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Etrian Odyssey Community Thread: The Ongoing Adventures of Fight and Heal
- Thread starter omlet
- Start date
Beat the Flame Demon on my 4th try. Holy shit, this diffculty is insane. After managing my force Skills and TP it went a bit better than expected, but I still had to use 1 Amrita (only have 1 more) and would have maybe survived for a few more turns, but that's all. It wasn't even unfair, just plain hard. Awesome! 
patrickthehedgehog
Member
Whyyyyyyyy are the FOEs in the second stratum so hard? I've already gotten to the boss of the stratum and I'm still burning through everything I have just to beat one tree sponge (aware of avoiding physical attacks) Playing Story Mode on Expert.
I feel like I've done something stupid to all of my characters. It's making the game difficult in a way I don't quite understand. Really considering ditching Untold 2 and starting up EOIII which I've always wanted to try.
Sölf;196838129 said:Beat the Flame Demon on my 4th try. Holy shit, this diffculty is insane. After managing my force Skills and TP it went a bit better than expected, but I still had to use 1 Amrita (only have 1 more) and would have maybe survived for a few more turns, but that's all. It wasn't even unfair, just plain hard. Awesome!
Flame Demon ain't shit compared to some later bosses.
I decided I'd play the postgame in EOU2 at least until I got bored of it. Managed to kill the Storm Emperor last night, so my level cap is 80 now. I think I'll start hunting down conditional drops for the individual super-armors and weapons next.
I don't know who's supposed to pump out the binds in Story Mode, but in Classic Mode a Dark Hunter's force skill almost guarantees a few binds which can be leveraged with the Ecstasy skill for lots of damage while they last. In the meantime I was using my Gunner to deal a lot of flame shot damage to finish it off.
But unless you're underleveled or something, a FOE at the beginning of the stratum should be beatable by the time you're at the end of the stratum.
Well, Fafnir can Arm/Head bind, Protector can Arm bind, Survivalist can Leg bind with bow skills passivly and War Magus can bind all things. The thing is, you actually have to skill in those. My War Magus is more into healing for me, my Protector is into defense, my Survivalist into damage and Fafnir also into damage. All my bind skills were leve 1 (and my WM does'nt even have them unlocked yet). Which is kind of a problem.
The wolf on the 3rd stratum can oneshoot my tank if i dont keep him buffed. But If i just let go the guard for 1 turn to buff, things get ugly.
The tree sponge only does its bullshit thing if you hit it with a physical attack. Bring elemental jars if you have them and use Link Order (if you don't have Link Order on Arianna yet, get it ASAP because it rocks). If you don't have the elemental damage output yet, just move on for now. You can always come back to a quest later. Even without the jars, you can also just use the Fafnir's pure elemental attacks. It won't do anything at all other than regular attacks (which don't hit that hard) if it isn't spinning, so you can just wait until the Fafnir's Focus meter has filled up again if you can't kill it in one go.
I don't think I figured out how to do any of the Wolf areas normally since the FOEs were so easy to take out...
The FOEs are noticeably harder in U2 than in previous games, but they usually have a pattern or trick you can exploit to make things easier. I had some trouble with my classic mode party, but story mode isn't having nearly the same problems. If you have Armcut on Chloe, though, even a single level of it has a really good chance of landing. It'd be worth popping a Force Boost to get it to land.
Yeah, Fafnir's binds work surprisingly well, but the problem is that he's so much stronger at attacking that it's kind of a waste to use a Shut skill other than to lower an enemy's defense.Sölf;196853060 said:
And you should really look into Ailment Slash + Vampire. AS does ridiculous damage at high levels, meaning that even with Vampire only converting a fraction of it to health, the front line will always be healed up.
What level Front Guard do you have? It alternates between ice and pure physical attacks each turn, so I had no problems with a level 10 FG and a level 5 Ice Wall. The ice attack does way more damage, which is why it's best to mitigate it.
I probably have to look into ailments now, but I simply prefer pure damage and healing. Chloe already has the group heal on 2 or 3 I think and Artery on 7. Arianna on the other hand is simply my buffbott, with Protect Order, Guard order and the heal when she has 100% life. But since I have quite a few problems I probably have to reskill or at least put the next few points into ailments and stuff. Will definitly explore 11F first before I go in to Ginnungagap again.
Sölf;196887830 said:
Ailment Cut has one of the highest attack modifiers if the enemy has an ailment. But it's a problem in the story party since you'll have to rely on Flavio or Chloe herself to apply those ailments. The rest of the cuts are decent, but nothing really special. If you have heal grimoires I'll put them on Arianna then spec Chloe for pure damage.
