EON: Exploring the world's trees, 4-1

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

Into Etrian 3 land!


The Waterfall Wood brought new monsters. Frogs could jump and do splash damage, no big deal unless they hit the back row and Nina was duplicating herself. Durians could inflict leg bind, and these fish enemies could line pierce - also something to watch out for on turn 1.

There were a couple of Adventure Episodes I accessed here. A box with vines entangling it. Nina, in a scene that makes her name origin obvious and silly, is able to carefully slice them up though, giving me a Hamao. There was also a meeting with another guild, who shared a fruit with me - I'd run into several similar adventure episodes with fruit just hanging around later - most of them edible despite appearances. This aside, it's a leisurely stroll through this place.


When I return after opening the first shortcut, I get accosted by Napier, who asks me to help a certain adventurer who's been deemed a lost cause by every other guild she's joined. No quest for it, but she promises a reward of some kind. There are two quests waiting for me, to gather the drops of the frogs and durians, the latter being a sequel to the quests for a sleeping potion, because the dude wasn't waking up and his wife was worried.

Luckily I had the fortune to not have sold the ones I got, so I am able to get the frogs' drops over to Napier. She apparently wanted them to make food! I only have four of the five drops from the durians though, so back in I went.


I run into The adventurer in question when I do that. She is Charis the Protector! And for once, I get an NPC who actually joins my team in-battle! She quickly proves to be only good as a meat shield. First she forgets to raise her shield and so can only defend in battle. When my party sets her straight, she keeps her eyes closed and so can only defend in battle. When my party tells her that, in the very next battle she can't decide whether to be in front or the back, and decides that she will only defend in battle. After this one we give her encouragement anyway for having potential, and she mentions having to get stronger so "they" will notice her. Some kind of senpai?

Anyway with that, my sixth slot is freed for Nina to duplicate herself. I unveiled the next FOE on the map, and I promptly go over to a door to beat it up...only to be stopped by guards who say they are currently investigating this monster and so I can't go beat it up yet.


Back to town? Some guy even more emo looking than Leo shows up, though with 100% more edge. He asks if it's an adventurer's fault if they die in the labyrinth. I say it's not, the RNG can totally screw you over. He gets mad at this and leaves, telling us off.

I'm able to hand in the DDurian quest at this point. Kvasir goes to deliver it, and this scene is great so I'll transcribe it.

---

Kvasir:
I'm back. By the great tree, that was awful.

For starters, he woke up, so that's good.

That brew was a terrible, powerful thing.
I swear, it must've been created in the depths
of hell.

What's that you say? Sounds awful?
You're damn right it was awful!

When the apothecary's wife started boiling
those Green Thorns, it reeked to the high
branches of the great tree!

Ugh, that horrid stench could wake the dead!

...Literally! It was so awful, it shocked the
corpselike apothecary awake in a split second!

The moment he was awake, he retched and
threw up! His wife was so happy that SHE threw
up! Then I threw up just at the sight of it!

Anyone would if they'd caught a whiff of that
ungodly combined stench of Green Thorn
and spilled vomit...

...Hell truly does exist in this world. I'm warning
you now, do not go over there. Not unless you
want to suffer the same disgusting fate!

I suppose helping our fellow man made it all
worth it in the end. Never dealing with Green
Thorn again, though.

That being said, here's your reward.
...What's wrong? You look pale. Oh! You can
smell it on me, can't you!?

---

So yes. That was a thing.

Back in the labyrinth, the way forward is finally cleared up. So I can go in and advance. Apparently it was not what I was expecting the guards were investigating, but it was the Great Lynx enemy! Charis, now able to actually act in battle, says she wants to defeat one. Because all adventurers should strive to defeat tough monsters!

---


So let's kill some hippos. These things were preposterously simple to fight. They could either do a simple physical attack, or a fully part attack. They telegraph the latter by charging up, so that was my cue to have Charis use Front Guard, and also on the first turn before Guard Order could be applied to that row.


That aside, its damage was very survivable. With appropriate buffs and debufs, Sophie actually fully healed up every time she was attacked. The very good thing about this party is that it has a lot of TP sustain for long fights. Harumi's supply is pretty much unlimited. If I were to give Sophie points in Royal Lineage, she would come close. And I eventually have a way to give Landis a ton of TP regeneration as well. Gundis still used Act Quick-Charged Shot to make this go faster. Not an issue at all.

---


I'm able to take down the three hippos roaming the floor without incident. Even with Charis this would be easy. Those Great Lynxes she was talking about, infamous from EO3, aren't that big a deal. They only did like 50 damage to Harumi without buffs or Front Guard. Half he health, but still, not impressed.


