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That divine grace... He was something much more than a mere monster.
Rosa
Nova Dragon, also known as Lord Dragon, is a superboss from Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. Unlike Atomos or Gilgamesh, it is optional to fight it in the Depths of the True Moon.
Stats
Battle
Nova Dragon will begin battle with Tidal Wave, which will KO characters with low HP, even at high levels. He does not use Tidal Wave twice in one turn, and always takes time to perform other attacks before using it again. He often uses Cursed Elegy, which will put the party under the Slow status. Nova Dragon will sometimes use Embrace, which will petrify a character and also heal all of their HP. Before dying, he will cast Meteor on the party as a final attack.
Strategy
It is recommended to fight Nova Dragon when the party is at Level 70+ with some of the best equipment, such as Ultima Weapon and the Adamant Armor. A Black Mage must have Rapid Ring v2, while the party's White Mage should equip the Twinstars. The party should start by casting Slow or use a Spider Silk on Nova Dragon to lower his speed.
After reviving KO'd party members from Nova Dragon's Tsunami with Phoenix Downs, and have a White Mage use Curaja every turn afterward. The Slow from Nova Dragon's Cursed Elegy can be remedied with Haste, but it will not impede on the party's performance too much. When they do not have to use healing items, physical fighters should use abilities such as Jump, or attack with the Ultima Weapon. A Black Mage's best spells to use are either Flare, or Meteor, which will do 5,000 - 8,000 damage to Nova Dragon, if not more with a Limit Ring. Other abilities such as the Heal Pill Ninjutsu are useful if any characters are in critical condition. Petrification be stopped with equipment such as the Ribbon. The player must make certain at least one party member will survive Nova Dragon's final attack. The same strategy works better if the player has Porom with Dualcast and the Twinstars. Dualcast will allow Porom to heal the party more efficiently and use Arise to revive others simultaneously. This is especially useful when someone dies from Nova Dragon's Doom spell.
Gallery
Etymology
Shinryu is the Japanese on'yomi name for Shénlóng, literally "god/divine dragon", an important ancient dragon in Chinese mythology. It is said to preside over storms and rain, and can bring disastrous drought, thunderstorms and general bad weather if it feels neglected and/or angered.
Though Shinryu's name is taken from the East Asian dragon which normally is depicted with four claws and no wings, it does not greatly resemble the mythological Shénlóng, as it originally had five claws on each hand as opposed to four as a way to show higher-rank (as well as sharing the same azure color as another mythological dragon, the Qīnglóng/Seiryu).
The Final Fantasy depiction of Shinryu's most iconic recurring design more closely resembles the European wyvern, a dragon-like serpent with two claws and two wings.
Nova means "new" in Latin. A nova is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion caused by the accretion of hydrogen onto the surface of a white dwarf star. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months. During the 16th century, astronomer Tycho Brahe observed the supernova SN 1572 in the constellation Cassiopeia, describing it in his book De stella nova (Latin for "concerning the new star"), giving rise to the name nova.