Down the Original Tree in HD, B19-B20

B1-B5 | B6-B10 | B11-B12 | B13-B15 | B16-B18 | B19-B20 | B21-B25 | Postgame 1 | Postgame 2


There were actually two FOEs who had to be dealt with by binding them completely. So here's the second one. And yes, tying up a whip-using female, make your own joke. Both were very weak to binds anyway, and were annoying in how they could inflict curse and panic respectively. Really noticing this party's frailty compared to the main one, even without Immunize. Might be an armor issue? Or that the main party can kill before they can move issue? Not that they had problems killing either: Alchemist can pull its weight.

Okay, that second quest now. I ran into another problem here: it wanted you to kill three Sickwoods on B17. Problem was, they were dead!! I needed to respawn them by having a level 1 character sleep for a few days. Actually, I eventually did a lot of sleeping and gathering to get a special piece of equipment in stock that is unfortunately both 50 of a material and out of my price range for now. Helped make some money back though. Shoutouts to money.

I then went through B18. The FOEs were actually a bit tougher with the main party, but it's still not saying much about them. The first one was in the way for crying out loud, you're expected to fight these. A lot of them. In a bit.


One of the quests from stepping into B19 involved fighting a bunch of palette swap frog FOEs. One of the two could curse and was really fast which was obnoxious. 1st Turn and stalling when needed solved them. The others only poisoned and died in one turn like a lot of fights were at this point.

The other was to find a giant bird's limb to make medicine. I thought this was the Ammoas, but it was actually the regular Moa FOEs. Easy to kill and I got the drop first try. This led to a second one that needed a take item from B18. Just sent in the gatherers as usual. Finally, I had to go and get one of my characters petrified for a quest. The fairies on the left side of B18 could do this. He was not automatically unpetrified, and buying a Theracia B was cheaper to heal him than asking the doctor at this point.


B19 was just this big expanded version of B17. I was able to fight the Redbeaks here, but it took me a while to get the Red Beaks. Nothing more to it.


Prior to reaching B21, this boss will respawn if all the FOEs on the floor are not dead. However, that is exactly how you can abuse it to grind: Picnic mode plus decently leveled characters can tear it down easily. And the FOEs will aggro, but can never reach you or enter the battle. I used this to get the B-team up to level 70.

Thought for a minute about retiring them, but it's definitely not worth in Etrian 1: back to level 1 for just 6 extra skill points and a mere +3 in a stat that's dependent on the class being retired. Even with Picnic grinding available, that's a bit much for little return. Especially considering many classes struggle to figure out what to do with leftover skill points.


Needless to say, they also got the rare drop along the way.


As I said, the gimmick of this floor is that you have to kill everything on it before fighting the boss. In HD at least, it seems you can leave the dungeon in between it? One of the ones that got in the way on the murder massacre stayed dead. But in the original, you had to do it all in one trip: at least you could leave the floor. It got hectic sometimes, but I kept everything under control. But I reset once when the boss Kool Aid Manned into the fight and killed the two FOEs in the process. Wanted drops, so. Yeah. Next time I remembered to keep a suspend save just in case.


And uh, bought this for next time. Like I said, I was close to the money farm, so it didn't matter.

The boss itself was a nothingburger. Only two interesting things: I had actually used Trumpet's force a bit earlier to regenerate TP. He had recovered enough to use it on turn 2, so it led to the interesting situation where turn 1 was Bravery and turn 2 was boosted Bravery. The bird also landed petrification on my Medic, but he still got experience, which is all I cared about.


Then enter one of the silliest design decisions: it implies you can go forward, but changes its mind and says you have to go back. Then all the way back down. Boring.

Down the Original Tree in HD, B21-B25

B1-B5 | B6-B10 | B11-B12 | B13-B15 | B16-B18 | B19-B20 | B21-B25 | Postgame 1 | Postgame 2


So right next to the Geomagnetic Pole in B21 is a Mining Spot with materials that can be sold at a premium. Very good stuff, needless to say. I made back the money from the Meteor Axe and then some: getting up to 400k after other expenditures, including some Landshark exclusive armor with a big STR boost.