I also spend some of Harumi's skill points getting her the reap skills available. She can now inflict Poison, Blind, and Panic. The middle of them comes in handy on the frogs, since if it lands, they get neutered.

I get a little lost at the end trying to find the stairs. Didn't expect them to be where they were, and unfamiliar with this tileset. I was trying to look around for a switch of some kind, and when I couldn't find it, just started looking everywhere. Very odd place for it to be, but I'll take it. Also Charis clarifies she was trying to impress a guy so she could go adventuring with him. Hopefully with what we taught her, he'll notice her! She leaves my team to either go back or explore B2.

EON: Exploring the world's trees, 4-2

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

So I explore B2.


I shortly run into an Adventure Episode where a Great Lynx has stolen some faceless female adventurer's bag. I scare the thing off just by approaching, and by going north I'm able to fight it to get her bag back with a preemptive. No big deal even without Charis.

A number of new enemies here. The Starry Slug seems to have a conditional for killing it with poison, but I couldn't get it off when I fought it knowing this. The Devilfish is something that's able to summon Fanged Fish, but only seems to do this when alone. When it did get to trigger this, I had it head bound so it couldn't use the combination attack.

On returning to town and trying to leave again, I see that there are FOEs on the map. I get told about how they go to gathering points and render them unusable. This is unacceptable, so red danger aura or not, I'm killing it for being an asshole.

---


These things. They had a number of different tricks available to them. One of their main being Jet Punch, a high-priority attack that did a ton of damage. There was also Boomerang Fist, which hit a row, and Rock Smash, which hit one person with splash damage.


They were vulnerable to blind and paralysis, but the statuses were very stubborn to land. Got lucky with the blind, but the paralysis never came. Harumi will eventually be able to rectify this with an ability, but I chose to spend some of her skill points on actually getting the statuses to inflict. This aside, I mostly wore it down with Act Quick Charged Shots from Gundis. I notably restrained from using Nina's double - I needed Sophie in the back row, and she barely survived Jet Punch in the back after giving her a Health Amulet.


Things got hairy at the end, because the thing would not stop one-shotting Harumi even with all the buffs and debuffs - just kept getting bad damage rolls. It had minimal health left. Wanting to keep EXP even, I restrained myself just a bit before this to get off the Nectar, then fired off Gundis' Force Break to take it out at the start of the turn.

---

So with that I could tackle the quests, and I started with one that had a new dungeon associated with it - the official guards guild of the city need help fighting some wolves that have been roaming around. So I head to the Alpha Plains. They greet me and explain they're being led by Fenrir. But my guild is famous and they hardly doubt it'll be a problem for me!


There were two varieties of wolves here. The first were the Forest Wolves in ust about every random encounter. These things go berserk if they're alone, but aside from a formation with two of them, every other encounter had them joined by weaklings from the Lush Woodlands. Keeping them around was no big deal. There were encounters with two of them, but evening out the damage worked there.


Then there were these things, the Skolls. They're FOEs, but I'm not even going to give them the dignity of splitting them off into their own section. Their only major threatening skill was Silver Fang, which could do heavy damage, but not heavy enough especially with appropriate defenses.


The main gimmick of the dungeon was avoiding their gaze, with them spinning around, and able to see in a 3x3 area from where they're looking. One area got annoying and I messed up, but I just fought all three of them. They have barely any HP, and if I wanted, I could easily wipe said HP out with Gundis. This was hardly necessary except in this instance, however. I could hold out against one indefinitely.


I was sitting on Sophie's skill points, but I decided to spend them maxing out Negotiation. This was a handy skill for sustaining my party in labyrinth trips. If I ran into an enemy that was no threat, like say everything but the Forest Wolves here, I could just sit back and stall. It is a high-priority move that removes a buff and/or a debuff from the target, restoring HP and TP to them, more if both are removed. It only costs 2TP even at max level, and restores enough TP to offset Sophie's own costs. So I could fully heal my party for nothing on long trips. Which I did so here. It's also a nice skill for an emergency single-target heal.


Eventually I made it to the room with the big bad wolf. I was able to eliminate two of the Skolls, though couldn't find a way to get the third before starting the fight - it's in a corner alcove and looks back and forth between north and east. Unless I was missing something I couldn't approach it to fight without walking into its gaze. But I could sneak up on Fenrir anyway, since it couldn't see me fighting it either.

