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[kjorteo]

Woo, Mother of Sins (Aletheia's non-X operation main-storyline appearance) XSed, meaning Aletheia has been added to the list of GUILT strains I have completely conquered (XS in every single appearance including X operation.) Only Tetarti (XSed all main story appearances but not X2) Edit: got it :o and Sige (haven't XSed anything having anything to do with Sige yet) remain.

When davidn beat X7, he was sufficiently proud of what he had done that he explained his method in a sort of walkthrough format. Now that I have XSed it (and Mother of Sins) I completely understand that feeling--in fact, it may be stronger for me, as going for the XS requires some lateral thinking on the most time-efficient and least chain-breaking way to get through certain phases, and I'm actually somewhat proud of the solutions I came up with for some of them. Therefore, I'm going to put my methods down here.


First off, some prerequisites and psychological preparations to go through, because this ordeal is sufficiently hard and takes a sufficiently heavy price on one's very soul to go through that it's not for everyone, and there's a right and wrong way to handle this with minimal damage to one's sanity even for those elite enough to try.

By far the biggest barrier in both operations is the ability to deal with Sige. Defeating Sige requires stunning it with antibiotic gel, then cutting it with the scalpel before the gel wears off. The first time I ever fought Aletheia (the first time I did Mother of Sins in the main story,) it was extremely, and I mean extremely common to gel it, wait just barely too long to scalpel it so the gel has just barely worn off, and have the game register it as "you tried to cut it without stunning it first, you can't do that, dummy" which results in a counterattack (it makes a pus cloud spawn right where it was when you tried to cut it) and, more importantly, breaks your chain.

You cannot still have that problem if you're going for the XS. With any luck, going through the rest of the X operations should have honed your senses to superhuman levels, to the point where you can go back on things that were sticking points before and wonder how it was you ever considered them hard. If defeating one or even two Aletheia-Sige at a time really is as easy for you as this portion of this video makes it look, then you are ready.

If you are doing this and want to XS both of them, I strongly, strongly recommend doing X7 first, then coming back for Mother of Sins. There's a major psychological benefit to doing anything that involves a decrease in difficulty, no matter how slight. For example, when I exercise on a treadmill, I have this routine worked out where I start at 5.5 MPH and increase the speed by 0.5 MPH every thirty seconds until I'm at 8.0, hold that for a while, and then drop back down to 7.5 while slowly increasing the incline for the last five minutes. On the way up, I notice very little difference between 7.5 and 8. On the way back down after having done 8 for that long, 7.5 feels downright leisurely to me. It is very important to have this effect on your side, because Mother of Sins actually has its own trick to make XS runs nasty in their own right (it's weaker, but the cutoff for getting the time bonus is a minute and a half faster than X7.) You really need to be thinking "well at least Mother of Sins Aletheia is easy, I just have to figure out how to take advantage of that to speed run the damned thing." (If you wouldn't describe Mother of Sins Aletheia as "easy," you are not ready, at least not to XS it. Do X7 first.) Also, there's a major benefit to getting it out of the way and approaching Mother of Sins with a "Holy crap, I just XSed X7, I can do anything" mindset, as well as a major relief to know that you got X7 out of the way and never have to do it ever again.

So! X7!

X7 (Aletheia)

Overview
While operations in which the bonuses and score matter for trying to get an XS certainly exist in this game (I have definitely gotten all four special bonuses but fallen short of the XS cutoff by about 50 points and gotten an S on a few operations before), X7 is not one of them. The bonuses are the only concern; it is completely impossible to finish the operation in such a way that you qualify for all four special bonuses and do not get the XS. So all you have to do (I say that as though it were easy...) is get the bonuses. What are the bonuses? Well....

• No misses: This one is mostly easy enough--the only thing that will trip you up is the narrow window to inject serum (it is...not quite X-Tetarti but still extremely narrow, you will want to be very good at injecting as fast as you can while still making sure to deliver a full serum every time) and if you mess up the Tetarti phase or something.
  
• Completed with 240 [seconds, AKA four minutes even] remaining: The biggest threats to this one are Sige and Bythos, which is somewhat unfortunate since Sige is the one you have to fight twice. This is one of the reasons I said that being really good at Sige is a necessary prerequisite to be attempting this. Other than that, you should be okay if you follow my strategies.
  