While exploring the ruins of ancient Tokyo, I bumped into another FOE. Immunize plus strong attacks with strong weapons put this one to bed quickly. I didn't fight the boss in the way yet, instead just let them stand there.

Because several quests opened up between this and a brief peek into B22. The first of these was the last of the solo quests, and gave a bit of backstory into the guildmaster. It all but says his party was wiped by a Sickwood and he lost and eye and somehow game mechanics did not apply there. So now I have to kill one solo for reasons. There was no follow-up on it before or after.


Besides being terribly weak and spamming poison that Huangshan could shrug off, she could recover damage with Drain even if it was any threat.

Two wanted materials I couldn't get yet. One wanted me to get some offerings for a fallen adventurer, who probably died to a Venomfly ambush on B1, or was just buried there for whatever reason. Just a fetch quest. And one concerned a mysterious girl who lives in the marshes of the second stratum on B7.


Yeah, you can see what a mess this is. This is also part of why I picked up Healing Touch. In the original DS release, this is a crummy skill that can restore up to 50% of max HP outside of battle only with a ten point investment. Here? For just three points you can have an on-demand full heal outside of battle.


Guaranteed ambush aside, I came in with boosted Immunize which instantly shut her down.

Condition is to not kill with fire. Which was already done and resulted in Troubadour's ultimate armor. I'll have to return with Alchemist to get her normal drop.


Then these two got in the way on a bridge. Allslash rapidly brought them bought to their knees. I could use Trumpet to cancel the Ronin's buffs. The Hexer kept missing her debuffs which helped, though I notably had to doublecast Immunize since she canceled it.


However, the dungeon itself for all that it is was pretty obnoxious. Lots of winding paths and dead ends. It took me four or five trips to get through and activate the elevators. I even kept pushing several times a little further past 60 items only to find I had longer to go than I expected. The enemies were for the most part similarly bland. Muskoids were the only thing of any danger, if they got off sleep before I could kill them. It all made for even more grinding. Had to happen sometime.

Even the quests didn't have much going on with them for the most part. Two wanted ten Angel Wings and Gold Furs respectively!! Thankfully I learned the former was not just a drop, but also something I could just take. Another concerned a noble who was having trouble sleeping, which needed a Hexer with Torpor. After that, another quest unlocked where I had to fight some fifth stratum FOEs on B1. No big deal.


Once I finally reached B25, it, too, was just kind of a mess to map? By the end of it I was starting to get really sick of the Desouler bear FOEs, which hadn't been a threat from the first time I saw them. But the real pricks were the Armorolls. Very physically resistant, very common, and could show up in packs of five. I eventually used the Troubadour's elemental infusions to get it done.


Relatedly, I got the Ogre FOE's conditional to kill it in two turns. Took some setup with the backup party due to being physically resistant.


Except backup no more. I actually got so sick of the rollers wasting my time that I booted Protea out of the party for Allium! The rest were nearing 70 anyway and it wouldn't be too much trouble to get him there. With the elemental chasers learned by Larkspur, I could clear encounters turn 1. Then find one to stall on to recover TP, but that's nothing new. It had another practical purpose too: there was one more new FOE down here that wanted a kill with non-physical damage. So that got it done.

But before long, I came to the final boss door, where the massive plot twists that are now commonly known are elaborated upon, and the importance of human curiosity and greed are emphasized. I thought about it, I looked up the stats...


...then I went right in with this party. Etreant is more convoluted than the previous bosses. In particular, he does not like buffs. Five or more, including any party AoE, and he flips his shit, dispels them, and follows up with a big nasty AoE next turn. Except I can just recast, instantly even thanks to first turn. The other thing that went into this is that he could use a move to prevent physical attacks.


The fun thing is that Blazer doesn't count as a physical attack, and naturally, neither do Alchemist formulae. With those two working in tandem, and Sunflower doing her thing when she could, I was slowly but surely wearing down the boss. And I could just keep regenerating TP for the party.


He eventually died. The end.

But there's a postgame. Let's do that.

