I love the Etrian Odyssey series. I'm someone who complains a lot about the series, especially preUntold, but it comes from a place of heart. For all the criticisms I give, I've dumped a ton of hours into these games. Untold, Untold 2, and Nexus are by far my most played games on the DS, approach hundreds of hours each and even run counts in the double digits. I think the series had a rocky start, Atlus hit their stride in Untold and every game after it has been pretty good.
I think it's safe for me to say that 2: Untold (I'll abbreviate it as 2U) is my favorite game in the series. Etrian Odyssey 2 was a wild experience with really dumb design decisions and an abysmal QA. It was a really dumb game, but it was a funny type of dumb game. 2U mostly kept all the good parts of the original 2 but removed a lot of the balance issues and a lot of the jank. Classes that used to be basically unplayable got huge buffs and many of the overpowered things got reigned down a notch. There are lots of toys for classes to play with, and with the grimoire system that you'll see later there's a ton you can experiment with. The game also has a massive class roster really helps make this game extremely replayable.
After playing the game a few times, I noticed some issues that really started to bug me and I'll mention them as I go along. The biggest issue I have with the game, however, is that random encounters can be really poorly designed. They're either filled with enemies that have pitiful hp pools, can be locked down a bit too reliably for my tastes, or just simply don't make any sense and the enemies either don't synergize well or have self sabotage mechanics (and I'll rant about the latter as we get deep into the game). EO has had an issue where enemies can't match up to the player since its inception, but at least in the original two games they were mostly just overcompensated statistically (or in 1's case, benefiting from a broken damage formula), and even then the difficulty usually tapers off past the first five or so floors. For a series that refers to itself as "a series for masochists", random encounters in this game can be frankly really pathetic.
And that's why I'm playing this patch made by Kyasarintsu, a friend of mine. In the next post, you will see an explanation of what this patch is and what it's designed to do. In my opinion, it makes the game a lot more fun because randoms were honestly at one of their lowest points in the series. This game has pretty split opinions regarding boss design, their damage, and their HP, but honestly I prefer the bosses because they at least put up a fight. I'd rather fight scripted fights with heavy damage than a ton of enemies that are made of paper and fall over to any aoe damage skill and can be shut down with ailments pretty much all the time.
I'm assuming that people who are reading this know the game enough so I won't get into the gritty details of the game so I won't be going into too much depth regarding the mechanics. I will write my opinion on things as I go and I will detail any changes in enemies and describe what new enemies do, so this Let's Play probably isn't suited for someone who isn't knowledgeable about this game. If you want an informative and detailed let's play for all types of players, there are some really good ones made by others in the community.
Etrian Odyssey 2: Untold hard patch
Hi, I'm kyasarintsu and I'm the one who made this patch. I love this series a lot and I play it constantly. I started with the DS trilogy and EO2 Untold was always one of my favorite games once I first played it on the 3DS, due to its massive class roster and large amount of content. However, a problem that started to bug me more and more is that some of the enemy and encounter design can be pretty lackluster. After my hundredth playthrough, I started wondering what it would be like if this game were made for someone like me—and who better to make the game for me than myself? After lots of procrastination, I started working on a hard mode mod, with many ideas tossed at me from others in the EO community. I plan to publicly release this when I finally finish it. I guess this is a sneak peak.
Anyone who wants to see the changes in a further-detailed, rambly changelog can click here.
What I set out to do was make the random battles of the game more difficult. Old monsters have learned a lot of new tricks and there are plenty of new monsters joining their ranks. Stats, resistances, skills, and AI have been adjusted across the board and nearly every random encounter group has been adjusted to be more deadly or varied. There's a lot of room for improvement here and, with my constant playtesting, I'm always making refinements. This is my first attempt at any sort of project like this, and I've learned a lot in the process. This mod isn't done yet; there's a lot of missing polish, but I have gone through basically every single area in the game and made adjustments to nearly every enemy in the game. There have been a lot of hilarious mistakes made during the process, and maybe during this let's play we'll find a silly oversight or two to amuse ourselves with. People who want to play through this mod should use a very well-balanced party, unless they're someone like ant who knows exactly what they're doing with a weird gimmick team.
Oh, and because I'm really nerdy sometimes, I'm retranslating a handful of names because the originals are wrong or not consistent with other games. You won't believe how much it bothered me that they erroneously named the three-headed pumpkin "cursed pumpkin" in localization.
Anyone who wants to see the changes in a further-detailed, rambly changelog can click here.
What I set out to do was make the random battles of the game more difficult. Old monsters have learned a lot of new tricks and there are plenty of new monsters joining their ranks. Stats, resistances, skills, and AI have been adjusted across the board and nearly every random encounter group has been adjusted to be more deadly or varied. There's a lot of room for improvement here and, with my constant playtesting, I'm always making refinements. This is my first attempt at any sort of project like this, and I've learned a lot in the process. This mod isn't done yet; there's a lot of missing polish, but I have gone through basically every single area in the game and made adjustments to nearly every enemy in the game. There have been a lot of hilarious mistakes made during the process, and maybe during this let's play we'll find a silly oversight or two to amuse ourselves with. People who want to play through this mod should use a very well-balanced party, unless they're someone like ant who knows exactly what they're doing with a weird gimmick team.
Oh, and because I'm really nerdy sometimes, I'm retranslating a handful of names because the originals are wrong or not consistent with other games. You won't believe how much it bothered me that they erroneously named the three-headed pumpkin "cursed pumpkin" in localization.
Last edited by kyasarintsu on Sun Jun 28, 2020 8:19 am, edited 2 times in total.
For this run, I'll be doing one of my favorite team comps. This team comp is entirely focused on not getting hit. While everyone knows of dodgetanking, this team focuses on increases its evasion to the point that they don't even need one. Things will be too busy avoiding hits that my team will not need a tank or any other defensive measure, and because of all the evades my Survivalists can eventually start spamming Hazy Arrow every turn if I'm lucky.
ant is the ronin. Ronin is a class that gets a lot of criticism in this game, and I can honestly see why. In every other game, Upper Stance was by far the best option the class had in 1 (where basically every skill but Midareba was useless), 2, and Untold and the other stances were generally kind of bad, with Clear Stance in particular being downright pathetic in the original game. Here? Drawing Stance is the best stance. It has the best aoe and does decent damage and most of its skills are ranged. Upper Stance got nerfed really hard, needing heavy investment to even be comparable to its Untold variant, and even when maxed the damage increase it gives is pitiful in comparison (20% at level 20 here compared to 40% at 15 in Untold). They nerfed Upper Stance's ultimate skill, Swallow Strike, really hard for some reason and isn't even much stronger than the stance's basic skill. This means that Upper Stance doesn't really have that big a damage advantage over the other stances, and once you get Peerless Stance Swallow is simply a garbage skill, being weaker than Drawing Stance's best skill but with a considerable chance of missing.
Drawing Stance increases action speed and evasion, and they're actually really useful for such a fragile class. Ronin can actually get insanely evasive as the game goes on, and for certain fights I will be potentially using my ronin to dodge tank heavy attacks when my Survivalists aren't able to.
