EON: Exploring the world's trees, 4-2
Feb. 27th, 2019 03:30 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
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.
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.