• MAX CHAIN over 50: The other tricky one. There are no less than three GUILT with chain-breaking abilities, but the only one that's actually going to be an issue if you follow my strategies is the first appearance of Sige. Which, by the way, is the other reason I said you need to be good at Sige for this.
  
• Red pipe not touched: This one is basically automatic. If you touch the red pipe at any point during the main operation, it's a chain-breaking miss that restarts the entire phase (which takes forever to resolve) so there goes all four bonuses in one magnificently bad move. If you touch it during the climax, it outright kills you. It can almost be taken for granted that if you beat Aletheia at all, you did it without touching a red pipe.

So beyond the usual don't-mess-up, the only real trick (again, I say that as though it were easy) is to do it fast and mind the chain. How? Here's how:

Phase 1-1: Kyriaki x4
Before they do anything at all, they hold still just long enough for you to laser one of them to death and get a shot of serum in. Do that.

Now, this is the exact opposite of the strategy davidn claims to have done in his writeup, but it is worth noting that he didn't XS it and I did. :) Aletheia-Kyriaki have two moves: they can either travel one space left or right, which almost always causes a laceration, or "flip" to the space directly opposite them, which never does and which causes them to hold still for a second or so after arriving at their destination. Your priority should be minding the lacerations, even if that means ignoring the Kyriaki themselves to do so, for two reasons.

One, somewhat counterintuitively for Trauma Center (it's usually aggressive enough that being defensive doesn't work, but this is a major exception) it's actually better for the patient's health this way. The damage over time from an open wound is absolutely insane (this is an X operation, after all.) Furthermore, the act of creating a laceration itself does absolutely no damage (it just makes you think it does because it plays that horrible sound), but if a Kyriaki would have created a laceration by traveling over a stretch but can't because it already has one, that does five damage. Combine that with the vitals loss from the lacerations' merely existing, and I'm actually surprised that davidn even beat this phase with an "ignore the lacerations" strategy--I didn't think that was even possible.

The other reason you really want to be on those lacerations, of course, is that they are by far the most time-efficient things-to-do-for-chain farm in the entire operation. Which isn't to say you can just sit here all day, of course--the time bonus is the other big problem--but get through this phase at a moderate pace with a goodly number of sutured lacerations under your belt. The best way to do that is to switch to the sutures and close every single wound as it appears when they're doing the adjacent-space traveling, but switch to laser and zap one of them while it's holding still after a flip. They have enough health that it will take more than one run of this to kill one, so try to pick one Kyriaki at a time, keep track of which one it is as they're all moving about, and get a sense for how much total laser it needs for defeat, since you want to be ready to inject serum once you kill it. (If one dies before you were expecting it to, that half-second of surprise before you realize what has happened guarantees that you will take too long and miss the serum injection. Trust me on this, I have been there many a time.)

You should defeat the Kyriaki with vitals in the mid-low 20s and one or zero open wounds. What's that, you say? I'm making this sound completely insane already and it's only the first phase? You're trying to XS X-Aletheia, you crazy bastard.


Phase 1-2: Nous x4
You can inject four full doses of serum after Kyriaki, then one shot of stabilizer while it's working on summoning Nous. Once they appear, they hold still for long enough for you to drain/scalpel (and thus defeat) two of them, with a dose of serum after each, before the other two dive. You then have enough time for three doses of stabilizer before they come up for round two. Drain and cut but do not extract the spore tumor--we're going to use the Nous trick here. (If you drain and cut but do not extract a spore tumor, sometimes it fails to spawn another spore tumor when it comes up for the next round.) After preparing the tumor for the Nous trick, spend the rest of that round healing.

Now, the payoff. Time is of the essence here, so you only need the Nous trick to work once, but it cannot fail more than twice. The third time you're counting on a tumor not spawning and it spawns, restart the operation. This is the most blatantly luck-based part of the operation, but fortunately it's early.

Once it works, extract the tumor and put the drain over one of the Nous while they're surfacing. Once they're active, drain them both, then cut them both to finish this phase in one fell swoop. (Do not attempt to inject serum after defeating the first Nous at this point--provided you took full advantage of every other opportunity thus far, you have room to spare.) You have to be somewhat quick to get them both. If the second one dives, all that work was for nothing and you should probably restart. (You may note that I say that a lot. XSing X7 is basically an exercise in trying until all the stars align and you get past every single failure point without failing any of them.)

