In my quest to get enough fire tears for all my SS Memorias in Heaven Burns Red, I've run the Oubliette dungeon over and over again. My latest dungeon dive was the most beautiful optimization possible.
Like other dungeons, the Oubliette only allows your party 100 energy at the start of the dungeon. Each encounter automatically costs you 5 energy, with every turn after the first turn where you don't kill the monsters costs you another 3 to 4 energy. The Oubliette has many boss fights as well, where it's unrealistic to defeat the enemy in a single turn.
There is one important loophole to this rule -- if you start a boss fight with energy in the tank, the most your energy can deplete to is 0. So you can fight one indefinitely long battle so long as you had 1 energy at the start of the battle. This loophole is key to defeating the last boss of the dungeon in the 50th floor at basically no price.
Once your party is out of energy you don't instantly die, but you do lose 1/5 of your life per turn you engage in battle, which means at best you can only participate in 2 additional battles with no energy reserves.
So realistically you can engage in around 14 random monster encounters in the dungeon while keeping your energy above 1 so you can defeat the 50th floor boss, plus 2 random monster encounters after you beat the last boss by sacrificing your life force now that your energy is depleted. The longer you walk the more likely you'll get into a random monster encounter, to the point that it becomes inevitable after the radar turns red. But the dungeon is full of treasure and the more of it you canvas the more treasure you get. Also, there's a steep price to entry into the dungeon -- 4 life points -- which is basically your whole day's salary of that resource, so you want to get as much out of each dungeon trip as humanly possible.
So what route did I take to maximize the profit of this delve? I started my journey on the 46th floor and quickly picked up the 'extra turn' ability sitting nearby. This extra turn ability is key to maximizing the length of time you can spend in the dungeon. Energy isn't lost during the 'extra turn' because it's considered a bonus round, which means you can fight every encounter for at least two turns while still only losing the minimum 5 energy. This massive energy savings is so worthwhile that it's better to start on the 46th floor and pick it up immediately, then start backtracking into earlier floors, then make your way back up to the top 50th floor from where you backtracked, than it is to take a straight line from the early floors to the top.
There's one other way to preserve energy for extra rounds, and that's by going into overdrive. Overdrive rounds are considered 'bonus rounds' and don't count towards energy loss. Getting into overdrive as much as possible, especially when you would otherwise go past the critical 'turn 1' threshold, is also key to a long dungeon run.
Boss fights can't be beaten in one turn, even with the 'extra turn' bonus and the overdrive bonus, but the key to these fights is to not spare any of your super moves and unleash them all with abandon.
During a single dungeon run, you are only allowed to use these moves 4 times across the entire journey. You have six characters, each with their own super move, so basically 24 supermoves to work with. (I actually have 28 supermoves because one of my characters has 2 supermoves with 4 charges each.) Don't spare any supermoves for the last boss. The last boss can be ground down slowly over 40 turns, there's no rush, because at most your energy bar will only be depleted from 1 to 0. But every fight before the last boss must be beaten quickly, because you can't face the last boss unless you saved at least 1 energy before meeting him. This means it is of paramount importance to kill as quickly as possible all the midbosses that take more than 1 turn to beat, and that means pounding them with every powerful ability you've got. Ideally all six of your characters would use their supermove once and the enemy boss falls over dead, letting you fight 4 midbosses overall.
So how far did my dungeon run go? Starting at the 46th floor, I went backwards and defeated the 45th floor midboss. Then I continued going backwards and defeated three more midbosses, all the way back to the 38th floor. Every midboss is guarding a cache of tears and thus must be engaged.
On the way back I picked up two more bonus abilities which are essential to winning battles quickly, during the 'turn 1' requirement. One of them is +2 SP at start of battle -- SP are 'skill points,' the resource required to use skills. Stronger skills require more skill points, and you need to use stronger skills to quickly eliminate your opponents, so you need those extra skill points at the start of battle desperately. The other bonus ability is 'skill damage up 20% during the first turn.' The goal is to win the battle on 'turn 1', which means in two turns really, because you get the free 'extra turn' bonus due to the third ability I picked up on floor 46. Which means during that extra turn, while your skills do 20% extra damage, you must use the lion's share of your skill points and get as much damage in as possible. Turn 1 your skills do less damage so the goal there is to clean up what's left with slightly more conservative sp consumption.
After getting the tears from the 38th floor, I turned back around and made my way up to the 50th floor, defeating another midboss in the way. So overall I defeated 5 midbosses by using my supermoves a little more judiciously than '1 from everyone every fight.' It helps that some midbosses are weaker than others and so you don't have to go completely ballistic on them.
Then, with my energy nearly depleted, I engaged Death Slug Omega and slowly beat it down with regular moves. This allowed me to loot the 30 tears it's guarding, almost as many tears as the rest of the dungeon combined. Then, with my energy actually depleted, I turned back around and picked up the aqua amber (which can be used to power up your accessories) on the 49th and 48th floor. I got into a couple fights during this backtrack, but I had enough life energy to barely scrape through. At the end of the dungeon I'd gotten 4 Aqua Amber on top of 60-70 tears, 6 or so gems and 8 drops of sunshine. Then and only then did I exit the dungeon for a well earned trip home.
The dungeon delve must have taken over two hours in real time, I spent so long down there. That's called milking your life points for all they're worth.
Though I'm proudest of my oubliette run, I've also completed other Heaven Burns Red challenges -- I actually beat some songs in 'gig mode,' the rhythm game. The reward for beating these songs is sweet sweet life points, which I needed to delve into the Oubliette. Gig mode is a harder challenge than any boss I've ever fought. I also climbed to the top of the clock tower, defeating everything in it, all 28 floors. However, I can't handle even the first floor of the clocktower in 'hell mode,' so clearly I still need to get a lot stronger. I also defeated the score challenge boss in hell mode, and the desert survival boss in nightmare mode. The only bosses I haven't beaten are the Orb III bosses. Their 'planar collapse' ability insta-kills my characters from max health, so I have no answer to that. Maybe someday I'll be strong enough to withstand an attack, at which point I can heal the damage and actually pose a challenge to them.
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