Bravely Default 2 is a true JRPG, bringing back old-school battles with hundreds of different monsters and unique Boss fights. Fights that usually tend to be way harder than what we’ve been dealing with up until the point we initiate them, often catching us off guard in our adventure. Such is the case with Bernard, the owner of the Thief Asterisk, who is a very strong opponent, unless you know the easy way of defeating him.
How to beat Bernard
As a master Thief, Bernard uses his skills to Steal various things from your characters and utilizes his extreme speed to cause some serious damage, if unchecked. His HP are also quite a lot, considering how early you engage with him, so make sure you level up a little before you fight him. I personally dealt with him with a full party of level 16, but I was for sure underleveled. Being around 19-20 is your best bet, if you want to keep on par with his stats.
In contrast to the previous fight with Anihal, the Beastmaster Asterisk owner, Bernard is a beast on his own, without the need of too many fodder monsters. Well, there are two guards alongside him, but in comparison with Anihal’s beasts, they are literally nothing to brag about. Bernard fights his own battles, and you need to watch out for his Steal Courage skill, which steals a BP from any of your characters, and his Godspeed Strike, a lethal attack that can wipe you in an instant.
There is one sure proof way of beating Bernard with ease, and this is by abusing the Beastmaster’s Taming command and Capture abilities. As you know, Beastmasters can capture monsters for doing their bidding. So, what you need to do, is to go to the sewers and capture some Minotaurs. Those are the big hulky bull-like creatures, that charge at you when they see you. To be on the safe side, capture around 10 of those. Yes, I know, this is time consuming and troublesome. However, it is well worth it when you see the results against the fight with Bernard.
With those Minotaurs caught, make sure to have 2 characters with Beastmaster as their sub-job. You can use it as your main Job of course, but it is optional. Have at least one White Mage and a Vanguard as well. A Black Mage is also suggested, to get rid of the guards fast. Which brings us to the beginning of the fight. Start by casting ‘Enrage’ with your tank, to aggro Bernard, and easily kill the guards with your Black Mage’s spells. After doing so, the rest is easy to pull.
First of all, keep your HP up with your healer. If possible, cast some Protect spells to your tank, in order to mitigate some damage. Then, whenever the turn is up for any of your Beastmasters, if Bernard is not on Default stance, simply keep throwing at him your Minotaurs. He is vulnerable to Axes and the Earth element, so each Minotaur hits extremely hard, at around 2k damage per hit.
In order to successfully do all of this, it is advised to Default for a while until you gather 2-3 BP for each of your party members. Then, proceed with what we mentioned above, and Bernard should be taken out quite fast. If you decide not doing this method, simply because you don’t care about the Beastmaster Job or for any other reason, then my suggestion would be to bring more Vanguards or Black Mages, and simply keep aggroing him with your main tank, with the Mages doing all the work. Just make sure to NOT bring any Monks, as Bernard counter-attacks their skills, easily killing all of them in the process. If you don’t follow the Minotaur route, then it’s simply a battle of patience and a matter of keeping your team with high HP. After defeating him, get the Thief Asterisk and move on to the next step of your journey.
Bravely default 2 is exclusively available on the Nintendo Switch.
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