The Glitch (EBF4)
For its appearance in EBF5, see The Glitch (EBF5)
- "What the hell is that thing?! It doesn't look like a normal foe!"
- ―Matt / Natalie, Epic Battle Fantasy 4
The Glitch (real name unintelligible) is an optional boss in Epic Battle Fantasy 4. It is a computer glitch that somehow gained a physical form, becoming a bizarre entity that defies the laws of reality.
The Glitch is responsible for the chaos within the Waste Disposal Plant during the events of the game. After escaping the computers, it seized control of the facility's many robots, including the mighty Praetorian, and began manipulating the building's security system to force the human workers out. If the heroes manage to penetrate the heart of the plant and bypass the barriers in the way of the room where the Glitch first spawned, they can battle and defeat it, ending its reign of terror over the plant and its robots.
Appearance
The Glitch appears as a string of square or rectangular repeated images of foes and Matt, cycling through them almost too quickly to be seen by the naked eye. When damaged, it shows a pair of bulging eyes and an open mouth, similar to Big Slimes when they suffer a powerful blow. It displays pictures of dying cats when killed, and the head of the Wooly Mammoth is shown when an attack misses it.
Unlike its later counterpart, this incarnation of The Glitch lacks any form of personality or sentience and does not directly interact with the players, its only purpose is being a mindless anamoly.
How to reach
In order to get to the Glitch, the player must activate a certain combination of switches within the factory. Only then the door to the "Danger Room" will open. The required switches are listed on the room's wall. The necessary combination is as follows:
- Switches II, III, VI, IX, and X must be ON (green light).
- Switches I, IV, V, VII, and IIX must be OFF (red light).
Due to Switch "X" being placed outside of the plant's upper exit, it is not possible to fight the Glitch during the player's first visit to the Waste Disposal Plant. It can only be fought as early as discovering the Temple of Godcat.
Overview
The Glitch is a very mysterious, yet dangerous, foe. It massively absorbs all elements to the point where it can't be damaged by any attack with a 50% elemental degree or above; furthermore, it's completely immune to status effects and stat debuffs. It only has one attack, but it is guaranteed to inflict lethal damage; not only is its Base Power stupidly high, The Glitch's offensive stats are literally infinite and its Accuracy is high enough to render party Evade a non-issue. It can also duplicate itself, creating a pair of smaller copies that have the same resistances and one-hit-kill move; however, they're only Level 0, so pretty much any attack from the party will kill them.
As terrifyingly powerful as The Glitch is, it has a single crippling flaw in both offense and defense. As powerful as its attack is, it is still treated as dealing (ludicrous amounts of) damage; thus, Morale enables the target to endure it as long as their HP is above 50%. On the other hand, while The Glitch absorbs all elements, it is still damaged normally by non-elemental attacks; this is the key to defeating it.
Statistics
| (No icon) | ??.@\'¬?]-?e??255 | EBF4 |
|---|---|---|
| ???-?e??255?.?---??]]]]??//??? @\'¬????v.?fa-- -0)?? sd d`¬45¬????`/v??.??c`} | ||
| Statistics | ||||||||||||
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| Base Statistics |
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Exp | AP | SP | Gold | Hit2HP |
| 700 | Infinity | 4 | Infinity | 4 | 400k | 8 | 700 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 | |
| Elemental Resistance |
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| 200% | 200% | 200% | 200% | 200% | 200% | 200% | 200% | 200% | 200% | |||
| Status Resistance |
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| 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | |
| Debuff Resistance |
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| 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | |||||||
| Item Drop Rate | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Icon | 
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- | - | - | - | - | - |
| Name | Microcontroller | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Chance | 100% | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Status Damage | |||
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| 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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| Immune | Immune | Immune | -33.(3)% |
| Final damage is randomized by ±5% (except for Doom) and rounded down. | |||
Prior to the Battle Mountain update, it had 250 EXP, 10 AP, 5 SP and 10 Gold instead.
| (No icon) | ??.@\'¬?]-?e??255 | EBF4 |
|---|---|---|
| ???-?e??255?.?---??]]]]??//??? @\'¬????v.?fa-- -0)?? sd d`¬45¬????`/v??.??c`} | ||
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| Base Statistics |
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Exp | AP | SP | Gold | Hit2HP |
| 700 | Infinity | 4 | Infinity | 4 | 400k | 8 | 700 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 | |
| Elemental Resistance |
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| 300% | 300% | 300% | 300% | 300% | 300% | 300% | 300% | 300% | 300% | |||
| Status Resistance |
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| 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | |
| Debuff Resistance |
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| 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | |||||||
| Item Drop Rate | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Icon |
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- | - | - | - | - | - |
| Name | Microcontroller | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Chance | 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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| Immune | Immune | Immune | -33.(3)% |
| Final damage is randomized by ±5% (except for Doom) and rounded down. | |||
Attacks and Abilities
| Attack List | ||||||||||
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| Attack | Target | Power | Type | Element | Status Effect | Acc | Crit | RdF | ||
| ??? | Single | 100k | 
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---- | -- | -- | -- | 100% | -- | -- |
| Notes: Deals infinite damage to the target, displayed as 0. | ||||||||||
The Glitch starts the battle with two replicas of itself that share the same resistances and use the same attack, but at Level 0 (and thus, with very low HP, defenses, and Evade). Whenever they are destroyed, they will be re-summoned at the end of The Glitch's turn.
Despite saying dealing infinite damage to the target, attacks from The Glitch do not fill Limit Break bar, possibly due to the attack being too strong that can TKO the player immediately before they notice themselves have been attacked, or The Glitch could glitch the mechanics of Limit Break within the danger room, though this is probably also as a balancing factor.
