EOU2: Climbing a tree, 17F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F


So since I got one conditional, I figured I may as well go for the other. This is super clean - Turn 1, Devaki inflicts Venom Curse, nothing more is done. Turn 2, Devaki uses Stigmata and Varda uses Ecstasy. No boosts besides the Force Boost, this does just the right amount for it to die from poison.

Quests. First up is the third of the gather stuff for some desperate guy quest. Turns out he got Brightslapped by Cass while we were away ("that's a load of crap!") who told "the tosser" that all a real man needs to woo a woman is his own body. And it turns out she liked him the whole time. The other two involve going through 17F itself for materials.

So next up, as stated, is a revisit to the 2nd Stratum. The game hasn't been putting up much of a fight lately. Clearly, we're not pushing the envelope hard enough.

---


Yeah, there we go.

The conditional here was to kill her while she's feared. Very easily done. My first victory came with the help of a Double Action Grimoire snagged from Touya, but this had nothing to do with that and everything to do with the fact that Ecstasy is broken as hell. You just need the right buffs and boosts. And oh yes, it gets worse.


Regardless, it was 23000HP to dead, just like that. It wasn't even luck dependent - when messing around with food, I got the results again every time. Normally, this was good for just under one whole level - a clear sign that this thing is intended to be fought by postgame parties.


But if I wanted to make this the most disgusting thing in the world, I could use my single free triple extra experience tea. This gave my main party two and some, which was three effectively three. I almost felt bad about doing this, though. Not so much that I didn't consider keeping it - since I'm wrecking this game anyway. Ultimately, I just decided I didn't want to be overleveled for prosperity reasons. Well, too overleveled. Already kind of higher than usual due to wrecking every FOE I come across.

Oh, and this thing can do a bunch of stuff. She never got to do any of it except summon a Baby Salamander (who got Feared and watched its mother die) thanks to finding out how to preemptive it and being totally bound for the whole duration. Even without the preemptive, all she did on turn 1 was a physical, and all I needed was for it to hit Ichigo.

---


Also on 7F was a locked door. Not very exciting, all it had was a Four-Leaf Clover. But from 10F is a longer area. The first of these was a hall of doors. Two new enemies were here: Black Boars and Dinotyrants. Both had attacks that were better off soaked up by Ichigo. Boars could be stopped by Leg Bind, but with the Dinotyrants being immune to Head Bind, the best thing to do against them was Evil Eye. Their bite skill can inflict Curse, but those who had a risk of being inflicted by it (Ichigo and Devaki) weren't attacking. They were also weak to all elements, physical and traditional.

Just like the 1st stratum's secret area, there's a new FOE running around here. But I just knocked off one of the postgame bosses a little over three-fifths of the way through the main game, albeit one of the easier ones. Really think this thing has a chance?

---


Not a chance!


The only hitch is that these guys resist physical damage, but there's ways around that. Other than that, there were only two interesting things to note. First, these things have a conditional that requires them to die via Fire damage. Not too hard to line up despite their heavy resistance. Second, if they're attacked with the Ice element (which does double damage), they use Waterproof Fire to buff themselves and heal all the damage they've taken. Of course, if they're Head Bound or being controlled by Suicide Word, it doesn't work...

There was a funny incident against one of them where it used its signature Lava Boulder and damaged Ichigo every time, taking the Beast to critical. But Ichigo responded with three Lick Wounds, completely healing off the damage.


Oh, and a third interesting thing. Their gimmick is the Baby Salamanders breathe fire on them to power them up. To face them properly, you need to dance around (they forcibly move two squares at a time), until they go back into their dormant states. You can also fight them in this state, though they're horribly weak, give up a useless item, and have a unique codex entry.

---

Fought my way to the end as usual, although skipped some of the Baby Salamanders. It was just a waste of time and resources to fight them. There was nothing at the end but another suspiciously empty room. Did get a nifty petrifying gun along the way, though.


Also, scored this in a Triple Premium Fever. Not perfect, but it'll suffice for the time being. Especially when I hit Lv50 for real and open up my Grimoire options to the point of having no idea what to do with them.

From those misadventures, I'd opened up the ultimate gun (actually there's one stronger), ultimate bow, and a super strong normal sword. I used none of them. Might've grabbed the latter if Kei was still Guard Slashing, but with her new deadly skill (especially with the above drop), it was just a bad idea.

17F floor proper was much more straightforward than before layout-wise. There were some spider enemies with a web move that they never got to use because I kept binding their heads to stop it and for their conditional, and moth enemies who sometimes did get to use their skill when Arm Bind failed to land. I also found occasional use for Devaki's Flank Shot here - plenty of groups to be shot up by it, for those times when Venom Curse is simply overkill...actually, haven't been using it much at all lately. Just hasn't been necessary. How the mighty have fallen.

There's also an incident on this floor where I need to beat up "Etria's Nightmare" which I don't remember at all from Untold 1. How it got here is beyond me, and I had no choice as to whether or not to fight it.

---


This was just a turkey shoot I had fun with. Too much fun, because I die once, but that's fine because it saves me some Amritas I had to use. Second try goes much better: it gets Feared, locked down, and Kei in particular starts wrecking it.


It ultimately was made to commit suicide.

---

A particular medic spoke of the next FOE, rhinos who just charge at you. Also, because I'm a member of the "stop falling rhinos" foundation, let's stop them the old-fashioned way.

---


By which I mean the OLD old-fashioned way actually had merit, because these things react rather negatively to binds. The restore themselves completely and heal 5000HP. So I could use an Order strategy if I wanted to prevent this, although of course, locking them down with Evil/Suicide was ideal in these situations.


...but even here, it wasn't needed. Even though it was a rude surprise the first time (although to be fair it was mostly brought on by Arm Bind failing to land), that I actually ended up having to run away from, I could still in win the usual way. With all the multipliers in-place, I could two-round it, taking out any possibility of it using this. Even in the one fight I have to use the other strategy on due to no force, I find I could hold out forever. I just end up using the binds because I last long enough for them to regenerate and it's faster. Killing them when bound is good anyway, because Head Bind is their conditional.

How you're supposed to deal with them is just simple dodging and tricking them into charging off the tree. But falling rhinos. Bad.

---

So interesting things in town...now there can be festivals which double money output at the cafe. Abigail implies her father wants to marry her off to a man just like us girls, and hand the store down to him. There's some secret codephrase we need to say when speaking to the birdmen.


The floor aside, I got one of these things here, surprisingly enough. Have like 3-4 now. I actually ended up fiighting quite a few of those rhinos, more than there are on the floor, because "stop falling rhinos", because they instantly respawn a day later after leaving, and , although I did dodge some.


One last thing to note - just like their counterparts in the first stratum, apparently these Prism Ladybugs can do this. These things had a conditional to kill them with Ice damage. Otherwise, they were no big deal like everything else, I just bound this thing's head and got to work. Still, was a bit of a surprise.

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree, 18F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F


With a new floor comes new quests. Two of them. One is to find some gathering points, the other is to find some materials from enemies to make some food. I make a quick dive into 18F to get the former down, then go through the floor proper for the latter.

Also, in town, we get some cookies from Abigail. :3 And, NEVER FORGET.


Making special mention of this random encounter. It was annoying!! Not for the enemies - the thing in front is highly vulnerable to binds, so a Stigmata shut it down. But I needed to use Swap Step to make Devaki go before it, and it was just a slow annoying fight to deal with. I actually ran from it because the RNG decided it was going to make me fight it five times in a row. It was one of two new normal enemies. The other, called Deathstalker, was a normal version of those scorpions who freak out when they get to the front row. Or they would if I didn't bind their legs before that, and once they were there they quickly died to Vital Hit and Volt Rounds anyway.

By the way, fun fact: you can still use Wolf Fang when Head Bound. Ichigo only had a Grimoire for it for its special effect (Victory HP), but it turned out not to be that significant, so I'll probably swap it for something.


The floor also had some damage floors, these...weird green things, that I forgot to take a picture of at the time, so just have part of the map. I grabbed some Scout Boots from the shop to mitigate these, but they stopped appearing after the first area. Well, there's more coming up probably, so these will be appreciated.


Anyway, the next FOE...jumps off the tree? NO, NO. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DO THIS. I FORBID IT. Okay, so they respawn just after leaving and reentering, good.


By the way, I do have enough for this, but I'm going to refrain from purchasing this for now. For that matter, this plus a bit extra from selling some of the materials I had is enough to fully upgrade the town. You don't seem to get anything from this, however - and like I mentioned before, I'd prefer to wait on special events to occur in these locations (festivals, the king) before pulling the trigger, because that way I'll be able to get the event along with the special things showing up...although that said, I've had only one festival, and the King's only visited the South Ward, so RIP.

I also had a bit of fun trying to get a Bee Stinger drop. As it turns out though, that quest was put forth with the intent to use those materials for a deliciously murderous purpose, but Cass talks the wife out of it. Much fun discussion about how a simple gathering quest turned way too exciting for his tastes.

Now let's murderify these frogs.

---


Actually, these were some of the more interesting FOEs, relatively speaking. They used their first turn to summon several smaller frogs, which could use an attack capable of inflicting Curse. Of course, the big bads themselves died instantly, and with Ichigo around to tank these hits, they weren't very threatening.

After the first of these, I actually went back and fetched Poison x2 food for what feels like the first time in forever. It came in handy not only to wreck these things, but also the scorpions.


These mini frogs really weren't all that strong. This from Kei - her buffed, them debuffed, Ichigo buffing her, and hitting a weakness, was nearly a one hit kill.


The final room sees you dealing with two at a time. Because Devaki misses on inflicting Poison, I have to deal with two back-to-back!! I almost have two on the field at the same time, but the other frog can't come in right away because there were too many enemies. Regardless, the party is up for it. Stigmata + Ecstasy still deleted the big frogs, just a bit slower, is all (didn't have Force there). And the little ones were no threat.

---

Also got this drop. Not too good for the Grimoire itself, but the added effect could be nice.


I was being more cautious, but was still running on fumes towards the end of this floor, TP-wise. I guess the TP regenerating food really makes more of a difference than one might expect - it really adds up over time. This fight was notable. It was an ambush, but after getting through the damaging first turn, I killed it with extreme prejudice - the two things in front were poisoned, I used Stigmata/Ecstasy on the stupid claw thing (it resists most ailments), and so on.

Right before the stairs some very rude deep voiced birdman comes in, spouting some of the same stuff as the one at the start. But I say the magic phrase, and he just leaves. Okay.

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree, 19F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

Continuing my march through the tree. Higher and higher my gang of girls and their pet tiger climb. Destination: the castle that is supposedly on top of this tree. The only thing separating me from it is this cherry tree bridge and time, because let's face it - I've broken this game in half.

The new quests unlocked by reaching this floor were to gather some materials I'd already gathered and help Abigail through some of her her young insecurities and mistakes (and chat about her will to become a proper lady), and to beat up an event enemy in three turns. Considering I can kill most strong enemies in two, that was easily done. Also, shoutouts to two lines written for males.


You can see the enemy (as well as the damage tiles I was talking about) here. It's just a renamed, tougher version of those enemies from the 3rd Stratum. Again, zero problem with the usual strat.


So I got some fancy new legendary Grimoires. The most notable were ones that boost all Grimoires levels on the user - including the level of the Grimoire itself - by three. A Fire Prelude was actually the perfect fit to fill Ichigo's sixth slot. Not only did it give the Beast something more to do, it also boosted Preemptive Roar to the maximum. Meaning at the start of every battle moving forward, he'll use it, guaranteed.

That Frost Fantasia Lv6 Grimoire could replace...the same skill on Azura, but one that would also boost the skills she has on. None over a threshold, but still nice to have. Finally, there was a Legendary Gunner with TP Restoration, which refunds your TP at a 25% rate. Kei had on Blood Fortune Lv4, but switched to this due to not really using that much and wanting to test it out. She is running out more than most. The results were a bit disappointing.


This floor was based around floating platforms that can ferry you across in a straight line, and riding them to various places. In addition to finding where one of the food books was hiding on 16F and getting one from the boar-killing quest, the third of them was here as well. Regina had an event after this where she shows her dere side, and is the talk of the town yet again. Apparently it's almost time, too. Time for what? Who knows, that information isn't given to us.

There were huge birds flying around here. They also seemed to go down holes, but these ones - having wings - just "circle" around and pay us no heed. Of course, we're going to pay them heed.

---


The new FOE actually got to do something - I was playing around with the new skill of Ichigo's, having it use it on turn 1. The party ended up taking some damage and blindings, but very easily recoverable - Azura just shot Varda with Medic Bullet beforehand. And boom, the damage continues to scale with more buffs; it equaled around 3700 more damage than without.


Other than that, there's really not much to say about these things. This game is in-part designed with burst/heavy damage in-mind, due to balancing of the story Fafnir Knight class' insane damage output by inflating everything's HP...but several other classes can do that as well, and this is still really really ridiculous. Fought one without some of the bigger buffs, and it still turned out all right.

---


I also have a festival in the North Ward, and upgrade it so that I can take full advantage of it with the event group - though not all the ways. After this, the event continues...and the stupid King shows up in the South, again. Him showing up in the North would be really beneficial, because the people here are picky.


This was a super short floor, perhaps even shorter than 18F. Only interesting thing to happen was a fight where everyone got panicked, but I'd locked down the moth on the left there, and had several failsafes. I've yet to enter any of the middle areas on the maps, I've just been circling around the rings on the outside. How suspicious!! Also, I was just painting those holes blue because blue sky??? But it's correct, according to what the map automatically colors in there.

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree, 20F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

The latest quests, but first, I get to talk to Dulcet-voiced caster once more, and Exhausted Tramonte. I swear, he has to be a reference to something. If this wasn't a remake, I'd postulate Katawa Shoujo or something, since that game apparently has a Lilly who's very high maintenance. Also a creepy fanbase. As in, people who actually are literally in love with that character despite how you need to follow every single step to the letter to get her.

So quests!! The first of these is a simple one from Abigail, just go feed an orphaned monster. Given it's a flying bird monster and the only other ones on this floor are seemingly flightless and how this one flies away, we may not have a monopoly on murdering FOEs. Either way, it's commendable. The second of these is...to go find Artelinde? I'm told she went through the locked door in 3F, but I feel she's probably at the suspiciously empty area at the end. And lo, she is. She's desperately searching for something, Wilheim is worried...we end up finding it.


Also these things showed up. I laughed at first, then saw they were unique versions of these enemies. I still laughed, because even without Ecstasy madness, this was simple. Did get variously bound when I couldn't bind the bug's head, but nothing I couldn't handle. Though if I did use Ecstasy, this would've been a complete slaughter. I mean, look at these stats, or lack thereof. These enemies are kind of pathetic!! Speaking of, an ominous feeling of something that could eat us whole makes us leave. What, that's not a plot hook for a future quest. Shut up!

There's also actually a third, but I can't complete it at this time.


I'm almost instantly blocked by another bird guy, and have to play more tag, accepting a mission for the first time in forever and receiving a crest. With this, I'm finally let through. As an aside, I've had one of these for a while, just forgetting to mention it, but I get another here.


We're atop the tree. Skyline is pretty beautiful up here, and even the battle background is tweaked a bit to show this. Right here is my destination, although I can't reach it just yet.


There's three new enemies here, though I don't get to fight often due to taking out every single one of the usual FOEs I come across. Cockatrices are of particular interest: they have an enemy skill that happens to be perhaps the best for inflicting stone on enemies. There were also palette swaps of the flowers and caterpillars from the first stratum - the former had a conditional for killing them while they were asleep. They resist it, but Devaki's multipliers could bust through.

Also, Kei could now officially one-shot the mini frogs. Just worth mentioning. I catch a glimpse of the boss, right before finally hitting the middle area. And indeed, have an adventure through the center areas on my hands.


Also, check out my TP stocks by the end, and this is with a few Amritas used and the TP food. Varda and Kei are the biggest spenders (that TP Grimoire really helped this time), and Devaki still had tons to throw around at the end if she wanted, a stark contrast to how her running out was the biggest clog in my trips before. Of course, getting 7 TP back every turn certainly helped.

Did that part of the floor all in one go. The usual annoyances with the restaurant I get out of the way, and prepare to go into the next area.

The next part was fairly straightforward. Much too late, I go and grab a Safe Step Grimoire I owned since the amount of Scout Boots in stock is too low. Before that I have to cross over a long path of green stuff to get to a chest, which only really necessitated some Salve use. Zero problem once I have it, though. There was also a rhino FOE to blow up in this area. Do have some annoying random encounters - those Cockatrices petrify my characters from time to time, but it isn't that big of a threat, not even to my desire to keep everyone's levels equal since petrified party members still gain experience.


Also, the Wind Fish is here. Except it isn't. This only gives me a rare gathering material. Also I can totally see Devaki being a patient fisher, although she just falls down trying to fish up the not-fish and takes a tiny bit of damage. A few of the treasures I get here include a staff that can inflict Head Bind (from that chest above), and another Formaldehyde. Also an "Over Heal" Grimoire, which is a nice typo considering the skill's actual name. Actually had to go back to trade some stuff away, because I hit 400 again. I like to keep around everything I may or may not use.


Loretime! The birdpeople are the sons of the will of the Star, Father Sun, and Mother Moon, and live if sufferance of the Star's voice. The voice gave them birth and dictates their laws, and he heard its voice in the holy place. The oldest of several commands they've been given is to 'escort those who bear the pact to the path to the heavens.' And carry injured earthbound ones to the heavens. That's right, they literally take them up to the castle to be experimented on.

And as for the thing we're about to slaughter? It suddenly appeared before them one day when they were trying to hear the Star's voice, and they had to abandon the holy land. It apparently instills fear with its shrill cry too. Sounds like ailment preventing food to me.


This is a shot from when I first saw her, since it's cooler. A foe who has slain countless of the bird people's finest warriors. With Canaan's blessing, we head back to prepare. Surely, an epic battle awaits us.

---


Yeah. Let's not even pretend this is going to be a problem and just put her in the trash. Harpuia has 19660HP, so doing it this way was a one-hit kill. Well, it was epic all right.

