Dark Lance
- "Uh... there's something wrong with Lance's face..."
- ―Matt / Anna, Epic Battle Fantasy 4
- "Hrrrggg... hmppphuuhhh, ohhmmmm... uurggghhehhhh..."
- ―Dark Lance, Epic Battle Fantasy 4 v3
Dark Lance is an optional boss in Epic Battle Fantasy 4. He appears on the final areas of the Battle Mountain along with the other Dark Players — as such, he is exclusive to the Steam release of the game and the post-Battle Mountain update version of the Premium Pack.
Appearance
As his name suggests, Dark Lance resembles Lance, but with an evil, undead appearance. His skin is an unhealthy reddish-brown, and the lower half of his face has rotted away, exposing his skull. Like all of the Dark Players, he has black eyes with tiny red pupils.
Dark Lance wears the Officer's Hat and Officer's Coat, and wields Lance's gunblade and the Shadow Blaster.
Personality
Dark Lance is of course a dark representation of his player, but rather than being a mechanical being like Lancelot, Dark Lance does not have any actual dialogue, but instead represented by zombie-like groans and grunts. This means that while Lancelot represents Lance's heartless efficiency, pragmatism, and generally "mechanical" stoicism, Dark Lance lacks any of those traits, good or bad, suggesting a representation of a mindless being, one whose only purpose that being of combat.
Overview
Dark Lance uses primarily Dark, Fire and Thunder attacks stylized after Lance's. While most of his special skills are not too dangerous, as their high element degree makes them somewhat easy to resist, all of his gunblade shots have a chance to inflict Instant Death on the victim, making them very dangerous, and most of their damage is non-elemental, making resistance much less effective. Dark Lance begins the battle with a Defender on his side, whose physical strength nearly equals to that of Dark Lance himself, and is able to re-summon the Defender if it goes down.
A feature shared with other Dark Players is the ability to charge up the Limit Break bar by taking damage. Dark Lance may use Nuke to deal massive Fire damage to the team, or Ion Cannon with a greatly increased Stun chance.
Defeating Dark Lance on Epic difficulty will award the player with the Fallen Comrade medal.
Statistics
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Dark Lance | EBF4 |
|---|---|---|
| Uses mostly dark, fire and thunder elemental attacks. Summons Defenders. | ||
| Statistics | ||||||||||||
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| Base Statistics |
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Exp | AP | SP | Gold | Hit2HP |
| 4600 | 6 | 3.5 | 6 | 3.5 | 7.5 | 4.5 | 800 | 80 | 200 | 800 | 10 | |
| Elemental Resistance |
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| - | - | - | - | - | -100% | - | - | -50% | 100% | |||
| Status Resistance |
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| - | 100% | 100% | 50% | - | 50% | - | 100% | - | 50% | 50% | 100% | |
| Debuff Resistance |
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| 50% | 50% | 50% | 50% | 50% | 50% | |||||||
| Item Drop Rate | |||||||
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| Icon | 
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- | - | - | - | - |
| Name | Dark Matter | Bottled Darkness | - | - | - | - | - |
| Chance | 100% | 100% | - | - | - | - | - |
| Status Damage | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Damage taken from status effects, in % of maximum health (per turn), including elemental resistances: | |||
| Burn
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Poison
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 Doom(if Death fails) |
 Regen
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| 1.4% | 0.6% per stack, up to 5.4% |
Immune | -6.(6)% |
| Final damage is randomized by ±5% (except for Doom) and rounded down. | |||
In the Kongregate version of the game, has 5.5 Accuracy instead.
Prior to the v3 update, he had 70% Dispel resistance.
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|
Dark Lance | EBF4 |
|---|---|---|
| Uses mostly dark, fire and thunder elemental attacks. Summons Defenders. | ||
| Statistics | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base Statistics |
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Exp | AP | SP | Gold | Hit2HP |
| 4600 | 6 | 3.5 | 6 | 3.5 | 7.5 | 4.5 | 800 | 80 | 200 | 800 | 10 | |
| Elemental Resistance |
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| 100% | 100% | - | - | - | - | - | -80% | -30% | 100% | |||
| Status Resistance |
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| 100% | 100% | 100% | 50% | - | 70% | - | 100% | - | 50% | 50% | 100% | |
| Debuff Resistance |
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| 50% | 50% | 50% | 50% | 50% | 50% | |||||||
| Item Drop Rate | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Icon |
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- | - | - | - | - |
| Name | Dark Matter | Bottled Darkness | - | - | - | - | - |
| Chance | 100% | 100% | - | - | - | - | - |
| Status Damage | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Damage taken from status effects, in % of maximum health (per turn), including elemental resistances: | |||
| Burn
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Poison
|
Doom (if Death fails) |
Regen
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| Immune | 0.6% per stack, up to 5.4% |
Immune | -6.(6)% |
| Final damage is randomized by ±5% (except for Doom) and rounded down. | |||
Attacks and Abilities
| Attack List | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attack | Target | Power | Type | Element | Status Effect | Acc | Crit | RdF | ||
| Normal Attack | Single | 160/2 | 
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30%
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-- | -- | -- | 100% | 10% | 10% |
| Double Shot | Random | 150/2 |
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30%
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20% | -- |
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100% | 10% | 10% |
| Snipe | Single | 150 |
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30%
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100% | -- |
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100% | 10% | 10% |
