After following the "All achievements, one game" guide to the end, I wondered if maybe hydraulic would be capable of the same thing quicker. I had played that class once on challenging and was very fond of Flash Freeze (a 2-turn stunner with no extra defence to the victim). It turned out to work quite well, hence this guide. Thanks to turnip90210 for testing and improvements to the guide.
The main build throughout the game will be a defensive ice build capable of doing nice damage nonetheless. All attribute points will go to Instinct. After the first battle, go to your abilities screen, put a point in Mind Freeze, Flash Freeze and Restore (2 points left). Your skill set for the early battles should include the starting abilities, your stun skill and your heal skill. Against a single enemy, you might end up having them stunned for the entire battle if you have some luck with Slam's stun effect. The way to go about battles is to use the stunner whenever possible or needed (enemies with short-term buffs are good to stun). Other than that, use Slam if you have the focus; Vapour Cannon when you don't; Restore if you think the medic won't manage.
As you level up, the skill points should be spent as follows (most Ice skills have a lower focus cost on higher skill levels, down to 0):
2: Flash Freeze and Restore 2 (1 point left)
3: Flash Freeze and Restore 3 (you can equip a second Flash Freeze now)
4: Flash Freeze 4
The two battles at level 4 are a slight step up from the first ones but still no biggie. The Doctor can turn his allies into mutants so kill him quick. The Twisted Experiment should go down easily if you keep Veradux on offensive and stun as much as possible. Hopefully he won't manage to regenerate.
5: Ice Wall 1
The Warden can deal some strong hits and after a while he will put the Death Sentence effect on you (the unit will die after its next action). It might be wise to spread out your stuns a bit (stun, Vapour, Slam, so you would start regaining your focus after the next stun and maintain enough for Slam).
Frankie won't be much of a challenge once his creator (the Doc) is dead. So start by stunning and attacking Doc, hoping he'll die before you're out of stun power.
6: Glacier 1
ZPCI Elite has a buff for 400% damage (Aim For The Heart), so keep a stun available at all times (don't use unless the other has 2 or less turns cooldown left). Restores are handy for dispelling poison debuffs. He might drop a weapon with +17 Instinct so you can always refight until it drops if you find the weapon worth it (Turnip said it helps a lot during the early stages).
Felicity is more annoying than hard. Keep damaging her until she says "Don't start what you can't finish" and stops using Black Metal. Then it'll go on slowly but just keep your HP up and you should beat her.
7: Vascular Arrest 1 (note that it always lasts 3 turns, despite the descriptions)
8: Vascular Arrest 2 (its cooldown is reduced with each skill level
The first tricky battle will be Frost Terror and Frost Zombies. For this, and other fights with multiple enemies, Ice Wall is a great way to reduce the damage you receive from one enemy while you deal with another one. Since your teammates tend to go for the upper enemy, you can begin by stunning the same guy and casting Ice Wall on whoever deals more damage of the remaining two (in this case, the Zombies deal more direct damage). Roald will be the main damage dealer, so concentrate on stuns, Ice Wall and healing (Restore also dispels up to 3 Ice debuffs) or go brute force and hope you will kill one Zombie before they kill any of you. If you manage, then the rest will go easily.
9: Vascular Arrest 3
The Frosted Light weapon from the Knight/Priest battle might be worth going for because of the +14 Instinct, +23 Vitality and +16 Physical Defence boost.
The Knight/Priest/Mage battle is a bit tough. Equip the following skills:
Flash Freeze x2
Ice Wall x2
Restore x2
Vascular Arrest
Vapour Cannon
First attempt to kill the Priest, because the Mage has a full heal spell (no focus cost) that he uses at about 500 HP and the Knight has a tendency to shield him. Ice Wall will make the Mage's attacks less damaging but he still has that annoying Doom skill that makes your heals very weak while doing around 100 damage-over-time each turn. It seems to be bugged too - the description says 50% chance to resist being dispelled but actually it doesn't seem to be possible at all. In this case, an Ice Wall can be used on your teammate to guard them and improve healing a bit. Vascular Arrest makes the Priest's heals weak but if he still manages to stay alive, he will eventually run out of focus and stun himself to regain it. Next you might want to go after the Knight to avoid shield buffs right as the Mage is about to die. Or keep Mage under Vascular Arrest and his healer will only heal about 700 HP.
10: Vascular Arrest 4
The next battle with 2 Mages and Knight can be won with the same skill set and strategy. Go after the upper Mage, try to time your stuns so that he will just be out of a shield and almost dead, don't forget about Vascular Arrest in case he's low on health and you don't have a stunner around. Ice Wall is again helpful due to 2 enemies able to Doom.
