EON: Exploring the world's trees, 2-1
Feb. 15th, 2019 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sirsystemerrorL1: B1 || L2: B1 / B2 / B3 || L3: B1 / B2 / B3 || L4: B1 / B2 / B3 || L5: B1 / B2 / B3 / B4 / B5
I deliberated a lot on whether to switch around my party before heading into the next labyrinth. Ultimately I decided to stick with what I have instead of swapping to Pugilist over Gunner. Gunner's binds are slightly more reliable even if they are slow, and its combo attacks go better with the Landshark's link moves.
Moving onward to the next area. It was the first dungeon of Etrian Odyssey IV, named after it as well. It even had the same music! Took me back to 2012 when I first got into the series. It had the enemies and everything - including the grasshoppers that briefly made me reconsider Gunner when it kicked and oneshot Gundis. Her wearing an accessory that allows EXP to be shared with inactive party members certainly doesn't help her durability.
It even had the same gimmick with the FOEs on the map: bears that I couldn't beat the hell out of even if I was able to because they break fallen trees in the way. The idea was taunt them, get them to follow you, and lead them over to the area.
This aside, it's only the second dungeon, so the game is still relatively simple. The strongest enemies here were these baboons, who could attack a line if I let them go without an arm bind. Which I didn't thanks to the scythe I was able to make from the previous boss that enabled using one of its attacks.
I was joined by a couple of chaps at the beginning - a brawn and a brains duo. They're exploring the labyrinths for the money, and joined because Oliver saw one of my party members and couldn't help but be worried. Unlike the medic from before, just hung around and didn't participate in battle. All they did was give the FOE tutorial. Some help they were.
There were two quests on this floor. The first was to gather materials for Nectar. I took the Farmer and Survivalist of my guild, made a few more, and sent them in. Unfortunately farming parties got nerfed in this game on account of their encounter reducing skills only coming at level 20 and above. Looking at it, it seems I can make a Zodiac to do that below level 20, albeit with reduced effectiveness overall. It actually took me a reset before it triggered and gave me the item I needed. I'd use this party with a Zodiac moving forward to make money as I saw fit. Once I got Flee to max level on one of the farming Farmers too, extraction became relatively painless.
Once I got to the end of the floor, which wasn't that long, I bumped into a soldier who said this before passing out. Sounds like fun. The guys were satisfied with my guild's progress and decided to take the guy back.
After a bunch of maintenance with farming, I moved onto the mini dungeon that opened up to train further - in-story at the advice of Marco and Oliver. Some guards at the start laughed about it, since the only major threats to them were these baby deer.
Still, this had some nasty fights in it that took a while until I added some levels and equipment. Mandrakes were a "bind or be bound" kind of enemy. One of the worst encounters here was the Roller/Baboon combo, which could combo to do very high damage to my whole party, as well as killing the Roller. Not even my equipment could save some of the backline from getting wrecked by that.
There were some FOEs lurking around here, the aforementioned deer. After I explored the place, since they were weak, I figured it was time for a pound-up.
---
There really is nothing to the Furyfawn. They're only marginally stronger than some of the random enemies, and could be crippled by binding their legs. It was from there more or less a turkey shoot.
---
They're so easy because killing them caused their mama to spawn. It also makes the guards who were yukking it up end up slaughtered. I couldn't quite work it down despite its color not being red - I just ran out of juice due to it having too much HP. However, I do find myself able to beat up the bears, so let's do that.
---
Cutters have a number of different attacks. They have a roar move that does very weak AoE damage on my party, and they have this charging move. After a turn of using it, they attack a row for heavy damage. The others could take it but Gundis had to be guarding to prevent a OHKO even with buffs and debuffs on her. Funny enough if it was arm bound, it would still charge but fail to use the move.
Later on in the fight it started using a move that hit twice on a single target. Very much survivable.
Slowly but surely, I wore the thing down. Was starting to run low on TP as it was getting weak, but I had plenty enough left in the tank to deal with the rest of its HP.
---
After this I go to HQ for a mission to hunt down the Berserker King, and meet one of the side characters from EO4! She speaks of her experience with the thing that beat up the guards, the Berserker King, as well as giving some advice on it. Also she only seems to want to act as a support and doesn't intend to help kill it. Well, more for us, so that'll be next time.
