This battle is very similar to fighting an Adamantoise but it is much harder. Long Gui is capable of dealing significantly higher damage and will deal attacks that are powerful enough that you will have to shift your strategy and attack pattern on the fly.

It has 16,200,000 HP but both of its forelegs also have 1,080,000 each. Lets start off by going over Long Guis attacks, many of which you should be familiar with at this point:

Attack	Description
Stomp	A regular physical attack where Shaolong Gui will stomp the ground and cause physical damage to all party members. This attack will also interrupt any actions your team members are performing, so keep an eye on status buffs that you queue up when your party members are Synergists because they may be interrupted and will need to be recast. It also does more damage to party members based on proximity to Long Gui’s forelegs.
Quake	An earth-based magic attack that hits all targets.
Ultima	Long Gui’s most powerful attack. It hits for a lot of damage, but there is a short gap of time between when it uses the move and when the damage hits, allowing you to Paradigm shift if you’re quick and you need to be quick in order to get through this fight. Long Gui will always use this attack at the start of the fight.
Roar	Similar to Shaolong Gui’s “Bay” attack, this move does a high amount of damage, but even worse than the damage is the fact that it can remove multiple buffs from your team members that will need recast. Even worse than that is that it has the potential to Daze your party members. This is the most challenging move to deal with as there is a random element as you could get unlucky (bad timing, lots of buffs removed, or multiple party members Dazed).
Doom	This fight should not take 20 minutes, but Shaolong Gui will cast Doom on your party leader if it does.

You may have noticed that all of these attacks are the exact same as Shaolong Gui’s attacks, so why is this fight so much harder? It’s not just that you have to power through both of the legs. The biggest challenge comes from the frequency of Long Gui’s attacks; they come in very quick succession and start to come even faster when Long Gui is below 50% HP.

Additionally, it will typically take two Staggers to bring Long Gui down, meaning the second half of the fight is a balancing act of trying to keep your characters alive and well positioned to deal with another heavy damage attack, while also dealing enough damage to the forelegs and eventually Long Gui to bring it down.

Your party members should include Fang, Lightning and Vanille. Make sure that Vanille has her Belladonna Wand equipped to increase the likelihood of debuffs being successfully cast, and consider investing in additional components if required to get all of your character’s weapons fully leveled. Then setup the following Paradigms:

• Cerberus
• Tri-disaster
• Assassination
• Tortoise
• Perseverance
• Rapid Growth

In the Assassination Paradigm, setup Lightning as a Ravager. There isn’t really a situation that calls for all three characters being Saboteurs, Fang and Vanille will be able to get the required debuffs up without Lightning’s help, so you may as well have her pump out some damage and build the Chain Bonus as a Ravager.

In the Perseverance Paradigm, setup Fang, who is your party leader, as the Saboteur, with Lightning and Vanille functioning as healers. Two healers is plenty, so while your two party members are healing up your team, you can manually cast the best status ailments as a Saboteur.

Make sure that your default Paradigm is Tortoise which you should shift back to any time you see “Ultima” or “Roar” being cast (less important for “Roar” but helps to reduce damage if you’re fast). Any time your party members have low HP, or if “Ultima” has just been cast, switch to Perseverance so that your party members can start healing up your group.

While this is happening, focus on getting debuffs applied to your next target (Left Foreleg, Right Foreleg and then Long Gui itself). Your debuff priority should be: Imperil, Deprotect, Deshell, with Curse being less helpful but apply it if you need to take a break to heal. Manually select the ability you want to use but then keep an eye on when it's actually applied. Sometimes this can take multiple ATB bars, if you’re unlucky, but if it's applied early, press Button to cancel the other casts and swap over to the next debuff. This will help you get through all of them as quickly as possible.

Here are some additional advanced tips:

• Your three characters each have Sentinel abilities, namely Deathward but especially Reprieve, which will save them when they’re low HP or would have otherwise killed them. You will quite often see them reduced down to 1 HP, but this is fine. Just heal them up and, as long as you’re not unlucky and immediately hit with another attack, you can proceed with the battle with no problems.
• Make sure that Vanille gets time to cast Poison as a Saboteur on Long Gui when it is Staggered. It is only susceptible to Poison when both of its Forelegs have been defeated, and Poison does a ton of damage (based on a percentage of Long Gui’s HP), so make sure to get it active when you can.
• Even when the first Foreleg is Staggered you may want to keep your party members in the Tri-disaster Paradigm rather than moving them into the Cerberus Paradigm. You may have noticed this already, or read up about it in the Commando Role section, but AI Controlled Commandos will purposefully switch to different targets in order to try and keep all of the target’s Chain Gauges high. This is the exact opposite of what you want when you’re trying to deal as much damage as possible during a Stagger. If there are only two targets (Right Foreleg and Head), Cerberus can be quite useful, but otherwise stick to Tri-disaster which still deals quite a bit of damage.
• An important reminder is that “Roar” removes a random number of buffs from your party members. If it removes important buffs like Protect and Shell, your party members will be taking heavy damage. It will slow things down in the second phase of the fight, but you may need to swap back to the Rapid Growth Paradigm to reapply both offensive and defensive buffs.
• Once you take out Long Gui’s legs, it will stay down on the ground much longer than when it happens to an Adamantoise. This extra time can be used to rebuffs your party members, apply debuffs (including Poison), heal up once the Stagger has ended, and reapply defensive buffs ahead of the second phase of the fight. Long Gui will always use at least one powerful attack, sometimes two, when it stands back up, so be ready to go on the defensive!

This is a tough fight so don’t be bothered if it takes a few attempts. The video below provides a demonstration of the fight completed with no Gold Watch which, if replicated, will get you 5 stars and the best loot. Best of luck!