My build for Story party went like this:
Fafnir: Elemental cuts having the highest focus (although holding off on master leveling them until late so that they don't take too much TP), with points put into Force Mastery for faster Force build along with grabbing Absorb. After all the elemental cut skills were maxed out I started putting points into Elemental Attack Up.
Arianna: Order Mastery to max to get Attack/Guard/Prevent Order plus that skill that increases Force , then Link Order once those were all learned and at an acceptable spot. Link Order II later on to deal with the harder encounters of the later stratums.
Bertrand: Just guard/wall skills and such. Elemental shields can be kept at level 4 for a very long time and still be incredibly effective, there's really no point in spending the extra skill points and therefore dealing with TP until you're in postgame. I ended up putting points into Phys Def Up so I could gain access to Parry too.
Flavio: Alliments, Curb ATK Up, one point into Natrual Instinct for the grimoire. Points were put into the leg bind passive as well, and Multi-Hit as a simple damage dealer. Drop Shot is situational, but very good with just one skill point in it for quite a while. Later in the game I got lucky and got a Master rank grimoire of the enemy skill "Feast", which deals a ton of damage and has a decent bind rate for all three bind types, so I put it on him since it scales with AGI and is a ranged attack.
Chloe: Healing machine, but with one point in the War Edge skill tree to get the stat altering skills. Later in the game I put a Link Order grimoire on her for additional damage. Barrier isn't so useful early on since there's better ways to spend your points, but later on I found it useful so I could spend more turns with Arianna casting Link Order instead of Prevent Order.
Fafnir: Elemental cuts having the highest focus (although holding off on master leveling them until late so that they don't take too much TP), with points put into Force Mastery for faster Force build along with grabbing Absorb. After all the elemental cut skills were maxed out I started putting points into Elemental Attack Up.
Arianna: Order Mastery to max to get Attack/Guard/Prevent Order plus that skill that increases Force , then Link Order once those were all learned and at an acceptable spot. Link Order II later on to deal with the harder encounters of the later stratums.
Bertrand: Just guard/wall skills and such. Elemental shields can be kept at level 4 for a very long time and still be incredibly effective, there's really no point in spending the extra skill points and therefore dealing with TP until you're in postgame. I ended up putting points into Phys Def Up so I could gain access to Parry too.
Flavio: Alliments, Curb ATK Up, one point into Natrual Instinct for the grimoire. Points were put into the leg bind passive as well, and Multi-Hit as a simple damage dealer. Drop Shot is situational, but very good with just one skill point in it for quite a while. Later in the game I got lucky and got a Master rank grimoire of the enemy skill "Feast", which deals a ton of damage and has a decent bind rate for all three bind types, so I put it on him since it scales with AGI and is a ranged attack.
Chloe: Healing machine, but with one point in the War Edge skill tree to get the stat altering skills. Later in the game I put a Link Order grimoire on her for additional damage. Barrier isn't so useful early on since there's better ways to spend your points, but later on I found it useful so I could spend more turns with Arianna casting Link Order instead of Prevent Order.
Just beat Chimaera (I'm slow, I know). Did tons of preparation by clearing out the bats first then abusing the heck out of traps, so it went pretty smoothly.
The orchestral rendition of Scarlet Rain is pretty nice, even if I feel it sounds a bit less menacing than before. I was surprised to hear Azure and Silver this early as well.
The orchestral rendition of Scarlet Rain is pretty nice, even if I feel it sounds a bit less menacing than before. I was surprised to hear Azure and Silver this early as well.
So Hrothgar survives in the remake, huh. Guess the hypothetical Untold 3 might get its fair share of happier endings as well?
Dandy Crocodile
Member
Fantastic. And it even nailed a huge part of why I hated Bravely Default so much.
E_Darkness
Member
This is my kind of article. Praises Etrian, shit talks Bravely.
E_Darkness
Member
I should finish an Etrian game while I mop about no Etrian 2 Untold. Like finishing Etrian 3 or Untold. I'm awful.
Made it to 30F of EOU2. All that's left in the main game when it comes to bosses/FOEs (I haven't paid for any of the DLC, not sure if I will) is the fire dragon, the Dinogator, and the Ur-Child. I just managed to beat Hec-whatever, puzzling out how to get close to it was pretty cool.
EDIT: The fire dragon is by far the hardest thing in the game so far, good lord.
EDIT: The fire dragon is by far the hardest thing in the game so far, good lord.
Damn, that's really good.
I know I'm just piling on at this point, but to show how good Ailing Slash is, at level 10 it deals 335% base damage and 770% against something with an ailment. It does 440/1100 at level 20. It won't even check for slash resistances, meaning it's basically an almighty attack that benefits from physical buffs. It's easily able to outdamage Fafnir early on, and even post-game, it still wins out in some cases. Not having it isn't the end of the world, but boy does it make some of the damage sponges go down quickly. Free line healing on top of that is just gravy.
