The Wild West Chapter in Live A Live is surprisingly short. You don’t have time to level up. You only have time to set traps and prepare for the final battle — and it is a very tricky final battle. The Crazy Bunch are set to raid your lonely torn by sunrise. You’ll have to find items and assign jobs to the townsfolk before they arrive. If you mess up, you’ll have to fight the entire Crazy Bunch yourself in a single fight. And that’s bad — because their boss can easily wipe your party by himself.
The leader of the Crazy Bunch is O. Dio. He’s armed with a gatling gun and unleashes hails of bullets that your starting gunslingers can’t survive. A single burst will knock your cowboy unconscious. A second attack is permanent defeat. If this is your first boss of Live A Live, you’re being thrown in the deep end. The trick to defeating O. Dio is all in your party positioning. Attack where O. Dio can’t hit you, and you’ll win the fight.
Other (older) guides will suggest you stay in melee range. In the updated Nintendo Switch version, this absolutely will not help you. O. Dio will use his gatling gun attack at any range and for any reason. The only way to win is to stand where he can’t get you.
More Live A Live guides:
Endings Guide | Odie O’Bright Boss Guide | Present Chapter | Secret Mimic Party Member | Edo Period Chapter | Lord Iwama Boss Guide | Edo Period Chapter
How To Beat O. Dio | Wild West Chapter
O. Dio is the leader of the Crazy Bunch, a gang of wild outlaws bent on killing everyone in town. Defeating him is extremely difficult as a starting player — his gatling gun attack can kill you and your ally in a single barrage. And that’s when you’re just dealing with O. Dio alone.
How To Defeat The Crazy Bunch | Traps Guide
To deploy traps, rapidly sprint around the town and collect every item you can. When you find Bottles + Oil, you’ll be able to combine them into [Flame Bottles]. Do it!
- Return to the saloon with 4 pips remaining on your timer. Even if you assign a trap to the slowest helper in town, they’ll still finish the trap before the time limit.
- Give the [Frying Pan] to a brave woman and the [Slingshot] to a crackshot kid.
- Set [Rope], [TNT], and [Shovel] traps. Don’t set the same trap twice.
Make sure to check all the buildings. Even without knowing where to go, you can easily check all buildings and collect everything in under 4 pips of timer. Once the timer starts, immediately leave, gather everything, go back to the saloon, talk to the sheriff, then talk to the NPCs to assign traps. The more eager they are, the faster they’ll set. After sending out people to set traps, wait in the saloon. If they return, you can send them to set a trap again. That isn’t required — if you assign a trap to everyone, they’ll all finish in under 4 time pips and you’re guaranteed to defeat the entire gang.
How To Beat O. Dio | Final Boss
Once you’ve defeated the Crazy Bunch with traps, you’ll have to fight O. Dio — he is extremely difficult with friends, so you really need to use all the traps you can to win.
- Use Mad Dog’s [Ride The Lightning] ability while outside Mad Dog’s gun-range. Stay one space outside the vertical / horizontal / diagonal sight lines of his gun. You can safely shoot him with this ability without him being able to hit you at all.
- If he moves, sprint past him between his turns. You can heal yourself while you’re carefully positioned to avoid all of his melee / ranged attacks.
- Use [TNT] and [Flame Bottles] if you didn’t use them as Traps earlier. You can defeat all the Crazy Bunch and still have x1 Flame Bottle left.
- Save the [Miracle Cure] to heal. Use it when your characters are close to each other to get the most effective use.
For this fight, you really only need Mad Dog to win. Keep Sundown out of O. Dio’s firing range, and really try to avoid the gatling gun attack. Even if you stand in melee range, O. Dio will continue to use the gatling gun. Staying out of his firing lines is the best way to survive.