I'm really conflicted with Dark Hunter. It's a class that can deal outright obscene damage but only in specific and short windows. I think it's grossly overcompensated in damage for how effective lockdown mechanics are in this game, and it can pretty much solo bosses on its own with two of its skills and it can honestly feel really cheesy.
This time I won't actually be using any of those skills though. I'm actually going to have it focus on the Baits. Bait and Magibait were two extremely strong moves in 2 that were pretty much the strongest skills in the game (ignoring Revenge). It was pretty easy to use because bosses had many aoes and random target skills, so with enemy manipulation or simply just spamming the skill you can deal 400% damage per counter, which is pretty ridiculous when Midareba was considered overpowered at 420%. And unless you used the Dark hunter's overpowered force skill, Ecstasy was basically not an option so they were the skills Dark Hunters used to slay bosses.
They naturally got nerfed really hard in the Untolds, both in values and because Ecstasy and the newly-added Soul Liberator are extremely powerful and way easier to use. The baits can hit really hard if Dark Hunter is targeted four times, and that's why I added Dark hunter to this composition (this was originally a War Magus in my previous run). What a lot of people don't know is that the Baits, for some reason, activate even when Dark Hunter evades an attack. This means that as long as I can prevent my Dark Hunter from taking damage it'll deal a lot of damage. tank also has the only defensive debuff in my team so Snake Eyes is really good. They'll also dabble in some whip skills and I might actually use Viper for the first time In my entire history of playing this game.
Survivalists got greatly buffed from their Untold showing and they might be my favorite class in the game. They can do a lot of things: they can dps, inflict ailments, decrease the enemy's hit, act as a dodgetank, and even act as a pseudohealer with items. bomb will be focusing on dealing damage and inflicting ailments. Blind is a really good ailment for this team since it dramatically increases my chance of evasion, and with the Survivalist's force boost (Illusion Step) I can actually deal a pretty considerable amount of damage and create a ton of chasers for ant, which will take a bit of sp to set up.
Normally I don't like stacking classes, but bomb and worms have two distinctly different roles that I don't actually mind doing it. worms's main job will be using Trick Step, an underrated skill that lowers an enemy's accuracy, and also eventually using skills like Scapegoat and Swap Step. They'll play a more supportive role, but that can still enable chasers the same way bomb can and will be a backup ailment user in desperation. They might even use Efficiency if I find it necessary.
Troubadour is probably the best class in the game. It's a support that buffs your team, but due the way it bypassing the extremely penalizing diminishing returns system on buffs it can enable a lot of damage. It's also an extremely underrated healer with Life Ensemble, has Energy Ensemble to allow you to rush skills on your other party members without having them dry up on TP and, most importantly for my team, can increase evasion and imbue skills. My team lacks elementals entirely, but with Preludes I can dish out some considerable elemental damage by making Perfect Chaser or illusion Step followups elemental. Interestingly, this comp is so fast that my Troub is consistently outsped by the other members so I'll have to throw a Speed Up grimoire somewhere when it's usually an inconsequential passive for the class to have.
For those wondering, I will not be using the Apple Matcha Shaved Ice. I think it's way too powerful and makes blind way too strong an ailment. I know people like playing with as much consistency as possible but I don't. I have other foods I'd rather eat than it anyways.
ant is the ronin. Ronin is a class that gets a lot of criticism in this game, and I can honestly see why. In every other game, Upper Stance was by far the best option the class had in 1 (where basically every skill but Midareba was useless), 2, and Untold and the other stances were generally kind of bad, with Clear Stance in particular being downright pathetic in the original game. Here? Drawing Stance is the best stance. It has the best aoe and does decent damage and most of its skills are ranged. Upper Stance got nerfed really hard, needing heavy investment to even be comparable to its Untold variant, and even when maxed the damage increase it gives is pitiful in comparison (20% at level 20 here compared to 40% at 15 in Untold). They nerfed Upper Stance's ultimate skill, Swallow Strike, really hard for some reason and isn't even much stronger than the stance's basic skill. This means that Upper Stance doesn't really have that big a damage advantage over the other stances, and once you get Peerless Stance Swallow is simply a garbage skill, being weaker than Drawing Stance's best skill but with a considerable chance of missing.
Drawing Stance increases action speed and evasion, and they're actually really useful for such a fragile class. Ronin can actually get insanely evasive as the game goes on, and for certain fights I will be potentially using my ronin to dodge tank heavy attacks when my Survivalists aren't able to.
I'm really conflicted with Dark Hunter. It's a class that can deal outright obscene damage but only in specific and short windows. I think it's grossly overcompensated in damage for how effective lockdown mechanics are in this game, and it can pretty much solo bosses on its own with two of its skills and it can honestly feel really cheesy.
This time I won't actually be using any of those skills though. I'm actually going to have it focus on the Baits. Bait and Magibait were two extremely strong moves in 2 that were pretty much the strongest skills in the game (ignoring Revenge). It was pretty easy to use because bosses had many aoes and random target skills, so with enemy manipulation or simply just spamming the skill you can deal 400% damage per counter, which is pretty ridiculous when Midareba was considered overpowered at 420%. And unless you used the Dark hunter's overpowered force skill, Ecstasy was basically not an option so they were the skills Dark Hunters used to slay bosses.
They naturally got nerfed really hard in the Untolds, both in values and because Ecstasy and the newly-added Soul Liberator are extremely powerful and way easier to use. The baits can hit really hard if Dark Hunter is targeted four times, and that's why I added Dark hunter to this composition (this was originally a War Magus in my previous run). What a lot of people don't know is that the Baits, for some reason, activate even when Dark Hunter evades an attack. This means that as long as I can prevent my Dark Hunter from taking damage it'll deal a lot of damage. tank also has the only defensive debuff in my team so Snake Eyes is really good. They'll also dabble in some whip skills and I might actually use Viper for the first time In my entire history of playing this game.
Survivalists got greatly buffed from their Untold showing and they might be my favorite class in the game. They can do a lot of things: they can dps, inflict ailments, decrease the enemy's hit, act as a dodgetank, and even act as a pseudohealer with items. bomb will be focusing on dealing damage and inflicting ailments. Blind is a really good ailment for this team since it dramatically increases my chance of evasion, and with the Survivalist's force boost (Illusion Step) I can actually deal a pretty considerable amount of damage and create a ton of chasers for ant, which will take a bit of sp to set up.
Normally I don't like stacking classes, but bomb and worms have two distinctly different roles that I don't actually mind doing it. worms's main job will be using Trick Step, an underrated skill that lowers an enemy's accuracy, and also eventually using skills like Scapegoat and Swap Step. They'll play a more supportive role, but that can still enable chasers the same way bomb can and will be a backup ailment user in desperation. They might even use Efficiency if I find it necessary.
