EON: Exploring the world's trees, 4-3

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


I get the mission from HQ: slay the artist formerly known as Narmer. Apparently it was renamed in the Japanese version as well, which makes it a bit strange that Napier reacts to it when learning Charis went in to fight it alone. We're tasked with helping! We're the only ones who can be counted on!

Entering into B3, and there was a nearby soldier who wanted all the chopping materials from B2. I would later give him these after getting them with my farming party, now able to really cook since they all hit level 20. Still a ways off from 40 where they'll hit full potential, however. There was only a single quest, get a Hibiscus from a rare Take and give it to Napier. Also done with my farming party. She talks about how it reminds her of home, also that she doesn't think of it often because of us.


There's really not much to say about this floor, besides the new monsters. The platypuses could hit a bunch of people with ice damage and possibly leg bind, but weren't that big a threat. The huge birds could deal partywide damage, but leg bind would again solve it. They had a conditional involving arm binding them, very easily done.


Notably when beating up the FOEs, I end up accidentally engaging all three Greedy Lizards in a room in one battle. I was just walking up on one, and shrugged when I saw the second was going to immediately engage me. This battle was a mess, especially when the third joined in which I wasn't expecting. But thanks to Medic Bullet, Negotiation, and having a lot of power in general, I was able to make it through, however. I also had to beat up another kangaroo on the map. This went better, but mostly due to it playing nicer - it could still one-shot Harumi at the start if it wanted.

I see the most asinine Adventure Episode yet: making leaves into boats. There was also a secret area here that was just a bunch of long corridors and a Formaldehyde. That makes two now. Dunno how useful it will be, but we'll see. There was one Adventure Episode here of note, I got some free money and an ambush by a bird. Everything else was "do some asinine thing to heal HP/TP".


After "avoiding" the lizards as the game says, I run into edgy emo guy at the end, saving him from a bunch of monsters. He freaks out and blames us for Charis taking the mission, calming down when we say we're here to help. He dumps his backstory on us, saying he was bullied a lot, probably for being an edgy emo dude, but Charis defended him. He got stronger and now wants to protect her. Okay.

A short ways later I see a healing spot and the last shortcut. There is also a reusable healing area here, rare as those are. Not that it matters since I went back and saved just in case.


Charis is just a little ways further in. I tell her about things and help sort this mess out. I'm given the option whether to have her join my party for this, or have her sit back and watch. The game talks about it a bit. Well, I can't really say no to her. Means I'll be a bit weaker with no double Ninas, but also means get to keep Sophie in the back row while still having six.


The game itself hypes this up!

---


A giant catfish, the artist formerly known as Narmer has a variety of attacks related to earth and such. It doesn't have its retreating gimmick from the original. Mud Throw was oddly an ice attack that could blind. Charis has a skill to defend against this, but since it's the only ice move it has, I mostly stuck to other abilities.


Periodically, it would dive into the mud and I'd have to play whack-a-mole. Very annoying when Gundis was using Charged Shot! I had to hit the thing to get it to come out, which I had no problem doing with Harumi's Reaps. If I didn't, it would start healing. Even when there were six of them later on in the fight. Apparently there's a tell if you watch the holes move, which would've been handy to know.


No, the problem was the damage. It did a ton, and the only way to reduce any of it was by using the Defend comman. Which not everyone could do due to having to attack the thing. Atonement was a great asset in this fight, useful for a full-party heal when I needed it. And the other big problem was that when it went into the mud, all its debuffs were purged. This meant Harumi was more on offensive duty for this fight.


I even manage to land the conditional, to kill it while it's petrified. I have Nina use Izuna towards the end of the fight, then let it have it after. It doesn't do its death animation when killed this way, it just sits there and eventually fades away. Winner!

---


Of course, I don't think I'll be buying what it gives me anytime soon.


Oh yeah, on the way out, the duo joins me except not in my party. They spot more ruins when leaving, to the point of where it brings me right back to the overworld map. I'm told some adventurers in my guild's debt have already gone ahead to it. Napier gives me 1000en for helping Charis, while poking a bit of fun at her. Woo?

EON: Exploring the world's trees, 5-1

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

Before I head into the next dungeon, I take care of some unfinished business.

---


Well, apparenty this is NOT a postgame boss, despite playing the usual postgame boss music for Etrian. Because of doing this like 6-7 levels after you're supposed to, this was not a difficult fight. Its attacks are fairly basic, and as long as the buffs and debuffs were up, I had little issue taking care of business.

There is a couple of catches to this guy: Reflection. It uses this to counter its weaknesses in all elementals. It straight-up cheats and just reads the commands you've used in order to determine whether or not to use it. It starts doing this at 80% HP with a 5% shot to use it, getting worse from there at 50%/10% and 30%/40%. You can outspeed it, but I didn't bother. Landis just did his thing near the start of the fight, then settled into chipping away with the Ninas, while Gundis did most of the damage.


One other catch was that it regenerates half its HP when killed. No problem, it just extends the fight. I just continued gradually wearing it down. It wasn't really a damaging threat, even though it managed to kill Landis once.