- Turn 1: Bull Charge/Fire Melody/Frailty Curse/Warrior Song/Torpor Curse (Force Boost)
- Turn 2: Ecstasy (Force Boost)/Defend/Swap Step (Devaki)/Defend/Stigmata

Granted, this needed Torpor to hit (could effectively be Lv10 though with a Grimoire + Boosted Grimoire) and all three Stigmata binds to land, but both were reasonable enough with some boosts to be done in two tries. Harpuia's first and only turn of significance was spent on Shrill Cry, a move that can inflict mass Fear, hence the Sweet & Sour Moa to protect against it.

Even if I didn't do this, the fight was still only three turns.

- Turn 1: Bull Charge/Fire Melody/Frailty Curse/Warrior Song/Chained Benefit
- Turn 2: Ecstasy (Force Boost)/Defend/Swap Step (Devaki)/Defend/Stigmata.
- Turn 3: Ecstasy/Defend/Swap Step (Varda)/Defend/Defend


The conditional is to kill her when Head Bound. Done and done. All it gives it the Survivalist's ultimate armor though, so not of much use to this team.

---

Nearly at the end. Will the final bosses put up more of a fight?! How about the postgame? And will Exhausted Tramonte ever get the girl of his dreams? It remains to be seen. Although as I write this, the boards are currently down for maintenance, so who knows when that'll happen? Literally, there was no firm ETA forever. But now it's back, and so here it is, and I don't have to stockpile updates.


The castle...which looks more like a golden spaceship, awaits!! Also, sheesh. Now I'm the one who's way far ahead.

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree (?), 21F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

tfw when you try to go in to not get put out of a job and you end up making the other guy quit.


Let's start off this part by walking into 21F. I'm greeted by the Overlord, who - indeed true to this place's appearance - sounds like a galactic overlord. I recite the pact, and he scornfully tells us that if we've realized our mistake, to come and accept eternal life. Probably a bad idea given what happened with Scylla.

So once more, the quotes in town have changed. We're High Lagaard's celebrities now. Since I forgot to last time, here's their quotes now.

---

1F-10F
Hanna:
- Entering: Hello, and welcome!
- Leaving: Allll right! Be careful!
- Do Nothing: Come again!

Quona:
- Entering: Uh, w-welcome...
- Leaving: Uh...have a nice...day...
- Do Nothing: O...okay...
- Switch Out: Ummm...

Abigail
- Entering: Welcome!
- Leaving: Thank you very much.
- Do Nothing: Please come again!

Cass
- Entering: Take a seat.
- Leaving: Keep at it, all right?
- Do Nothing: This ain't a museum, y'know.

Marion
- Entering: What do you need?
- Leaving: Farewell.
- Do Nothing: Right.

Dubois
- Entering: You have business at the Grand Duchy?
- Leaving: I await your triumphant return.
- Do Nothing: By your leave.

11F-20F
Hanna:
- Entering: Welcome back!
- Leaving: Do your best out there, lovelies!
- Do Nothing: Busy, busy, busy...

Quona
- Entering: W-welcome...
- Leaving: Um. Good luck!
- Do Nothing: Come again.
- Switch Out: H...huh?

Abigail
- Entering: Oh! Come in~
- Leaving: Thank you for your business.
- Do Nothing: I'll...I'll have something better next time!

Cass
- Entering: Hey, you guys!
- Leaving: Well. I'm countin' on ya!
- Do Nothing: Don't be a stranger!

Marion:
- Entering: Ah, it's you.
- Leaving: Be careful.
- Do Nothing: Until next time.

Dubois
- Entering: How may I assist you all?
- Leaving: I'm counting on your success.
- Do Nothing: Take care!

From here on?
Hanna
- Entering: I've been waitin' for ya!
- Leaving: Don't forget - I'm cheerin' for ya!
- Do Nothing: What am I going to do with you kids?

Quona
- Entering: Welcome home!
- Leaving: Good luck. <3
- Do Nothing: Oh. All right...
- Switch Out: Um. H-huh?

Abigail
- Entering: Welcome back, everyone!
- Leaving: Thank you for choosing us!
- Do Nothing: Come back safe, okay?

Cass
- Entering: Take your time!
- Leaving: Heh. Clock'em once for me, huh?
- Do Nothing: But ya just got here!

Marion
- Entering: Glad to see you!
- Leaving: Come back anytime.
- Do Nothing: Take care!

Dubois
- Entering: Ahh! Good of you to visit.
- Leaving: Best of luck to you.
- Do Nothing: Visit again anytime.


---

Also, from fighting Mandrakes who show up because the game gave me an insane danger rating, and binding all their parts, I'm able to make the Queen's Whip. It's even stronger than the one you get for beating Hellion under its conditional. And there actually is an even stronger one than this, although only slightly and with no special properties like boosting force. From earlier, this is why I don't pick it up now. It's just overkill. Exhausted Tramonte actually picked up one of these for his Lilly, since she's super cute. If she is like the Katawa Shoujo Lilly, he only needs to follow like a dozen more steps at this point to get her good ending.

Anyway, I got more legendary Grimoires, but my stocks were beginning to feel a bit low. This means it's time for Grimoire Grinding part 2.


Wait, what? Here's my "B-Team", who got a big boost when I beat a certain DLC boss and gave them the quest EXP. All told, here was the swag I picked up.

- Limitless Lv10. This replaces Bull Charge Lv5. Although this, that, and Triple Charge all do boost the next attack by 170% at Lv10. It only makes a difference beyond that. The first one that showed up even had a Cut boost.
- Fire/Ice/Volt Wall Lv10. Not really critical, as I was aiming for high level in general as there's going to be times where I really want these later, but they're not that much more expensive.
- Fire Circle/Shock Circle Lv10. Akane could only get two of the three. Sadly, the highest Freeze Circle I have is Lv6, but it's still higher than my others for this.
- Curb ATK Up Lv9. Uh, wish this was Lv10. Highest I've got, though.
- Fire/Ice/Volt Palm Lv10. Goddamn Aurelia took forever to generate these. These will be very important later!
- Paralysis Arrow Lv10. This is one of the statuses Devaki can't inflict...not anymore! This also lets her keep a bow. Cuts off Flank Shot, but that was silly filler even if I did get use out of it. This was also the hardest to get - Oran, the token boy, took longer than anyone else to get his one Grimoire even though he only had the one. Everyone else, not wanting to be that guy, produced at least one extra Lv10 Grimoire. He got it in the end, but still. This proves why girls are better.

Varda of course got Limitless (Cut Up1) and also an Ice Wall (Cut Up2). The latter replaced the one Varda already had that had Drop Amount Up1. Devaki got the hard-earned Paralysis Arrow Lv10. The walls, circles, and palms were set to sit in storage for a while. There may be more of these to come, but this is sufficient for now.

Back to the game, I have a total of five new quests that I can do!! One to test my management skills at the resturaunt, a Test of Courage (capitalized at skills), cutting the branches on the tree, helping prepare for winter, and a DLC quest to beat a new boss. It's only for kids Lv75 and up.

---


BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! DIE, DIE, DIEEEEE!!!!

Just had to try this. Kei took a break to make room Ciara, the Troubadour! A future member of this grouping, but for now, just making a special guest appearance. She played much the same role, except she was also able to stack Warrior Song on herself, and used her Force Break on the last turn. With all the buffs and the Queen's Whip on, this did more than the beast's 35000 health. Ciara gained 16 levels from this, it was pretty great. Turning in the quest itself got her several more, enough to bring her just below level 36.

Conditional is to kill it when Arm Bound, done and done. Except not actually done, because OCD, keeping levels equal, etc.

---
Doing the proper quests, which really starts out with just as insane a success, I set out on a Test of Courage. Read: I need to kill a bunch of rhinos. Because prevent falling rhinos, and I mean hell, even the branch cutting quest talks about problems with things falling from the tree. Because I want to be part of the solution, that means fighting all six in the outside portion of 17F in one go.


This is all setup: I get a bunch of Axcelas, and take them on two at a time where possible. Varda could now one-shot the rhinos with Limitless Force Boosted Ecstasy, and two-shot them without. Against two, Devaki and Varda fed each other the tonics while Ichigo used Hit-Taker, Kei used Front Guard (first time in a long time!), and Azura defended to permanently lock down their attacks. When it was time to attack, it went something like this.

- Turn x+1: Whatever/Hit-Taker/Front Guard/Defend/Chained Benefit
- Turn x+2: Limitless/Hit-Taker/Frailty Curse/Defend/Stigmata (Force Boost)
- Turn x+3: Ecstasy (Force Boost)/Hit-Taker/Swap Step (Varda)/Warrior Song/Chained Benefit
- Turn x+4: Ecstasy/Hit-Taker/Swap Step (Devaki)/Defend/Stigmata
- Turn x+5: Ecstasy/Defend/Swap Step (Varda)/Defend/Defend

After getting all of them, I set a new record and get the reward times five!! And a letter of commendation.

---

Beneath the glorious gaze of Yggdrasil,
you have all exemplified bravery and skill.
The Duchy commends your achievements.

Your names shall be engraved in glory and
light, carved into our history, known from
High Lagaard to the citadel empyrean...

---

Next quest is to trim trees. After searching for an illusive third spot (and going on another FOE killing spree in the process), I take out a guy's roof with a falling branch the size of a tree, provide lots of wood for the town, and get double the reward. Oh, and it's fine on the first point. Cass hates the bastard, anyway. :^) A much better reward is getting another Cut++ grimoire.


For the management quest, I just need to make 50000en in one go. Past ventures don't count, but 'all' I need to do is wait for a festival in a place I haven't upgraded yet, get their event customers in, and trigger the quest when relevant. I mean, look at this. This is fairly high, and yet still isn't even halfway.

...before I forget, said DLC boss. Which I did earlier as mentioned, but here it is again. For those 65 and up. Though I beat it when I was 50, sometime during 17F.

---


Kenshiro in chicken form. There's really not much to it. It starts off with Dread Stare which can cause Fear, so I use Sweet & Sour Moa to counter. That move also lowers attack, which is a bit annoying. Regardless, four Ecstasies in a row brings it from 30000HP to dead.

- Turn 1: Bull Charge or Limitless/Fire Prelude (Varda)/Frailty Curse/Warrior Song/Chained Benefit
- Turn 2: Ecstasy (Force Boost)/Hit-Taker (Force Boost)/Swap Step (Devaki)/Warrior Song/Stigmata
- Turn 3: Ecstasy/Hit-Taker/Vital Hit/Volt Rounds (Force Boost)/Absorb
- Turn 4: Ecstasy/Hit-Taker/Vital Hit/Volt Rounds (Force Boost)/Black Mist
- Turn 5: Ecstasy/Hit-Taker/Vital Hit/Supreme Bolt/Whatever


As long as the triple bind lasts through Turn 4, Black Mist makes sure it lasts on Turn 5. This gets a nice item in the Bronze Belt, which is an Almighty Ring but better. But the real treats from this fight come from a 2v1 and 1v1. Which I can't quite pull off yet.

---

As the remaining quests involve going into 21F proper, let's do that. Mandrakes prove annoying, having to kill them or head bind them ASAP or face instant death (120% base chance). There's also Iron Tortoises, just need to bind their legs and use some Links or something. Shortly into this, I see some robot running around with dual lightsabers. Time to fight!

---


Besides being able to do heavy damage on the one relevant turn it gets which can kill Ichigo, it can only rarely deal enough to kill the others, and in the end met the same fate as just about everything else. Conditional is killing it in five turns or less.


Done.

---

After this thing, I clear out a Grimoire to make room for a new one, a Clearance Grimoire. Meh, Lv1. I find my two destinations for the other quests here: the remains of an explorer who told Cass of the flying castle and made a bet on it before it was cool...and who he was apparently in love with...and she made it there successfully. Sadly, she didn't make it back out, just writing a letter telling him to pay up. And to get a bunch of materials from this place for Marion to build shelters for winter. Here, I learn she apparently was named second-in-command of some order of knights in a faraway country. Sounds like EO4.

I didn't feel like waiting until the next floor. The Forest Bats can undergo a horrifying transformation or something if left alone. Do they turn into dracula?!!

---


No, just these things! These things...are no joke. They're considered the toughest FOE in the main game by some, and even the toughest including those in the postgame. They're also not particularly pleasant for my party - they resist arm bind and leg bind, because 'fuck you', I guess. They have two moves: a devastating hit-all move that can inflict blind. And if you somehow survive that, a low-accuracy hit-all move that inflicts instant death, becoming perfect accuracy against a blinded target.

Their biggest weakness is status. They are only 75% resistant to paralysis, panic, and poison. I downed some paralysis-buffing food, so that I could make sure they could never act during a turn when they're paralyzed. I may not be able to stop them through binds, but I had three statuses that could stop them - panic which isn't a guarantee but does stop them from using their deadly skills, paralysis which is guaranteed with the food, and fear which is guaranteed with Suicide Word. I also buffed it all the way to 10. Was already emulating 5 through Grimoires, and I was liking what I was seeing. Indeed, it didn't disappoint here, either.


The trick was keeping it locked down for as long as possible. The only tricky part is inflicting a status without the Force Boost after the first one runs out. As for my own offensive, I took to using an elemental assault: Volt Rounds, Link Orders, Shock Circle, and Shock Fantasia. If there is one general weakness with this party, it's its lack of elemental attacks, It would've been less if I'd actually used Tawny on the main team as intended (in place of Kei), but I figured going without a healer might not be too wise on Expert.


It wasn't pretty by any means - had to pop Medical Miracle at one point and needed a lucky Panic - but I could get it done this way. Conditional is killing them when head bound. Just needed to use Gag, Head Snipe, and Stigmata towards the end.

---

So with a bunch of points on Devaki spent that I'm not sure where else to put anyway (maybe Frailty Curse for super late game stuff), I also landed their conditional, which lets you buy the Dark Hunter's second ultimate armor. The Shadow Glove costs a semireasonable-for-this-point 128000en, and boosts STR by 3 and LUC by 5. Had an Almighty Ring in that slot, so the boosts weren't as big as they would be. This did, however, give her much more DEF. The regular item is an Arbalest bow, not too important for Devaki.

Floor isn't too much longer. With the east side clear, I head west next. There's three of those FOEs which I take on. The third proves incredibly stubborn. I have to pop Medical Miracle and Supreme Bolt to beat it up. I also have a pretty scary double Mandrake ambush. Not too hard to beat at least: a raw Ecstasy and Fire Rounds+Link Order took out both.

Short but eventful floor, that's for sure. By the way, I am unlocking some insane weapons. Not sure if I want to spend money on anyway yet despite being able to afford them and then some, though.

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree (?), 22F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

tfw stuck for a week because annoying things to do to proceed in an otherwise short venture!

After meeting up with Exhausted Tramonte again and learning of a drop I already have (and apparently Lilly eats them?!)...next up was yet another session with the Premium Chance tea.


- Lv10 Temptation. This is a skill I picked up for Varda with 14 skill points. It inflicts Stun on a target and boosts damage on them. Multipliers, ho! I got several of these, as if she was apologizing for never making an Lv10 Ecstasy way back wehn.
- Lv10 Lick Wounds. This is going to make Ichigo's Auto-Lick even more insane.
- Lv10 Hit-Taker: An extra.
- Lv10 Cure. An extra.
- Lv10 Vital Hit. I even got one with Ailment Recovery + which is welcome.
- Lv10 Revive: An extra. If I ever need 800HP worth of revival though, this is what I put on Kei.
- Lv10 Burst Shot. Really wasn't sure where else to put her points, so she can get this I suppose. Still unimpressed at Ricochet
- Lv10 Curse Mastery: An extra, but a very welcome one.
- Lv10 Suicide Word. Buffing this skill.
- Lv10 Evil Eye. Just an extra.

With this in mind, it might be wise to go over my general Grimoires moving forward, and a few specialty setups.

---

Varda:
Lv10 Ecstasy
Lv10 Limitless (Cut Up1)
Lv4 Ice Wall (Cut Up2)
Lv5 Curb ATK Up (Cut Up2)
Lv1 Whip Mastery (Cut Up2)
Lv10 Weapon Free

Quite naturally, Varda's Grimoires are based around boosting Ecstasy with their secondary effects while providing useful effects. Ice Wall is more for the shield, Curb ATK Up is useful anyway, and while there's better than the Lv1 Whip Mastery, it's essentially filler. Weapon Free of course lets her use the Sword Skills for status when that's welcome.

As an alternative, I can switch one out for a Circle or something, although this might go to Ichigo moving forward due to her having Temptation as another multiplier.

Ichigo:
Lv10 Loyalty Mastery
Lv10 Shield Mastery
Lv10 Lick Wounds
Lv5 Auto-Lick
Lv3(5) Preemptive Roar
Lv7(10) Fire Prelude (Skl LvUp)

Ichigo's Grimoires are based around making him more of a tank. Shield Mastery is again for the shield, but has a 10% chance of nulling physical damage altogether. Loyalty Mastery Lv20 gives a 35% chance (up from 20% at Lv10) of halving any damage. Lick Wounds Lv20 recovers around 300 health right now, and Auto-Lick Lv10 gives him a 24% chance of using it. Preemptive Roar is just utility that sees the enemy's physical attack reduced by 20% at the start of every battle. Fire Prelude's extra skill boosts that to the max, but also is an added bonus multiplier.

I can throw on something with Self Heal Amp to boost Auto-Lick to the point of being an essential full HP restore. Similarly, HP Recovery can do a half-heal at 25% odds. Finally, in any battle where I plan to use Suicide Word, I could cut back a bit and give him some more support options. The screwy thing I just realized about Auto-Lick is though, that its healing sometimes gets halved for no apparent reason.

Kei:
Lv10 Vital Hit (Ail Rec Up2)
Lv10 Link Order
Lv10 Frailty Curse
Lv5 Swap Step (Self Heal Amp)
Lv7 Front Guard
Lv8 Double Attack (TP Cost Recovery)

Kei has a variety of utility skills. Lv20 Vital Hit and Lv10 Link Order are for when I want her to do damage, the latter nice for providing an element. Swap Step is an important part of my overall general strategy. Frailty Curse is part of setting up, since Devaki does her own thing. Front Guard is again for the shield, but does half physical damage to the front row, making Ichigo even more invincible. The Double Attack is more for the added effect.