Troubadour is probably the best class in the game. It's a support that buffs your team, but due the way it bypassing the extremely penalizing diminishing returns system on buffs it can enable a lot of damage. It's also an extremely underrated healer with Life Ensemble, has Energy Ensemble to allow you to rush skills on your other party members without having them dry up on TP and, most importantly for my team, can increase evasion and imbue skills. My team lacks elementals entirely, but with Preludes I can dish out some considerable elemental damage by making Perfect Chaser or illusion Step followups elemental. Interestingly, this comp is so fast that my Troub is consistently outsped by the other members so I'll have to throw a Speed Up grimoire somewhere when it's usually an inconsequential passive for the class to have.
For those wondering, I will not be using the Apple Matcha Shaved Ice. I think it's way too powerful and makes blind way too strong an ailment. I know people like playing with as much consistency as possible but I don't. I have other foods I'd rather eat than it anyways.
Spending my skill points, I gave ant two point in Katana Mastery and one point in Sheath Strike. To be honest, I really hate how the Ronin's tree looks. There are so many segmented options that it can be pretty daunting. Sheath Strike lets me use Drawing Stance and I'm maxing Katana Mastery to get Perfect Chaser. Most people write this off as a pretty bad skill, but it isn't. I think it's a bit too inflexible, but with my comp it can actually deal a pretty considerable amount of damage, and it's quite cheap too.
tank put a point in Whip Master to unlock her three bind skills and is maxing Phys Attack Up to get the baits. Could they really not think of a better place to put this in her tree? Common passives are generally pretty horrible in this game so it basically feels like I'm investing in nothing to get two skills. Really boring.
bomb put three points into Bow Mastery, unlocking Flank Shot and the ailment skills. I'm actually beelining Saggitarius Shot because it has great synergy with Perfect Chaser.
worms put one point in Bow Mastery for Flank Shot and is maxing Trick Step immediately. Also why aren't skills unlocked through levelling other skills and passives learned automatically like skills you obtain by levelling the class's mastery? It makes some things feel like an unnecessary SP dump.
diddy put three points in Song Mastery and will be investing in Lightfoot for a bit.
I buy everyone a Leaf Sandal. More agility means I'll evade more and my Survivalists will deal slightly more damage. My action speed is noticeable increased too, but only tank really feels an effect. I buy a few Medicas as well because I don't have a healer right now.
I don't buy armor. Why? Because armor is awful in this game. For anyone unfamiliar with the first two games in the series, you wouldn't know that armor used to be pretty good. Considerably less so in 1 where your level mattered more than anything, but with how strong defensive buffs were it was a nice damage reduction on top but wasn't mandatory. It was extremely strong in 2, and then 3 and 4 drastically nerfed it to the point that it's basically never worth using unless it increases your HP, VIT, or gives you stat bonuses you're looking for. This game is no exception. My team basically gets its ultimate armor 11 floors in, and it isn't until I get the class exclusive armors at the very end of postgame will I be upgrading. Maybe tank might change once or twice, but definitely not the rest. I don't know why it took until the seventh game, Etrian Odyssey 5, for them to fix this. Honestly Untold gets a reputation for being unnecessarily cruel and I wouldn't be surprised if most players dump all their money into entirely useless pieces of equipment! This series used to have "trap skills" in the DS era, skills that were completely underpowered, didn't work, or were completely redundant. Most of the 3DS games have a trap gameplay mechanic! How did they think this was acceptable? if you're looking to boost your defense, look for anything that increases HP, VIT, TEC (if it's an elemental you're worried about), or something that increases resistance. The DEF stat reduces damage by a pitiful amount, so unless the DEF gain is absolutely massive (like, entire stratums apart), don't focus on armor if it doesn't increase your stats.
Anyways now that I'm done with that rant, it's time to get exploring!
But before we go anywhere, the game needs to shove some tutorials in our face. After playing all the previous games in the entry, it annoys me that this still can't be skipped. In fact, 2U has a problem in general with overtutorializing things, and it's a problem throughout most of the main game. The first few sets of tutorials are mostly harmless, but later on the game basically tells you the answers to puzzles and the tutorials slow down the pace of exploration every now and then.
A few steps later we walk into the first encounter!
The forest snail is updated a bit this patch. Hard Shell is now an aoe buff that increases defenses and it's a bit tankier. This makes it less of a timewaster and more of a full support enemy, which is pretty nice. This means that it's a priority enemy to kill and it'll survive a bit more attacks than before. Because of how low your stats are at this point, formations aren't really changed much over here. I can basically autobattle this if I...
I forgot to buy tank a whip. This means she can't use Gag, Cuffs, and Shackles at all and all she can use is her force break and basic attacks to deal damage. She'll basically be dead weight outside of using her force skills. Whoops. At least this formation is pretty trivial.
A few steps later, I run into this again. While this patch was designed to be harder, it isn't sadistic. It's not going to pull out anything nasty in the tutorial area, right?
This formation is a bit harder, but still pretty manageable. Clawed Mole deals considerably more damage than the Hedgehog, but it has a new trick up its sleeve this patch. It now has Arm Strike, an average attack with a chance of binding your arms. Arm bind can be pretty scary, and it can suck to have your attackers and tanks unable to do their job at the right time. I defeat this with no issues.
I approached the first gathering spot. I know I boast a bit too much on how lucky I am in these games, but my gathering rng is horrendous. I swear I get blindsided half the time I try gathering, but the encounters so far have been pretty tame so I might as well try, right?
Crap. this blindside is brutal. Crawler was already extremely scary in the original, but with backup this formation is way more dangerous.
Our first new enemy! Forest Butterfly has two skills. Shiny Scales attempts to blind a line and Harsh Noise has a chance of head binding a line. For my team whose primary defense is evasion, any ailment that prevents evasion is scary.
This is Crawler's basic attack. It hits that hard. Ensnaring Web hit deals light damage to one line and attempts to bind legs. I honestly would've preferred that. It even landed a hit on the one person that wasn't blinded.
Clawed Mole just added some more hurt. You can see its new arm bind in action too!
I don't want to risk this. I'll just use Issen and try to instantly kill them.
I swapped tank and worms around and I'm having worms use a nectar on bomb to revive her while diddy uses Lightfoot to increase my chases of evading attacks since I can't afford more hits from Crawler. I don't know why i had worms use the nectar instead of tank when tank is effectively useless. I'm dumb.
Managed to revive bomb and I got a lucky Issen that killed the Clawed Mole and the Crawler and got the Forest Butterfly really low. tank missed and contributed nothing if you're wondering. Luckily the Forest Butterfly didn't do anything consequential so everyone survived unscathed.
That was close. You know the worst part of that formation? That wasn't even a gathering ambush. That was an ambush one step away from the gathering spot. I decide to not even risk gathering and run straight to the treasure chest, which spawns the foes on this floor.
Normally I would fight attempt to fight this at level 6 or 7, but they're considerably stronger in this patch and I just want to leave. I don't know why Atlus made them make the sound they do, but deer aren't horses and I don't know why Nexus didn't fix this.
I ran into Hedgehog + Mole a few times. Nothing to write home about but I did get my first level up.