| Crush | Centered | 120 |
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30%
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150% | -- |
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100% | 10% | 10% |
| Unload | Random | 396/6 |
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30%
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10% | -- |
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100% | 10% | 10% |
| Notes: Unlike Lance's version of the skill, it will not cause any negative consequence to the user. | ||||||||||
| Tank Guns | All | 60/8 |
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50%
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-- | -- | -- | 70% | 10% | 10% |
| Notes: Prior to the v2 update, this attack had 58/8 power. | ||||||||||
| Poison Gas | All | 45/3 | 
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50%
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200% | 3x |
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100% | 10% | 10% |
| Bullet Hell | Centered | 120/4 |
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75%
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100% | 5x |
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100% | 10% | 10% |
| Plasma Field | Centered | 120 |
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75%
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100% | 50% |
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130% | 10% | 10% |
| Notes: In the Kongregate version of the game, this attack buffs evade by 30% instead of debuffing it. It works properly in the Steam version. | ||||||||||
| Scan | Self | -- | -- | ---- | -- | 50% 50% 50% 50% |
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-- | -- | -- |
| Nuke | All | 250 |
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100%
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100% | 9x |
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200% | 10% | 10% |
| Notes: Limit Break! | ||||||||||
| Ion Cannon | All | 180 |
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75%
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100% | 3x |
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200% | 10% | 10% |
| Notes: Limit Break! | ||||||||||
Battle Logic
The following describes general logic of the enemy and attack patterns, with chances of each attack to be used. Conditions are listed from highest to lowest priority unless specified otherwise.
- Limit Break → Nuke (1/2), Ion Cannon (1/2). If alone, also summons a Defender;
- ≥65% HP → Normal Attack (1/6), Double Shot (1/6), Snipe (1/6), Bullet Hell (1/6), Plasma Field (1/6), Scan (1/6);
- <65% to ≥32% HP → Normal Attack (1/10), Double Shot (1/10), Snipe (1/10), Crush (1/10), Unload (1/10), Bullet Hell (1/10), Plasma Field (1/10), Tank Guns (1/10), Poison Gas (1/10), Scan (1/10);
- <32% HP → Crush (1/2), Unload (1/2).
Strategy
Equipment
Against Dark Lance's Limit Breaks, you'll want either Morale (by Kitten Fort), Auto-Revive (by Genesis) or high Fire and Thunder resistance. The latter is preferable due to them reducing damage of Bullet Hell and Plasma Field as well, and without any SP cost. As for his usual attacks, Instant Death resistance is pretty much mandatory. Dark resistance also helps: although his Dark attacks have a low element degree, it's still something, possibly making the difference between life and death. Stun resistance or Bless are required for whoever has Purify, in case Ion Cannon is used.
Dark Lance is weak to Holy and Bomb, however, single-target Holy skills tend to be much more powerful than Bomb ones, so they'd end up more useful; inflicting Curse on the boss will boost them even further. Poison and Burn/Stagger also work, for a less active style of play.
If the player is willing to take more unorthodox battle strategies, one can try out Hand Bombs. With Ninja Gear/Skirt, Hand Bombs dish out 240 base power of raw magical Bomb damage. With Mini Bomber (gun) or Wrecking Rod (staff) equipped, Lance and Natalie can use their respective weapons' boost of Bomb-elemental skills to hit Dark Lance with the strongest easily spammable attack that can be used against him. While this strategy may not be as useful in longer battles, stockpiling Hand Bombs can lead to the player being able to deal damage much more efficiently than hacking away with Blast, Air Strike, Judgement or Holy Sword. However, this strategy is somewhat lacking in elemental resistances, so make sure to protect the damage dealer through status effects or/and resistant flairs.
Battle
After setting up your initial buffs, start working on inflicting Weaken and Tired on both Dark Lance and Defender. These statuses will gradually lower their offensive stats and then keep the stats low, plus they'll negate the effects of Dark Lance's Scan within three turns and without any need of hoping for the more resisted Dispel to work right now. Direct stat debuffing is also a good idea, to cripple the enemies as soon as possible.
After that, simply fight Dark Lance. Don't destroy Defender, at least not yet — that'd just get you a fresh Defender summoned, which would be more dangerous than one without a half of his attack strength and accuracy due to debuffs.
Before Dark Lance drops to a third of his health, try to get a good stack of Poison, Burn and Curse on him and make sure he isn't buffed up, and Auto-Revive and maximally buff all players, and get some sort of Dark and Dispel resistance if you didn't do that yet. In other words, prepare for doing a major assault. Dark Lance will soon start using Crush and Unload over and over, with the first one Dispelling your Auto-Revive and buffs unless resisted, and the second one simply dealing extreme damage, quite possibly killing all active players in one turn if caught unaware. At this point it's recommended to go full offense and kill him before he kills you.
Dark Lance is often regarded as the hardest Dark Player, primarily for the variety of things you must be ready for. The fight will be difficult, but it should be doable.
Trivia
- Dark Lance is the only one of the Dark Players to wear the corresponding player's starting gear. Disregarding aesthetic differences, all other Dark Players at least have a different weapon equipped.