You should do enough damage to trigger the veins at this point. If it summons Pempti, you did something horribly wrong and should restart.


Phase one veins
This is a good time to point out that the damage to the patient from your scalpel is actually significant in this operation. By the time you're done cutting all of the veins, you'll have done about 25 damage. It doesn't matter now, since you're going from one easy-breather-heal-type phase (Nous) to another (Sige), but it suddenly becomes much more significant later, which is why I say now is a good time to point it out--you don't want to be surprised by this when it's actually important. You do not have enough time to stabilize during the cutting phase (you need to be on it the whole time, or it will time out and just restart the current phase as though you had cut a red vein--failure) but it was a nice thought while it lasted.

The easiest way to do the veins without cutting the red one is to cut one that just barely stopped being red--it doesn't revolve nearly fast enough to come all the way back and get you before that vein is cut. In fact, it can do a half-circle or so in the time it takes you to cut a vein, so I usually cut them in a pattern that ends up looking like (assuming that we're using compass directions to signify which ones I'm talking about, since there are eight of them,) N, S, NE, SW, E, W, SE, NW. The trick is to not get too excited and hit one too early, while it's still red. Also, the timing changes when it's down to the very last single vein--at this point, just pay attention to the timing (it blinks on and off very regularly) so you know about how long you can hold it while it's off and when to bail before it turns back on.


Phase 2-1: Sige x6
Spam the stabilizer, ignoring the Sige unless they release pus (at which point you stop what you're doing, drain it, then go back to stabilizing) until you are at full health.

Sige is a lot like Kyriaki in that it can either move around in a way that attacks (releasing pus clouds in this case) or flip to the position directly opposite them, which never attacks. The important thing to keep in mind with Sige is that these attacks alternate--if it moves adjacently and releases clouds, it will follow it up by flipping, and if it flips, it will follow it up by moving adjacently. The only random element is if it moves adjacently without releasing clouds (very rare in X7, but not impossible), at which point it is free to do either one at random after that. The best way to fight Sige is to drain the clouds as they're made, then switch to the gel right before they flip (since you know for a fact they're going to,) and gel/scalpel after they flip.

If you did everything right and were about as fast at Kyriaki as I was, your chain should be in the low 40s after healing but before actually going after Sige. This is your only chance to get it to 50 (Bythos will break it) so if you go after Sige and break your chain at 46 or something, you may as well just restart. If you're brave, really good at Sige, and don't want to waste time, then you should only have to kill two or three of them at most (serum in between each one, and stopping to drain clouds as they appear) before you hit 50. If you're not that brave, you should have enough time to just wait for them to spawn clouds and drain them for a way to farm the last eight or so actions to get to 50, and go after them once you're ready. I'd say to make sure you're quick at beating Sige and Bythos if you're going to do that, but you kind of have to be anyway.

So anyway, one way or another, you now have a patient at full health with a chain of 50 secured (even if it's broken at this point, you already got it, so you don't care anymore,) so kill Sige as fast as you can. However, you want to make absolutely certain you kill them one at a time with a full dose of serum after each--phase two has the least wiggle room for how much serum it takes out of all of the phases. Other than that, just do your best. And make sure your best is fast. However, make sure the patient's vitals are in a good place before you defeat the last Sige--it's going to be your last chance to heal for a while.

You may be tempted to do four doses of serum and then one of stabilizer while it's working on summoning the next attack (because that's what you should be doing everywhere else,) but skip the stabilizer this time--four doses of serum and then let the syringe rest, or you're going to run out.


Phase 2-2: Tetarti x3
Tetarti will kill you once it gets going, so make sure to destroy it before it gets going. Pause the game while it's spawning and use that to commit its colors to memory, then destroy them before they have a chance to do anything. Inject, defeat them, and then throw serum like it's the end of the world, because if you don't stop phase two right here and it summons its next attack (Kyriaki x6,) it will be.


Phase two veins
Do the veins again. Health is probably going to be in the yellow at this point, which is really too bad, because next is your doom... but there's really nothing you can do, except try to have given yourself as high a starting point as you were able back during Sige when you had the chance.