Nothing really interesting happened. ant is continuing to max Katana Mastery, tank is still leveling Phys Attack Up, bomb is investing more to get Saggitarius Shot, worms put another point in Trick Step, and diddy put another point in Lightfoot.
I drink the water from the event at the east and I untangle the whip and kill the Forest Snails in the forced encounter and I'm ready to leave.
My team gets a level and a half from this. Sadly there's still nothing interesting to write about. The same exact investments I made last level up.
In my entire trip I got four drops, and I need a lot of drops for two of the quests I took. I bought bomb a Speed Talisman for more damage and more evasion.
I rested up and saved and I'm ready to continue floor 1. But before I go...
I buy tank a whip because I almost when I was at the shop. Again.
Next time I'll be continuing the rest of the first floor. I'm sorry if this post was uneventful but outside of one formation nothing I fought was very interesting and worth detailing. Now that we're out of the tutorial, the upcoming encounters will be a lot more interesting!
We go back to the first floor and only after a few steps do we run into an encounter.
We run into a similar formation, but this time the Crawler's in the back. There's a reason for this, which you'll see later.
Typical first turn. Couldn't land Cuffs sadly. Gonna attempt arm binding the Crawler against and I'm gonna pick off the front line.
I won't be using Shelter much, but for encounters like this it's nice since I can't rely on evasion against leg bind and blind. The Crawler's more likely to use Ensnaring Web when in the back, which isn't an insignificant amount of chip damage.
Luckily due to arm bind, the Crawler's second Ensnaring Web dealt little. I guess I'll heal up ant and finish this.
And here's where we get our first instance of uneven EXP. I used to be one of those players that would ragequit when the bars are uneven, but I've gotten softer over the years and after playing EO3 I stopped caring altogether. It's not like this is EO2 where dying to a boss makes you miss out on two entire levels or something.
And with that, I'm going back to town, healed up, and came back. I went to the right side to remember to pick up the water for a quest, and I ran into Hedgehog + Mole about four times. Citra rng can be strange. At the last hallway I run into a familar formation:
I didn't want to deal with this.
Took a few more steps and ran into this filler again:
Preemptive encounter too. Free autobattle. I at least got 4 level ups.
Nothing changed from last level up. The same Katana Mastery, Phys ATK Up, Lightfoot, and Bow Mastery investment as last time. bomb learned Drop Shot, which she will be levelling for Saggitarius Shot. I pick up some gathering materials and head to the stairs.
I really, really hate Floor Jump. While its purpose was to cut down on all the backtracking, it affects a lot of things indirectly:
1) Ariadne Thread is a lot less meaningful because you can always Floor Jump to the first floor and warp out, making Thread pretty obsolete unless you're deep into a new floor and can't walk out. Return Flute is basically just a better Thread because you can warp to the start of the floor, go to the previous floor, and Floor Jump back to town. This game has a lot of massive shortcuts too so it's not very common to be in a bad situation to begin with.
2) Every time you enter a dungeon, you have to see the splash screen, warp to the staircase, wait for the game to warp you to it, go up the stairs, and wait a few seconds to enter the next floor. It doesn't sound like much, but after playing 5/Nexus you'll start to really notice how much these 10-15 seconds add up. There's no good reason reason why you can't just start on the floor you want. At least this game doesn't have the restore points of Untold which turned exploration sustain into a complete joke because you would just Floor Jump to the eighth floor very often just to take advantage of the water which would fully restore your team.
Anyways, time to turn in some quests.
Looks like running into that Hedgehog a million times ended up being a good thing after all. No level ups though.
I get access to the cafe (which I name diddy), and I go to the shop to sell.
Here is a pretty massive change in this patch. Blast Grenades are now totally useless. They didn't get nerfed at all actually. It's just that all the enemies they used to work on don't charge anymore so they can't cheese a lot of fights. Blast Grenades were really unhealthy and could totally trivialize a ton of enemies and even some foes. To compensate, charge enemies deal noticeably less damage in favor of being all or nothing, making them consistent threats without being overbearing. Certain enemies, like Sauroposeidon, used to deal so much damage even without the charge that they'd basically just oneshot a row. Enemies like these got damage mod nerfs to be more of a standardized enemy. Blast Grenades will be replaced later, but for now you should just sell all of them you find.
Next post we'll enter the second floor. Hopefully now with more than two formations!
We run into a similar formation, but this time the Crawler's in the back. There's a reason for this, which you'll see later.
Typical first turn. Couldn't land Cuffs sadly. Gonna attempt arm binding the Crawler against and I'm gonna pick off the front line.
I won't be using Shelter much, but for encounters like this it's nice since I can't rely on evasion against leg bind and blind. The Crawler's more likely to use Ensnaring Web when in the back, which isn't an insignificant amount of chip damage.
Luckily due to arm bind, the Crawler's second Ensnaring Web dealt little. I guess I'll heal up ant and finish this.
And here's where we get our first instance of uneven EXP. I used to be one of those players that would ragequit when the bars are uneven, but I've gotten softer over the years and after playing EO3 I stopped caring altogether. It's not like this is EO2 where dying to a boss makes you miss out on two entire levels or something.
And with that, I'm going back to town, healed up, and came back. I went to the right side to remember to pick up the water for a quest, and I ran into Hedgehog + Mole about four times. Citra rng can be strange. At the last hallway I run into a familar formation:
I didn't want to deal with this.
Took a few more steps and ran into this filler again:
Preemptive encounter too. Free autobattle. I at least got 4 level ups.
Nothing changed from last level up. The same Katana Mastery, Phys ATK Up, Lightfoot, and Bow Mastery investment as last time. bomb learned Drop Shot, which she will be levelling for Saggitarius Shot. I pick up some gathering materials and head to the stairs.
I really, really hate Floor Jump. While its purpose was to cut down on all the backtracking, it affects a lot of things indirectly:
1) Ariadne Thread is a lot less meaningful because you can always Floor Jump to the first floor and warp out, making Thread pretty obsolete unless you're deep into a new floor and can't walk out. Return Flute is basically just a better Thread because you can warp to the start of the floor, go to the previous floor, and Floor Jump back to town. This game has a lot of massive shortcuts too so it's not very common to be in a bad situation to begin with.
2) Every time you enter a dungeon, you have to see the splash screen, warp to the staircase, wait for the game to warp you to it, go up the stairs, and wait a few seconds to enter the next floor. It doesn't sound like much, but after playing 5/Nexus you'll start to really notice how much these 10-15 seconds add up. There's no good reason reason why you can't just start on the floor you want. At least this game doesn't have the restore points of Untold which turned exploration sustain into a complete joke because you would just Floor Jump to the eighth floor very often just to take advantage of the water which would fully restore your team.
Anyways, time to turn in some quests.
Looks like running into that Hedgehog a million times ended up being a good thing after all. No level ups though.
I get access to the cafe (which I name diddy), and I go to the shop to sell.