I deliberated a lot on whether to switch around my party before heading into the next labyrinth. Ultimately I decided to stick with what I have instead of swapping to Pugilist over Gunner. Gunner's binds are slightly more reliable even if they are slow, and its combo attacks go better with the Landshark's link moves.
Moving onward to the next area. It was the first dungeon of Etrian Odyssey IV, named after it as well. It even had the same music! Took me back to 2012 when I first got into the series. It had the enemies and everything - including the grasshoppers that briefly made me reconsider Gunner when it kicked and oneshot Gundis. Her wearing an accessory that allows EXP to be shared with inactive party members certainly doesn't help her durability.
It even had the same gimmick with the FOEs on the map: bears that I couldn't beat the hell out of even if I was able to because they break fallen trees in the way. The idea was taunt them, get them to follow you, and lead them over to the area.
This aside, it's only the second dungeon, so the game is still relatively simple. The strongest enemies here were these baboons, who could attack a line if I let them go without an arm bind. Which I didn't thanks to the scythe I was able to make from the previous boss that enabled using one of its attacks.
I was joined by a couple of chaps at the beginning - a brawn and a brains duo. They're exploring the labyrinths for the money, and joined because Oliver saw one of my party members and couldn't help but be worried. Unlike the medic from before, just hung around and didn't participate in battle. All they did was give the FOE tutorial. Some help they were.
There were two quests on this floor. The first was to gather materials for Nectar. I took the Farmer and Survivalist of my guild, made a few more, and sent them in. Unfortunately farming parties got nerfed in this game on account of their encounter reducing skills only coming at level 20 and above. Looking at it, it seems I can make a Zodiac to do that below level 20, albeit with reduced effectiveness overall. It actually took me a reset before it triggered and gave me the item I needed. I'd use this party with a Zodiac moving forward to make money as I saw fit. Once I got Flee to max level on one of the farming Farmers too, extraction became relatively painless.
Once I got to the end of the floor, which wasn't that long, I bumped into a soldier who said this before passing out. Sounds like fun. The guys were satisfied with my guild's progress and decided to take the guy back.
After a bunch of maintenance with farming, I moved onto the mini dungeon that opened up to train further - in-story at the advice of Marco and Oliver. Some guards at the start laughed about it, since the only major threats to them were these baby deer.
Still, this had some nasty fights in it that took a while until I added some levels and equipment. Mandrakes were a "bind or be bound" kind of enemy. One of the worst encounters here was the Roller/Baboon combo, which could combo to do very high damage to my whole party, as well as killing the Roller. Not even my equipment could save some of the backline from getting wrecked by that.
There were some FOEs lurking around here, the aforementioned deer. After I explored the place, since they were weak, I figured it was time for a pound-up.
---
There really is nothing to the Furyfawn. They're only marginally stronger than some of the random enemies, and could be crippled by binding their legs. It was from there more or less a turkey shoot.
---
They're so easy because killing them caused their mama to spawn. It also makes the guards who were yukking it up end up slaughtered. I couldn't quite work it down despite its color not being red - I just ran out of juice due to it having too much HP. However, I do find myself able to beat up the bears, so let's do that.
---
Cutters have a number of different attacks. They have a roar move that does very weak AoE damage on my party, and they have this charging move. After a turn of using it, they attack a row for heavy damage. The others could take it but Gundis had to be guarding to prevent a OHKO even with buffs and debuffs on her. Funny enough if it was arm bound, it would still charge but fail to use the move.
Later on in the fight it started using a move that hit twice on a single target. Very much survivable.
Slowly but surely, I wore the thing down. Was starting to run low on TP as it was getting weak, but I had plenty enough left in the tank to deal with the rest of its HP.
---
After this I go to HQ for a mission to hunt down the Berserker King, and meet one of the side characters from EO4! She speaks of her experience with the thing that beat up the guards, the Berserker King, as well as giving some advice on it. Also she only seems to want to act as a support and doesn't intend to help kill it. Well, more for us, so that'll be next time.
