Down the Original Tree in HD, B13-B15
Sep. 3rd, 2024 04:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sirsystemerrorB1-B5 | B6-B10 | B11-B12 | B13-B15 | B16-B18 | B19-B20 | B21-B25 | Postgame 1 | Postgame 2
Two quests resulted from a poke into B13 before returning. One was to find a lost pearl that a woman dropped when being chased off by a horned creature. At first I thought this was the now very dead tortoises, so I spent some time searching there until I learned it's in one of the wrong pitfall rooms at the southern end of the floor. First, I had to fight a Warbull. You know, generic enemies from the first stratum? Then after that, a Hellbull, their palette swap from much later. I took it serious. It tried to charge up for an attack, but then it died before it could move.
The other would take me to B12 to investigate rising ant attacks. It just meant going through part of the floor without hitting anything running around and discovering it's egg season.
B13, besides being when I finally had to start paying more attention since the enemy levels were starting to catch up, introduced waterways. A pain to map because FOEs can cross over it and you want to mark that, but the DS games and by proxy these collections never gave you a color for that. So I used yellow, my personal designated catch-all. Speaking of FOEs, these things show up when you're in battle then try to ambush you during it. Had a funny situation when I was using Peace Ballad to regenerate TP, except I picked the wrong place for it. I was going to lure one into an ambush, only for a second to show up in just the right spot. So I quickly finished the battle and made to splatter them both one-by-one, except the FOE got a blindside! It was of little consequence because boosted Immunize just ignored their damage.
Though shortly after that, my inventory was full, so I had to head back to town anyway. Killing them got a new sword that was almost as strong as the Bardiche. Also got a new bow.
Muckdiles were crawling around the last little bit of B13. However here, they were just plain boring FOEs. I alertly swapped to the Bardiche for the slaughter. The only thing of note was Apollon missing on one! Rude!!
Of the two new quests for reaching B14, one was another gathering quest and the other needed three drops from the Moriyana enemies. I hadn't even gotten it once so far. Had to farm it out. The floor itself was the lilypad maze. I eventually made my way to the northern portion of it, which led to B13's take and chop spots. No shortcut to them, though. This is Etrian 1. I actually ended up using boosted Peace Ballad to recover TP twice during this trip.
It ended due to a full item pack, but I pushed through that northern section anyway and ended up with the Violet Key for my efforts. That meant checking out the doors, after doing the gathering quest - noticed that even on Picnic, EO1's weird level-based damage formula meant my Survivalists were taking a ton of damage. Not enough to kill straight-up, but still.
The first stratum just had a Nectar II and a Gem Staff behind its violet door. The second stratum stuff was similarly uninteresting, just item collections. But the third led to a massive backdoor through the second stratum where an optional boss would eventually show up. It had a ridiculous damage tile everywhere gimmick. I took the gathering party in on Picnic to fully map it. Before that though, I abused a Moa to regenerate TP. Surprised it was even here given how old it was as a FOE.
I made it to the exit to B15 before exploring B14, but I decided I may as well fight the boss now. I finally spent some of Protea's skill points, which I'd been hording out of uncertainty of how many levels I was going to get. Ice Wall would make this boss even more trivial.
Corotrangul follows a strict pattern for the first part of the battle until it's below 60% HP: Blizzard, Frost, Tackle, Ice Gaze, Coiling...but the poor thing barely got a chance to do anything! Crush, Caduceus, it was kind of crazy. I ended up with its rare drop on top of that after some resets.
I couldn't afford the bow it gave (yet) and in turn gave up the one made from its regular drop, but in time. There would certainly be better ones available before too long. Assuming I didn't make enough money for it before this, and if I do, I can really start killing things.
Two quests resulted from a poke into B13 before returning. One was to find a lost pearl that a woman dropped when being chased off by a horned creature. At first I thought this was the now very dead tortoises, so I spent some time searching there until I learned it's in one of the wrong pitfall rooms at the southern end of the floor. First, I had to fight a Warbull. You know, generic enemies from the first stratum? Then after that, a Hellbull, their palette swap from much later. I took it serious. It tried to charge up for an attack, but then it died before it could move.
The other would take me to B12 to investigate rising ant attacks. It just meant going through part of the floor without hitting anything running around and discovering it's egg season.
B13, besides being when I finally had to start paying more attention since the enemy levels were starting to catch up, introduced waterways. A pain to map because FOEs can cross over it and you want to mark that, but the DS games and by proxy these collections never gave you a color for that. So I used yellow, my personal designated catch-all. Speaking of FOEs, these things show up when you're in battle then try to ambush you during it. Had a funny situation when I was using Peace Ballad to regenerate TP, except I picked the wrong place for it. I was going to lure one into an ambush, only for a second to show up in just the right spot. So I quickly finished the battle and made to splatter them both one-by-one, except the FOE got a blindside! It was of little consequence because boosted Immunize just ignored their damage.
Though shortly after that, my inventory was full, so I had to head back to town anyway. Killing them got a new sword that was almost as strong as the Bardiche. Also got a new bow.
Muckdiles were crawling around the last little bit of B13. However here, they were just plain boring FOEs. I alertly swapped to the Bardiche for the slaughter. The only thing of note was Apollon missing on one! Rude!!
Of the two new quests for reaching B14, one was another gathering quest and the other needed three drops from the Moriyana enemies. I hadn't even gotten it once so far. Had to farm it out. The floor itself was the lilypad maze. I eventually made my way to the northern portion of it, which led to B13's take and chop spots. No shortcut to them, though. This is Etrian 1. I actually ended up using boosted Peace Ballad to recover TP twice during this trip.
It ended due to a full item pack, but I pushed through that northern section anyway and ended up with the Violet Key for my efforts. That meant checking out the doors, after doing the gathering quest - noticed that even on Picnic, EO1's weird level-based damage formula meant my Survivalists were taking a ton of damage. Not enough to kill straight-up, but still.
The first stratum just had a Nectar II and a Gem Staff behind its violet door. The second stratum stuff was similarly uninteresting, just item collections. But the third led to a massive backdoor through the second stratum where an optional boss would eventually show up. It had a ridiculous damage tile everywhere gimmick. I took the gathering party in on Picnic to fully map it. Before that though, I abused a Moa to regenerate TP. Surprised it was even here given how old it was as a FOE.
I made it to the exit to B15 before exploring B14, but I decided I may as well fight the boss now. I finally spent some of Protea's skill points, which I'd been hording out of uncertainty of how many levels I was going to get. Ice Wall would make this boss even more trivial.
Corotrangul follows a strict pattern for the first part of the battle until it's below 60% HP: Blizzard, Frost, Tackle, Ice Gaze, Coiling...but the poor thing barely got a chance to do anything! Crush, Caduceus, it was kind of crazy. I ended up with its rare drop on top of that after some resets.
I couldn't afford the bow it gave (yet) and in turn gave up the one made from its regular drop, but in time. There would certainly be better ones available before too long. Assuming I didn't make enough money for it before this, and if I do, I can really start killing things.
