Giga Drill

Giga Drill hitting a Garden Snail

"Pierce the heavens with your drill!"

―Kamina, Epic Battle Fantasy 3

Giga Drill (also known as Tera Drill) is an Earth-elemental special skill available for Matt and Lance in Epic Battle Fantasy 3 and 4, and for Matt, Lance and Anna in Epic Battle Fantasy 5.

Description

Upon casting, a huge, dark grey drill erupts beneath the target with a loud creak, dealing massive physical damage with a slight Earth-elemental degree. It also has an above-average chance of scoring a critical hit.

Unlike other skills, Giga Drill's damage increases if the target has its Defence and/or Magic Defence buffed; starting from EBF4, it also gains power if the target has the Defend status effect. Thanks to this, the skill proves very useful against enemies that tend to buff their and their allies' defenses, including some bosses. Inversely, Giga Drill deals less damage if the target is suffering from a debuff in Defence and/or Magic Defence, possibly dealing zero damage in EBF4 and EBF5, or even healing the target in EBF3.

Note that Giga Drill still follows the standard damage formula, so a Defence buff will be utilized twice — once to power the skill up (assuming a positive buff), and once to reduce its damage dealt, like usual. The power gain always outpaces the damage reduction, but a Magic Defence buff is still more efficient, as it only increases damage. In the same way, Defend will increase the skill's damage, but will still halve the final damage dealt.

Giga Drill is generally better suited for the character with the highest Attack, since its low elemental degree makes it rather pointless as elemental coverage. Keep in mind that it doesn't actually remove any buffs or status effects, so the player should have a source of Dispel handy if they need to hit a foe with other attacks.

Foe Users

Epic Battle Fantasy 4

• Drill Golem
• Dark Matt

Epic Battle Fantasy 3

Tera Drill is unlocked by completing a quest in Kitten Kingdom Ruins for Kamina. It is not affected by the Gaia Axe's boost to Earth-elemental skills.

	Tera Drill
	Attack that does more damage if the foe has buffed defence or magic defence, or especially both. High critical hit rate.
Target	Type	Element	Status Effect	Acc	Crit	RdF
Single		25%	--	110%	30%	10%
Level	Power		Status Chance	Status Strength	MP	AP Cost
1	60		--	--	18	1000
2	100		--	--	24	3000
3	140		--	--	30	9000

Buffs' impact on power: SkillPower * (1 + (DefenceBuff * 4 + MagicDefenceBuff * 4) / 100), then affected by target's defenses normally, including any existent buffs and bonuses.

• Buffs are specified as displayed by in-battle icons.
• At 70% Defence and Magic Defence buffs, it goes up to 6.6x power, then down to 6.6 / (1 + 70 / 100) ≈ 3.88x effective power.

Epic Battle Fantasy 4

Tera Drill has been renamed Giga Drill. It can be obtained by completing a quest in Crystal Caverns for Simon. The skill itself received a few changes: it gets an additional damage boost on a Defending foe, but its Accuracy, critical hit chance, and power increase from buffs have been slightly lowered.

	Giga Drill
	Does more damage if the target has buffed defence or magic defence, or is defending.
Target	Type	Element	Status Effect	Acc	Crit	RdF
Single		25%	--	100%	20%	10%
Level	Power		Status Chance	Status Strength	MP	AP Cost
1	60		--	--	12	300
2	90		--	--	18	1000
3	120		--	--	24	3000
4	150		--	--	30	9000

Buffs' impact on power: SkillPower * (1 + (DefenceBuff * 3.5 + MagicDefenceBuff * 3.5) / 100), then affected by target's defenses normally, including any existent buffs and bonuses.

• Buffs are specified as displayed by in-battle icons.
• Defend triples the outcome and then halves it, for 1.5x effective power gain in total.
• If power goes negative, it'd become 0 instead.
• At 70% Defence and Magic Defence buffs, it goes up to 5.9x (17.7x with Defend) power, then down to 5.9 / (1 + 70 / 100) ≈ 3.47x (≈5.2x with Defend) effective power.

Epic Battle Fantasy 5

Giga Drill can be obtained by completing Aniki's quest in No Man's Land, one screen below the main entrance to Lance's fortress. It is functionally the same as in EBF4, but the higher buff caps allow it to deal even more damage to an appropriately-buffed foe; on the other hand, it also has a 2-turn cooldown.

	Giga Drill
	Powerful earth attack which hits a single target. Does much more damage if the target has buffed defence or magic defence, or is defending. Has a 2-turn cooldown.
Target	Type	Element	Status Effect	Acc	Crit	RdF
Single		25%	--	100%	20%	10%
Level	Power		Status Chance	Status Strength		AP Cost
1	60		--	--		N/A
2	90		--	--		600
3	120		--	--		2000
4	150		--	--		5000

Buffs' impact on power: SkillPower * (1 + (DefenceBuff * 3.5 + MagicDefenceBuff * 3.5) / 100), then affected by target's defenses normally, including any existent buffs and bonuses.

• Buffs are specified as displayed by in-battle icons.
• Defend triples the outcome and then halves it, for 1.5x effective power gain in total.
• If power goes negative, it'd become 0 instead.
• At 100% Defence and Magic Defence buffs, it goes up to 8x (24x with Defend) power, then down to 8 / 2 = 4x (6x with Defend) effective power.

Trivia

• Giga Drill is a reference to the Giga Drill Break from the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann animé. The NPCs who give the players the skill are also references to characters from the show: Kamina (the inventor of the Giga Drill Break) and Simon (the most prolific user of the technique).