EON: Exploring the world's trees, 2-3

L1: B1 || L2: B1 / B2 / B3 || L3: B1 / B2 / B3 || L4: B1 / B2 / B3 || L5: B1 / B2 / B3 / B4 / B5

So moving onto B3, I see Marco and Oliver wounded. They tell me to hunt down the wounded Berserker King and OH GOD WHAT

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Just a few steps in and I'm already fighting the thing, though at half of its 4067 health. It's a blindside, so it opens up by doing like 30 damage to everyone. I counter with Sophie's force boost to buff and get everyone healed up in no time.


I pretty much wrecked the thing, at least. Gundis was able to get off a large number of Rapid Fires due to Leg Bind and then Paralysis neutering its evasion. I was using Link skills at the same time to do even more damage.


Done.

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After the battle, it says the totally wrong person brought it down. But the game's trolling continues as it's again right there upstairs

It gave me a drop that allowed me to create a strong katana. Nina could use this, but I didn't equip it right away as some of her skills require using a knife - namely for now, one that deals leg bind. When I did later on though, I really noticed the difference on her basic attacks. Oh, and she could fight from the back row too due to her passive! And it came with a skill of its own which lowered attack and did a ton of damage.

Two quests again for this floor, at least at first. The first was to kill one of those bears for their drops, except Napier is a fool and I already got and sold her the materials. She insults herself because of it. The second was to find this Mossarella or whatever that some algae specialist dropped. I'd found it in a pool while exploring and report the location to him after going back and looking at it again.


New enemies here included the Big Roller, just a bigger fatter version of them with the same gimmick with baboons, paralysis on its roll attack, and the same leg bind vulnerability. There was also the Ghost Owl, who could deal ranged electric damage. The head bind skill on the gun I made came in handy here, when it landed anyway. Was also what I needed for its conditional anyway, so.

Shortly into this floor another quest becomes available - find chopping points, but only very special ones. In other words, the remains of the logs that the bears break open. Have to advance through it for that. I need to find six in total for the max reward. Speaking of chopping points, get my first wipe here when my farming party gets ambushed and one-rounded. What they get for not giving me any rare materials...

I run into the same guild from before after the third of these logs on this floor. I assume that it'd be different ones if I scanned guild cards, which I haven't yet. The leader, a shota Hero, introduces himself as Kincaid here. They give me some Analysis Scopes. There was also another Adventure Episode here where stealth was required to grab something without alerting nearby monsters, so who better than a ninja?

Not much else to this floor after entering into a big area with five logs to break and a bear, who I'm at this point strong enough to take down with minimal TP spent, though it's slow goings.


Before heading into the Berserker King this time with all of its health, I had a little FOE puzzle on my hands. There were two bears in here I needed to avoid, so I needed to have them smash the logs, leave the room, and use them to sneak on by. I would've just potatoed the bears down, but it would've required fighting one at 0am, resting till 7am, getting the other, then resting until 7pm. Not like it would've been a problem, but I didn't bother. No sneaking up on it from behind like in EO4 either.

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This fight actually turned out to be easier. I defended at the start and that made its opening move laughable. Nina's weapon from its previous form was very handy here. It had a move that did over 100 damage to the Berserker King without buffs/debuffs, and 130 with. To add insult to injury it had an attack debuff associated with it. I could stack this with Sophie's defense buff (boosted and used right away on everyone) and Harumi's attack debuff to make its attacks mostly feeble. These even negated its attempts to buff itself.


Of course I soon remembered I couldn't spam it. Still she was still doing 60 damage on her own. Landis and Harumi - when attacking - also did more than enough to wear it down. As did Gundis, but her binds were also being very stubborn to land. Eventually I just activated Double Action and eventually got down an arm bind (crippling its attack further) and even a leg bind.

I also eventually turned on Landis' boost shortly thereafter and went to work with his Links. Pretty soon the Berserker King was in no condition to fight at all.


No surprise that it died (again) on this turn.

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And with victory comes--


WHAT THE HELL WHY?

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Thrown right into another battle, though I get healed by Wiglaf (who still just sits around) and even a chance to save in-between. A real save too, though you're warned to use a different slot to not Wiegraf yourself.


Cernunnos was the boss of the Primative Jungle in EO1, a dungeon also in this game. But apparently I guess it decided it couldn't wait and attacked right now. It has a gimmick where every five turns it went into a counterattacking stance. I avoided this via arm bind the first time, and not attacking it subsequent times, but sometimes got dinged by it. It also has a gimmick where it summons Healing Rollers to buff and heal it 150hp at a time. One time after killing one of them during a counter turn, an attack got redirected and Gundis stupidly shot the thing and died.


That said despite having only 1000 more HP and actually less defenses, because of those rollers this fight took way longer than I wanted. They constantly heal and/or cast defensive buffs on the thing. I eventually caught on that Nina could attack the back row for full damage too, which made dealing with them more practical. It was bad enough that my resources were strained, to the point where I decided resources are there to be used, and used the TP recovery items that I had on me.


I took out two sets, but it summoned a third at low HP!! Thankfully though it negated my defensive debuffs, I killed the rollers before they could buff it back up. I popped NIna's force break at around this point to help get me across the finish line.


I had enough to keep going for several turns after this, but thankfully it came to an end.

---

I get the blessing of Mueller and the guards for avenging their fallen by defeating the Berserker King after this, but no one mentions that other dickbag who decided to crash the party. At least we tell Persephone about it, who compliments us for doing "what many an adventurer should strive to accomplish". We're celebrities in the town already, and she encourages us to go out and greet everyone waiting for us.