Phase 3-1: Bythos x8
This is by far the deadliest portion of the operation. There are points of failure everywhere, but usually the kind where you make a mistake that causes a miss, curse, and restart. However, this is a part where you can actually lose.

Laser three of them. Extract the first, serum, extract the second, serum. If a hemorrhage did not explode, extract the third, serum. If it did, fix it and just move on, leaving the third one there.

At this point, screw Bythos. The next phase has just as many serum opportunities and isn't half as deadly. Laser three of them, extract them all (including the third one from last time if it's still there) without serum, laser the final two, stabilize if you don't have enough vitals to handle two or three hemorrhage explosions (they cost 15 each) but be really fast if you do, extract the second-to-last one, serum. This one will make all the hemorrhages on the field explode (if you were fast enough and lucky, that should only be about two or three) and is a very deliberate move to clear the field--exploded, immobilized cores can only create hemorrhages where they're sitting, so with only one left that's immobile, that gets rid of every other hemorrhage without having to waste precious time looking for them. Fix them all (quickly, these are the kind that create extra blood pools if you wait too long and the extra blood pools do a lot of damage when they spawn.) This whole procedure is a lot easier said than done--it will probably take you a few tries to do it without getting killed in the attempt--but once you pull it off, you will now be in the relatively good position of having naught but one immobilized core that can only make hemorrhages where it's sitting.

Heal (but don't take too long--this is about the point where time starts to become an issue), extract the final core, start between-attacks serum. It is guaranteed to have made a hemorrhage while you were healing. You can try to carve it out and fix it before extracting if you want, but I usually get unlucky enough where I do that and then it just makes another one anyway. >:[ And if you healed, you can survive having a single hemorrhage explode and sit there long enough for you to inject the serum--just drain and suture it after the fourth dose, while it's working on its next summon.


Phase 3-2: Sige x8
Your chain is already secure and time is really becoming an issue now, so just kill Sige quickly. I've seen YouTube videos of them getting fancy and killing several of them at a time, but you mostly skipped Bythos so you can't really do that--you still need catch up on all the serums you didn't inject last phase. So you have to kill them one at a time with serum in between, but you should still do that quickly. Drain the clouds as best you can, but you probably won't stop them from making at least a couple inflammations. That's fine, ignore them, they do almost no damage, take too long to treat to be worth it, and will automatically disappear later anyway. Just kill Sige, but make sure there are no pus clouds when you kill the last one (that one is important) and that you have enough vitals to handle more vein cutting. Time is really the biggest issue at this point, though--this is the moment of truth, where either you have enough time to do two more vein cutting phases and still finish with over four minutes to spare, or you don't.


Phase three veins
Cut them.


Climax veins
Healing Touch immediately, you'll probably want one dose of stabilizer before you start cutting. Even in Healing Touch mode, the red pipe here actually moves faster than it did before, so don't try any fancy patterns. Also, it stops and blinks every time you successfully cut one--this gives you just enough time for one dose of stabilizer between cuts. The trick where if you start cutting right after it stops being red, you'll get it before it comes all the way around again mostly still works, but it gets extremely iffy once you're down to about two or three of them and there are large invisible gaps preventing you from seeing when, where, and how fast the red vein is coming. Do not be afraid to abort, wait for the vein to come and go again, and finish it off on the second try. Again, the very last single vein has a pattern all its own that all comes down to watching it long enough to get a feel for its timing, and holding the scalpel when it's off and lifting again before it comes back on. It's mostly a test of nerves at that point.


Finishing up
Aletheia's explosion will instantly cure any injury that was still on the field (like those inflammations you were ignoring) and automatically take you back out to the "close up the patient" phase. Sutures, gel, bandage. Don't miss with any of them, and be quick about it if you're running out of time. If that bandage is on and you still have more than four minutes on the clock, you still have that 50+ chain secured, and you didn't miss, then the XS is yours!




That was supposed to be a walkthrough for both, but it ended up being longer than I expected and I ran out of time (I need to get to bed) so it's only X7. I may talk about how I did Mother of Sins later.

For now, I'll just add that I also XSed X-Tetarti (how the hell did I do that D:) and cleaned out chapter 5 while I was at it. There are now only five operations left in the entire game that I haven't XSed--three in chapter 6, one in chapter 7 (a Sige one, so I'll save it until after X-Sige so I can do it while it seems comparatively easy) and X-Sige.