Azura:
Lv10 Cover Fire
Lv10 Battle Instinct
Lv6(9) Warrior Song
Lv4(7) Speed Up
Lv5(8) Curb ATK Up (Ice Up2)
Lv6(9) Frost Fantasia (Skl LvUp)

Support and various skills to buff herself. Battle Instinct Lv10 is nice filler, Speed Up helps mitigate some of her problems I was having early one, and Curb ATK Up helps when she needs to inflict binds.

As you'll soon see, she can also go in a completely different direction.
She can also use Temptation, especially if you like deer (without it, it was about 12000 less)

Devaki:
Lv10 Venom Curse
Lv10 Suicide Word
Lv10 Stigmata
Lv10 Paralysis Arrow
Lv10 Link Order
Lv3 Absorb

Boosting. Lv10 Link Order here too is nice when I need elements. Paralysis Arrow for the status and to equip bows, and the curse skills buffed to boost their potency. If I don't need one though, I can slap on that Lv10 Curse Mastery or something.

---

With this new stuff in hand..and actually, completely shifting from that general setup (which might not be the general setup for long), I moved onto 22F proper. The gimmick of this floor was those Cursed Knight FOEs and bombs that can vaporize them and I'm very strongly warned they can do the same to my party. Getting vaporized does a pathetic 100 damage.

The EVIL SQUIRREL is on this stratum much like the rest. Actually called a demon squirrel by now, even though I've never fallen for it.


These things are here proper now. Fighting one of these was now down to a science. Worth noting, they always use their first turn on Death's Blade, which almost always misses unless you're blinded. Fighting two was significantly trickier - all the ones in a room are alerted when one sees you. I had just enough to hold out under ideal circumstances, which of course meant a bit of luck. Sadly, and although this is partially due to not having everything available, Azura's nuking prowess is nowhere near comparable to Varda's. It also didn't help that I'd forgotten the Paralysis-boosting food...or any food in the wake of that grinding session. And several other things as well, like not having the elemental debuff. Also, I learned that Beast Roar cannibalizes Suicide Word's damage a bit. Bad synergy between them...other than that, Lv20's damage without impressed me: around 1650 a shot without an attack debuff.


I had to rebuild from an ugly position when fighting two, but won it. The rest aren't worth talking about, except the ones in the room later. Needed to find a setup so that I could beat one without being trapped by any others. I could've beaten all three given a fight to charge boost in-between, but the bombs got one. Didn't sweat it too much, as these are the kind of FOEs that respawn in a day.


An interesting enemy on this floor was the Yellow Gel. They're standard gels - physically resistant, use a move when they die (this one inflicting paralysis). But they have a special enemy skill of note - Power Gel. This is an offensive buff...which also has the property of boosting the target's AGI. This is not a buff effect, it's a straight-across increase of the stat. This means it affects the damage of skills that use it twicefold. Even got a decently leveled one, that could be Lv10 with a bonus. The only screwy thing? This is technically considered an attack against your own party, so it can be blocked by Hit-Taker. The other present here is just an uninteresting palette swap of a similar enemy first seen on 3F.


I also took the time to just pop the 50000en quest when I saw a festival going on in the Slums and events in the South Ward. Even if I had to reset and prop another ward up to trigger their event guests, because 50000en is really ridiculous to achieve. I wouldn't make it otherwise!!


Speaking of quests, let's do them now. The first I tackle is one to deal with two of those Enraged Raptors at the same time as another guild is dealing with another two. I decide to take a skillset that will allow both Varda and Azura to use their skills. The result is as expected. Turn 1, setup. Turn 2, more setup and Burst Shotting the first one (second shot's damage. Turn 3, the other one comes in, gets immediately Stigmata'd and erased with Ecstasy, right before the other one kicks it. One thing, I notice that the other guild actually is fighting the others at the same time, and the one has only just started to engage them. I was a bit concerned about this, but it turns out "at the same time" is just a codeword for "you don't need to do anything". A gunner girl (apparently like ten years old from hearing her at the bar later) waves to us.


Funny incident on the way back: have just enough to quickly kill this Rhino in the way, with Ichigo attacking. Streamed big and I got it!

Next is to get a single Life Honey. Just send in some gatherers, it's the most common thing. Finally, I have to gather a bunch of stuff for Quona because perpetually sick. :< The Yellow Gelatins instantly cooperate, but the Mandrakes know I'm coming and stay far away, and even so take forever to drop their materials. But I get it. More scene transcription of the delivery of the goods.

---

Quona:
*cough* ... Ah... H-Hello...

...M-Mommy, the... the people from
Velichiye are here! *cough*

Hanna:
Ah, I've been waiting for you kids! You've
taken the quest for the medicine, right?
So, do you have the ingredients already?

...Yup, that's them. Alright, I'm gonna
go make the medicine now! Watch pumpkin
for a minute, okay?

Quona:
*cough*... *cough*... She's gone...

Uhm... can you chat with me for a little
while you wait here?

> Do you not like the medicine?

Quona:
Yeah... I don't like the medicine that
Mommy makes... It's always really,
really, really bitter...

Mommy says that she made it sweet, so it
should be yummy, but that's a lie. It
always tastes awful...

> Then, are you not going to drink it?

Quona:
I wouldn't drink it if I didn't have
to..

..but since mommy's putting in so much
effort into making my medicine...

Hanna:
Sorry to keep you waiting, dear. Here's
your medicine.

Quona:
Oh... Mommy...

Hanna:
Here's some water. Since the people of
Velichiye got all these
ingredients for you, drink it all up!

Quona:
Agh...
.......

Okay... I'll drink it.

...Guuuuh...

Hanna:
Oh, my. You drank it all! What a good
girl!

You usually complain so much about how
much you hate it.

Quona:
*cough* ... It's... really bitter...

...But... mommy... you're always making
all this medicine just for me...

Th... Thank you.

Hanna:
Wh-What's gotten into you? Do you have
a fever?

...Well, you only just drank the medicine,
so you probably still do have a fever.

Maybe tomorrow we'll see some flying
pigs out the window, too! Bahahahaha!

Quona: ("Stupid mom...")
I-I was only saying how I felt... Stupid
mommy...

Quona:
Say something, Velichiye.

(there's no dialogue options here...)

Hanna:
Bahahaha, sorry, sorry. I was just
surprised! You don't normally say things
like that, sweetheart.

Quona:
Ughhhh... now I feel all weird about
what I said...

Uhm... Thank you for bringing the
medicine and staying with me.

When I feel good enough to go outside
again, please take me back to the place
with clean air sometime, okay?

Hanna:
Bahahaha! I'd like that too. I think
my little girl's getting a little
better thanks to you.

You kids! Thank you. I left the reward
with Cass, so don't forget to grab it!


And after this...

Hanna:
Oh, you're all back already?

Hey, remember that time when you got
ingredients to make medicine for Quona?

And after all you went through, all the
girl could do was say 'thank you' to me!

You know, though, even though she couldn't
say it to your faces, the poor thing was
so happy she could've crie...

...Sorry, I just wanted you to know! And
thanks to you, it looks like she's having
a lot of fun. Thanks, loves.

And an extra bit when I switch her in...

Hanna:
Well, she has been feeling better...
I suppose it'll be alright for her to
mind the counter for a bit.

Plus, I bet she can't wait to welcome
you back. Bahaha!

Quona:
Welcome back...! Are you all okay?

I'm... glad...


---


Didn't get to show off the payout screen because of stupid glitches that stopped the program from taking shots halfway through but this is what happens when the King shows up in a place alongside event guests, and you have two other guest events too. Sadly, I think "experienced explorers" don't exist, so upgrading it all the way was a waste in that regard. I got one War Magus with Displace 7 and HP Up 3, and another with a grabbag of low level skills


Just had a last section of the floor to move through, so one last fun thing. This was technically before the quests and never actually happened, but Varda technically no longer has a monopoly on ridiculous overkill damage. That said, this took a lot more setup, although didn't technically need any Force. This damage was still unoptimal, but enough for a one (well, two since Action Boost) hit kill. That said, this required the ubergun and a very unlikely Temptation Stun. More realistically (no stun and no ubergun), she was doing less than half this damage. Still enough to slice into over a third of these things' health, and from there with the buffs was enough to kill them in short order. So Varda is still superior for now, whenever I can get all the binds down.

Nothing else to say. Another floor bites the dust.

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree (?), 23F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F


A very short floor here. There's one new quest. It's about a family from a previous quest who has given birth to a baby girl, who needs a capable trained animal to calm her down. Instant pass, I have Ichigo. Who apparently does not take too kindly to hearing Marion hates fur and furries. Which incidentally is the other way to beat the quest - get some drops from Nozuchis and Gem Lizards, make yourself a fur-suit, and be on your way. Touya will probably cover this way.


So 23F. The overlord taunts me some more, more or less warning that an explorer forcibily granted immortality now stands between him and me. Before me is the eptiome of EOU2's boss design: this SOB has 72000HP, tied with one of the superbosses for third-highest in the game. The game practically DEMANDS you use the bombs to whittle this down to a more manageable level. There's thankfully a faux Geomagnetic Pole here you can use to save and heal, which is good for helping figure out this boss. Practically the whole floor is dedicated to this puzzle.

I tried to solve it, but got annoyed when I couldn't get beyond figuring out how to get one bomb onto him. So let's try a different approach.


Playtime's over.

---


The first round of battle goes similarly to any other battle. The difference being it politely gives me a buff as well - Berserk Cry, boosting the power of EVERYONE IN THE BATTLE by 100%. Second turn, I throw down Stigmata and have Azura charge up herself in attempt to throw in some extra damage.


It...it dies.





Really, really badly.






Azura certainly can't be called a slouch either and delivers the final blow, even if those two shots were almost all its HP to begin with. Absolutely positively 100% wrecked.


Actually, truth be told, I don't actually need the brokenly strong whip, either. I just need to use both buffing strategies and need all the binds to last through Turn 4. Very consistent. If you look at some of these, you'll see they're from different takes.

Turn 1: Limitless/Warrior Song/Frailty Curse/Fire Prelude (Varda)/Chained Benefit
Turn 2: Ecstasy (FB)/Point Blank/Swap Step (Devaki)/Hit-Taker/Stigmata (FB)
Turn 3: Ecstasy/Burst Shot (FB)/Shock Circle/Power Gel (Azura)/Absorb
Turn 4: Ecstasy/Volt Rounds (2nd shot)/Shock Circle/Hit-Taker/Black Mist
Turn 5: Ecstasy/Volt Rounds/Shock Circle/Hit-Taker/Link Order


Conditional is killing it while it's leg bound. Done. I could also use AGI+10 food to boost Azura's damage more, although the only real difference this made was Devaki getting the kill off her Link Order instead of Varda's Ecstasy.

---


So yes actually, playtime is not over. Disregard buying the whip above for now. The Overlord sees he'll have to personally deal with me, and says he'll use the Grail of Kings to instill new life into my party. He then invites us to his lair on 25F. I'd say he just signed his own death warrant.

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree (?), 24F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

New floor, new quests. Also new dialogue, with more of Ichigo's wacky humanoid shenanigans. The first I deal with is called The Golden Shadow, and pertains to some missing guards on 16F. The others tried to find them, but they kept blacking out when trying to make their way through the room to the north.

And so do I. This is a really stupid puzzle. I had to look up what to do here, as the game gives no hint as to what to do itself and will otherwise keep respawning you back at the start. I make it to the end and the west room...


...where after more darkness the culprit is revealed...






Another postgame boss! I'd say that for all the hell it put me through, we need to kick its ass. Who cares if it's a postgame boss? We just took out a 72000HP boss you're not supposed to take out that way! IT'S SHOWTIME!!!

---


The most important thing when dealing with Storm Emperor, or any dragon, is having a way to shrug off its Volt Torrent. This is practically an instant kill right at the start of the battle otherwise. I had Ichigo Force Break when I first tried this out, but on subsequent goes just brought him with Volt Wall. Other than that, it's the usual. That was Azura's second shot, by the way. First one did 5000ish.


The boss attempts to flee three turns into the battle. A GameFAQs guide is like, "don't even bother. you CANNOT deal enough damage in time..." The Dragon also does this if it's at half health or lower. Well, if you have enough overkill damage...or just bind its legs, maybe panic it...


...you're in the money.

Literally, you get a 100000en bonus for taking it out. No raising of the level cap, though, and it just retreats into the sky. The conditional is killing it with Volt Damage, but I just choose to pop one of my Formaldehydes, items which guarantee all drops. This is also relevant because another drop is just a random chance.

The Barbet gives up the Volt Whip, yet another ultimate whip that gives +204 ATK, +5 AGI, and is volt element. It's weaker than the Crimson Eater (209 ATK) and Queen's Whip (213 ATK). For getting the Scale, I earn the Emperor Orb. A 100k accesory that gives near-immunity to Volt damage. Finally, the Thunder Orb gives access to the Ouroboros Robe, the Alchemist's ultimate armor.

---

Another unthinkable victory, at least as far as the game is concerned. Really.. Shoutouts to my daily training regimen.


I'm also with this officially a millionaire in-game.

Next quest is to help convince the father of a bookworm son of a forest guard to approve of his marriage. A wild tale of family drama. After getting lost due to a shaky definition of the northeast room, I find the guy's father. We spend some time with the guy, and he laments his son's lack of independence and said he never grew up, also saying that a real man would be able to protect his woman, and shows us a pendant of emerald ore. We go back and tell the kid, and he rushes out to get some for himself. Cass sends us to make the save because this guy can't even swing a sword.


Indeed, he gets into a fight with a mole and loses. A tougher mole than most, but it still dies in a single round without having to do much of anything. With this, we send the kid on his way. On handing the father what the son dug up, the father says that his son missed the point, that he'll never approve, and to tell him if he gets married, he'll disown him. He then gives us the pendant to give to him instead of the gems which can't be used...and turned out to be a big softie who approves the whole time in his own way since he put the fiancee's name on the back. Tsundere fathers?!

Next quest involves heading into 24F to gather materials. I send in some gatherers to the wrong side (there's two entrances to this floor, I took the long way). By the way, something I forgot to mention about 23F - there are no random encounters in Juggernaut's area, yet the siderooms that do have a bloody insane encounter rate. I manage to find the Mine point easy enough. With this, there's just one more quest to go before that silly quest above it is finished.


Two new enemies of note are here. Huge Statue just sits there doing nothing until you attack it, after which it unleashes its fury. You can set up, I could Stigmata it, even just sit there and recharge Force while they politely waited. The only problem is when one shows up with a Yellow Gel - Power Gel will indeed provoke them into attacking. Arm bind can stop their tough attack, though. The other is Nightmare. These horses can be leg bound to stop their attacks, and have a conditional drop that requires them to be sleeping. It makes the Survivalist's second ultimate armor. Easy to get, not important to me. There's also Silver Gunman, but it just gets bound and easily killed with Link Order.


After making my way through the maze, I step into this floor proper with a lot more bombs. The GameFAQs guidesman awkwardly goes "okay look there's a lot of bombs here and you NEED them to get the FOEs out of your way." I mean, that's close to his exact wording. But screw that noise! I have to go through several rooms of the bombs alone at first, very annoying and I sometimes just end up tanking them. Before long, I find the floor's resident FOE.

---


The only thing worth noting is their attack pattern making me change my own: they open with EMP, a high-priority skill that binds everyone's everything. Might be nice to steal, but I only ended up with low level ones. Ones that got saved, anyway. This first fight was screwy, but since Devaki can use Stigmata regardless of her own binds, I was free to bind its everything and fight back. They do this on turns 1, 4, 7, etc. and use a Scorching Laser otherwise. I did indeed win this first one. Of course in subsequent fights, I just Swap Step Stigmata.


The problem was fighting them repeatedly. These things constantly respawn, and only stop when all in a patrol area are destroyed. Bombs can aid in this, although I never used these intentionally when going through. Bit of a scary moment here as you can see, almost. That second one joined, but the first one died right after and the second was immediately bound up and eventually destroyed

That said, I found it was actually really easy to preemptive these things, which also removes the problem that Swap Step Stigmata is unreliable without Force. If you enter into their patrol radius, all are alerted to your presence and stop where they are. So I could just walk in behind one and jump it, allowing Devaki to use Chained Benefit -> Stigmata (they won't use EMP), although I sometimes had Azura help with Head Snipe.


With Trance Ecstasy, these were clean one-shots. Of course, I had to save on Force, so she had to wear them down with lesser strikes. The only notable incident was one who recovered from Head Bind before dying, but popping Trance and using Swap Step solved that.

---

I get by the first group in my way, with a total of four of these. A bomb assists me on one, and I took out the other two as in the second image in the spoiler, also this. Next is a group of three. I believe I jump one from behind, jump another from behind, then massacre the third with Force. I unlock a shortcut, so I go back and save. Next up is a set of two. Very easy at this point, although I accidentally screw up my movement and have to reset.

There's another food dispenser on the floor, along with rainbow fruit. This alongside the faux Geomagnetic Pole and some Amritas was enough to last me the whole way through the floor, even without TP Regen, all the way-


...I went backwards through the floor and completely missed the entrance to 25F, which was where I started. That is priceless.

I keep going and easily slip into where I need to go, apparently the bombs were torturing these things the whole time when I was away. They're the type of FOE that respawn one day later, although simply going to another floor kept them dead so long as it was the same day. Then I decide to torture them some more, killing around two extra here and two extra in the lower area, with bombs helping to clean them all out.


The whole floor is clean of them. Also yeah, changed the icon on the bomb depositers. when getting the last shortcut (which I don't even use!!), I decided to check into that suspiciously empty part of the floor. Indeed, there's a secret room with a Soma Prime.

One floor left to the main game. Next time, a man with a voice modulator will scream in ecstasy!

