against her. In addition, she drains electric skills, nulls physical attacks and has resistance against dark and light skills.

Her skills are :

  • Babylon Goblet (almighty attack, all targets)
  • Trisagion (severe fire attack, one target)
  • Ice Age (severe ice attack, one target)
  • Thunder Gods (severe electric attack)
  • Antichthon (almighty attack)
  • Death Lost (almighty attack, might charm)
  • Soul Drain (steals HP/MP from target)
  • Dekunda (all stat decreases removed)
  • Dekaja (removes stat buffs on enemies)

Best partner to battle Mother Harlot with :

There is no doubt about it. You will need Navarre as your partner for his support. You will need his skills to increase your team’s maximum HP, defense, evade/hit-rate as well as his debuffing skills toward the enemy.

The strategy to defeat Mother Harlot

Getting your healer

You need a majority of your party members with force skills that hit heavily or severely (severe is recommended). The only party member that does not necessarily need a force skill is your healer. This healer needs to have a skill that restores most/all HP to all allies on the field as well as have a skill that revives them if they fall in battle. It is also important for this healer to have a lot of HP to tank hits.

Buffing and Debuffing skill users

You’re going to need debuffing skills on your demons and/or protagonist. Navarre will do his best to support your team but while he increases your stats, you should lower Mother Harlot’s stats so you to take more of her attacks and even evade them, resulting in her losing actions.

Luster Candy and Debilitate are two of the best moves for this situation.

What to do when battling :

Before engaging her in battle, make sure your assist gauge is full and you have a magic repelling skill.

Use your stat lowering moves first combined with your force skills to get some extra actions. Navarre should increase everyone’s HP on the team with his Doping skill and the assault attack should skip Mother Harlot’s turn. Go all out with your force skills with her lowered defense and use a magic repelling skill at the end of your turn.

When she does attack, you should be able to survive and she may miss. Use your healer to recover your injured teammates’ HP and keep using force skills. If she uses her skill to recover from the stat loss, keep using them again because she doesn’t do it often.

You might have to battle her 2-3 times to finally defeat her using this method. I got kicked out of Twisted Tokyo once and the second time we met on the battlefield, I defeated her.

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About Gervais D.

Gervais laughs at a difficult RPG while it takes its last breath as he conquers it. He's been gaming since the NES and loves to relax at the beach.