Here is a pretty massive change in this patch. Blast Grenades are now totally useless. They didn't get nerfed at all actually. It's just that all the enemies they used to work on don't charge anymore so they can't cheese a lot of fights. Blast Grenades were really unhealthy and could totally trivialize a ton of enemies and even some foes. To compensate, charge enemies deal noticeably less damage in favor of being all or nothing, making them consistent threats without being overbearing. Certain enemies, like Sauroposeidon, used to deal so much damage even without the charge that they'd basically just oneshot a row. Enemies like these got damage mod nerfs to be more of a standardized enemy. Blast Grenades will be replaced later, but for now you should just sell all of them you find.
Next post we'll enter the second floor. Hopefully now with more than two formations!
We enter the second floor and sprint to the mine pont. I'm hoping to pick up an Amazonite for a later quest. I run into a new formation:
Venomfly (named Poisonous Butterfly to match its Japanese name) is untouched in this patch, and instead got indirectly buffed by being more commonly used and in formations where you'd much rather kill something else.
the Sunflower is quite a bit different. As it's no longer a charge enemy, it's now such a simple elemental enemy that hits a row pretty hard. My team has awful TEC so it can oneshot me if I get lucky, but it's pretty squishy.
My team does a pretty good job against formations that are weak to stab. It's very fast and Flank Shot is a cheap aoe.
Note that diddy is slower than almost everyone. This is a consistent problem for a while which really hurts Warrior Song and the Preludes. Song Mastery will need investments to fix this and maybe some Speed Ups.
Everyone but bomb levels up from this formation. It's the usual: Katana Mastery, Phys ATK Up, Trick Step, and Lightfoot.
I pick up the Blind Bow and give it to diddy. Bows make him faster, it's slightly stronger than the default weapon, and it never hurts to land blind when i'm out of options.
I make a loop and get past all these Raptors without a single encounter. As soon as I do though I get a nasty encounter:
You know how I feel about Crawlers and enemies with blind.
This is why Issen was made.
I turn the corner and find familiar faces:
I don't have Issen and I don't feel comfortable burning worms's Summer Rain so I gotta play this carefully.
I have tank try to use Cuffs on one of the Crawlers to nerf any hit they make while bomb and worms try to kill the Forest Butterfly. I put tank in the back while worms uses her force boost for extra security. I value the arm bind more than the damage tank will do.
Darn, I thought Post-initiative would've secured his survival. It's a skill I'll actually be using a lot. It's a pretty effective evasion increase when stacked with other options and when ant's waiting for other people to set up he might as well use it.
Anyways, I make my next move, with diddy tossing a nectar to revive ant.
Unlucky. At least I got the Butterfly out of the picture. Couldn't get Cuffs on the second Crawler either. I'll just try to blind it instead.
Good call since Cuffs missed again. They're pretty much dead now.
That was annoying. I continue moving onwards and fight the tutorial rare Clawed Mole, open the shortcut, and leave. worms levelled up, and I invest a point in Drop Shot.
I turn in the Amazonite and get a lot of EXP.
Katana Mastery, Phys ATK up, Trick Step. Instead of continuing on levelling Lightfoot, I actually invest in Song Mastery because I want the Preludes. These are incredibly broken beause you can bypass diminishing returns with them, but I use them for the imbue. With a Prelude, Perfect Chaser, the Survivalists' basic attacks, and Illusion Step Chasers all become composite with the respective element. This is a huge increase of damage for just one buff, and it's a major way my team bypasses physical resistances, especially stab. ant will probably get Ronin elemental aoes later, but that'll be well into lategame probably.
Sadly, Preludes do not change the element of the Baits. tank will need a palm to bypass physical resistances.
Anyways, on to floor 2. We get to the part where Wulfgar shows us the pit floor and we run into a formation.
That monstrosity is actually a Poison Butterfly and Forest Butterfly. They just occupy the same space.
Rollers got a buff here. They resist cut and stab and Rolling now pierces and attempts paralysis.
In the main game I'm actually really down on Drop Shot. It's a skill that feels like an SP dump for Sagittarius Shot and randoms weren't threatening enough to really warrant using it. Now, it got indirectly massively buffed. Many pesky support enemies are put in the back now and the fact that formations are often a lot more filled means that killing a specific target fast is really nice.
And with that turn, I proceed to autobattle to victory, reach the stairs, and go back to town.
I babysit Quona for a quest. If you act rude to her and tell her that you don't like interruptions, you can actually end this quest really fast. Your reward is reduced and Cass even scolds you for being mean to a little girl.
Usual level ups in Katana Mastery, Phys Up, Drop Shot, and Trick Step. I do level up Song Mastery to 5 and get the Preludes. As said before, these are absolutely invaluable.
I go through the grimoire tutorial, and equip everyone filler grimoires on their slots. You need a grimoire on in order to activate grimoire chances, and I can't really use any of these skills. Well, except for one:
Despite what you'd think, this is actually one of the best skills my team can have. See, with Perfect Chaser, ant follows both the basic attack and the Illusion Step chaser. With Double Attack, I will get four chases per survivalist. Multishot costs 12 TP at level 1 for 220% damage. Double Attack gives me 200% damage and two chases from Perfect Chaser, which deals about 125% per chase early on. This makes Perfect Chaser extremely economical. With crits, Double Attack skyrockets to 150% per hit (or 300%), which is great but worse than and about on par with Multi-Shot 9. If that wasn't enough, weaknesses in this game are usually 125%, and if I give my Survivalists a prelude their basic attacks will carry that element, so that 300% from Double Attack crits x 1.25 = 375% damage. That's not all. Illusion Step benefits from Preludes, and Illusion Step deals 100-300%% depending on your level (I'll just use 100% for calculations). This means:
Regular Double Attack with Illusion Step = 200% + 200% = 400% damage
2 crits without imbues with Illusion Step = 300% + 200% = 500% damage
Imbued Double Attack with Illusion Step = 250% + 250% = 500% damage
2 imbued crits with Illusion Step = 375% + 250% = 625% damage
This is actually a ton of damage you can squeeze out for 0 TP. It requires luck, but remember that Fencer exists. Fencer 10 significantly increases the chance to crit and makes crits deal 160% per hit meaning Double Attack will deal 320% or 400% with imbues. This makes feeding the Landsharks actually incredibly important, since I want better Double Attack grimoires for better consistency and Fencer 10 for more damage. Multi-Shot level 16 and up will outdamage an imbued Double Atack (20 deals 440% damage), but for a very long time this will be a very good source of damage. It will eventually fall of towards the later half when Hazy Arrow gets online and Double Action grimoires start popping up, but the Attack command will be a very good source of damage for a very long time. This'll always stay relevant against stab-resistant enemies, so this strategy will never go away.
I'll add Perfect Chaser's damage when it becomes online, and boy does it get juicy there.
Next update will be a bit more substantial. Perfect Chaser will be online, we'll be tackling two floors at once (Floor 3 is too short), and we'll be fighting some buffed foes.