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree (?), 25F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

It's time to bring this game to its conclusion, with the highest production values I can manage. By the way, something I forgot to mention about the last FOE in the process of tearing through them all - their fixed drop isn't guaranteed, but I still got plenty from fighting so many of them. Also, extra sad dialogue. :< Also, duclet-voiced caster! Who talks about punishing a certain upcoming enemy.

Two quests to complete, and a couple side-diversions. The first is to track something of Marion's down on 16F. If you don't have/won't use a Beast, you need to get a lady and a (male/female) puppy called Bobby to help you. Just need to go kill a Nightmare on 23F for Stallion Meat. Of course, I had a Beast, but I did it this way anyway because Touya is butt and will likely just use his wolf. That said, it's nothing interesting; it's just an extra trip that changes the dialogue during the quest (the puppy does everything if you get it, else the first Beast in your party does the appropriate actions), as well as after. Oddly, it'll howl regardless of whether it's a tiger, bear, wolf, panda, or the puppy. It's also possible to get the puppy after and have it steal the credit, or get the Stallion Meat and keep it in your inventory forever.


Either way, the animal finds the lost brooch. Also, Marion plans on coming over to Cass' for a pint as a way of thanking him, as this wasn't a formal request.

I also break 100 hours around this point.

Second quest is to try to trick a kid into thinking his father from Etria is still alive and kicking in the Labyrinth by bringing something back from it. I'm told to beat a tough monster and ideally get a rare material as a soveneir. Sounds like conditionals from FOEs to me, so I grab them all. Turns out I only needed one, so I give the Bound Shard since Sky Metal Shard sells for more. Also turns out he knew his father was gone the whole time, and his mother cries and stuff. Getting the rare material gives me 3 Nectar IIs instead of 1.


I also go ahead and use some food to try to get an EMP Lv10 Grimoire. I manage to beat two shiny ones (no real threatening difference), and...end up in this ugly situation where I take on three all in one fight. The third goes off incredibly screwy, but I have enough to survive the fight, and the fruits of my labor was the Grimoire in question. Only looking it up after did I find out it might not be as good as Stigmata after all...stupid enemy skill differences!

I also got an extra conditional by busting out Petrifying Breath on those Nozunukis. It makes an ultimate accessory for the Troubadour, available in unlimited quantities after selling just one.


25F brought forth two new enemies. On the left is Undead Soldier. This thing usually showed up with one of those steel soldiers. It has a chaser-type move, but excepting here and that one shiny one I found (who just used a normal physical), I just killed its friend before it could (Volt Rounds/Link Order/some physicals), then it on the next turn. In these rare fights, I'd focus down the King Gels first (often with Burst Shot), since it can summon Yellow Gels and use a strong combination attack when alone. Never gave it the chance to do this. They both have conditionals: Undead Soldier to die while feared (which isn't a sure bet), and King Gel to kill with Curse damage. Fought a lot before this trying to get the drops, and on finding out that specific, decided I'd set up to get it later. But I get it anyway regardless, no Curse Food needed. I get even more when I find a consistent setup to throw it into critical: Burst Shot and Link Order from Devaki.

I had an interesting adventure here where my experience was made unequal. It was late and they're close to the cap so I didn't mind, but yet I took solo Ichigo anyway and managed to get him exactly on par with everyone else. After the usual FOE repeat rush, the latter half of the floor was a maze. I somehow find my way to the end easily, so have to go back and find all the other nooks and crannies. There is an ominous glowing red door before me...time to prepare and clean up loose ends!


First, I beat chicken Kenshiro with two characters, those being Varda and Devaki. I slap a Grimoire on Varda to counter the offensive reduction, and they both do their thing. Devaki also uses Frailty Curse towards the end of the battle (no time before that). All it takes is the binds holding out. For this, a different reward from fighting him with a full party is given, which gives +3 to all stats instead of +2 and adds more HP. The experience from this and turning in the quest is enough to take both to take both to Lv70.


Next, I take the other three, along with Tawny and Iantha (a Ronin) to get a conditional from those dragons in the second stratum's secret area. It requires you to kill them via instant death. I was trying to get this with Devaki earlier, but it wasn't proccing. But Iantha's Force Break essentially always instantly kills if the target is at critical HP.


Finally, I take on the Frost King proper to get the whole main party to 70. To actually go into the quest this time, it's put out by Canaan due to it suddenly showing up one day and none of them being able to get near it. No clothes and such. So we, the earthbound ones, tasked with dealing with it with our cold resistance.

It's in the southeast room just standing here.

---


Again, this is an interesting fight, seeing Kei stepping out for a Troubadour. It has a pattern of throwing up armor at certain HP thresholds that you need to take care of before dealing with it. But with enough buffs - Troubadour's Force Break being key - you can skip it all with a one-hit kill.

My damage is less than last time due to not using all the buffs and not as many Cut Ups, although I did use a Pre-Initiative Grimoire. Still, all that mattered was that he died in a single hit. It also took more turns than last time due to not all the binds landing. If I had all the proper buffs though, I'd have done 10000 more.

Conditional is killing it when Arm Bound, which it was. The normal drop lets you make a helmet that has great defenses but lowers action speed. The Conditional gives you a shield with fantastic defenses and ice resistance, but also a heavy fire weakness.

---

So that got everyone to the level cap for the time being (not to mention got Ciara plenty of experience). Everyone is at their finest for the final battle.

I also finish up the recipes for the fifth Stratum. Notably, I end on the STR+10 food. Doing these makes Regina plan for a feast with her grandfather, and triggers her third set of quotes, which I'll go over next time. Oh, and one more thing.


The nexus has been unbound for real this time. To make this even nastier, I've thrown on STR+10 food. It's time to fulfill my destiny. I do some Grimoire reshuffling and make my way to the door. One of the Grimoires is a Stalker Grimoire as so to prevent random encounters on the way there. Theoretically. Encounter rates can be random.

This isn't about winning at this point. I've beaten postgame bosses, so this guy is just doomed. No, this is about winning as hard as I can. On opening the big red door, I come before a huge pod, where a scene plays out...

---

After swinging the heavy the heavy door open,
you enter an open, well-lit chamber

The hall is filled with objects wonderous
to your eyes, as well as a strange, echoing
noise.

As you struggle to take it all in, the
mysterious voice booms from above you.

Overlord: ("AT LAST. YOU HAVE ASCENDED."
"Welcome to the inner sanctum of my
Heavenly Keep... The King's Hall.

We created it in the image of an ancient
ark, that we might escape into the skies.

I fear you will not understand my tale,
but listen... Long ago, this world faced
destruction.

The signs were obvious, and so we made
plans to flee the perishing earth for the
skies.

(Ngh...)
But another ordeal fell upon us.

Humanity could not adapt to the
drastically altered environment.

I continued my never-ending research
on life to save them. But some were not
satisfied...

They wished to die on their home soil...
to return to the false lands on the dead
earth.

I performed experiment after experiment
to save those who remained faithful to me...

(Uggghh...)
But the secrets of life are obscure and
arcane. Little time remained to find
a breakthrough.

Thus did I discard my human form,
trasnffering my mind to a body that
would last forever.

In this way, I continued my research to
protect my flock from all manner of
calamities.

That research continues today. The Grail
of Kings... source of that much-sought
immortality...

It is not yet fully functional. Genetic
warping occurs, and men become
something entirely other.

(PITIFUL)
If she had remained with me... Her
specialty was genetic research... perhaps...

No, The past is dead, and it is folly to
speculate. I alone will discover man's
salvation!

I will not let you take the Grail of Kings
from here! It is vital to mankind's future!

Perish and become dust before my power
as the Overlord!"

---

And with this...














IT IS ON.

---


The most important thing about the battle against the Overlord is this triggering. I could've used Sweet & Sour Moa, but I wanted overkill asskicking damage (STR+10 food) and was actually clean out of the food and was too lazy to get more. Either is important because of his first move: LRDA inflicts random ailments on the party. I can afford this happening (would just need to heal with Kei...assuming she doesn't get bopped either), but it's easier if it doesn't.

When it doesn't...well. By now you should know the fate of all powerful foes who stand in my way who can't be completely bound..


Well, you'd be WRONG~

Turn 1: Defend/Defend/Defend/Shock Fantasia/Frailty Curse
Turn 2: Power Gel (Azura)/Fire Prelude (Azura)/War Cry/Weakening Curse
Turn 3: Defend/Defend/Point Blank/Salve/Chained Benefit
Turn 4: Defend/Shock Circle/Burst Shot/Swap Step (Devaki)/Stigmata

The ubergun technically was not necessary here. It only has 6000 HP, All the buffs on Azura were enough for the win anyway, she just might've needed to use her Force Boost. Chained Benefit/Stigmata was technically pointless. So why this? This is a two-phase fight. Although the first time, I overcompensate and Varda/Ichigo's turn 3 was dedicated to buffing the former. I just did Stigmata because Head Bind buffs elemental damage...though I guess it has to be pure elemental damage. I also had to stall on turn 3, else he would block the Burst Shot. I thought he might immediately shift over midbattle...

But instead, you get a small break where another scene happens. By the way. If you don't go fast like this, it eventually starts repeatedly using an attack that may as well be an instant kill.

---

The majestic being known as the Overlord
falls silent before you...

As you bask in your hard-won victory,
the voice speaks again.

Overlord:
"It seems your power is far greater than I
anticipated. But you do not understand...

My research is still far from complete.
Though I have created something of
a prototype...

True eternal life will not be possible until
the Grail of Kings is finished.

And so I cannot allow myself to be
defeated now.

But I have a propsition. I can grant you
eternal life... Trascendence of your mortal
human forms.

In return for which, you must leave the
Grail of Kings with me and depart from
this castle.

(I WOULD HAVE YOUR ANSWER)
Think well... do not all humans desire life
eternal and strength unsurpassed?"

The Overlord's offer has been made,
and he awaits your answer.

The decision is entirely in your hands...

How will you answer?
"Very well. We'll go back."
"We cannot turn back now."

---

Answering the first of these leads to a Game Over, because his research is incomplete and therefore would more than likely turn you into grotesque monsters. I believe this was more ambiguous in the original, but the threat is very much laid out here. Here's a link to this scene in the original.

---

You cannot leave when the Grail of Kings
is so near at hand, and so you refuse
the Overlord.

At hearing your response, the Overlord
sighs deeply before speaking again.

(FOOL.)
"So... That is the path you choose. It was
inevitable, I suppose. Then I will resist
you with my true power..!

(HEAR ME!)
Children of man! Freed from the
destruction of the old world, I have
dreamt a new future.

(VA'd)
None shall deter me from my sacred goal!
I shall surpass the limits of humanity!

(VA'd)
Witness the might of a true god!"


--

And then...this insane transformation happens.


This is it. The final battle of the main game in Classic Mode. Overlord has 27000HP,. He has a variety of attacks, including Mountain Stream (he opens with this), "looking at the party fearlessly", then using this to one row. There's also Dazzling Sunlight, Hail and Rain, and Crashing Thunder, all which deal 180% damage of Fire/Ice/Volt to the party and attempt to bind their head/arms/legs. If he's debuffed, he'll sometimes use Seek to purge them all and raise his physical attack by 30%. He can also debuff you with Solitude, a nasty move that halves your physical defense and attempts to inflict paralysis/fear. Birth of Anguish is a move that inflicts Cut damage, can splash, and inflict Fear.

Most interestingly, he can summon Killer Satellites or the Overlord Core. The former have 1700HP and use chaser-type attacks after the elemental moves. They can also explode for heavy fire damage. The latter just sits there, but when the Overlord uses his...Dance attack with it active, it becomes significantly more powerful - going up to 10 hits (from 5) and doubling in power (400% to 200%). It can only hit a target once/twice under normal circumstances, although with Hit-Taker and such, the damage can be spread around.


Of course, none of that even matters.

Turn 1: Power Gel/Fire Prelude/War Cry/Defend/Frailty Curse
Turn 2: Limitless/Hit-Taker (FB)/Front Guard/Defend/Chained Benefit <- Switching Azura and Kei

Overlord uses his first two turns on "charging" and then using Mountain Stream, hence the free buffing period and Ichigo defending on Turn 2. It was also a good idea to use the Force Boost, because it could hurt. And what happens on Turn 3? Watch the video!?






Turn 3: Ecstasy (FB)/Hit-Taker/Swap Step/Defend/Stigmata (FB)


Indeed. I think I messed something up somewhere when taking this still shot (which I had to reload for), but that is still a one-hit kill on the final boss. Really, I might've even been able to do this even without the uberwhip. Certainly, as indicated by Juggernaut, it'd just mean a few more turns at most.

But regardless...

---

An epic battle of epic proportions has happened. Not quite my most epic battle to date, but that was certainly a battle. One thing, however, is true.

My guild and I are now the Heroes of Lagaard. An epilogue immediately follows the results screen.

---

Shafts of light fill the room, and
after a violent quake, the light
pours down to the earth...

Whether the light marks the end
of an ancient legend...
or the opening of a new chapter...

It would be premature to judge now.



You recall his words... "My aim was
nothing less than the evolution of
man... the dawn of a new race!"



Perhaps their conflict was not
a matter of right and wrong.

It was a struggle whose outcome was
determined by the strength of their
respective beliefs.

There may come a time again when
mankind, facing incredible adversity,
will lose its way...

But even when traveling a false path,
man will continue to go forward,
one step at a time.

Just as you traversed the flying
castle, their strength and bravery
will allow them to face any hardship.








---

The game then goes from townmember to townmember, skipping only Regina for some reason. Word of the Overlord's demise has already reached them, and these scenes show them planning a feast and party in Velichye's honor.

---

Quona:
Mom, mom! They said that everyone from
Velichiye came back safe...!

Hanna:
Is that true!? Then there's no time to waste!
We've got a feast to prepare!

Hanna:
They've just accomplished the impossible...
You know they'll be hungry! Come on Quona,
fetch the ingredients!

Okay...! I'll help as much as I can so we can
welcome back Velichiye!

_____

Abigail:
I always thought they would be the ones
to solve the mystery of the legend...

Abigail:
Haha, I'm not just saying that! I've been
rooting for them throughout their whole
journey!

Abigail:
And I wasn't the only one. Dad and all the
people at the workshop were cheering for
them, too.

Abigail:
All of Sitoth Trading has been rooting
for the Velichiye guild!

_____

Cass:
They finally did it, did they? Awright!
I'm off to see myself some real live heroes!

Cass:
Yeh know they've come far if I'm taking
the trouble to go see them! Haw haw haw!

Cass:
What's that yeh say? A barkeep shouldn't
leave his bar...?

Cass:
Aw, don't yeh sweat that. We'll be open
tomorrow! Ain't a blamed thing wrong
with a barkeeping shuttering for the day!

_____

Marion:
So they've traveled the length and breadth
of the Labyrinth. Hm... I suppose I should
do what I can to keep pace.

Marion:
Ah, but no. I can't indulge my bad habits...
This is not the time for me to wallow in
the past.

Marion:
Still... who would have thought that
they'd become heroes of the city?

Marion:
I wonder what their faces will be like as they
return. How should I greet them...? Haha,
at last, something to look forward to.

_____

Gradriel:
They are returning... This means that my
father will be saved!

Gradriel:
Oh, but we waste time. Minister Dubois!
Make haste to ready the celebration for
our heroes' return!

Dubois:
At once, Lady Gradriel! I shall prepare
festivities befitting such a glorious
occasion!

Dubois:
Why, it seems as though the people are
already gathering. This will be quite
the celebration...!

_____

Wilhelm:
It seems they've fulfilled our selfish
desire...

Wilhelm:
The Ruler of Heaven is no more. And so...
those explorers trapped in an endless cycle
of torment can finally know peace.

Artelinde:
Velichiye... Seems there's
no one who doesn't know the name now.
Everyone has nothing but praise for them.

Artelinde:
Their names will never be forgotten here...
And that's true immortality.

---


And that's it! Final gametime is 105:08, jesus. Compare to my first save, and again, be a bit sad that Tawny didn't make it to the final party even though she was in the initial plan in Kei's place. Beating the game unlocks the Album. I don't get any of the movies, but I do unlock all the music and even the voice clips, including those for the story party.

Of course, there's a postgame and a promised fight some voice in the basement said we could have if we beat this guy. So I'm not done yet. There's still more DLC to bust open and postgame bosses to formally slaughter. Next time, I think I'll finally see what that basement's all about, as long as I don't have to jump through even more hoops. And since it's the story mode's final battle area.

Next | Index

EOU2: (not) Climbing a tree, B5

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

I turn in the mission with some other members of the guild because everyone else is capped, getting a really bizarre amount of experience for it. That said, don't forsee actually using any of these besides the Troubadour. Speaking of, I turn in the quest with her and friends mainly for a level, although her leveling's slowed at this point - she's only Lv50. I only get 100000en and a fancy accessory for the quest, and not the title of nobles. And a single extra thanks, because a thousand would not be enough.


Also, have some statistics.

So around town, everyone has new things to say. One of them is amusing. Yeah, eldritch horrors, monsters, and gods don't scare Velichiye, but get that scientific astronomy stuff away from us. One of the new things to say is a SPOILER (although she's happy about it!). Praise too. Also new things about Regina. Some cute. Some a bit creepy. There's two new quests here. Both especially for us! But the subject of this floor is the one to go into B5 and defeat the calamity within, as per a dream the princess got.


Oh yes, forgot to mention, I did another DLC quest before during 25F, but...that part of the report was already really crowded, and it made very little tangible difference. Thunder Queen, in a previously inaccessible part of 7F, plays out at first similarly to Arachne. Navigate the maze and make your way over to her, or you get shot. Also, this is a really sick boss design.

---


Once I did that, there really was nothing to this fight. Wrap her up and make her scream in Ecstasy.


Conditional is to kill her when panicked. Was a bit screwy to get this since she recovered from most of the binds, but she was at critical health, it landed easily, and I had more than enough left in the tank to beat her from there.

