EON: Exploring the world's trees, 5-3

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

Two quests. One is another gathering one, to get a material so a Ronin can make a sword. Another...referred to "that one" by Kvasir. It involves Petaloids! It's a simple path, take a certain set of steps in the entrance room of B1 and blow them all up with a Flame Tailsman.


Of course I step wrong to fight the things. I start off with a group of four, and after have to fight six at once. My team is ready to fight the infamous monsters, however. I go all out on the offensive, trashing them with Blazing Link, Reap skills, and Hawk Strike. They go down without incident despite a bit of sleep shenanigans in the second fight.


I run into Charis and Rob here. I get Rob to act tsundere as they talk a bit about the resident FOEs: birds that can fly over walls.

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Really, there was absolutely nothing to these things. They have the nasty ability to cut your HP in half, but they weren't doing enough damage to make that a threat. Even if they had, I could have given Sophie some skill points to counter that, and she could do so with Negotiation too.


Their namesake attack, being used here, did line-piercing damage. Still only like 30, easily healed. Their description did say they get mad if anything is faster than them, but whatever that is if anything never came up.

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New enemies here included the Roly-Poly Tanuki. If they were left alone, they could transform into FOEs. And unlike them, they were far more likely to use Potent Acid. That said they didn't copy stats, so this was only just a rude surprise when I was trying to go for their conditional of killing them while sleeping. Easily done once it finally landed with a Charged Shot. Charis and Rob describe them later on.


I also see this idiot. He describes a fruit. I don't know which fruit it is. It's not a pineapple enemy (at least the non FOE one) or any materials I can get from here. It turns out to be an actual pineapple from a refreshable healing location, doesn't hit me until the next floor.

Other than this incident, the floor was very straightforward, if winding. Notably after taking out the second set of FOEs, there's still another area to go through. No FOEs to avoid or beat up here, just regular enemies. Nice change of pace, really.


I also get to live out a revenge fantasy from EO4. That was about it for this floor. I was able to move onto the bo-


Next floor? Sure, whatever dude.

EON: Exploring the world's trees, 5-4

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


I start this floor off by being forced to take a mission to find the Geomagnetic Pole. Whatever, was popping in with my farming party anyway, so wasn't much to turn back.


The usual new quests were waiting for me. The first was to beat up a blob monster. It had a gimmick where it split into multiple versions, but I saw through its ruse partially due to using an Analysis Scope and seeing what it split into were different monsters...and then that the Suicide Ooze itself was still around. Then Harumi paralyzing them all just made a total mockery of the fight.

The other was to find a hairclip a tanuki stole from Napier. She gives me a trap for this and no other instructions, so I was unsure what to do here.

There were two new enemies that I hardly ran into because this being the final floor for real this time (except not), meant a bunch of FOEs to carve through. Which I could do multiple times per trip thanks to Negotiation and those weak birds being able to refresh me quickly and easy. Total disrespect, restoring on a FOE.


The new enemies were a bull one that was mostly notable for resisting pierce. Landis had to/got to rely on its fire weakness. And the Flame Lizard, self-explanatory and nothing special aside from being able to reduce elemental resistance. Countered with Guard Order or just killing it quickly before it could do anything, or even blind.

Had a really annoying battle against the last FOE which was one of those pineapples again. Accidentally killed the first spawned drone and had to deal with three at once. Everyone was weak and Harumi was paralyzed - even through accumulative resistance - but I anticipated and called out which small one was going to team up with the big one, and to add insult to injury, pertrified it right after. Was simple cleanup from there.


Towards the end of the floor, I find an Adventure Episode involving a hole in the wall. Someone needs to reach in, and since Nina isn't wearing gauntlets (armguards don't count it seems). All it gives is a bit of money, but more importantly, I hit level 40 as a result of it. I can give my characters another huge boost.

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Harumi gets Epherial Reap Lv10. Really expensive, but also should be really useful for her to contribute meaningful things after throwing down all her debuffs if status isn't necessary.

Landis gets Single Devotion Lv6 and Link Mastery Lv7, sitting on 2 points. Not sure if I want to use those on pushing an individual link up to Lv5 or keep it for some other purpose. I sat on the Break skills for now as those only really shine once you get a certain 100DEF shield.

NIna got Mystic Calm Lv4 and Ninpo Panic, - picking up the needed points along the way. This expanded her status options greatly, added a deadly technique for randoms, and reduced her TP costs significantly.

Gundis got a single point in each of the Charged elements and Ricochet Lv10 - again picking up the needed points along the way. I could've easily pushed all the former to max Lv6 apiece, but I chose for the somewhat unwieldly option that can support links instead. Worst case, I can always Rest. Probably with EXP DLC so I don't lose any effective levels.

