SirNewtonFig

Oh, well, in that case, here's how I'd have done it with that party: Phase 1: Celes opens with Seraph. Terra and Gogo kill Gogo. Celes reapplies Rerise to Gogo when he's back on his feet. If Wrexsoul appears, proceed to next phase, otherwise repeat with the others until he does and then proceed. Phase 2: Terra opens with Storm. The Soulblazers retreat behind Wrexsoul, where they will remain inconsequential for the rest of the battle. Celes casts Rasp. Wrexsoul is now trapped. Now you can go one of two routes: beat him down with water/holy, or MP mill him to death. MP Mill: Terra maintains Reflect on the party, revives as needed, and throws healing items at Reflected allies. Celes and Gogo spam Rasp (or Bushido 2 if Gogo isn't clearing 500 MP on a cast). Holy Wind occasionally from Gogo if you need a group top up. Beatdown: Terra does the same as above. Wrexsoul will continue to trap himself with reflected Rasp casts. Celes attacks with Holy or Illumina. Gogo Mimics Holy, or Rages Troll (equip Avenger for X3 holy physicals, and Refract on a 1/3 is a nice perk) or Ninja (fire immunity, which lets you give the Flameguard to one of the ladies, and spams water attacks). I'm also willing to bet the Ghost merchant is a nod from BTB to there being some strat here involving Ghost Rings on the party, but I never thought to try that. An experiment for my next playthrough, perhaps.

Oh, you have a great squad for this. Try playing around with Reflect from Terra and Gogo and see if that makes a difference. Edit: and your levels are roughly on target if you've done most of the WoR by now. The expectation is about 30)20 rolling into Kefka's Tower.

Who do you have, and what are your levels?

On my last playthrough, I hit a wall at Wrexsoul too. Took me a good 10 tries (maybe more?) to bring him down. There's three ways to run this fight. You can play to his gimmick, killing off your party members until he emerges, and fighting him for a while when he reappears until he repeats the cycle anew. Or you can ignore him entirely, fighting only the soulblazers, if you can keep them from killing your team. Or you can run just the first cycle of his gimmick, trap him when he emerges, then beat him to a pulp. The key to option 3 is to use his offense against him. The rest will soon be apparent.

Short answer: big nope. Can elaborate more later.

Most humanoids have both a common and a rare steal (Fanatics Tower is one exception, pretty sure it's all Tinctures there), and some things that might not seem humanoid at first actually count (some undead, the things riding the flying green toads or whatever the heck in the Ancient Castle/Cyan's dream, etc.) I'll also note that none of the steals are things you need to worry too hard about — there's no legendary tier loot waiting to be pilfered in BNW. The Multiguard is probably the most useful, but there's also a situationally handy stealable for every other equipment slot if you "treasure hunt" hard enough. Also, there's nothing stealable that can't be repeated indefinitely somewhere. The ladies you stole that Multiguard from have a palette swap in Kefka's Tower from whom you can steal more. Finally, after you beat the game, you'll get the password for the Unlockme, which will list all the available steals and what you can steal them from. So if you don't have the patience or curiosity enough to find everything blind, you can try it out then instead.

Atma is weak to Ice, so Ice 2 from Strago might get you some better output than Blow Fish. That is a bit of a tough team with no Life casters and two squishies. If you're super pro with Slots, Jackpot (777) is a weak revive though. Definitely keep up on the Rerise, and take note if Purge brings it down. For Mind Blast, equip status protection relics to prevent the worst effects. An Amulet on Setzer might be advisable to ensure you have a healer who won't lose control. If you still can't make it work with this team, try tapping in Celes instead of Gau. Life, Rerise, Ice 2, Remedy, Slow, Float and Dispel are all crucial tools for this fight, and Runic can be nice if you can fit it in around everything else (timing is key though, watch out Strago's casts!). Mog for Setzer could allow for Harvester from Forest Suite to deal with a bad Mind Blast roll (go ahead and Spirit Stone + Amulet him to ensure you don't lose him), and Earth Blues is a solid option the rest of the time. Or Ice Rod proc fishing from the front row. Good luck!

Kaiser is scripted to treat each multi elemental spell as one of its elements. Storm is water, Merton is fire, Razor Leaf is wind, etc. Try each one against him and see how he reacts to know which counts for which.