---

Conditional gives up the Thunder God Bow. It's slightly weaker than the Zamiel Bow, but much less expensive. Still, if we're talking Devaki, she kinda wants the latter for its huge Luck bonus. The normal drop is Swift Shoes, which give an action speed bonus. Speaking of selling stuff, I could get the Czar Cloth from the Overlord, a good piece of light armor that gives light resistance to the elements and some HP.


By the way, I got the ultimate Hexer accessory at one point, but I preferred Devaki using the Silver Belt. Still gives a LCK and HP bonus, and usually its the others running out of TP before her, so that's not too important.

I spent some stat points before this. Ichigo finally got some Claw Mastery stuff, if only to help inflict more damage when speedkilling is preferred. I calculated the rest of what I want, and he could afford spending 10 points to grab Wolf Fang Lv5. Kei meanwhile, grabbed Scavenge Lv10. I noticed drop rates were very low in the 5th Stratum, so with her having much of what's already relevant, this will come in handy.


Anyway, yes. A final impossible request. I've dealt with them before, how hard could this be? First, I'll transcribe what the dream voice told her.

---

The day of the Calamity's awakening is
near.

But there yet exists potential within
humans. Send the conquerors of Yggdrasil
back into Gunnungagap.

That is... the last hope.

---

So let's go! The way to B5 is open.


NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. White blood cells were EVIL in EOU1. Burst Shot this thing dead with extreme prejudice (which also killed the moth). On seeing its stats, I learned I could deal with this fight with Link Orders on each, Fire Rounds, and attacking the moth. For that matter, the red ones show up too. They can inflict petrification and instant death respectively, although thankfully, they're toned down in this game.

So how about the resident FOE?


Well, they're not these things, which grab you like Scorpion from Mortal Kombat and hold you for a while. Mostly annoying, since if you dodge them, a cutscene ALWAYS plays of the tentacle grabbing nothing. Or the actual resident FOE if you happen to lead it into the path to be grabbed.

---


It's pretty horribly weak. Even its own attacks via Suicide Word hurt really bad. The only things it has going for it are how its special lowers the target's accuracy (not a problem if it's Ichigo or Azura) and how it can recover all of its health. The former can be stopped by Hit-Taker, the latter can be stopped by either binding its legs (need a boost for it to be consistent) or just quickly tearing the thing down with Ecstasy or Burst Shot.


Hell, those Scorpion tentacles? If you fight them when they've been grabbed, their everything will be bound, which made them bait for Varda.

---

The FOEs always respond and do a patrol if they hear a tenacle reach out, which I assume can be dangerous, although more often than not you can recover beforehand. Sometimes they have to be grabbed by the tentacles so you can advance. Because of this I'm assuming, they instantly respawn if you leave the room.


After a large room of these, I end up in another maze, leading to a glowing red door. After refreshing and tweaking my equipment/grimoires, I step forward.

---

Voice from somewhere:
"Child of man, you have done well to
arrive here.

Now, I would have you listen to me.

I wish to tell you... the story of
Ginnungagap.

In that distant past, there existed a being
known as the Calamity...a being possessed
of earth-shatteringly destructive power.

This primeval creature... this entity
of pure annihilation... rests deep beneath
the land known as High Lagaard.

I and my colleagues knew of this, and
rather than try to control or destroy it, we
sought to seal it away in this land...

We have renewed this seal time and time
again, by way of... a certain tradition.

That time is now past, and it will no
longer help us. Little by little, our
sacrifices have affected the seal less...

And thus, the seal keeping the Calamity
in place has weakened with each new dawn.
It is now little more than a glimmer...

Ginnungagap is akin to a grand casket,
within which the Calamity sleeps. If it were
to fully awaken, it would be... unstoppable.

Which is where... we come to you, child
of man. I would ask one final thing of
you.

Open this door... and witness with your
own eyes the abomination that is the
Calamity.

And, if it is truly within your power,
bring an end to it.

In all likelihood... it is an impossible
feat for humans. You may simply perish as
yet another sacrifice to its bloodlust. Yet...

Perhaps... humans truly do have the
strength to overcome all things, no
matter what may come.

You have done the impossible already--
entered the castle in the sky, and won
against he who transcended humanity.

This... though it be the faintest of hopes...
you may yet defeat the Calamity. You are
this land's... last chance... of survival.

Unknown adventurers... I leave the fate
of this world... in your hands..."

---

Some heavy lore. The voice stops at this point, but the narration continues...

---

The voice's final words... are a
sorrowful, barely-heard apology.
"I'm sorry.

You know that the voice must have used
all the power it yet retained, in order
to give you these final words.

You can open the door and confront the
Calamity here and now, or you can head
back to town and prepare as necessary.


---

I'm already prepared, so it's time to step forward and end another threat to humanity!!










Um.


UM.



























Well, hello there? Scarlet Rain even plays during this scene.
















Before your eyes, there is a grotesque,
writing beast... the would-be destroyer
of worlds; the Calamity itself!

Your knuckles whiten on your weapons.
Noticing you presence, the Calamity
whirls its tentacles towards you...

And, with a shrill, keening shriek from
the Calamity, your ultimate battle now
begins!


This fight, with its own theme, is interesting. The Yggdrasil Core opens up with this, which not only does what its saying its doing, but also makes it immune to damage. Need to take care of the Core Irae (tentacles) which are weak to the elements and resist physical, and after that the Core Odiums (extra heads) which are weak to physicals and resist the elements. They have 2500 and 4000 HP respectively. The Core just sits there most of the time before they're down, occasionally using Poison Dust to poison and reduce healing.


After one battle that becomes a long-lasting comedy of errors trying to set everything up all the way and making it last even longer because I used Shock Fantasia instead of Shock Circle, I instead try for something more beautiful. Varda and Azura, working side-by-side to bring the Calamity down. The first turn is dedicated to Ichigo just getting up Self-Defense while Kei throws up Shock Fantasia. The usual buffs go up next: Power Gel, Frailty Curse, Warrior Song, and even Ice Prelude on Azura. A much smoother setup


I begin the assault next turn. The Irae are dealt with by Azura and Devaki. Volt Rounds + Link Order with Shock Circle from Kie backing them is enough to bring them down, one turn after another. Sometime during this, Varda dies because of Poison Dust, but Ichigo is there with a Nectar II.


This then happens.


One of the Odiums has its Head (!?) bound by Devaki using her Force Boost and Stigmata, which is enough to Varda to kill one with Tranced Limitless Ecstasy. A Lv15 Point Blanked Action Boosted Force Shot brings the other down. That just leaves the Core itself, who used a buff-killing defensive lowering move on...Devaki. Meanwhile during this turn, Devaki had used Chained Benefit...


It's now vulnerable!


With the barrier destroyed, Devaki is Swap Stepped and unleashes Stigmata. Varda follows up with the usual massive damage, and even with only Warrior Song (and the Core's weakness) to support her. She was buffing herself, and had she not died, this would've likely been a clean one-shot. The Core meanwhile, pulls off this to reduce Max HP and Curse people...but Varda is not one of them.


The problem with this not being a one-shot is that the Core regenerates its parts after it's taken enough damage, but this is only a theoretical problem. It still does take a turn for the barrier to return, so with Swap Step...







It goes down! Yet another epic battle.


I get a nice Grimoire reward from this, too. Not that it's critically important.

---


At long last, after a battle unlike any
peril you have ever faced, the hideous
Calamity is dead!

With this beast dead, and the voice's last
wish fulfilled, High Lagaard will at
last know true peace, free from danger.

You may never know who the mysterious
voice was... or for what reason the
Calamity existed...

However... you, your allies, and the heavens
above have borne witness to your final
victory to save all living things.

While it may not be recorded in the
annals of history, it will survive
forever as a tale of true heroes...

When ready, you should return to town
and report your success... or rather,
your completion.

Return proudly to those who wish your
safety, and herald the arrival of a new
age of peace in the world!

---

Well, that's that. The postgame proper is next. Certainly, it's not going to be that big a prob-

UMMMM...



Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree, 26F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

Before moving into 26F, I tackled the remaining quests. This was to find the "Foul Grail", the counterpart of the Grail of Kings that takes life away. It was pretty mindless, just needed to go to the room before the Overlord's - not the Juggernaut's room as I initially thought. But before that, I went and beat Chicken Kenshiro, Frost King, and Thunder Queen again...turning in all the quests with Yggdrasil Sprout tea!


The experience of these three quests tripled, plus a shiny Sky Metal Knight on the way there, was enough to get Ciara very close to 70. It felt like a productive use of one of my two. I decide to take her (and the triple experience) with me for the next few quests, just to see how the group functions without Kei. To this end, she got new equipment (including her rare accessory), skill point distribution, and Grimoires that mostly consisted of the stuff Kei generated: Lv10 Cure, Lv10 Revive, Lv5 Salve, and Lv10 Refresh. The other two went to a Flank Shot Lv10 (she could equip bows anyway) and Battle Instinct Lv9 TP+ for lack of anything better. Also, I'm not sure if I'm going to be using the others. Different screenshot by the way. Had another crash and lost some screenshots, although most of them were just of nothing anyway.

My group was crushing all comers, and while Ciara couldn't do much herself, was certainly helping the others do a lot with her huge wellspring of TP and Warrior Song. My initial impressions are that Kei might be superior for general travel (especially with Scavenge), but Ciara will be best for boss fights and stuff. She could also do tricks with auto-healing Ichigo.

Doing this unlocked another quest pertaining to the birdmen. I made my way to 20F to meet Canaan, and apparently he has no idea of quests despite the fact that he's technically sent one in before. Anyway, Storm Emperor (under an alias that I can't recall) apparently was damaging their vault, and they've been transfering it. I head up to 23F - walking up, since floor jump is for chumps - running over Harpuia along the way. Just need to fight some Gem Lizards after getting there, no big deal.

No more quests show up at this point, so all I can really do is to keep climbing the tree. Or at least step into 26F so I can get more new quests. Welcome to the...


...a place of peace...










...which is a false/artificial Eden. Peaceful on the outside, liquid murder on the inside (of battles). Seriously, this track is metal. Here's Gasser Tree (aka Sickwood) on the left, a foe that does not take kindly to dying and inflicts a deadly poison...unless head bound. On the right is Ancient Hermit, who has only 12HP, but is incredibly resistant to just about everything. That's right, multi-hit moves like Ichigo's Wolf Fang could actually come in handy here Naturally, Frailty Curse and Warrior Song also helped to kill this thing, and a Fantasia is just cheating. Why this way when you can just melt it with poison? Because it has a conditional to kill it with physical damage!

Also, when I failed to inflict head bind once, I found out the poison actually hurts its allies! Different from the original and EOU1.

Nothing to do here due to plot, except beating up a FOE called Asterius.

---


There's three of these things in the room to the south and they're all alerted at once, so a speed kill here was of utmost importance. Really need to get another Swap Step or something for Ciara. Had to just hammer on the Stigmata - no time to Frailty Curse (it provokes a murderous counter if not bound anyway). One good thing about Kei - I could go...

Turn 1: Limitless/Fire Prelude/Frailty Curse/Warrior Song/Stigmata (FB)

...and it'd be crippled, disabled, and Varda would be ready to kill it next turn. Here, it was something like..

Turn 1: Limitless/Fire Prelude/Point Blank/Stigmata (FB)/Warrior Song
Turn 2: Ecstasy (FB)/Hit-Taker/Burst Shot (FB)/Defend/Reverb (Varda->Azura)


Also despite it having a weakness to 2/3 elements, Burst Shot disappointed. Still, the combo left it at critical health. I ended up trying to fight all three at first, but got owned when they pulled out a move to nearly slaughter a Force Boosted Ichigo. This thing has 25039HP, hmm...and the conditional is to kill them with Bash damage! The big catch with these things are their replies to debuffs...like Ichigo's Beast Roar. They can purge them and unleash a party-wide attack which is stronger with more of them. They can even debuff themselves with Warhammer, which hurts anyway.

Also, as I found out, they can rudely be summoned by the Ancient Hermits if they're alone. I was up for beating one in this fashion. Had to pop a "fuck you too" when it decided to try to screw me at the last minute, but winning is what matters.


And as I thought it might be, this was much easier with Kei instead of Ciara. This party with its Grimoires is just a bit better at setting up and stunning something at the same time, and Kei even has Front Guard to help soften up their blows. With Ciara I have a bit more raw power thanks to being able to buff Azura, Reverb stuff, etc. I even get a second copy of the conditional - the first I get after a battle using Ciara since Burst Shot/Ecstasy takes them to critical HP...but this second time it wasn't as critical, so I had to fight a bit for this. It goes into two things, neither of which are relevant for me.

---

So it's settled. Sorry Ciara, you're a good and cute girl and will certainly be called upon to help against some bosses, but Kei just fits my mold better. I could work with either, but my playstyle - beating up all FOEs - just is much more condusive to Kei. Plus, she can deal respectable damage, which Ciara kind of lacks in.

Next quest is to investigate the secret area of Stratum 2. Get to see Marion without her helmet (and she's pretty good-looking!) and learn some lore about her: something in there took out her entire guild save for her. It generates a lot of heat. Sounds like a setup for a postgame boss to me! I find a plate of some kind and bring it back. I turn in the quest with secondary/tertiary members of the guild who are very unlikely to see action - I'm no Touya - but better than just wasting it on capped party members.

Last quest is from the birdmen again, and this time, it's to make a blood sacrifice to fill the Foul Grail, which will unseal the way to the Forbidden Woods. The Juggernaut is chosen as the target.


With Ciara AND Kei at my side, I one-shot the beast this time around.

The ritual is performed beyond where the Asterius FOEs were, up a flight of stairs on 27F. Canaan takes care of most of it, and talks about an(other) End-Bringer here. Only thing we need to do is to pull out a sword. The game for whatever reason says if you don't feel like pulling it, you can prepare to pull it. I take this to mean "go get Ciara".

And yes, that is a good idea.

---


Another boss, another victim of Ecstasy. I use the same strat as I did on Juggernaut, although switch Fire Prelude for Hit-Taker because I don't know what he does. And he does something that is better off blocked. Then gets healed off. This move also buffs his...a lot, although one of them is his offense which is canceled out because of Beast Roar..

Turn 1: Limitless/Hit-Taker/Frailty Curse/Warrior Song/Chained Benefit
Turn 2: Ecstasy/Defend/Swap Step (Devaki)/Crusaude/Stigmata

If I really wanted to with this strategy, I could have Devaki be the Frailty Curser and have Kei use a Prelude, although this reduces the rate of Stigmata landing. At any rate...


Hello? You are not allowed to do that. When I kill you, you stay dead. Still, it only recovered half of its very limited HP pool, so a follow-up for over 9000 ended this.

---


A few more enemies. King Shrooms weren't that threatening. These freaky three-headed dinosaurs have a conditional to kill them via petrification. I usually fought them by having Ichigo Self-Defense, Varda and Azura try to head bind it to prevent its attack, and Devaki using Weakening Curse. If the bind was successful, the others would just wait for her to use Petrifying Stare successfully. If not, Kei would Swap Step her and Ichigo would Hit-Taker. Though all these gave up was the Landshark's ultimate armor.


A new misty room gives way to another new FOE and intriguing mechanic. The map suddenly stops showing where I am! It's still possible to map it out, but you don't get anything properly revealed and have to do it fully manually. Doesn't help this game doesn't have a compass...to fix this, you need to do a pound-up.

---


Really, these things are roadkill. 4577HP. You're actually intended to hunt them down, because they prevent you from seeing where you are on the map. They try to flee from you while doing so, and you need to corner them. Even for FOEs you're supposed to be fighting, these things are pathetically weak.


The only interesting thing is their conditional. You need to kill them on the 11th turn or later, a bit of a difficult task considering their penchant for explosive suicide. The solution is to lock them down with things like sleep, fear (they're weak to both, though you'll need a control move to exploit the latter), panic, head bind (only stops them from exploding, not them trying to expode which takes a turn), stun, and so on. Devaki using Chained Benefit while we wait helps to nail it.

---

The Eternal Hide lets you make the ultimate armor for the Medic.

In later rooms, Astrius FOEs are thrown in with the Icy Bulbs. They can't see when the mist is up, but you can't preemptive them - they'll just only see you when you're right in front of them.. In any case, this one was guarding a chest with an "Echo" Grimoire (a mislabeled Reverb), so it had to die anyway. There's also instances where you need to take out multiple Icy Bulbs in a room.


The north side of the map has damage tiles!! And they hurt way more than the previous ones - 50 damage (5 with Scout Boots! Also I went and got more Scout Boots). The next room over throws them into the mix as well, the gimmick being the bulbs not being able to cross over the damage tiles (and how you can only really see them when they're one tile in front of you). An Astrius is also thrown into the mix in another room - had to carefully back away due to not having Devaki's Force Boost up, lest things get a bit hairy.

Not too much to this floor, so I'll end the report before I formally finish it because stupid battery life and stupid restaurant. The last room isn't too much different, just is big and with two Icy Bulbs.

Less screenshots than usual - especially at the back end - because the tool is the worst thing in the world and can randomly and arbitrarily decide it's not going to work. To wit I had to retake some of the Golem stuff because it was full, but then it bugged out and didn't give those (namely it dying) anyway. I'll end on some interesting points.

- Lick Wounds does indeed seem to not check for Grimoires, or at least is very bugged/inconsistent as to whether it does so or not, so I gave Ichigo a Legendary Grimoire to buff the healing instead. Shame, because if it worked and I combined the two, any triggering would be almost a full heal.
- Ichigo can't Fire Prelude before Varda moves with Ecstasy, but Ciara can.
- Even some of my other party members got a ton of experience due to the triple experience stuff, it has more of an effect on those in the guild than I thought.
- I had money to spare, so I got the Zamiel Bow for Devaki.
- Devaki's not packing Link Order at the moment because of needing to make room for Petrifying Stare, but it'll probably be back.