Venomfly (named Poisonous Butterfly to match its Japanese name) is untouched in this patch, and instead got indirectly buffed by being more commonly used and in formations where you'd much rather kill something else.
the Sunflower is quite a bit different. As it's no longer a charge enemy, it's now such a simple elemental enemy that hits a row pretty hard. My team has awful TEC so it can oneshot me if I get lucky, but it's pretty squishy.
My team does a pretty good job against formations that are weak to stab. It's very fast and Flank Shot is a cheap aoe.
Note that diddy is slower than almost everyone. This is a consistent problem for a while which really hurts Warrior Song and the Preludes. Song Mastery will need investments to fix this and maybe some Speed Ups.
Everyone but bomb levels up from this formation. It's the usual: Katana Mastery, Phys ATK Up, Trick Step, and Lightfoot.
I pick up the Blind Bow and give it to diddy. Bows make him faster, it's slightly stronger than the default weapon, and it never hurts to land blind when i'm out of options.
I make a loop and get past all these Raptors without a single encounter. As soon as I do though I get a nasty encounter:
You know how I feel about Crawlers and enemies with blind.
This is why Issen was made.
I turn the corner and find familiar faces:
I don't have Issen and I don't feel comfortable burning worms's Summer Rain so I gotta play this carefully.
I have tank try to use Cuffs on one of the Crawlers to nerf any hit they make while bomb and worms try to kill the Forest Butterfly. I put tank in the back while worms uses her force boost for extra security. I value the arm bind more than the damage tank will do.
Darn, I thought Post-initiative would've secured his survival. It's a skill I'll actually be using a lot. It's a pretty effective evasion increase when stacked with other options and when ant's waiting for other people to set up he might as well use it.
Anyways, I make my next move, with diddy tossing a nectar to revive ant.
Unlucky. At least I got the Butterfly out of the picture. Couldn't get Cuffs on the second Crawler either. I'll just try to blind it instead.
Good call since Cuffs missed again. They're pretty much dead now.
That was annoying. I continue moving onwards and fight the tutorial rare Clawed Mole, open the shortcut, and leave. worms levelled up, and I invest a point in Drop Shot.
I turn in the Amazonite and get a lot of EXP.
Katana Mastery, Phys ATK up, Trick Step. Instead of continuing on levelling Lightfoot, I actually invest in Song Mastery because I want the Preludes. These are incredibly broken beause you can bypass diminishing returns with them, but I use them for the imbue. With a Prelude, Perfect Chaser, the Survivalists' basic attacks, and Illusion Step Chasers all become composite with the respective element. This is a huge increase of damage for just one buff, and it's a major way my team bypasses physical resistances, especially stab. ant will probably get Ronin elemental aoes later, but that'll be well into lategame probably.
Sadly, Preludes do not change the element of the Baits. tank will need a palm to bypass physical resistances.
Anyways, on to floor 2. We get to the part where Wulfgar shows us the pit floor and we run into a formation.
That monstrosity is actually a Poison Butterfly and Forest Butterfly. They just occupy the same space.
Rollers got a buff here. They resist cut and stab and Rolling now pierces and attempts paralysis.
In the main game I'm actually really down on Drop Shot. It's a skill that feels like an SP dump for Sagittarius Shot and randoms weren't threatening enough to really warrant using it. Now, it got indirectly massively buffed. Many pesky support enemies are put in the back now and the fact that formations are often a lot more filled means that killing a specific target fast is really nice.
And with that turn, I proceed to autobattle to victory, reach the stairs, and go back to town.
I babysit Quona for a quest. If you act rude to her and tell her that you don't like interruptions, you can actually end this quest really fast. Your reward is reduced and Cass even scolds you for being mean to a little girl.
Usual level ups in Katana Mastery, Phys Up, Drop Shot, and Trick Step. I do level up Song Mastery to 5 and get the Preludes. As said before, these are absolutely invaluable.
I go through the grimoire tutorial, and equip everyone filler grimoires on their slots. You need a grimoire on in order to activate grimoire chances, and I can't really use any of these skills. Well, except for one:
Despite what you'd think, this is actually one of the best skills my team can have. See, with Perfect Chaser, ant follows both the basic attack and the Illusion Step chaser. With Double Attack, I will get four chases per survivalist. Multishot costs 12 TP at level 1 for 220% damage. Double Attack gives me 200% damage and two chases from Perfect Chaser, which deals about 125% per chase early on. This makes Perfect Chaser extremely economical. With crits, Double Attack skyrockets to 150% per hit (or 300%), which is great but worse than and about on par with Multi-Shot 9. If that wasn't enough, weaknesses in this game are usually 125%, and if I give my Survivalists a prelude their basic attacks will carry that element, so that 300% from Double Attack crits x 1.25 = 375% damage. That's not all. Illusion Step benefits from Preludes, and Illusion Step deals 100-300%% depending on your level (I'll just use 100% for calculations). This means:
Regular Double Attack with Illusion Step = 200% + 200% = 400% damage
2 crits without imbues with Illusion Step = 300% + 200% = 500% damage
Imbued Double Attack with Illusion Step = 250% + 250% = 500% damage
2 imbued crits with Illusion Step = 375% + 250% = 625% damage
This is actually a ton of damage you can squeeze out for 0 TP. It requires luck, but remember that Fencer exists. Fencer 10 significantly increases the chance to crit and makes crits deal 160% per hit meaning Double Attack will deal 320% or 400% with imbues. This makes feeding the Landsharks actually incredibly important, since I want better Double Attack grimoires for better consistency and Fencer 10 for more damage. Multi-Shot level 16 and up will outdamage an imbued Double Atack (20 deals 440% damage), but for a very long time this will be a very good source of damage. It will eventually fall of towards the later half when Hazy Arrow gets online and Double Action grimoires start popping up, but the Attack command will be a very good source of damage for a very long time. This'll always stay relevant against stab-resistant enemies, so this strategy will never go away.
I'll add Perfect Chaser's damage when it becomes online, and boy does it get juicy there.
Next update will be a bit more substantial. Perfect Chaser will be online, we'll be tackling two floors at once (Floor 3 is too short), and we'll be fighting some buffed foes.
Lotta gifs this time around, so you might have to wait a bit for everything to fully load.
We navigate through the third floor in this update. This floor actually has a really low encounter rate for some reason, and this is a consistent problem with every foe-focused floor. It's enough of a problem that in later patches the encounter rate has been increased on many floors.
Anyways, here's a new formation:
Cube Gel got a bit of a buff. It's a bit tankier, hits a bit harder, and has a new skill.
It now has Digestive Fluid, a single target almighty that heals the damage it deals.
What's most annoying about this formation is that I lack a defense debuff and elementals that don't rely on Preludes. This battle was just a slow war of attrition, with imbued Double Attacks being my only real source of damage.
In case you never noticed, Giant Ladybugs didn't do anything in this game outside of summoning Rafflesia. Now it has Wind Flash, an agility buff for its team. Giant Laybug pretty much always goes first, so you can't exactly just Drop Shot it away. The buff means three things: the enemy team will basically always outspeed you turn 2 (they outspeed mine), their evasion is increased, and their accuracy is increased. I'm not overreacting to using Blind Arrow and Trick Step on it. With how hard Wild Wing already hits, I don't want to risk any stray hits.