---


Now if you do get spotted, all the wolves in the room turn hostile, and Fenrir summons more. It can also do this in the fight itself. This is what it looks like, blurrily. However, when fighting it for real I prevented it from doing this with Head Snipe. It is insistent on Howling for help, to the point of where I shut it down completely for the duration - though of course I set up the buffs/debuffs anyway.


The excellent status luck continued with a panic and then a paralysis, stalling it a bit further. The Skolls can do nasty things once they're in battle with Fenrir, but by the time the one nearby made it, a lot of damage had already been done. Gundis was doing like 500 damage a shot, and with other support it wouldn't last much longer than this.


I slipped up a bit at the end and didn't notice Gundis had her Force Boost ready to go, which could've mean a double Charged Shot to end it a bit sooner. Way less than the one turn needed for the conditional. Still, no threat - I Force Broke next turn instead, making that turn irrelevant for Fenrir.

---

That's that. I get a Nectar II as a reward, hardly worth it. But it's the praise and the experience that is worth it!

There were two further quests here. One was to gather some chopping materials from the Waterfall Wood. I sent the farming team in for this. With this material and a monster drop, I was also able to upgrade Harumi's scythe finally. No better ones had come around since the one I got from the first boss. This meant saying goodbye to the one that had her ability to bind arms, but it was a small price to pay.

Entering back into B2 with my party proper. I was so high leveled by now (27) that the game showed the next FOEs with a blue aura.

---


Greedy Lizards were based around poison. Their Poison Sting attack hit a row and had a seemingly small chance to inflict poison that did like 50 damage. There were times in this battle with Harumi's Atonement came in handy. Shame she needs level 40 or her force boost to make it not cancel her Miasma Armor status, and even at max level it doesn't consistently cure them. That's what Gundis was for, I suppose. They also used an attack that had splash and lowered resistance to ailments and binds.


One amusing thing is that this was a debuff that Sophie was capable of canceling said debuff, which meant more TP restored. Actually because of this being used for healing in-general, my buffs weren't that consistent. But this thing's main threat came from poison, and as long as I could keep it off, it wasn't an issue.

What was an issue was killing it with fire damage per its conditional. Made the battle really slow towards the end and meant I couldn't go completely hog wild with Gundis - even when she wasn't busy healing poison - but oh well. Got it anyway.

---


I went back to lock that in. Their conditional gave me the option of giving Nina a new katana even stronger than the one she got from the Berserker King. However, also available from their normal drop was a knife that had equal power to this, as well as boosting LUC by 12.

I got the last quest too - head to certain locations on B2 and investigate something near water that has been attacking adventurers (and everything else) with sharp fangs. These turn out to be Fanged Fish encounters. The first of these is pretty ordinary. The second has the purple one in the back, so it was only able to hit the front row with the combo. The third had two purples! However, it seems they were only able to throw out one of these combo moves at a time. I dropped my force, including Charged Shot without Act Quick, to eliminate one as soon as possible.


I also went back to this cute room in the Primitive Jungle. I made the decision to switch Nina over to knives, since she'll need to eventually and the new tools give me more options. With this, as well as getting Landis the Vanguard skill, alongside Negotiation, I was able to take on three of these at once. After I brought down the first, I stalled for a bit to regenerate my TP - even as I was being statused, sometimes in ways that made me question accumulative resistance.


Once it was down to the last one, I let it have it - having the double Ninas use Hawk Strike and Gundis Rapid Fire alongside Improved Link. This culminated with his Force Break being used with Harumi's Force Brea. The first hit did over 300 damage, and followups 100. It was put on death's door from this, and victory was mine. I didn't need to use many resources in this fight either, just some Theriaca Bs and a Soma. For my efforts, I was rewarded with a Medica III, a Life Belt (+50HP accessory), and a Formaldehyde.


With nothing else to do for now, I went back into the dungeon. I get introduced to this guy formally, who warns me about the lizards I already killed two of and would kill the next two as well. He's called Rob, and he's a tsundere. Kind of. He also wants us to be dead because it's better for Charis or something.

Nothing else to note about the rest of this floor. I see the same nameless Female Adventurer again, who sells me some stuff. I paused after killing the last Greedy Lizard to have Sophie restore my party in front of a Fanged Fish. Probably would've been smarter to just go back, but I was stubborn. It takes a while, apparently this whole trip in took roughly an hour - likely a bunch of it that restoring fight and the FOEs - but I made it through and down to B3 without incident, after which I turned around and went back. There was even an Adventure Episode at the very end that restored me to full. Means I don't have to rest at the inn, I guess.