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree, 27F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

Finish up the map and head back to the bar. Also talk about eggs. Hard over isn't there, so I go with that. She's bad at making them, but promises to try her best! The bar has visits from Dulcet-voiced caster and Leggy Dark Hunter from EOU1. One quest had already opened up, but three more showed up sometime durng 26F. One of them is a very high priority - to fight the Storm Emperor again. This time, for real. I go for it first because that raises the level cap! Immediately after accepting the quest, the big bad sky snake, aka Storm Emperor, aka Klanvaline. attacks the town. I go and meet Canaan on 20F. He gives me a book which leads to an area I know existed from FOEs wandering around on the outside, but haven't been - the outside area of 19F.


Two new enemies here. And oddly, part of this place seemed to be unable to be reached. You can see them both here. Scissors Crab never got to do anything because I always feared it (conditional) or panicked it, and neither did Lightning Drake because I head bound it (Poison is conditional). The former's conditional is just a strong light armor, the latter is the Gunner's second ultimate armor.

Later on, I get ambushed by two crabs and one Lightning Drake, which is where things get terrifying. Reaping Claws hurts like the fist of god, and a lot of characters get wiped out due to Ichigo's Hit-Taker running out. I do beat this group through smart play and a bit of luck with Suicide Wording the right one. It's one instance where Conflict Word would've been nice - since it could stun both at the same time.


The resident FOE is a model swap.

---


My initial fight of it was screwy due to its resistances towards physical elements, but I got it done. After this, I went and got Panic resistance food and an elemental setup for Azura, which made these as routine as anything else. Except in how there was a bonus in how they buffed my attack as well.


Their conditional is the Blind Eye. Obvious, and makes the Hexer's ultimate armor.

---

Another bonus I intend put to use, by the way. All three can apparently show up on this floor. Maybe soon. This soon led up to the big baddie himself. Of course, I beat this thing back in 24F, so opening the spoiler isn't going to be very interesting.


If I really wanted to, I could've just gone hog-wild and one-shot the dragon. Instead I showed a bit of restraint as so I could get the Conditional the proper way with Burst Shot. Did forget to use Ingredients+ food to increase its yield, but I don't expect to be using that regularly and already have quite a few from doing that the first time.

There's a crazy cutscene at the end, too. Madness! Adorable scenes of bravery! Azura being a badass! Killstealing headshots! Ultimate weapons! More adorableness! And proclamations.

I next take on the Call of the Wyvern quest, to avenge Guild Esbat's earlier loss. They promise 70000en and the earlier gun for helping Artelinde earlier. The only quest - which makes this a REAL quest - is having to kill the thing that took it from the Gunner from her previous guild, who rampaged through the Labyrinth and went solo kamikaze on the Wyvern.

I get not one, but two pieces of ultimate equipment from this, and that's before counting the conditional: first, I'm bestowed the Yggdrasil Staff, a very strong weapon that also gives +50 to HP and TP. And the quest itself is for the Agnea (well, money, but it's how to find it), the strongest gun when it comes to raw power, although only by a few points and with no special abilities. Very cool, though!

---


I just step on it and move on. It uses Burning Ray as its first move, a Volt-elemental attack that Ichigo gobbles up.


As before, I show a bit of restraint as so to get its conditional - the Paralyzed Wing.

- Turn 1: Limitless/Hit-Taker/Frailty Curse/Warrior Song/Chained Benefit
- Turn 2: Ecstasy (FB)/Fire Prelude/Swap Step (Devaki)/Point Blank/Stigmata (FB)
- Turn 3: Limitless/Hit-Taker/Link Order/Burst Shot/Absorb
- Turn 4: Ecstasy/Hit-Taker/Swap Step (Devaki)/Defend/Paralysis Arrow


Dead.

---


The normal drop of it lets you make some Katana, the conditional lets you make the Wyvern Spear (one of the strongest of the class) and Kerykeion - a staff weaker than Yggdrasil Staff, 175 ATK to 207, and with no HP bonus, but the TP bonus is a startling 200. Still, I have to leave if anyone runs out of TP, so not sure if it's good for Kei.

Next quest is boring: effectuvely get two materials, go to 16F, and get the axe of a Landshark from a famous guild (but not as famous as us!) sharpened. The birdman is bored by it, but does see the sword taken from unsealing the Forbidden Wood...but makes me wait.


Lastly, I need to go through the hidden area of Stratum 3. It too, has an enemy like this which could be neutered by Head Bind. It also has a conditional, although it's harder to achieve - it needs to be panicked, which usually requires a buff. And, on a failure, it's a bit more dangerous due to its skill inflicting Sleep, meaning if it inflicted Ichigo mid-attack, the others would feel it. Instances like this were also scary, since the shiny one could remove the protection anyway. Did have Ice Wall on Varda, but slipped my mind to use it/it was never necessary. There's also a long ice puzzle that was annoying to map out.

There's also some ghost here which is only mentioned here.

At the very end of it, I get a warning, and I'm fresh out of juice. Had to go back...only to find there was nothing there anyway. Quona does like the flower I get from the grave though. I give her it, and when she sees the pin she gave us is all wilted, promises to make us another one. Without help. Well, this won't end well.


Also break my sales PB. Now for 27F proper...


Two new enemies are here. Mr. Bloody Lizard is uninteresting except for a skill - Affection Collar is just like Power Gel - it buffs AGI directly on the target in addition to healing them. Hoping I get get some good high-leveled ones from them. I could make the Beast's ultimate Collar by beating them when they were poisoned. Lord Sanguano or whatever is an Attack Cactus palette swap. Arm Bind was nice on these things, and Kei could almost one-shot one with Vital Hit if I wanted. They had a conditional from beating them when panicked.

They're very generous on experience here, too. Hit Lv76 by the end.


Also came close to 1v1ing Chicken Kenshiro, but that's ofc not good enough. Otherwise in 27F....


Yeah. Should speak for itself. I spent my first trip in cleaning out the southern Astrius FOEs. Had to duck into 28F sometimes to escape when Force wasn't charged. I also got a visit from Legendary explorers again. Twice, actually. Have to trade some extras I would rather have not, but I can always just make more. Took Safe Step with me when cleaning out the north since I was out of Scout Boots.

Also you can see a good have dozen entrances to 28F. This is going to be interesting...though am doing more Grimoire Grinding next time. Using Bloody Lizards as they don't really do much. Hopefully I can get a good Affection Collar. Already got Salve Lv10, need a new purchase Lv10, and everything else is just a bonus/for trading.

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree, 28F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

Been a while. Been lazy, and not going to be as detailed as usual due to time eroding some of the memories of what exactly I went through away. Quests. First is to bring 3 Gold Spores and something else to the birdman blacksmith. This helps the sword sharpen a bit, but doesn't remove the rust, so I just got a stylish red sword that's still unusable in battle. The next that I do entails heading into 28F itself.


So 28F. It's a teleporter maze - a staple of sixth stratums - in an artificial Eden. I have some bad experiences with those from SMT: Strange Journey, but thankfully this one isn't as bad as Sector Eridanus. But it is still very much impossible to properly map - there's way too many warps, and the numbers only go from 0-9. Otherwise, not much to be said here. There was a new gorilla enemy that could be arm bound to prevent it from dancing. Seems legit.

As for the quest, it just requires getting to a certain part of the floor. I have a bit of "fun" with a puzzle with three Icy Bulbs to be able to properly reveal the room. Needed to manipulate it so I got the southern one last.

The contents of the quest warn of something with 50 heads and 100 arms. I hit level 80 during it, which is an important cue since I'm heading to the next dragon in the next quest. Spoilers!


So Quona wandered off on her own, reaching the special spot with clean air on 14F safely, just to make us a new charm! But a three-headed dragon somehow sneaks into the room, grabs her in its maw, and flies off. Obviously, we need to kill this thing for daring to mes with our little sister.

---

This is the ice-elemental dragon. As with Storm Emperor, you absolutely need to use Ice Wall to survive its devastating Ice Torrent. Otherwise...


?!








Boom goes the dynamite.

So this is one of the most infamous strategies in the game, that I knew about since the Japanese version. The idea is that Blizzard King is vulnerable to Curse. Remember the Slaughter Shield you could get from Mimics, the shield with 100DEF that effectively makes you take double damage from everything? You throw that onto a low level Beast, and maybe a Fullface Helm as well. You Curse the King with Curse x3 food, and use the Beast's Force Break. It takes a shitton of damage from Ice Torrent, surviving because - Force Break. You can stack the deck with the Landshark's War Cry to lower the Beast's defense, too. The Blizzard King takes 1.5x the tens of thousands of damage it dealt to the Beast in return, which is incredibly lethal.


The best part is, this for some reason counts for getting the Conditional. Which is good, because this boss sucks. It in particular can pull out a reflective move any time it wants.

---

In the end, I save the girl and she ends up holding a magic whip, the strongest in the game power-wise. Not sure what's up, but we are worthy. Her reaction is pretty priceless. The level cap is now 90.

Speaking of caps, that damage was without the Fullface Helm. With it, the dragon could do close to the damage cap on itself.


Randomly, I get a visit from an Alchemist with some high-level Grimoires. I also do another grinding run during this, and grab some legendary ones as well because manipulation!!

Let's keep moving and cover the next FOE, since that's all that's really a threat.

---


It has an insane resistance to physical attacks to the point of making Ecstasy strats useless, so I just used elemental ones. Wasn't set up for it, but I did a decent job anyway and the remainder were dealt with easily enough. Conditional is to kill it with poison damage, also that I did without any particular setup. It's used to create the ever-useful Formaldehydes, and supposedly can be used to create Amrita II - but I couldn't make any after several.


TP restoration in the form of Hamao Primes were important for fighting it properly. It has a skill where it can drain the TP from several targets. The strategy with a proper setup, of course, was to completely forget about Power Gel/Affection Collar and just go with the Point Blank/Burst Shot setup. I also had Devaki running Frailty Curse Lv20 for this, for fun and for a reason I'll get to momentarily.

The only problem was its opening move: a party-wide attack of no element that can inflict Fear.


The base solution of course was to have Ichigo tank it, but I needed a bit more in-play. First, he needed an accessory to block the Fear. No problem there. But the attack hurt, so I set it up so Kei could heal him with Revive Lv10+10. Ichigo was in the last spot because the damage is taken top to bottom left to right. He'd die after four hits, so the last one - slated to hit him - would hit nothing. I had Kei equip the helmet from Frost King to slow her action speed so she'd be guaranteed to go after the pumpkin did its thing. So the fight/setup was like this. Usual order even though I was moving characters around...

- Turn 1: Whatever/Hit-Taker/Revive (Ichigo)/Warrior Song/Frailty Curse
- Turn 2: Whatever/Fire Prelude (Azura)/Frost Fantasia/Point Blank/Whatever
- Turn 3: Freeze Circle/Hit-Taker/Link Order/Burst Shot/Link Order
- Turn 4: Freeze Circle/Hit-Taker/Link Order/Charged Ice/Link Order

Charged Ice? Got a Lv10 Grimoire of one, and though it was only Lv12, it was coming out to around 2000 damage without Freeze Circle. Felt it would be a good idea to have that, so Azura can do more. Even though this is going to delay her from getting Double Action properly...she has to be the character of mine who most desires skill points.

Also, despite being a Cursed Pumpkin, there were no curses to be had in this fight.

---

One annoying maze that's technically impossible to properly map later, and that's mostly that. Still need to go back though, forgot some shortcuts from the looks of it - particularly ones the ones that led to one of the mining points. Should actually use that Lv5+5 Sight Formula. Hopefully this time too, I'll remember to pre-write stuff.

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree, 29F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

AHHHH!!! AFTER TEN THOUSAND YEARS I'M FREE!! Let's...try to continue the fight. Not sure if I'll finish it without some level up DLC abuse at least, for reasons I'll go over when relevant. Whether TouyaShiro is still at it or not.



Next set of quests. The first was to show my Codex to a weird shy girl who loves monsters. It's a bit amusing to scare her. I have enough logged in there, I'm assuming that's the trigger, so it's an easy quest. With that I finally complete the set of pieces, allowing me to finally finish that quest that's been active since the start of the game. My reward is the Yggdrasil Axe, which apparently belonged to some knight who saved High Lagaard several times in the past.

After that I need to go see the swordsmith in 16F again to finally finish that sword, with some Flame Marrow from Salamander in-hand. I use the thing to wean myself back into playing. I get the God's Sword, but don't get to use it because it turns out it's a national treasure and the princess needs to study it!!

I do a bit of adventuring in 29F before doing the final quest. There's a couple new enemies running around here that I forgot to take pictures of. Trihorn looks scary and can probably do horrible things, but has an incessant need to buff itself - and it's always in the hole on that due to Beast Roar going off in every battle, although they're immune to binds. I can set up and kill them with Burst Shots. Their conditional is to kill them when Cursed. Easy. There's also Carbunkle. They mostly sit and wait. They counterattack, but a Vital Hit one-shots them. Conditional is killing when blinded, but it's not a sure bet. Then there's the resident FOE. Then there's these moths that can screw you up with status, need to arm bind them to prevent it.

---


These annoying things called Hazardous Petals are thankfully no Muskoids from EO4, but they do have two annoying moves: one uses the head and tries to bind everyone's everything as well as inflicting various status. The other just hits hard.

The conditional is to kill it while Cursed. And being a plant it's quite weak to fire and cutting, so there's that taken care of. Also I was sloppy and forgot to use Varda's Force Boost, but still won this initial fight. Their conditional is quite nice and goes into Amrita IIs, but it can be annoying to land the Curse. With a proper Warrior Song + Fire Prelude + Limitless on Varda though, they could be brought to death's door, so I could at least try to stall and grab it. If Arm and Head Bind wore off though, I'd just finish it.


Why fight them first? Because they drop an ingredient which goes into something quite welcome for me indeed: Dangerous Flowering Tea makes it so that binds and ailments don't expire for three turns! So Varda can get in a full set of Ecstasies in.

Wasn't quite done from there, though. The next boss has a bunch of Bash damage. I needed to get a Bash charm for this, which is actually obtainable in Stratum 2...with 30 Iron Nail drops from the lizards there. So I went and farmed those out, slapped the relic on Ichigo, and set out. Apparently some thing in 28F has been slaughtering everyone. It's so bad that the Duke doesn't even want us, the heroes who saved the world twice over, going - while just lamenting and giving us interesting dialogue options.

---


The fight actually begins before you head there. If you try to approach this...thing directly, you just get swatted. So you need to play a puzzle with the Icy Bulbs in the nearby room - force the westmost one into the middle one's area, get them near the path south with one blocking the other, then approach the one at the south entrance (from the north?) to force it to go south. Then do the same with the next bulb and path south - although you need to move in a fashion to keep them alert, since they will eventually try to go back to their normal patrol radius. Make one stay to the side of the gap leading south, and drive the other to said gap, forcing it south.

It then goes into the portal. The thing can't see and you're free to fight the thing. Even run off and save beforehand, it keeps its position. Naturally this was pretty annoying so I kept a Stalker grimoire on and ran a lot while solving this puzzle.


This thing has a ton of nasty attacks, including this one right here. Most of them were shut down though once Devaki had laid down the binds.


And then because it's weak to basically all forms of damage, Varda tore it apart from here. Except the first time where I got owned, due to forgetting a buff and because Cursed Mist may have interefered, but from there it was easy. The conditional is killing it with Bash damage. I could've theoretically done this, but I just threw a Swap Stepped Formaldehyde and had done with it after trying for it got me killed the first time. I can just kill some of the pumpkins if I want more of those, anyway.

---

For beating this, I get the usual ton of experience and gold as a quest reward, as well as Hyuga, the strongest katana. Although the duke is in disbelief of beating it at first, and then has a good laugh over doubting us.


I also get access to the strongest claw. Gives a nice HP and defensive boost, so I equipped it despite the one Ichigo had on raising his max HP.

Onward. 29F employed the same puzzle as was needed to approach the boss. Guiding the Icy Bulbs into portals to bring them into rooms where they can obscure the Hazardous Petals' views. What they ordinarily do is "hide" on the map and pop out of the ground screeching if you walk in a space beside them. If an Icy Bulb is in the room, they don't do this. Although they still turn to face you though, so you can't preempt them.

Gotta say, mapping teleporter mazes is annoying. I had to make a ton of annotations for warps and their destinations. But in better news, I end up getting access to the best Beast accessory from stuff further in. Don't use it, though.


One amusing moment came here with my farming party when trying to map, because this teleporter maze is really obstructive: they actually killed some stuff. What those lizards do is selfdestruct if they've taken any damage, which those evil apes can sometimes hit them with whether you like it or not. But since I was having one of them use True Endurance, it whiffed. Then the ape was killed by the Survivalists' Force Break.

I also had an annoying ambush that I somehow survived where one of those moths panicked almost everyone. Only Azura and Devaki survived. They both threw a Nectar II at Kei (since Azura was paralyzed and in case one died, but both went through and survived to do so), who Force Broke next turn, but even from there it was annoying to take down, because it statused almost everyone again!


Eventually after a bunch of annoying mapping in Icy Bulb rooms and walking around or beating up FOEs, that was that. Going to need to reinvent my strategies for the boss on 30F, though. Can't use the typical strategy because it's immune to a bind and has too much HP anyway. Oh but I still intend to murder it horribly. I hope.

Next | Index

EOU2: Climbing a tree, 30F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

EO5 all but confirmed, so let's finish the fight. Or the prelude to finishing it, anyway. No screenshots here because it decided not to save them and I'm too lazy/annoyed to retake the ones I can. A shame because there were some good ones!!

Two new quests here. The first is from that weird shy monster lover and requires going into 30F. I'll do that later. The other however regards the sword quest - apparently the duchy has no record of ever getting that sword. I go to register it as a lost item, only to find Abigail there. The guildmaster isn't around, and in fact left to go beat up the dragon. She's scared and is ubiquitous in how she mans the guild and the shop at the same time. Her "OKAAAAAAYY!!" in particular when you call a team up is aborbs.

But that aside, I believe we have someone to save.

---

So I go into that dead-end and indeed, a dragon magically spawns in that empty room. Marion is there in a duel, and gets soundly thrashed. The dragon is content to be all "yeah go ahead and leave man you aren't worth my time". Apparently he did not get the memo from his dead partners in crime. One awesome scene later...