Important things to know: Weapons count. Elemental blades, Avenger, and elemental spears cover Fire, Ice, Bolt, Water, and Holy with ease. As Dufaux noted, Bio Blaster covers Dark. Rods only count if they proc, otherwise they are non-elemental. Demi/Quartr count as Earth (note their spell descriptions). Healing spells also count as Holy, if you're in a pinch and don't have time to swap on the Avenger or Longinus. Mutsunokami procs can count for Wind, but see Rods above. You don't have to do your damage with only elements. Mix in hard-hitting weapon/non-elemental attacks (Tempest, Flare) when you have some time to breathe for extra oomph. You don't need to use all 8 elements. This fight is a puzzle of sorts, and is 100% winnable with your current party. The rest I'll save until you've given it another shot if you still want some help.

It is unlikely that your *need* to warp out, but it can certainly make it easier sometimes. What's your current party? FWIW, the upcoming 2.1 update will make Kaiser optional, but I'm unsure if upgrading to the 2.1 beta would be advisable with your current save.

You're pretty close to the mark, and close enough that you'll probably get him most of the time with this approach. Differentiating between his regular elemental responses and his "repeat element" counterattacks is an important piece in figuring out your way through this fight, as well as understanding that you're up against a timer that you need to run out. Note also that physical attacks can count for either elemental or non-elemental contributions to this gimmick. So between claws + weapon-switching and Blitzes, Sabin alone can technically hit all 8 elements, if you kept both Stormfang and Frostgore. Even lowly Cyan can hit up to 5, counting a Mutsu proc (6 even, with a Crusader summon, but only once). I used to think I needed to nope out if I brought a ragtag bunch of fighters to Kaiser, but I've come to appreciate that pretty well any team can pull it off if they have enough healing resources (or elemental immunities).

One of the Hidonites, after regenerating back from dead.

Positioning bugs are pretty common, and hard as hell to get rid of. If you spend enough time playing with triple-BAR slot summons or Palidor, you'll probably get to see a few more. A bug like this, especially if it doesn't hinder the player in any mechanical way, might be there to stay. If you can figure out some way to reliably reproduce it, however, someone might get curious enough to look into it.

No idea about the bug, but how does Terra have Rerise in this party?

It was a deliberate change, yes. I don't recall the exact rationale myself, but I like it for one main reason: it's harder to game the AI counter script this way. Suppose you want to Slow something that responds by Hasting itself — previously you would just hide your Slow spell with any follow up, and only the second spell would cause any reaction (or potentially none, if it didn't hit a trigger), but now you have to "bait" out the counter with the first spell in order to get your Slow through, perhaps by double casting Slow itself. Mechanically, the way it works is that the first of the two spells to hit a counter trigger will do so, and once the counter is triggered for a given target, there can be no more counters from that target for the rest of that dualcast action.

I am pretty sure D has an opener in the next version to negate the vanish cheese strat, just as a heads up.

Yeah, Big D really is the first boss fight that forces you to play more cautiously, and the lessons you learn here will serve you through the rest of the game. I think this is why so many people struggle with him initially. He's that prof you get in the second semester of first year that acts like a gate for all the students coasting on their high school knowledge, forcing them to really learn how to learn or drop out.

It's worth noting that there is limited space for enemy scripting, and that BTB filled every byte of it for the 2.0 release. Whelk being part of the intro, it was deemed unimportant to dedicate valuable AI bank to him, so he kinda just became "press A to win". There has been a lot of discussion about Whelk's neutering on the BNW Discord channel. Some people feel that if he's such a pushover, it would be better to just rip him out entirely. Since the 2.0 release, some AI fixes have freed up a modicum of space, and a happy medium has been struck for the 2.1 release where Whelk will start the battle in his shell, so the player still has to pay a bit of attention instead of just "press A to win". Still a pushover because intro, but the spirit of his gimmick lives on.

Yeah, the defend action gets queued like any other action, it does take a moment to take effect.

Spoons are a Phoenix Down check for sure (unless Gau is raging Conjurer for Rerise), but the jumps aren't a guaranteed KO. Use the hang time before he lands to turtle up (dpad right in combat menu to Defend), and most characters at expected level will survive if they have a good chunk of HP left.

XP still displays after battle even with it turned off — did you check your XP on the status screen before and after combat to confirm you actually received any?

This has not been my experience, not sure what the issue is. An easy enough test would be to take Strago to Zozo, deplete a little MP on some randoms, then go inside a building and try to Osmose one of the dancers. If it works, then great; if not, then WTF. For it to work, the caster must have some MP missing, the target must have some MP remaining (most have 0 max MP), the target must not be undead, and it must hit (it can miss).

I just checked, and I do not have 1.9 on this machine anymore. Maybe try asking around on the Discord?

I probably have a copy of the 1.9 ips on my laptop. I'll check when I get back to it.

Had great success chewing albatrosses to pieces with them on a recent white river rafting excursion.