It missed, thank goodness. Notice how fast they went! You can't just ignore Giant Ladybug anymore. If you have no ways to get rid of the speed buff you better preemptively lock down the big threats before turn 2 since you probably won't be able to do so on turn 2.
It hits pretty hard with the arm bind on. This is the first of several formations designed to enable a heavy hitter, and the first instance of several enemies being changed to serve a completely new role. The weird thing is that the Ladybug did this in EO2! Why would they completely get rid of all the utility of an enemy when remaking it?
I save the guards and turn in the mission. Levelled up Katana Mastery, Phys ATK Up, learned Saggitarius, and levelled Trick Step and Lightfoot.
As we enter the fourth floor we encounter a Vampire Bat.
Normally I would kill this whenever since it's weak to stab, but I don't want to waste my force skills so I won't use them. It's strong to blind, but that's not the main concern of the fight.
Had some pretty awful luck. I never landed blind, Rose Prison inflicted nothing, and Saggitarius missed. I don't think i've ever seen it miss in any game.
Blood Drain is now a random 3 hit attack and it hits my team really hard. Normally you could just always kill it by winning trades, but killing three squishies an put you in a really bad position.
i fight a random encounter on the first floor while I grind for some nectar, and ant, worms, and diddy level up. I level up Trick Step and Lightfoot, but most importantly I finally have Perfect Chaser and it's time to refight that Vampire Bat.
I didn't take any chances with and immediately used Rose Prison. On turn 3, I turn on both my Survivalists' force boosts and start up Perfect Chaser.
Pretty nice damage. What's nice about Saggitarius is that it's an extra Illusion Step chase, and therefore a Perfect Chaser chase. It adds up to quite a bit of damage, and enough that a basic attack next turn will kill the Vampire Bat.
Oh, and I still have basically-default weapons still. Everyone has their second weapon, so once I upgrade I will hit a lot harder. Wakizashi is the second katana and ant can deal some decent damage.
I walk on a bit and fight a new formation.
This isn't actually new at all, but the revamped Ladybug actually changes it quite a bit. Flying Lizard is untouched and remains as a simple "finishing off the scraps" type of enemy, but with an agility buff it's possible for it to pick you off before you can act.
Whenever a formation scares me, I;ll default to Post-Initiative. It's a safe way to make sure that ant will likely survive the first turn and maybe deter some hits away from the rest of the team. If he's not autostancing he's not going to do that much in randoms anyways.
I lucked out. Dive Kick is seemingly really slow so my team managed to outspeed the right Lizard. Don't think other comps could've done the same.
We move on a bit, a guard tells us about the scary Chimaera, and we run into a formation that's honestly way worse.
Everyone knows that Wild Wind are assholes, but Hypnosis Owls are bad too. Sleep basically makes Beaked Rush oneshot anyone it hits on my team, no questions asked. I can't pick it off either because Drop Shot is too expensive (costs 12 TP), so I'm forced to double down on lowering Wild Wing's accuracy and landing an Arm bind to make hits on sleeping targets more survivable.
No luck. Oh, and Hypnosis Owl now sleeps an entire line now. In the original EO2 it put the entire team to sleep and was the hardest enemy in the first dungeon but it wasn't in that many formations to enable it. Now, it's in threatening formations that can really benefit from a lack of evasion and a damage increase. I decide to run away and I go through an intense series of emotions.
I barely managed to survive. Thunder Strike is a new skill Hypnosis Owl has and it doesn't seem to hit that hard. Maybe it's undertuned, but for an enemy that does so much to make everything scary does it need to hit very hard on its own?
I rest up at the end and continue to go through the fourth floor.
These guys are back for blood. Luckily I have Drop Shot so I can finish off the Owl.
Bleh, whatever. At least no team wipe. I lack revives, but I want to at least open the shortcut before I leave. I talk to the soldier for one of the missions I have and tell him to deliver the case himself. I actually only did this because I've never done the fast response to the quest and I was curious on what the dialogue would be, but right before I get near the shortcut I run into a special formation.
Yeah I'm not dealing with this. My team's tec is so bad that Freezing Snare can borderline oneshot right now. I'm just going to spam all my force breaks.
Hey look! It's a weapon that's better than the default!
I continue onto the fourth floor and something catches my eye.
Hmm.
Oh, so the fight's already over. It can't really come back from being fully bound, can it?
Well that was painless. With this level up I level Perfect Chaser, level up Blind Arrow for bomb, max Trick Step, and level Lightfoot. I also finally learn Attack Bait. Why they put the Baits behind such a dumb requirement is beyond me.
As we reach the end of the fourth floor we run into one final formation.
The Rafflesia's rare this time, and I don't have any force breaks to cheese this with besides Crusade. Guess I'll use it to weather the storm of the first turn. And hey, I get to show of Attack Bait.
Well that was disappointing.
Didn't mean to use Flank Shot. If I used a basic attack Perfect haser would've probably killed it. Since worms is the only person that's guaranteed to die from Freezing Snare, I'll have everyone besides worms defend.
That went a bit how I expected. Freezing Snare can leg bind now (it is named Freezing Snare after all) but nobody got tagged. Now I gotta just autobattle and hope for the best.
Anticlimactic, but I'll take it. I pick up the Venom Ring (which I'll sell), and I beeline to the stairs so I can go to town and leave.
I give everyone a new grimoire to fill up their new slot:
- ant gets PHys ATK Up level 5.
- tank gets Take level 3 (she has nothing else to get)
- bomb gets a Flank Shot level 1 grimoire
- worms gets Mine level 2 (more filler)
- and diddy gets Hard Shell 2, because I wanted the Grimoire up effect
Before I end this post though, why don't we fight an old favorite?
If you never played the first two DS games, you wouldn't know about the history of FOES. In the first game they were really scary enemies for the first dungeon, mostly because you lacked tools to beat them and their level advantage made them hit extremely hard. After the first stratum though, you had more than enough tools to deal with them and they basically felt more like extended random encounters. Most of them didn't have much HP and they didn't do much besides "hit hard", and with most of them lacking any sort of aoe they felt almost impossible to lose to for the most part, Depth Dancer and Bane Lizard are perhaps the most dangerous foes in the series, but in EO1 they were absolutely pathetic! Macabre and Teralich, as the two were called back then, did nothing but hit the player with single target hits! That's absolutely pathetic for postgame foes.
In response to FOES being undertuned in the original, EO2 massively buffed them. They generally hit way harder, they have a lot more aoes, they're bulkier, and they use ailments more. This indirectly massively buffed Climax which, while already significantly buffed, skyrocketed in value since killing FOES was no small feat anymore. After 2, 3 massively nerfed FOES, perhaps to their lowest point ever. FOES never really recovered from the nerfs, though they have definitely gotten more dynamic over the years.