Sophie got a mixed bag. She got Final Decree Lv6, getting what was needed along the way. This gives a 40% boost to damage/reduction in damage, at the cost of needing three buffs and dispelling them all. The option to potentialy spam this will be opened up, but for now I grabbed a point in Prevent Order just in case. Next goal would be to get the Arms skills up and running for Landis' sake.

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There was yet another floor to go, so all there was to do from here was to finish up that quest from Napier. Turns out she joined another guild and befriended the tanuki. We look at her until she caves and explains, then have a good laugh as we ask if she'll keep it.

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

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

There was only a single quest here, get a drop from a Rebel Wolf.


With my new tools, these fights turned from slogs into ones I could easily rip to shreds if I was willing to go all-in. A single turn's worth of damage with Landis in Force Boost could do 40% of its HP in damage. Nina's new tools made it reasonable to spam skills after splitting, and panic was fun to throw out. Harumi could do respectable damage if she didn't need to debuff. Big surprise was Gundis. Ricochet I was kind of regretting (though it can do more than Charged Shot), but her other skills added another debuff and more options for random encounters. Final Decree was fun to use, if expensive.


Sadly, Prevent Order was useless!! That or I was horribly unlucky and it needs all the investment I can get. Guess that'll be something I'll need to ignore for a long while due to other priorities. At least these fights were a nonissue, since if I threw Panic at them, it would lock them down unable to use Pineapple Mash for a while.


Two new enemies on the floor. The Wrath Blooms from their description and from the turkeys', I'm guessing they have a gimmick where they can eat the turkeys and power up. Often I never gave them a chance to do this. There were also these slugs who could inflict status ailment and were resistant to physical damage. Gundis' new skills went to work here due to their conditional of killing them with stab damage.

I meet the boss along the way. This big boy is capable of attacking and knocking me off the walls. Just movement and luring puzzles. That I actually have to do unlike with FOEs. Besides the wolves, the pineapples were also easier to deal with - their instant death wasn't working as often, and panic when the small ones came out forced it into attacking normally.


More interestingly, I find this in a chest. Seen a couple locked doors so far, so that'll be some backtracking. Assuming this is the thing that opens this chest.

I just get lazy and use my farming party for the last little bit. You have to lure the big guy all the way to the top left so you can get by before it starts attacking you. No encounters made this easy, and it's not like I need to fight too much given my levels.


And here it is.

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And after all its hype and bluster, this thing was not a big threat face-to-face. Sinister Flame was a hit-all fire move that inflicted various statuses, most notably Curse. Luckily Curse only landed on Landis, it did hit Sophie and Harumi but neither were attacking at the time. Darkness Rend could inflict that status. Deathly Glare lives up to its namesake but never hit me once. It had a mass poison attack too, but it ticked for barely anything.


The strategy was simple: get Landis going now that he's well on his way to being a fully fledged Linkshark and go in on it. After several turns to stack his buffs, I activated his Force and let the turtle have it. These turns took down nearly 40% of its health. On the last turn of the Force, I had Sophie use Final Decree for even more damage. Harumi in particular hit for 750 total on this turn. Ephemeral Reap is pretty strong, but expensive, so I only had a few chances to use it. Hamaos helped keep my sustain at several points.


Periodically it would summon these Dark Skulls. I'm not sure what they were capable of. Apparently reducing vulnerability to ailments. But every time they showed up I had the Ninas toss Panic out, and that stopped them from doing whatever it was they were doing. They were just minor inconveniences because the Ninas couldn't use Hawk Strike and I couldn't use Ricochet either to beat down the Shellbeast.


At the very end once Landis' force is back up. With his Force Break, and Sophie's because it works anyway in lieu of not having enough TP for Final Decree, the first hit does over 500 damage. This followup critical hit finishes it off. May need to actually invest in that, even before boosting the link skills themselves, it makes a huge difference.

Conditional was killing when Paralyzed. I had Harumi start throwing out Paralysis Reap towards the end of the fight with some Wilt Miasma support. It landed without too much difficulty. This lets me make the Ninja's ultimate armor, out of my price range.,

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Some mysterious voice talk to me again, pondering if I'll save even my enemies. Speaking of which, I run into this chap after using the Geomagnetic Pole. He talks about wanting to find the treasure as well, and leaves with a bell. Then I get back and find the princess is bedridden, Mueller is in her place (some "Captain" manning the guild in the meantime), and he heard a bell at the time.

Just spelling it right out.