These are Wiglaf, Oliver, and Marco. Oliver offers steaks as promised, Wiglaf joins us in celebration. Persephone admits she was unsure she count rely on us, but admits how much we've grown. She gives 1500en and almost enough EXP to get up to level 16 as a reward. I also get a pair of Aim Goggles for fully mapping the Lush Woodlands, something she used recently but hand't needed as of late.

EON: Exploring the world's trees, 3-1

L1: B1 || L2: B1 / B2 / B3 || L3: B1 / B2 / B3 || L4: B1 / B2 / B3 || L5: B1 / B2 / B3 / B4 / B5


Before moving on, I scanned some Guild Cards for the fun of it. One of these was a Who's That Pokemon lead, which I need to unlock a psuedo-class later. Epicly, another immediately showed up as soon as I left to tell me about outside the dungeon gathering points.


With a new stratum comes new enemies, and this one was based on the second from EO1. The bees here could line-pierce, there were ooze enemies of poison and sleeping varieties who could inflict their respective status if left un-head-bound, and there were these big fat birds who could lower defense and use a long-range fire attack. The ooze were in particular annoying due to being only weak to elemental moves, which made Landis have to spend TP on Links.

There were three Adventure Episodes on the west side. One involved an unsteady scaffold. Nina's ninjaness as usual came into play to climb the stairs and climb down the vine rope to get the thing up top: a Warding Chime. In another dead end, Gundis got bit by an insect, but Nina treated it with a medical kit she just so happened to have on her. Ninjas!! Finally there was a place where I could drink nectar from a flower, but had to fight some bees after. Just a formation of three that I'd seen before, nothing special.


Then I meet this twerp. He says this, warns of the damage tiles in the room beyond, then leaves. Since I just decide to use the tile drawer and not actually walk on them - I could only buy one Guard Sole when I got there - mapping this place out was easy.

There were FOEs running around starting in the room beyond. Time to beat'em up.

---


These things are simple and straightforward. They can either attack directly, or they can use Rush, hitting the whole party for like 30 damage apiece. I used my Force early as usual, spreading buffs around. Harumi's first few turns were stacking the debuffs on it. Once I landed a leg bind, I had Landis and Gundis use their boosts to lay down a bunch of damage between Rapid Fire and Links. Even when the leg bind dropped, keeping it under control was easy.


Conditional was to kill while paralyzed. I had Harumi use Paralyzing Reap as it was low on health, but this still could've gone wrong due to Gundis being killed at this point. I revived her but she went right back down when the thing used Rush. Still, it stayed paralyzed, and my EXP even stayed even.

---

Sometime after this I backed out. This is around when I accepted the quests. The first of these was to get a few materials from the chopping points. No issue, even though the farming team was a bit slow to get them. There was also the quest to get some drops from the Sleeping Ooze enemies. Also no issue.


There was also a side-quest triggered by talking to an alchemist bar patron, saying his assistant hasn't returned from exploring a maze. It turns out to be Birgitta, who lost another one of her surely animal companions, Snow. As before she joins and heals my team after every battle.

This side-dungeon was much more of an issue!! It was based around these things, very deadly FOEs. They wake up move when you're in a battle, and to compound it, it has an INCREDIBLY obnoxious encounter rate.


Then there's these things. They have 508HP and are so difficult to face I could just turn on autobattle and eventually win. When facing one in the room with the first FOE, it ended up blocking my progress.


Oh yes that's the other gimmick, they can do that and sometimes you even have to do that to make them move. Or not have them move because they can block you like they did to me here/ Because they're being dickbags it's time for a pound-up.

---


Except they're gimmick enemies that my main team can't really handle, so some of my backups stepped in. These idiots use an instant death AoE attack that's more accurate than it should be. They are very weak to ice and take like no damage from anything else. Only Landis could damage them and only a little at a time. At least it only has like 700 health. Can't be blinded either, and can't raise my evasion or lower their accuracy yet.

This team was able to handle it though, throwing all of the ice at it. A boosted level 10 spear assist in particular did well over half of its health alone. Not quite a one-round, but also not really practical to do this.

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All fine and dandy to do that, but getting through is still a pain. So what to do about this obnoxious area?


After getting through the first few places, I threw up my arms and brought out Zoey from my farming team! Standing in place of Gundis, she was able to knock the encounter rate way down. I then ran from everything that came my way. Wasn't hard at all, and it made things way easier. Especially the last room, I could just move the one statue, reset their positions in a side-room, then casually stroll around using the damage tiles, which without the encounter lowering would like instantly give an encounter.

These enemies here weren't hard to deal with when I came back, because leaving experience equal. The palm trees could do random target AoE, but couldn't hit someone more than once. The blue bees' line piercing stingers could inflict leg bind, which wasn't too dangerous.


Birgetta at the end finds Snow, which turns out to be a cloud of bats with only one male. Somehow they, basket and all, made it in here. She also warns that they're scared of a dangerous monster in here, and advises us to be careful.


Yeah. I don't think I'll be fighting this yet.

After that diversion, there was only a little bit of the floor left. I get asked to help look for some guards with a girl, but haven't seen any such characters. Three more Adventure Episodes were on the right side. You could relax on leaves! Nina swung on a vine to work off stress! And a spider that lands on Sophie that she just waits to go away. Also run into a dead went with a big angry bird but nothing else of note.