I was going for its conditional too, for all that's worth. It's to kill while it's blinded, which it resists. I reset the first time and came back with Harumi rocking Wilting Miasma, and was able to inflict it without too much difficulty. Then I just flattened it.

---

Once more, this unlocked a piece of equipment I have no monetary business having at this point, the Hero's ultimate armor. The regular drop allowed me to create a hit rate increasing helmet though, that might be handy.


The fifth dungeon is modeled much the same as the first, with the same music and everything. Even the game notes this distinction. New enemies were here. Ropers were uninteresting and could arm bind, these flying squirrels did splash damage, gryphons were just the latest big enemy who's mostly a fat chunk of HP, and then there were these chaps on the left. If killed, they release a paralyzing suicide attack. Panic or just killing them last solved this issue handily, however.


Not too far in, I meet up with the expected two adventurers who were in my debt and get introduced to the gimmick of this dungeon - it has multiple levels to it and you go up and down. Also because I was using light green for my FOE paths on my maps, I had to go back and change those to yellow for lack of anything else. And then later I adjusted the map so that there was no wall marking so it's a bit clearer.


Two quests were waiting for me back at Kvasir's after hitting the first shortcut. One was to gather some Take materials, the other was to get some drops from the flying squirrel enemies. I had the foresight to check into these before selling my materials, but still only had two of the latter. The farming party got the first without incident. These quests have some pretty priceless reactions the party can give to Kvasir. Like for this one. Or when he starts talking up how he loves schoolgirls, you can reply like this


A short ways after this, I meet Oliver and Marco again, who can't seem to get by the wolf in the next room. They talk about some way to avoid being seen by it. Well, I have a way...

---


Even though it is very painful. These Rebel Wolves happen to play to my party's weakness. Their gimmick is based around an inaccurate fire attack that hits for heavy damage multiple times, as well as potentially leg binding rows to try to ensure it hits. I don't have a Hero or Protector to lower the fire damage, I don't have a Medic or anything to clear the binds, and I don't have a Survivalist to lower its accuracy so stray hits can't get through or redirect onto an evasive party member.


So all I can do is push my way through. I throw out Theracia As as long as I can, and revive when I need to. One scary moment happened when the whole front line got reduced to critical HP, but a Soma got me back in business from there. Harumi died and got revived early. Gundis went down once, but thankfully recovered her force before the end.


Towards the end of the fight, I get into an annoying situation. Landis and Sophie went down, and I was out of Nectars. However, Harumi got PISSED at this point. I threw out a Soul Transfer and it not only hit the 50% on both, it left both alone. Chaos Reap then landed and inflicted the status first try as the Ninas used Medicas, and from here, popping Gundis' Force Break alongside the Ninas and Landis attacking got me the win and the conditional.

---


This victory was very worth it, however. Their regular drop gave a scythe upgrade for Harumi, and the conditional gave a gun upgrade for Gundis that had a special skill attached to reduce fire damage. Subsequent battles against the things were much easier thanks to this: it only did like 40 damage as long as the gun's buff was up.

The rest of the floor consisted of puzzles where you had to either let the things chase you around a loop to get ahead of them or use higher ground to go around. I of course killed them all en route to the stairs to the next floor.

EON: Exploring the world's trees, 5-2

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


As I return to town I get accousted by Shilleka who wants me to look into a mini dungeon where some soldiers working for her haven't returned from. Why not do that right away?


Because I instead choose to spam guild cards to unlock the Vampire psuedoclass. This thing bestows 100HP and a 10% boost to all other stats, as well as replacing the class' Force Boost and Force Break and making the class take damage during the day and heal at night. Harumi and Nina can both make good use of this. Nina because then I get two units taking advantage of it, and Harumi for the stat bonuses.


Getting it requires some strange prerequisites - like recruiting a guild card member and using them in battle. Here we see a shadowy figure who is the swimsuit Hero DLC that I didn't buy. Once the requirements are done, to talk to one Young Gossip Hound in the bar. He tells a story of a father and his daughter, the latter who had red eyes and never aged, yet still died at the same time as her father. For this I need to head back to the first dungeon. I go on a bit of an adventure to spots on the map, and learn their story: he was researching a way to make his terminally ill daughter live longer, so looked to the secrets of immortality. He passes it on to us in hope that we may use it for humanity's sake. It'll be a boon to it!


One oddity - I found that Vivian and Mueller stopped saying their voice clips on entering their places. To solve this after some asking and getting an indirect answer, I had to have someone wearing the eye on entering their places. This triggered a scene for each one but Persephone: Vivian thinks the character in question looks different (and her cathat is scared), Napier says that she sells things to help with bloodshot eyes, Kvasir says to sleep, and Mueller briefly goes on guard due to sensing an inhuman presence.


Heading into that maze now, a Waterfall Wood lookalike, I head west and almost immediately run into an FOE.

---


These chameleons have an incredibly predictable pattern for the most part. They camoflague themselves, raising their evasion sky-high. They follow this up with Blizzard, a hit-all ice move. I just had every member of my party defend except Gundis, who used Act Quick to unleash a Charged Shot next turn.