Strategy
Equipment
Regardless of difficulty setting, battling the Glitch always plays off the same; due to its attributes, the only thing that changes is its HP. The Glitch's only vulnerability are non-elemental attacks, so non-elemental weapons and skills are the natural choice for offense. Defensively, both elemental resistances and defensive stats are irrelevant against the Glitch; equipment that boosts Attack, Magic Attack, Accuracy, or provides other useful special effects is preferred.
For skills and summons, you'll want non-elemental skills like Star Shower and Sawblade/Triple Sawblades, and skills that base their element on the equipped weapon's element (since you're using non-elemental weapons, they will also be non-elemental), even including Limit Break skills such as Cleaver, Power Blast, and Rapture. However, your main concern should be having Revive, strong healing spells, and the Kitten Fort summon (which is a reward for a quest in Lankyroot Jungle given by Tabby). The Slime Bunny summon may also prove useful, but if you feel unsure about your amount of SP, focus on Kitten Fort.
Battle
The battle against The Glitch is an ambush, occurring automatically when the party steps on a certain tile, and cannot be fled from.
Except for Morale and Auto-Revive, there is no real way to prevent The Glitch from killing at least one player per turn. Its minions, however, must be destroyed at all costs; fortunately, they're weak enough that pretty much any source of non-elemental damage will do the trick. With this in mind, the ideal party should consist of:
- A player spamming a multi-target attack to destroy the minions and deal some damage to the boss; Matt's Swift Slash, Natalie's Star Shower, and Anna's Arrow Rain are useful here.
- Anna or Natalie with Revive to raise the fallen or apply the Auto-Revive status if necessary, as well as a healing spell to keep damaged party members above 50% HP for Morale.
- A player who can deal focused damage to The Glitch itself or use Coffee on the healer/reviver if she gets killed.
Apart from its massive resistances to literally every element, status effect, and debuff, The Glitch's main defensive asset is its above-average Evade stat. Since you can't reduce its evasion, using Lock On may seem like the next best option; however, it can be difficult to find time to cast it while keeping your party healthy and taking out the smaller Glitches every turn. Instead, you can use multi-hit attacks like Combo Shot, Arrow Rain, Legend, Star Shower, and Double Shot, or attacks with increased Accuracy like Piercing Shot, Quick Slash, and Snipe to increase your chances of hitting The Glitch. Equipping Accuracy-increasing gear is also a viable option (especially the Eagle Eye, Cowboy Hat and Shirt, and the Target Badge). Despite its power, The Glitch has fairly low HP and no skills beyond its "overflow" attack, so it can be brought down quite quickly if you can mitigate its offense.
The battle becomes much less of a headache if you have the Kitten Fort summon; cast it on the first turn to kill the Glitch's two minions, damage the boss, and (most importantly) apply five stacks of Morale to the entire front line. With the Morale status up, you only need to worry about keeping everyone's HP above 49% (such as by summoning Slime Bunny or casting Heal/Refresh/Medipack) while you keep wearing down The Glitch and slaying its minions. This strategy also turns The Glitch's constantly-spawned minions into something of an asset, as they each give 25 SP (only 3 SP before the Battle Mountain update) when killed, effectively regenerating your SP meter by fifty points per turn. Since the effects of Kitten Fort and Slime Bunny last for five turns each, you'll have more than enough SP to maintain Morale and Regen indefinitely. This strategy also makes Matt a good choice for the "focused damage" attacker; if he's reduced to 1 HP by The Glitch, he can smack it with a powerful Revenge before Natalie or Anna heals him back to a safe threshold.
Defeating the Glitch will reward the player with the Leet Hacker medal, regardless of the difficulty.
Summon
The Glitch is one of the new summons added in the v3 update. It can be obtained from a chest located right behind the Glitch boss itself. When summoned, the Glitch uses its Overflow attack on the selected player, dealing a massive amount of physical damage that scales with the product of said player's HP and Defence, this will usually instantly kill the target while also filling their Limit Break bar to full like the description states. While highly unorthodox, the summon may prove useful when used in conjunction with the Morale and Auto-Revive statuses to instantly refill a player's Limit bar.
It's worth noting that due to the damage scaling with HP and Defence before bonuses from Equipment, stat boosting Food, and buffs are applied, a player that achieves high enough final Defence using the aforementioned multipliers can potentially reduce the damage enough to the point where it won't be enough to completely fill their Limit Break bar from 0 to full (particularly if they also have the Defend status to halve damage and/or are playing on higher difficulties where charge speed is slower).
|
??.@\'¬?]-?e??255 | SP |
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| Fully charges one ally's Limit Bar... | 55 | Kept | ||||||||
| Target | Power | Type | Element | Status Effect | Acc | Crit | RdF | |||
| Ally | 999* |
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---- | -- | -- | -- | 999.99% | 10% | 10% | |
Note: *Deals physical damage equal to Target's HP * 50 * Target's Defence, for both stats it does not take into account bonuses or penalties from Food, Equipment, or de/buffs. Does not scale with Summon Attack, but is still reduced by target's Defence.
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Trivia
- The Glitch is a tribute to video game glitches, notably glitched characters such as Pokémon's Missingno.
- The Glitch is formed of data images and several different EBF-related images, such as Lazarus and Pumpkin Slimes. This may be a further reference to Missingno., as the data for Pumpkin Slimes weren't implemented into the game and Lazarus was never in a game, similar to how some of Missingno.'s forms take the appearance of non-existent Pokémon.
- When being hit, it will often show the Wooly Mammoth's head or a Slime's "critical hit" expression.
- When dying, it will use the Cat Soldier's death animation.
- After defeating The Glitch, Natalie will wonder how a computer virus gained a physical form. Lance proceeds to speculate that "all of (their) reality is a computer game", a fourth-wall-breaking moment which will be revisited in Epic Battle Fantasy 5.