...and hell yeah, Marion's on the team, and we're ready to kick some oversized lizard ass!! Literally, you can call it that in the hype up before charging in to take this idiot on. She's a Landshark with some nice abilities, including Frost Chaser. And oddly, she has a full compliment of battle text. That said, the strategy remains the same - except with the addition of her War Cry as yet another buff.

Unlike its icy counterpart, I do need to use Flame Wall here. Threw it onto Kei, although I probably should've put it on Varda. Ultimately it didn't matter, though.

I was trying to use a Double Action grimoire from TouyaShiro to potato this thing down almost instantly. Indeed, it worked well the first time where I forgot a few things, but I messed up - I forgot to use Frost Circle, didn't have Ichigo use Desperation, and mistimed the Formaldehyde. So I won, but didn't get all the drops. One reset later, the Double Actions didn't work, but it didn't matter - three Ecstasies with some Ice Chaser from Marion plus a Burst Shot to FINISH HIM did the trick.

---

In the end, Cass covers for Marion, and everything works out. And I get the Yggdrasil Sword, one of the strongest in the game. Bonus, except I don't have anyone who uses swords in the party. I can put it on Varda due to her having Weapon Free, but it drops her damage output on her bind skills by quite a bit, so not a good idea. But better than that in said regard is the Dragonbane, a 600000en infinitely purchasable item that's sort of a reward for killing all the dragons. It boosts all stats by 5, it's pretty awesome. Still not worth it damage-wise on her whips, though.

Also from its conditional, the Scorching Horn, I was able to make the Dragoon Mail for Azura. The Gunner's ultimate armor which offers 77 DEF, +30 HP, and +3 AGL.

One of the new enemies on this final floor is the Bloody Knight. Naturally I bind their arms, and make an initial guess that they're weak to electricity - a correct one. Their conditional is killing them with fire damage, easy with Burst Shot. They're kind of annoying if you don't bind their arms - their big move smacks everything - friend and foe - for big damage, which is bad when some of the enemies respond to hits.

The floor itself is fairly straightforward aside from a misty room...with one big gimmick. There are corridors, there are rooms, and there are warps. Every time you step into a room, you instantly get a random encounter, even if you have the food that prevents it. With one except it will randomly be drawn from any of the random encounters in the floor, including the dreaded Dinogator. It's an incredibly nasty enemy. So dangerous it gets the postgame boss theme in the original game.

---

Dinogator has 31243HP, and very high stats. It has three nasty attacks: the first is Playful Bite, a painful hit-all skill. If you try to bind it, or if it's below half health, or in one fight for me, just randomly at the start, it can use Frolic. Thie annoying move can't be stopped by a bind and attempts to bind everyone's everything. Finally when it's at low health, it can pull out Pout. This does ten hits and can do insane damage that's basically unsurvivable unless you're prepared.

I ran into the dreaded double Dinogator the first time I ran into one. Made it fairly far before Pout came out of nowhere and bodied me. All right then. The second time I only had a single one. It went better - I stayed the course even with the threat of Frolic, shifting to using Azura towards the end due to its elemental weaknesses. This got the job done, eventually.

Conditional is killing it with Stab damage. Did it with Burst Shot.

---

The quest I mentioned before pertaining to going into this floor was to register Dinogator in your codex. The reward is the strongest claw in power, the Claw of Bonds, but I had Ichigo stick with what he had due to this thing giving no other bonuses. Its conditional also lets you make the Sovereign's ultimate armor.

Marching on through the mess of fixed encounters. One really bad one was a moth with three Trihorns in the back. Very dangerous unless I could kill them fast and bind the moth's arms. The penultimate room is a hot steaming mess where you're surrounded by FOEs. I managed to take it down in two trips. The first one I managed to bring down two of the bulls, before retreating. I then swung around, took out one of the pumpkins, grabbed the chests, and waltzed through to the warp leading to the penultimate room...

Not taking on the final superboss just yet, though. Need to prepare, but there was two more things to do. The first was to go through all the warps again until one randomly dumped me in a secret area. This would come in handy later. The second was to get everyone to 99 - I was using clover tea for most of the way through, finally popping the pay2grind DLC. It'll be nice to have, considering I have a long grind back up from retiring them.


There was also one more thing to do once I hit 99 - 1v1 Chicken Kenshiro. I'll actually add pictures here later when I can. Which is now. The combatant of choice was Varda, as you can see here.

---


Since I'd be resetting soon anyway, I customized her stats with the points that I had remaining to get everything up to code. Her Grimoires were Ecstasy, Weapon Free, Stigmata, Chained Benefit, Curb ATK Up, and Double Action. Now the first problem with Master Bird is its Dread Stare at the start of the fight, which inflicts fear and more importantly, weakens on offense. I could've put something on to prevent fear, but could do nothing about the offense. Except...make sure it couldn't use it!

Turn 1: Hypno Bite. Needs to sleep, hopefully not trying too hard and hitting Double Action. If it fails but Dread Stare doesn't inflict Fear, I do have a second shot because the effect will wear off by the time I start attacking.
Turn 2: Chained Benefit.
Turn 3: Stigmata. I pumped her Curb ATK to 20 for the maximum chance of inflicting all three binds, which must land.
Turn 4: Use a Thercia A.
Turn 5+: Force Boost and Ecstasy away. Double Action is present for insurance.

---


It took several attempts, but I was victorious before long. The Gold Belt is the reward for the 1v1 - bestowing 100HP and an extra 5 in all stats. I do this a few more times before preparing for the next phase. Next and possibly last time...

Next | Index

EOU2: Conquering a tree, 30F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

So with the real nasty stuff the postgame in front of me, the goal became to hit 99, retire everyone and then hit 99 again. The best way to grind was to send the difficulty down to Picnic, and go into a sort-of secret room in 30F that you can randomly get to when going through a teleporter. Here, the fixed encounter will always be a Dinogator or two, and they will always be shiny. Given that Picnic is literally its namesake, beating these things in this scenario is ridiculously mindless.


This gives out a ton of experience each time, topping out at 999999 if two show up and you have five Holy Gifts on. Once everyone was at 99, I retired them all!! The last ones to hit 99 were my farming party, who also got retired into others now that I could just use Natural Instinct Grimoires or something. After turning in some of the DLC quests, I got the main party back up, and kept on going. It took around 25 minutes to get them back up to 99, which sent everyone else to 81. I proceeded once I had everyone but the War Magus, Survivalist, and extras I wouldn't be using any time soon at 99. Setting the difficulty back to Expert, of course.


Some interesting things, by the way. I advanced Regina enough for her to give a speech and everyone to talk about her. She made a comment about being able to marry whoever she wanted, suggesting someone in our group, to which Marion advises us to watch Dubois for. Good enough to save the world, not good enough for his granddaughter, clearly. And second, your retired party members may show up to trade Grimoires. Pretty neat touch, but silly in how I essentially cloned everyone by naming them the same thing. It also seems to be cosmetic for the most part. Devaki there for example had Reincarnate, but she never did learn that skill.

Retiring gives a bunch of bonuses, including extra stats and skill points, as you can see here.

The Eldritch Hound is the first one of the level 99 recommended quests I tackled. This asks that you go to a particular part of 12F to restore a seal. You walk through a series of strangely empty rooms after reaching it from the southeast corner, fighting enemies that are completely irrelevant at this stage of the game, eventually finding the "dog" in question guarding the shard that protects it.

---


Its name is Tindalos. This is a really weird encounter, not to mention bizarre enemy. It has a massive 135000HP, but it doesn't hit very hard - the worst it can do is some status here and there. So this fight is more of a war of attrition than anything else. The real problem is the Toxic Gland accompanying it. If left unattended, it will gradually lower the amount of HP you can heal. It doesn't come back when killed, and only has 15000HP, so it isn't too difficult to take out.

I dealt with this by...not dealing with this and trying to. I had three Gunners for this, since I wanted to test their damage for later, but this was really suboptimal. I was focusing too much on just making Tindalos dead as soon as possible, without sparing the gland a single shot. This cost me the first couple attempts at the fight. They could get the job done, mind you - but just slow enough with the setup I was using to potentially cause problems towards the end of the fight depending on how it went. Also check the buffs, they're pretty wild.

Both it and the gland are weak to fire, so I naturally used the likes of Flame Fantasia and Fire Circle. Point Blank and Burst Shot the idiots in the face. And when not doing that/waiting for it to reload, Charged Fire. This did acceptable damage!!


Conditional is killing it while Leg Bound. With this strategy I just had Ichigo toss a Formaldehyde. I probably could've come up with a better one, but didn't feel like checking up on the resturaunt again. That's literally the only reason I did it with this party - laziness in not wanting to look up what to serve to who. Still, it could get the job done, and the "who needs healing?" aspect was fun, I guess.

If I were to do it again, I'd probably use something like Beast, Medic, Gunner, Alchemist, and a third damage dealer to wipe the gland before it could get too out of control.

---

But once you defeat it, you still don't beat it. Instead you need to escape, while several more spawn as FOEs and try to stop you - it peculiarly did play the FOE music last time. Given that you sometimes run into multiple and this thing can be obnoxious enough with over a hundred thousand HP, it's not necessarily an option to fight them all! I mean you can burst it down faster than I did, but a lot of that strategy does rely on Troubadour Force Break which is once only. So you need to do things like take advantage of ice tiles to slide away (really annoying in the last few rooms!!) and playing ring around the wall. If you do bump into one, escape is an option. However, you can't use any threads or any similar escape skills.

Two rewards from this, the Toxic Gage and Toxic Cannon. The former are gloves that only give +5 DEF but gives minor resistance to all ailments. The latter is only the third-strongest gun, but can inflict any random status ailment on a physical attack.


The next piece of DLC in my way was the Treasures Untold/Seven Kings DLC. This is a fight against the enemies from EOU1 which had the potential to spontaneously produce unique Grimoires when you fought them, which encompass the first four stratum bosses, the stratum 3 midboss, and two optional bosses. The Seven Kings grimoires was a really stupid system that I don't know how I managed to get down legit. Their battle in EOU2 is a series of seven encounters, no chance to heal in-between. Careful party selection would be required here.

Ichigo, Kei, and Azura were all in this party. Joining them were Ciara the Troubadour and a never-before-seen-in-this-report-I-think party member, Aurelia the Alchemist. It took a bit to settle on the party here. Originally in place of Ciara was Devaki, and in place of Ichigo I was using a Protector called Kusuma. Well, every boss enemy in this rush resists at least one bind, bar none. So Varda is of questionable use. Meanwhile, all except one enemy in the rush has an elemental weakness, so Azura gets to stay, and an Alchemist is also a great pick. The first three fights are also against multiple enemies, so mass-damage from an Alchemist is also welcome.

Devaki vs. Ciara. One buffs, the other debuffs, and in both cases I handed them the elemental circle skills. Devaki did have the advantage of being able to temporarily lock down some bosses with Evil Eye. However, I switched to Ciara for three reasons. One, that wasn't the most reliable thing. Two, for a particular boss later. And third and most important, doing this freed up the Fantasia skills from everyone, since Ciara brought them herself - therefore allowing more skills.

As for Ichigo vs. Kusuma, a few of the bosses carry elemental skills I'd rather not deal with - especially since they can just wipe me outright. So I was going Kusuma at first for a similar reason to using Ciara, also giving her Hit-Taker and such. But she kept on dying. So I swapped in my reliable Beast instead and gave him...actually only Ice Wall and Volt Wall, because Fire would be irrelevant.

I spread Grimoires around carefully, also grabbing a few from guild cards (especially after spawning a ton of Provokes). Here's what it looked like when I achieved victory.

- Ichigo: Shield Mastery/Auto-Lick/Lick Wounds/Ice Wall/Volt Wall/Unbind

Half his typical setup, along with two elemental walls for certain bosses. Unbind is just included for its legendary grimoire effect of buffing healing, but it can see use.

- Kei: Front Guard/Vital Hit/Link Order II/Frailty Curse/Prevent Order/Fire Circle

A hodgepodge of skills. Front Guard for extra protection, Vital Hit if she has the chance to do damage, Link Order II for another alternative, Frailty Curse to debuff, and the last two for the last two bosses.

- Azura: Point Blank/Burst Shot/Charged Fire/Charged Ice/Charged Volt/Fire Prelude

Just stuff to buff her skills. Fire Prelude is a legendary Grimoire but did see use in her using it on herself and Aurelia.

- Aurelia: Compression/Inferno Formula/Cocytus Formula/Thor Formula/Point Blank/Limitless

Two charge skills is odd on paper, but the former buff is stronger - yet only useful on single targets. The latter is used when there's multiple enemies around.

- Ciara: Warrior Song/Ice Prelude/Fire Circle/Freeze Circle/Shock Circle/Sapping Curse

Stuff to buff herself, the Circles to throw out, and Sapping Curse for debuffing because some of these jerks hit hard.

Now let's get into the fights themselves. You go to the Overlord's room in 25F to investigate these mysterious boxes. They ask if you want to activate the battle program. If you say yes, then the mayhem begins.

---


Fenrir is the first boss, and is accompanied by several Skolls. The wolf and its pack were more or less roadkill, really. Limitless Inferno Formula 20 with buffs and boosts instantly destroyed the Skolls, and it didn't last much longer. It can sometimes stun or inflict fear on people, but it's a minor nuisance at best.
_____


Cernunnos is accompanied by two Healing Rollers who like to heal him for over 2000HP at a time, as well as buff his defense. It always seems to open with a move that can bind heads, which was a pain because most of my characters were using that. The hopeful idea is to Thor Formula down the rollers (they're not weak to it but it's the best to use since it's what the boss is weak to) ASAP, while hopefully not dying in the process.

The annoying thing about the enemies in this rush is that they have no set patterns. So I'm at the mercy of luck sometimes. It could suddenly Hurricane Punch and then Ichigo could easily die. Or if he wasn't guarding, everyone would. Still, not too huge a threat. That stance by the way is a special skill that counters physical elements for damage, and I think is used on every fifth turn. Ichigo could block it anyway, but I could simply refrain from having Azura attack if needed.
_____


Queen Ant is the last boss to have goons, and the ants are really annoying in how they'll buff her offense and defense. Both really bad!! Thankfully, they're frail, and a boosted Cocytus Formula took them out. She has several annoying attacks, including Queen's Verdict which hurts like hell if not protected against, and Ruler's Eye which can panic. I ideally don't want Defense Unit up when unleashing the Cocytus Formula, and preferably Fraility Curse, to kill the other ants ASAP.

Ultimately aside from the madness from its panic, it's not too be a deal. It does have a skill called Duster which blinds and reduces accuracy, but a quick Refresh from Kei handled the blind part of it whenever it came out. I actually recovered from a disasterous situation in my winning run.
_____


Corotrangul is an annoying boss. It has two devastating ice moves that are almost sure to wipe everyone if Ichigo wasn't spamming Ice Wall repeatedly. It does have other moves though which is the problem. But I might survive those, and I definitely wouldn't. This is one part where Front Guard was definitely coming in handy.

There's also a small issue where it can cast buffs to raise its offense or make itself really resistant to fire - bad considering that's its weakness. However, Fantasia can counter it.
_____


Now for this idiot with a real mess of a name. Just like the previous boss, it has a Volt-elemental move that can easily wipe the party. Unlike Corotrangul though who is more than glad to spam its ice moves as you spam Ice Wall, it mixes things up a lot.

It was definitely the second-jankiest boss of the rush. Needed a bit of luck to make it through this one when I got to it. At least you don't need to fight 30 FOEs before it!
_____


And now for Manticore, the single biggest SOB of the rush. This jerk? It's immune to all status ailments, all binds, and takes half damage from all elements. Its MO is status ailments, which is where Prevent Order on Kei comes into play. It's not the most reliable skill, but it is the best I've got.

Thankfully, Gunner and Alchemist have Ricochet and Nuclear Formula going for them. I'm doing it like TouyaShiro with the former, and this is one of the few times the latter is really helpful. Because of my setup, Azura and Aurelia took turns Point Blanking then attacking, chipping away at its 24000HP gradually. The good news is, it doesn't hit that hard. The bad news is, those status ailments are bonkers. I had to pop Medical Miracle at one point as shown because it was that bad, barely having anything left when I took it down.

_____


Now Alraune is a real nasty piece of work. She has tons of really powerful skills and is capable of throwing out all three elements as she pleases. So we're not going to put up with this junk.

Turn 1: Force Boost!Hit-Taker/Frailty Curse/Fire Prelude (self)/Compression/Warrior Song
Turn 2: Hit-Taker/I forget what/Point Blank/Point Blank/Ice Prelude (Aurelia)
Turn 3: True Endurance/Fire Circle/Burst Shot/Inferno Formula/Crusade

This was barely not enough, but Skandi...wasn't quite enough to outspeed, but her next move essentially whiffed, so I was able to rapidly bring this one down.

---

There are no drops from the enemies here, so the only reason to do it is for the glory, bestiary, and three Formaldehydes you get. After the battle you can chose to leave the boxes be or just smash the hell out of them. The only thing this changes is some dialogue, with Cass getting a good laugh if you do the latter.

One last thing to do in this update, and that is to finish off 30F. To do this, I need to face the Ur-Child. This boss is a marathon - it has 140000HP, and at various points in tha battle it will throw up two Origin Buds which will prevent it from being damaged until they're dead. Also it'll restore HP at various points. It features several points where it breaks your force, only to later restore it. This madness is all kept in check by a distinct attack pattern which you can learn and follow. A really long and tedious fight, in other words.

But screw that noise! Etrian Odyssey is in the end, about making broken setups and then unleashing them on your enemies. There exist tons of strategies to just murder the shit out of this idiot instantly cutting out all that phase switching, and with the basis of one I was able to put a team together.


Pulling this off requires two things - dealing damage of course, and something to deal with Ur-Child in the meantime. I figured it might be fun to try without any of my original party members at first. Aurelia and Ciara you should recognize. Iantha you might vaguely remember from a previous part. She's a Ronin and is prepared to come in with Point Blank Compression Frigid Slash. Don't ask how it works, it just does. Tawny is a Highlander prepared to jump in with Spear Assist. And lastly, Kusuma is the Protector, the one to deal with Ur-Child in the meantime. Specifically, her Shield Smite skill can bind arms, which blocks all but one attack of Ur-Child's in the first phase. The one that can't is one of three multi-hit elemental moves on the third turn, handled via her Force Break.