She could also theoretically hit it with a Snipe skill to prematurely end the camoflague and allow the others to hit, but defending against their attack was more important. With this, the damage it did actually got completely healed off everyone but Gundis due to Sophie's regeneration. The turns in-between were free attacks, since it spent it recloaking.


As the battle went on it started mixing it up with Vertigo Lash, a line-piercing move. No big deal, just meant more turns to attack and occasional further healing. Also if I wanted to be even more cruel to them, there were other strategies. If I had Gundis spam a Snipe skill, it would usually go after the thing cloaked and immediately break it, which does stop the Blizzard. I fought subsequent ones this way. And if I managed to poison it, that would force it to uncloak every time too for the duration.


All in all, this was way easier than the previous FOE.

---

Their drop allowed me to create a weapon that's a huge upgrade for Landis, though with the tradeoff of being a Rapier and so inflicting piercing damage instead of slashing. This isn't always desired depending on the enemy, but it's there. It even lets me use their Vertigo Lash move.


Their random encounter purple cousins were around too, following a similar pattern: cloak then use an ice-based line piercing attack. Much more annoying were these Swordfish, who could use a high-priority attack with a high chance of stunning, and loved to use it on Sophie.

I tore through every single FOE here. They had it coming. I was doing them one at a time at first, but I eventually switched over to fighting two back to back, which wasn't that hard to stretch due to Negotiation.

I see the soldiers here too, alive and well but retreating. And get a promise of money from Shilleka. After wiping out the four FOEs next door, I go to engage the boss in the room just beyond. It's their daddy!

---


Was not expecting End of the Raging Winds here. Forgot this twerp from EO4. The Chameleon King started the battle off by summoning Lizard Retainers, who fought similar to their breathren. They would cloak and use an ice attack on uncloaking. However, they are far weaker in every respect - they have little HP and their ice move only hits a single target. They even seemed far less likely to cloak.

The King himself could also do the same thing, but this attack hits the entire party. Unlike the FOEs, it didn't have an incessent need to cloak. It'd occasionally use Lick, an attack that reduces offense and occasionally paralyzed. This mostly just ended up reducing my buffs. One of the retainers also used a similar move to reduce defense, same story. It also used a full party poison move. Aside from some scares, accumulative resistance made this mostly a nonthreat.


I went all out against this thing. Gundis landed two Charged Shots when it was sleeping due to the Ninas, and at one point I had her Force Boost and pull it off three times in a row despite the massive TP drain. Gundis atacked the retainers and occasionally the king, Harumi debuffed and occasionally swang at the retainers, Sophie healed and buffed, the Ninas threw items and debuffs.


Conditional was killing it when panicked. I inflicted it with Harumi towards the end of the fight, then went mostly all out. Couldn't get it done the first turn after, but the ailment stuck for another turn allowing me to get the job done.

---

Instead of selling it, I turned the drop into Shilleka at the bar for 10000en. Selling it would've allowed me to create a gimmicky armor that has only 1 defense but high resistance to ailments and binds. The conditional was the Imperial's ultimate armor.


I enter into B2 first with my farming party, doing a big brain play: mapping the markers and FOE (paths) with them. I enter it properly with two quests: a gathering one and one to strike down a monster who's been attacking adventurers. It often attacks from above after battles...


It's a giant killer turkey. I...was not expecting that. Either way, it has the same stab weakness that most birds have, so with Landis' strong weapon this went down fairly quickly and without incident. The ones in the back were just regular enemy versions of it. Not too tough, and the regular ones' drops created an item with a 10/10 description. Speaking of the regular enemies, one new one here was the Dire Wolf. Very smaller versions of those FOE ones from the previous floor, with a conditional for killing them with ice.

After some refreshing Adventure Episodes include an asinine boomerang one, I run into the next FOE wandering around the upper areas.

---


The big brothers of those miniature ones, these things open up with Potent Acid. It's a weak attack with a high chance to instantly kill. I just had to take it the first two times. The third time I fought one, I came up with the idea to have Nina use mirage to take it. This worked, but it didn't draw the move the fourth time.


Eventually they summon one of the smaller ones and get to spamming Pineapple Mash - an electric move that hits the whole party. It also carries a chance to paralyze, just like killing the things. However if I did kill them, they eventually summon more. I figured this was easier to deal with than that and potentially more Potent Acids, so I resorted to other things.

Namely, they were weak to Leg Binds and this locked down both of them for the duration. They were weak to physical damage, so Gundis could do close to 1000 damage a hit under ideal circumstances. Blind could work in a pinch as well. I also popped the Confuse Gas I got out of one of the quests at two points, which similarly locked it down.

All in all, fairly easy FOEs.

---


I bump into Leo on the way out, now with a smile and less emo. He talks about these things a bit, first that they're able to chase you off ledges, and secondly when running into hi later their general strategy when fighting which I already knew of. Still, the thought that counts.


Sure enough, one of them actually blocks my path! Since it strangely doesn't go off the ledge, I need to step away out of its radius in order to get up and fight it. Another one does jump off its ledge after watching me fight its brethren and enters a new patrol radius below, no issue there though. Beyond this is the stairs down.