11: Regulate
For the Baron, destroying his focus is the most effective way. You won't have it as easy as biological, but Regulate still works (equip 1 instead of one Ice Wall). You will tuck in enough of those between stuns to make him lose his first chunks of health (stun->Regulate->stun->Regulate->Regulate). His focus regen lasts a few turns so don't Regulate him yet, rather heal any Tick Tock scars you receive. Once your stun is ready, go for the next round. When he has Holy Scars on, keep him at 0 focus and when he attempts to regain it, he suffers 53,000 damage and dies.
The Baron might drop a decent weapon with +43 Strength and +26 Vitality. If you didn't have trouble with the battle, you can try getting it by replaying the battle.
After this will be your first encounter with Hounds (re-equip Ice Walls). This time, they have thankfully little HP and marginal attack power/buffing compared to their Bloody relatives waiting to chew on you later, so you can probably take one of these canines out fast. Keep a stunner for ZPCI's 400% damage buff. Restore helps against all the poison debuffs.
Next is the battle for the Predator achievement. If you don't have Vascular equipped, do so (also replace Vapour with it; no more need for focus regen). Start with Sniper, keeping a stun ready for Lock and Load (Regulate will work too, if you manage to replace something with it). As soon as the initial shields come off, throw an Ice Wall at the Medic (he's prone to doing random high damage out of nowhere at times). Once the Sniper is down, start regularly stunning the Medic and Ice Walling Hunt. The battle is somewhat challenging, do not get too annoyed when you have to redo it a number of times.
12: Crystal Ice 1
13: Crystal Ice 2
14: Subversion
The next noteworthy battle is the three Spectres. While these guys were quite pathetic the first two times alone or as a pair, three of them is actually nasty. They have a buff that makes them stronger but they "ay for it each turn with their life". I died one battle so that all three had health in red while I had been attacking one. Then I came up with a way to survive longer: equipped the team so that Veradux had 1800 HP and the others around 3000. Since Veradux rarely deals damage anyway, he's the best candidate for being the Ice Walled tank. This way he will also heal more and you will probably last through easily.
Next up is Clemons. The Black Magic achievement is perfectly doable, so leave your teammates for this battle.
Skill set:
Flash Freeze x2
Mind Freeze
Subversion
Restore x2
Vascular Arrest x2
Crystal Ice (passive)
Phase 1: Clemons casts Subversion on you, so you cast Mind Freeze for 3 turns of immunity during which you can hack away with Vascular Arrest. Next you Flash Freeze him until there's one cooldown turn left for Mind Freeze. He will cast Subversion again and the cycle repeats.
Phase 2: Try to keep him under Vascular Arrest so his healing will not undo all your damage. When he casts his shadow buff, cast Subversion on yourself and he will likely throw a shadow bolt at you for 600-800 damage..err..healing ^^ While Subversion cools down, you stun him and heal yourself further if needed. You may also cast Subversion after he casts Collapse if you start getting low on health. He might tweak his pattern a bit and cast shadow bolt before his buff.
Phase 3: Pretty much the same. Except your priority is staying alive, since he has a tendency to hurt himself anyway.
He has two neat weapons he might drop: Shandor's Darkstaff (56 Instinct, 45 Vitality) and Sun Struck Horrors (28 Instinct, 56 Strength, 34 Vitality, 211 Fire Piercing). You probably won't feel like refighting this battle but it's up to you
The next zone goes with old tactics. You'll be getting Crystal Ice maxed soon and start dishing out some real damage. That will help against healing monsters like Gregor. The last battle of the zone is the Hydra. If you're going for the Pacifist achievement, your skill set should include:
Ice Wall x2
Glacier x2
Restore x3
Subversion or Regulate (Subversion is good to cast on low health units, so I will be including it in several battles; Regulate can make the Hydra miss a turn when his focus drops to 0)
In this mode, you only have a defensive role (you cannot deal more than 2000 damage throughout the fight; a few Glaciers won't do that much to disqualify you) and can simply hope for Veradux to throw a lightning bolt at the Claws (they're weak to certain elements). Restore is again very helpful in dispelling debuffs. Once the Claws die, the Hydra starts using poison techs that you can dispel if they pose any threat. Takes a while but is doable.
If you already have that achievement or simply just want to get the Legend one, you should instead refight the battle until the Hydra drops Emerald Death. It will go quick because one ice skill kills one Claw. A +186 Strength sword will serve you well for a while.
Skills:
Flash Freeze x2
Restore x3
Glacier
Subversion or Regulate
For your next abilities, you might want to max the Cold Neurology passive or get the remaining levels of Glacier. Guardian form is tempting but I didn't really use it much myself. Shatter doesn't really make sense for the tough battles ahead (why would you want to dispel your hard work debuffing them?).
Caretaker & Blood Hounds is the next tough battle. For this, I went back to the previous zone and bought Sonny a Frozen Runeblade and Lavastone Barrier. His 135 Vitality was still the lowest so he was the main target, while his physical defence was the highest.