I farmed and grabbed some grimoires online for sanity's sake, also getting a couple extra Double Actions from Touya. A little scene plays before you enter its domain.

---

After traversing so many floors, you have
finally reached the top of the Labyrinth...

The door before you radiates malice and
danger as you've never felt in your
journeys.

You have come so far...

Over your many travels, your strength
and confidence have won your share of
victories.

Whatever lies beyond the door, you must
face it with that same boldness and
confidence.

When you feel that you are ready, take hold
of the door and open it to meet your fate!

Fight well, and good luck!

---

And when you pop that sucker open, you're greeted with this and another scene.

---

You pass through the door and are almost
physically overcome by a fearful energy.

The demon you face must be that which
ushers in the end of all things; the most
powerful monster in the Labyrinth!

There is little to do now but meet your foe
in open combat.

You confer with the rest of the party to
ensure your equipment and inventory
will suffice.

You take a glance back at the demon...
Once you are sure, all that remains is
to fight!

---

Let's freaking go!

--

The idea with this or any strategy is to buff all three damage dealers, let them unload with their elemental attacks. Ur-Child is neutral to physical, but is weak to all three elements - so it doesn't matter what you use. I ended up going with ice since it's what I had the most add-ons effects for - extra slots on the attackers not being used by grimoires were taken up by whatever skills that give Ice Up. And hopefully hit that arm bind


The three key buffs were Ice Prelude, Compression, and Draconic Fury. The first of these is an independent buff that does not suffer diminishing returns. The last of these is an enemy skill from the dragons that works out to 150% damage. And Compression is for Iantha and Aurelia, making their attacks stronger. Aurelia was also packing the Blizzard King's Ice Breath, which is stronger than her own Cocytus Formula even at level 20. And while irrelevant, Iantha's Frigid Slash actually remained multi-target despite Compression's effect, yet retained the extra damage.

The debuffs I threw on were Frost Fantasia, Frailty Curse, and Mind Shut off a grimoire, since it's all I could think of. Frost Fantasia just straight-up makes the enemy weaker to an element with no diminishing returns. The other two tank its defense further. It looked a bit like this.

(Iantha/Kusuma/Tawny/Aurelia/Ciara)
- Turn 1: Frailty Curse/Shield Smite/Mind Shut/Draconic Fury/Frost Fantasia
- Turn 2: Peerless Stance/Shield Smite/Reverb (Aurelia->self)/Compression/Ice Prelude
- Turn 3: Point Blank/Perfect Defense/Limitless/Point Blank/Reverb (Aurelia->Iantha)
- Turn 4: Frigid Slash/Ice Circle/Spear Assist/Ice Breath/Crusade

The turn before the big burst, everyone charges up - Point Blank for Iantha and Aurelia, and Limitless for Tawny. Turn 4 is unloading. This was doing impressive damage - when I got through to the phase. I needed Shield Smite to land (Kusuma did have on some Bind Ups and Perseverance 10 on), and/or Battle Instinct to trigger and block the status ailments on turn 1. Not very good odds.


But when I got through, the damage was also not enough!! Tawny was proving to be a weak link - as hilarious as that Hero Battle effect was. She could only deal around 18000 damage. And trying to pick up the pieces from there was absolutely not an option either due to Ur-Child's Noble Rest, a move that restores HP relative to the amount of damage it has suffered since its last use/the start of the battle, topping out at 99999. This was, in few words, a bad thing.


The other two were sufficient. Aurelia could hit 39000 on a good roll, and Iantha did a passable 24000. So I swapped in Azura in place of the Highlander. She performed better, able to do over 38000 between the two hits of her boosted Burst Shot. This still was not enough, only around 100000 between the three of them. But between that and the Double Actions (nature and grimoire), I now had a realistic chance of getting through.

I also eventually switched out Kusuma for Devaki. Her arm binds were just too unreliable. Devaki did have a way to deal with the third turn as well - Blinding Curse! It's not a sure-shot like Perfect Defense or True Endurance are, but you can indeed blind Ur-Child and reduce its odds of hitting you with an attack. She could also do a lot better in the arm binding department, giving me more chances to reach the bursting down part of the battle.

I furthermore changed some equipment around to bolster stats further to squeeze out a bit more damage. I had to go back to stratum 5 for this to farm up some materials to make a Brawn Ring to give +7 to STR. I also threw an Ice Crown onto Aurelia. This would make her move after Azura, which would save me a bit of hassle. The extra equipment boosted Iantha and Azura's damage output by about 1000 for the former and 2000 for the latter. Squeezing an additional Ice Up onto Azura boosted her damage even more. With all that down, here's the rough play-by-play.

(Iantha/Azura/Aurelia/Devaki/Ciara)
- Turn 1: Frailty Curse/Power Gel (Aurelia)/Draconic Fury/Abdomen Curse/Frost Fantasia

Order is important during this turn. There's a maximum of three buffs at a time, so I want the ones that will be replaced on first. Ciara needs no help going first with Frost Fantasia. Thanks to the heavy helmet, Aurelia will always go after Azura, so her buffs on this turn look like Frost Fantasia-Power Gel-Draconic Fury. Meanwhile, Iantha debuffs the boss, and Devaki stops the attacks.

- Turn 2: Peerless Stance/Reverb (Aurelia->Self)/Compression/Blinding Curse/Ice Prelude (Aurelia)

More turn order fun. Ciara leads off with Ice Prelude, which Azura then copies. She ends up with Power Gel-Draconic Fury-Ice Prelude. Aurelia goes after and her buffs end up Draconic Fury-Ice Prelude-Compression. Good for her and Iantha, not the best for Azura. Iantha meanwhile drops an independant buff onto herself in Peerles Stance, whereas Devaki blinds the boss for next turn.

- Turn 3: Point Blank/Point Blank/Point Blank/Creeping Curse/Reverb (Aurelia->Iantha)

Setting up for the burst turn here. Given my food, it may have been better to use a Wall and try to call out a move, but it wasn't necessary and questionable anyway since it only blocks one attack, and it can hit multiple times. It can still kill someone, but blind tilts the odds in my favor. Ciara also Force Boosts during this turn.


- Turn 4: Frigid Slash/Burst Shot/Ice Breath/Ice Circle/Crusade

This only does a little over 100000 damage on its own power. So it's up to the Double Actions from here to carry me the rest of the way through.


And before too long after settling on this strategy, Aurelia rips one out, throwing an additional 39k or so on top of everything else just enough to defeat the boss! Either one from her or one each from Azura and Iantha were required.

---

A final scene plays to lead out.

---

Time and again, you pit your best strategies
and attacks against the powerful demon.

But its power is so incredible that it seems
the battle will never end...

At last, however, victory appears to be nigh!

You land a powerful blow on the demon's
forehead and it recoils in pain!

The fiend collapses onto the floor, its body
dissolving into light before disappearing...

...It is done. You have mastered everything
the Labyrinth can offer.

Your names will be remembered always in
the history of this nation...

As Guild Velichiye, the Heroes
of High Lagarrd!

---


There remains only a few more things to do in this mode of this game. Some general cleanup for the rest of the medals. Beating it again preferably on Picnic just for a codex entry because you miss one if you do it like this. And the ultimate challenge awaiting on the DLC-exclusive 31F. A floor in itself that will take a lot of setup, so I'm going to split it off into a really final update.

Next | Index

EOU2: Conquering a tree, 31F

1F-5F | B1 | 6F | 7F | 8F | 9F | 10F
11F | B2 | 12F | 13F | 14F | 15F
B3 | B4 | 16F | 17F | 18F | 19F | 20F
21F | 22F | 23F | 24F | 25F | B5
26F | 27F | 28F | 29F | 30F (1) | 30F (2) | 31F

The final DLC, The Original Sin, adds an extra 31st floor to explore. This is pretty serious business - you're summoned to the palace and the princess addresses you personally, saying that a newly found Geomagnetic Pole has been located, leading to a place in the Forbidden Wood where the deepest darkness is said to reside. It's so serious that Cass suddenly becomes serious about it out of nowhere, and the princess makes you promise to come back safe. I of course pick this option.

Once you've activated the DLC and seen that scene, a new option opens up when you choose to head out. This is a very quirky floor - first off, there's no random encounters. The rooms also tend to be very wide open. The threat comes from the FOEs in these rooms. These FOEs are a problem. They're everywhere, have completely random movement, can see you from miles away even through walls, are fairly tough, and respawn very quickly. I had to come up with a plan for dealing with them in a quick and efficient manner.

---


I first tried a Chaser party, using Landsharks. This wasn't very effective, so it was back to my main party - Ecstasy is still really effective at rapidly taking an enemy out. It wasn't enough on its own, which is where Azura came in. But the problem was Devaki not landing binds with Stigmata. So enter Hotah, the old War Magus. I found a Displace 10 Grimoire, so giving him that as well as a War Lore 10 Grimoire, he could back up Devaki if need be. He replaced Ichigo, who wasn't doing much since they weren't getting a chance to do anything.

The strategy is simple and the usual. Also very important was food that guarantees a preemptive on FOEs.

(Varda/Azura/Hotah/Azura/Devaki)
- Turn 1: Limitless/Warrior Song/Ice Prelude (Varda)/Frailty Curse/Chained Benefit
- Turn 2: Ecstasy/Point Blank/Displace/Swap Step (Devaki)/Stigmata
- Turn 3: Ecstasy/Burst Shot/Ailing Slash/Swap Step (Devaki)/Evil Eye


Displace wasn't the most effective backup, but probably was one of my best - and better to have something than nothing. It cleaned up Devaki's binds, at least. If they didn't take, it was best to just run away and try again - its attacks are pretty insane. Evil Eye on Turn 3 is just insurance in case it uses normal attacks.

---

They drop a material that allows you to make a whip. Not the strongest, but it can bind any to all parts when using a basic attack. No conditional.

Icy Bulbs are also in all but the first and last room. You have to take them out to map the room effectively, but their presence also gives you a lot more leeway before the FOEs can see you - "only" two tiles instead of like six. And yet they can still see you from around corners.


Still, my strategy did suffice to wipe out any in my path. The last room was a total mess with tons of them running amok without any Icy Bulb. There were multiple doors leading into it. I'd cleared out the previous room. The idea is to lure as many as you can south, run north, and hopefully make it to the door before they reach you.

There's also an item point here - only reachable through the mess. And you can make some nice goodies from the stuff you get here. Thankfully there is a shortcut, so you don't need to go through the mess of a floor again to reach the boss.


The materials here can be used to create some pretty fantastic items. Solomon's Seal allows you to make Healing Remedy, which fully restores HP and TP to all party members. Antler Fungus creates Over Soma, which boosts all allies max HP in addition to giving moderate healing. And Bloody Dew lets you make Eye of Time, a fancy item which you can use in town which respawns all FOEs and bosses. I brought some Natural Instinct Grimoires so I could get as many of these as I could the first trip in.

I needed to make preparations for this boss beforehand, however - as well as a bit of random cleanup. I started out by grinding up a bunch of grimoires to prepare for the ultimate final battle. The ideal place to do this was on 31F itself, odd as it may seem. See, you should probably already know grimoires can have added effects tied to them. Well as an added "feature" of this floor, every grimoire made that has an added effect will have it at level 3!


That said, grinding out added effects is more of a bonus, albeit a horribly tedious one. A ton of quickkill strategies depend on getting as many elemental add-ons as you can, some requiring the absolute maximum amount. That's why I chose a strategy that requires few to none in order to get the job done.

A few final things to take care of before this. Quickkilling Ur-Child did have one issue with it - I didn't get the Origin Bud codex entry. I tore it apart on Picnic for this. Finally, I made the last of the recipes, before setting my active food to boost the effect of blinding.

The party for this ultimate final battle consists of debuffer Devaki, buffer Ciara, and three gunners: Azura, Ginger, and Raanan. I went into Tindalos without much of a plan with them, kind of managing to bumble through. But the reason for the two extra gunners' being is this fight. Azura and Ginger have a really esoteric setup - they're using Ronin Grimoires!! Specifically, Upper Stance, Peerless Stance, and Upper Slash. They also have Weapon Free in order to actually use these skills. Rounding these out are boosts to their Point Blank and Burst Shot, the latter with Ice Up 3 - I did make a valiant effort to get added effects, but it's really ridiculous to get Lv10 grimoires with the desired effects, so that's all I had.

Ranaan goes in a different direction: he's carrying the critical Gunner/Survivalist buffs in Affection Collar and Power Gel. Because he has no time to use Peerless, he's got a Pre-Initiative grimoire instead to make up the difference, as well as a Double Action. We'll need to proc those again, but it's nowhere near as demanding.

Devaki fills a somewhat familiar role - to weaken the boss and also throw out Freeze Circle. However for this fight, she has Speed Up as insurance for turn order, and Hit-Taker to deal with the boss' opener. Ciara has the same familiarity - all she needs is Ice Prelude and Frost Fantasia.

---

After undergoing countless trials, you
finally reach an area housing a horrific
creature you have never before seen...


This must be the deepest darkness that
you have been searching for...

Even a mere glimpse of its vile miasma
is enough to turn your stomach!

All your senses and experiences are telling
you that this entity possesses power beyond
anything you've ever known!

Knowing that, and feeling the raw malice
radiating from this being, you immediately
understanding that it must be defeated!

Are you fully prepared for the
momentous battle that awaits?

If you are, then there is no need for
further words!

Here, at the zenith of High Lagaard's
Yggdrasil, confront and slay the deepest
darkness of the Labyrinth!

---

This is it. The ultimate final battle.

---


Ur-Devil. As its name implies, this bad boy is an upgraded Ur-Child with a really freaky look, twice the HP, and about four times the BS. Nevertheless, it is very much vulnerable to a rushing beatdown, just the same as the original.

(Azura/Ginger/Raanan/Devaki/Ciara)
- Turn 1: Upward Slash/Upward Slash/Amrita II (Devaki)/Hit-Taker/Frost Fantasia
The monster begins with a nasty TP-draining attack. This is why Devaki has Hit-Taker - it allows her to absorb the attack. Raanan heals her TP since having none just won't do, and the first debuff gets laid down.

- Turn 2: Peerless Stance/Peerless Stance/Power Gel (Azura)/Boost+Abdomen Curse/Ice Prelude (Azura)
The two Peerless Gunners continue setting up. Two buffs are laid in place on this turn. Ur-Devil retains its vulnerability to arm bind allowing to shut down many of its attacks, so it's thrown out on this turn.

- Turn 3: Charged Ice/Charged Ice/Affection Collar/Blinding Curse/Boost!Reverb (Azura->Ginger)
Blinding Curse again comes into play. The two buffs are copied over to Ginger so she can have Ice Prelude and Power Gel as well, with Affection Collar being the third. Charged Ice is used on this turn for lack of anything else.

- Turn 4: Point Blank/Point Blank/Point Blank/Frailty Curse/Reverb (Ginger->Raanan)
Now to prepare for the big burst. The last debuff is down. At this point, all three gunners have Ice Prelude/Power Gel/Affection Collar as their buffs. Ur-Devil has Frost Fantasia and Frailty Curse as debuffs.


- Turn 5: Boost!Burst Shot/Boost!Burst Shot/Boost!Burst Shot/Freeze Circle/Crusade
And now to let loose. I need at least one Double Action to trigger, preferably two - and ideally from one of the Peerless Gunners. They do like 23.5k on their second hits. The second doesn't do as much, but still a plenty respectable amount. The other two help boost the damage to these insane levels.

This alone isn't enough to deal with the boss, but Ur-Devil differs in how if it's knocked below 80%, it throws out the Ur-Eye phase and just proceeds directly to its final pattern, which begins with Strongman's Glory - a move that restores TP. As long as enough damage was done, which needs at least one Double Action. There's a decent enough shot of that happening with three!

- Turn 6: Point Blank/Point Blank/Point Blank/Hit-Taker/Defend
Setting up for the finishing blow...


- Turn 7: Supreme Bolt/Supreme Bolt/Supreme Bolt//Defend/Defend
...and executing it! Peerless Stance has worn off at this point, but the Force Break can pick up the slack.

---


There is no drop from the boss, but there is a reward for beating it on Expert: the Ragnarok. It...is a thing, all right. Not the best thing for everyone, but this is still a hilarious weapon. You get it in this scene afterwards.

---

You stand against a malign being of
sheer hatred, incomparable to anything
you have faced in your adventures!

But as you lash out at the enemy with
all your power, focus, and determination,
it finally slumps to the ground!

Gasping for breath, you watch warily, but
the deepest darkness of Yggdrasil melts and
disappears without a trace...

Gradually, the last wisps fade away.
In its place, you see something stuck
in the ground, shining beatifically.

You cautiously approach to investigate,
and realize that the shining object is a
sword.

Its blade gleams in the light, and it
appears sharp enough to cut through any
known material...

Even setting your hand to its hilt makes
you feel a sudden surge of power.

Whether the sword had been there from
the beginning, or had fallen from the body
of the deepest darkness, you cannot tell...

But, having emerged victorious over the
ultimate monster of the Labyrinth, you
are truly the sword's rightful inheritor!

Now, take your sword in hand and return
to town, and report your success with
the pride you deserve!

---


And that's it! This game is now 100% complete, Classic Mode! Here's a final look at my guild card and a QR code for Iantha. Fun fact, the real version has Compression instead of Double Action, just passing the buck back to Touya . And a bonus one, with skills from Aurelia.

EOU2 is a really fun game. Story Mode next? Maybe. Heard the party there is really defensive though, and doesn't work well together. Which kinda sucks, but you can reclass them. And Fafnir can do some really insane things if you pull him out of Story when he's maxed. So probably will do it, but not sure if right away. Need to go back to FE15 at least and beat it before this. Until then, to steal someone's catchphrase, thanks for reading~~