But yeah, I've been thinking early Etrian games were basically survival RPGs for years now. Recently I've even been thinking about how you could play that up to make it a thing throughout the entire game. Like, make items more useful and cheaper to buy so you have a reason to use them frequently, but limit your usable item pack to like 8 or something. Then you get into cases where you might have to make trade-offs between what to bring when exploring, like turning down a thread for something that restores TP.
It's a good article, but I think it glosses over some things that might've made it more interesting had they been explored in-depth, namely how the resource management gets less restrictive over time and how EO1 DS actually manages to have level design that is very maze-like, but still respects the player's time for the most part, even throwing somewhat meaningful choices in the mix.
But yeah, I've been thinking early Etrian games were basically survival RPGs for years now. Recently I've even been thinking about how you could play that up to make it a thing throughout the entire game. Like, make items more useful and cheaper to buy so you have a reason to use them frequently, but limit your usable item pack to like 8 or something. Then you get into cases where you might have to make trade-offs between what to bring when exploring, like turning down a thread for something that restores TP.
Yeppers.
So I traded in my spell book things and scanned in some QR codes and I killed the fire dragon in five turns with copious abuse of the Troubadour's skills.
Just unlocked floor jump on the final floor too. All that's left is Dinogator and Ur-Child.
EDIT: Shiny Dinogator down. Only the Ur-Child left to go.
...time to grind I guess...
Just unlocked floor jump on the final floor too. All that's left is Dinogator and Ur-Child.
EDIT: Shiny Dinogator down. Only the Ur-Child left to go.
...time to grind I guess...
I have a beast. No front guard, ice wall or silly things like that, the beast just tank ALL the damage. It can also take all the damage from one ally but my party cant really handle that so, it has to tank it all.
Edit: Ronin and Pricess in the front row, so if I let go the guard, they will probably die there.
Parakeetman
No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
Im still surprised you guys have not made it to a 2nd OT yet with how this thread is still constantly active. lol
I knew what I was getting myself into when I signed up. It'd probably be weird to bump the thread after it's been dead for so long. Though, now that I think about it, how were the IV and Untold 1 threads handled? Still surprised IV was able to go 30 pages.
Nice, Expert?
I am working on him on Expert still... (well, Ar Tonelico 3 and FFXIV and FE Fates happened so I haven't really sat down and tested my party against him seriously yet lol)
Yeah. Expert mode the whole way through, except when I dropped it down to Picnic to collect materials for the top level armor and weapons, and to grind a little at the end (level 92/93->98).
I'm not crazy enough to fill out my enemy and material compendiums though and I don't have any interest in the DLC bosses, so I think I'm done.
I am not a huge fan of etrian odyssey level design, it's not the worst but it's not the best either. After replaying EO3, I found that there was the same pattern very often. their map also feel a bit linear but they do have some good puzzle sometime though, like persona Q tower last few floor.
Parakeetman
No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
I was just about to ask who are you since you have a different avatar now lol. Got too used to the old one.
SliceSabre
Banned
I'm STILL working on EOIII.
I'll finish it one day.
I'll finish it one day.
Selkie da best.
EOIV's thread got bumped and put back into Gaming for EU. EOU's just got buried.
Hey, I own every EO so far, only beat the main game in EO 1 and 2 and no other! You can't be worse than me!
Arachne is totally killing me. So, I was level 29 and on my first real try I brought her down to roughly ~50%. But that took already nearly 30 turns and her poison swamp only gets stronger each time, it dealt too much damage by then (over 60 to Flavio for example). I could have done a bit more since I didn't use any of my Force Breaks yet, but I doubt I could have killed her.
I reskilled after that, tried to skill Chloe more into damage/binds, Flavio into Ailments and Fafnir in to Fire damage. Arianna was still my buffer but I changed things up a bit. However, it seems I am now lacking healing and the two missing levels are enough for Arianna to get one shottet even with level 9 Front Guard when Arachne uses her poison attack to the front row. Any tips what I can do? I probably will level to 28/29, try it again and if nothing works reskill again.
I reskilled after that, tried to skill Chloe more into damage/binds, Flavio into Ailments and Fafnir in to Fire damage. Arianna was still my buffer but I changed things up a bit. However, it seems I am now lacking healing and the two missing levels are enough for Arianna to get one shottet even with level 9 Front Guard when Arachne uses her poison attack to the front row. Any tips what I can do? I probably will level to 28/29, try it again and if nothing works reskill again.
One Foul Note
Member
That thing is bullying me hard right now. As it stands I haven't found a way to burn through its health before it burns through all my tp and items.