Down the Original Tree in HD, Postgame 1

B1-B5 | B6-B10 | B11-B12 | B13-B15 | B16-B18 | B19-B20 | B21-B25 | Postgame 1 | Postgame 2


Several quests opened in the postgame, and there was still one outstanding one I didn't do. They were all preludes to superboss fights in some way. The first was to face the Wyvern and win in three turns or less for its conditional drop. No problem. The second was to find all the Ankhs in stratum 5. Just tedium. Another was this weirdo invisible maze on B18 that makes no sense and isn't follwed up on. But I used the chance to take on another secret boss, which I think is unlocked by this.

Before doing so, I took Allium and got the Alraune's conditional. Just swapped to using Blazer and Flame when she was low.


Manticore is guarded by a lot of (weak) stratum 5 FOEs. Its gimmick is status: all it can really do is throw it out and try to kill you with them. Theracia Bs just said no as I rapidly wore it down.

Conditional is to kill in under 10 turns. And winning a diceroll, because of course. Note that qualifying for this drop and missing it does not disqualify you from getting the normal drop (which is another diceroll), so you don't have to stall until turn 11.


I still had some levels to gain, so it was straight to hell. What a lovely first encounter too. Thankfully, I learned these white blood cells do not petrify you immediately in the original game. They have to take damage first. In fact, one of them defied 1st Turn? Tried to. I thought those bugs were fixed in HD?


The most annoying enemy down here were the crabs who were immune to everything short of electricity. Not even picnic mode changed this. I dealt with them by having Trumpet imbue Sunflower with electricity and have Larkspur chase it, which could kill one a turn. Their conditional was to kill with pierce damage. So long as Sunflower got the kill, it worked.

After a bit of exploring B26, everyone but Protea hit level 70. I leveled him the rest of the way solo on picnic. With this done, I was as ready as I could be for the elemental dragons.


I was a little surprised to find they still use their original names, given they updated a lot of other stuff to their modern versions. The icy Drake was beyond a pointlessly long winding maze on the secret side of B15. I actually had Trumpet learn Stalker here: he had the SP to spare, and not like he was going to be using much else. The opposition was just boring 5th stratum enemies.


You either need shenanigans or just a Protector's Wall skill to survive their elemental breaths, but Drake is particularly nasty for being able to inflict instant death. It also has a buff that reduced damage by 1%. It can be locked out with a Leg Bind, dispelled, or overwritten with a debuff, however. The first option wouldn't be very viable on the original game, but the HD release introduces accumulative anti-resistance: the more you fail to land a bind, the more likely you are to land it. Sunflower had a lot of spare SP, so she could learn the skill to inflict it. Mostly, it amounted to letting Trumpet deal chip damage instead of spamming dispels.

Other than its buffs, its entire repitoire is ice based, and the rare physical wasn't doing that much through immunize. So with Protea using Ice Wall every turn there was nothing it could do. Eventually, its 35000HP was depleted.


The fiery Wyrm was in the Wyvern's nest, who was evicted from it and moved to B9 as a result. Right in the same position, up to and including allowing an easy preemptive against the thing. I brought my Ronin here for a change of pace. It can do a lot. It didn't do a lot. Only problem was it got off a physical AoE before I got off Immunize; I instead used the free turn for extra damage. Still not fatal and I recovered easily enough.


I needed to go to the elevator activator on B21 in order to fight the next boss on B25. I warped out after. Dragon the Electric Dragon loved spamming its electric move, although it at least had other options. I didn't bring my Ronin this time because it also loves to dispel buffs. This meant a quick 1st Turn Immunize and resetting Bravery every time, though every time it reset buffs, it just used its electric breath next turn anyway. With Protea blocking that, it didn't take long until--


--really? The rare drop? Well, I was going to say, next up is an RNG manipulation involving a solo Medic taking them on in Picnic mode, but I guess that's one less I have to do.


So I went and did that to unlock this sword. It's pretty insane: +20 to all stats and usable by everyone. Obviously not the best idea for everyone because it locks out weapon skills. But Protea and Larkspur both used swords. So did Huangshan. And Troubadour, Alchemist, and Hexer all don't make use of weapons if you really want to go nuts. Naturally, this is only practical on HD: these are super rare drops from superbosses otherwise with no way to manipulate them on DS hardware.

Next it'll be through hell to the final challenge.