Skills:
Flash Freeze x2
Ice Wall x2
Restore x2
Subversion
Glacier
Crystal Ice (passive)
For Android Guard & Riot Police, be sure to pack a Vascular Arrest because the Policemen heal each other for a substantial amount. Regulate would be nice against the focus-reliant Android, but he has too much of it to bother removing it by 30's.
Specialist & Androids was an easy one. Mind Freeze is nice against Specialist due to his nasty specialities.
City Council guys are pretty strong. When one dies, the other becomes way stronger, so try to have at least both shields down when you decide to deal the final blow to one. Vascular helps against their heals.
Specialist and Blood Hounds is a very hard one. Buy 2x Azure Flatblade and Riot Shield for Sonny and Roald; give Frozen Runeblade and Lavastone Barrier to Veradux. First take out Specialist, keeping one dog under Ice Wall. Subversion helps when someone falls to low health. 2 Hounds alone are already easy, because you can have one stunned for most of the time and the other weakened.
Mayor, the final enemy, has a monster ally named Guardian Cannon whose attacks scale with focus. Using Regulate all the time would probably make the battle drag too long, so equip Mind Freeze instead to use between stun cooldowns. Vascular Arrest helps to keep the Cannon's health regen lower. Subversion might come in handy. Ice Wall keeps the Mayor's attacks weaker once he gets Enraged (hopefully the worm is done for by that time).
After this, you are free to peruse training battles. The next zones would be very easy with biological (except the 2 guardian fight) but in case you want to go the full path with hydro, here's how.
Metal Warden has the same skill as its zone 1 counterpart - Death Sentence. So you and your 1 teammate will have to do a quick job. Not a very hard achievement.
For Time Bomb, be sure to max out your level (up to 30) and re-spec to Hot-Blooded build (everything from the physical attacks + points to Strength). Decimate deals the most damage in the long run; Avenger Form regains your lost focus (some of your abilities scale with focus); Wreck is nice to use in the meantime.
For Nostalgia, this is the skill set I used:
Flash Freeze x2
Restore x2
Decimate x2
Regulate
Wreck
Lasting Pain (passive)
(all attribute pts still in Strength)
At first, all you need to do is cure yourself of effects on you (Fate is an instant kill when he has Venomous Intent active) and damage him. When down to 30,000 HP, he casts Earth Titan and changes skills. When he uses Dark Omen, stun him right away. Also beware of his water bolt technique that scales with focus. 20 focus means around 3500 dmg; 40 focus around 5000; any more than 50 and you're toast. Regulate and Restore as needed. When below 20k HP, he either dispels his shield (dunno if a bug or not) or stops using Dark Omen and continues with physical attack (+focus regen)->water bolt. In the latter case, go on with lowering his focus, healing self and stun him when possible (so you could get some hits in). He will probably run out of Earth Titan before you kill him and the rest will go quick.
The Judge is simple and the Doctor simply needs some Subversion cast on him every 5 turns so the next battle to earn itself a few lines is...
The Guardians
Skill set (re-spec back to ice build):
Flash Freeze x2
Restore x2
Vascular Arrest x2
Guardian Form
Glacier
The safest way is to try to kill them around the same time, because when one dies, the other will start dealing 13,000 damage hits and you need to have him down enough to be able to kill before you run out of stunners. Vascular Arrest will help you stay ahead of their heals. Beware if one gets to low HP - if your teammates stupidly kill him, the other will get his revenge right away and if Sonny is the target, you lose (unless the other has really little HP left or if Roald magically manages to pull off a stun...just like he'll even try >_<. Hopefully they will deal the finishing blow when you have both stunners ready and are using one for the other guardian on the same turn.
Be sure to have space for their dropped 10 pieces of equipment. You will need it for the next battle with the fiery samurai.
Skills needed:
Flash Freeze x2
Restore x2
Glacier x2
Guardian Form
Equip your lowest vitality characters with the sets dropped by the guardians (you might go back and get a Firestone Barrier from zone 4 to have an easier start). In my case, Sonny had a few thousand HP less and was always the target. At the beginning of the battle, Yosuke casts a shield buff that reduces any damage he receives by 4000 and heals him for 300 HP each turn. Since you don't have anything like the Withdrawal combo available, your only chance is to outlast his shield. Stacking a lot of Glacier debuffs on him will make this task very simple (you can take quite a few hits so Veradux always has time to regain focus when he runs out). Once the shield is down, he will follow soon.
Skills for Versu:
Flash Freeze x2
Restore x2
Vascular Arrest
Glacier
Guardian Form
Ice Wall
When the lower orb dies, Versu takes the Corruptor form with sick defence and attack power. Therefore, use Ice Wall on the orb if it starts dying. Otherwise, just whack away at Versu, keep Vascular Arrest active, stun when possible and it won't be too hard.
That's all for now. Hopefully you got just as far and didn't end up frustrated too often. Comments/additions welcome