Furyhorn in this patch is a lot like its EO2 incarnation. Baffling Step is a bash attack with splash damage with a chance of panic and Knockdown is now a piercing Stab attack. While it's obviously significantly buffed, it's still the first FOE, and can be bursted down if you spam force breaks.
Ouch, that hits. A nice indirect buff my team got for this fight is that Baffling Step needs to hit in order to attempt to inflict. As long as I don't get hit, I can't get panicked,
It let me revive tank safely.
Perfect Chaser's a-go. Sadly Bait couldn't trigger.
Perfect Chaser Shennanigans. Still no bait trigger. Why can't foes spam their most deadly attack to the front row when i want them to most?
I decide to use Issen, Rose Prison, and Crusade. It's not like Bait was ever going to trigger anyways. It's basically dead now.
Whatever dude. Everyone hates tank lately.
Bleh, I really wanted Perfect Chaser to kill it for a quest. I'll fight another one later. Anyways, my team makes it look pretty simple but this can actually be a pretty rough fight. There's no consistent way to cure three party members at once so your best bet is to use Prevent Order to prevent the ailment from even landing. You can also leg bind it and burst it down quickly because it doesn't have that much HP.
Next update we'll go through the 5th floor, fight some Raptors, and defeat Chimaera,
We navigate through the third floor in this update. This floor actually has a really low encounter rate for some reason, and this is a consistent problem with every foe-focused floor. It's enough of a problem that in later patches the encounter rate has been increased on many floors.
Anyways, here's a new formation:
Cube Gel got a bit of a buff. It's a bit tankier, hits a bit harder, and has a new skill.
It now has Digestive Fluid, a single target almighty that heals the damage it deals.
What's most annoying about this formation is that I lack a defense debuff and elementals that don't rely on Preludes. This battle was just a slow war of attrition, with imbued Double Attacks being my only real source of damage.
In case you never noticed, Giant Ladybugs didn't do anything in this game outside of summoning Rafflesia. Now it has Wind Flash, an agility buff for its team. Giant Laybug pretty much always goes first, so you can't exactly just Drop Shot it away. The buff means three things: the enemy team will basically always outspeed you turn 2 (they outspeed mine), their evasion is increased, and their accuracy is increased. I'm not overreacting to using Blind Arrow and Trick Step on it. With how hard Wild Wing already hits, I don't want to risk any stray hits.
It missed, thank goodness. Notice how fast they went! You can't just ignore Giant Ladybug anymore. If you have no ways to get rid of the speed buff you better preemptively lock down the big threats before turn 2 since you probably won't be able to do so on turn 2.
It hits pretty hard with the arm bind on. This is the first of several formations designed to enable a heavy hitter, and the first instance of several enemies being changed to serve a completely new role. The weird thing is that the Ladybug did this in EO2! Why would they completely get rid of all the utility of an enemy when remaking it?
I save the guards and turn in the mission. Levelled up Katana Mastery, Phys ATK Up, learned Saggitarius, and levelled Trick Step and Lightfoot.
As we enter the fourth floor we encounter a Vampire Bat.
Normally I would kill this whenever since it's weak to stab, but I don't want to waste my force skills so I won't use them. It's strong to blind, but that's not the main concern of the fight.
Had some pretty awful luck. I never landed blind, Rose Prison inflicted nothing, and Saggitarius missed. I don't think i've ever seen it miss in any game.
Blood Drain is now a random 3 hit attack and it hits my team really hard. Normally you could just always kill it by winning trades, but killing three squishies an put you in a really bad position.
i fight a random encounter on the first floor while I grind for some nectar, and ant, worms, and diddy level up. I level up Trick Step and Lightfoot, but most importantly I finally have Perfect Chaser and it's time to refight that Vampire Bat.
I didn't take any chances with and immediately used Rose Prison. On turn 3, I turn on both my Survivalists' force boosts and start up Perfect Chaser.
Pretty nice damage. What's nice about Saggitarius is that it's an extra Illusion Step chase, and therefore a Perfect Chaser chase. It adds up to quite a bit of damage, and enough that a basic attack next turn will kill the Vampire Bat.
Oh, and I still have basically-default weapons still. Everyone has their second weapon, so once I upgrade I will hit a lot harder. Wakizashi is the second katana and ant can deal some decent damage.
I walk on a bit and fight a new formation.
This isn't actually new at all, but the revamped Ladybug actually changes it quite a bit. Flying Lizard is untouched and remains as a simple "finishing off the scraps" type of enemy, but with an agility buff it's possible for it to pick you off before you can act.
Whenever a formation scares me, I;ll default to Post-Initiative. It's a safe way to make sure that ant will likely survive the first turn and maybe deter some hits away from the rest of the team. If he's not autostancing he's not going to do that much in randoms anyways.
I lucked out. Dive Kick is seemingly really slow so my team managed to outspeed the right Lizard. Don't think other comps could've done the same.
We move on a bit, a guard tells us about the scary Chimaera, and we run into a formation that's honestly way worse.
Everyone knows that Wild Wind are assholes, but Hypnosis Owls are bad too. Sleep basically makes Beaked Rush oneshot anyone it hits on my team, no questions asked. I can't pick it off either because Drop Shot is too expensive (costs 12 TP), so I'm forced to double down on lowering Wild Wing's accuracy and landing an Arm bind to make hits on sleeping targets more survivable.
No luck. Oh, and Hypnosis Owl now sleeps an entire line now. In the original EO2 it put the entire team to sleep and was the hardest enemy in the first dungeon but it wasn't in that many formations to enable it. Now, it's in threatening formations that can really benefit from a lack of evasion and a damage increase. I decide to run away and I go through an intense series of emotions.
I barely managed to survive. Thunder Strike is a new skill Hypnosis Owl has and it doesn't seem to hit that hard. Maybe it's undertuned, but for an enemy that does so much to make everything scary does it need to hit very hard on its own?
I rest up at the end and continue to go through the fourth floor.
These guys are back for blood. Luckily I have Drop Shot so I can finish off the Owl.
Bleh, whatever. At least no team wipe. I lack revives, but I want to at least open the shortcut before I leave. I talk to the soldier for one of the missions I have and tell him to deliver the case himself. I actually only did this because I've never done the fast response to the quest and I was curious on what the dialogue would be, but right before I get near the shortcut I run into a special formation.
Yeah I'm not dealing with this. My team's tec is so bad that Freezing Snare can borderline oneshot right now. I'm just going to spam all my force breaks.
Hey look! It's a weapon that's better than the default!
I continue onto the fourth floor and something catches my eye.
Hmm.
Oh, so the fight's already over. It can't really come back from being fully bound, can it?
Well that was painless. With this level up I level Perfect Chaser, level up Blind Arrow for bomb, max Trick Step, and level Lightfoot. I also finally learn Attack Bait. Why they put the Baits behind such a dumb requirement is beyond me.
As we reach the end of the fourth floor we run into one final formation.
The Rafflesia's rare this time, and I don't have any force breaks to cheese this with besides Crusade. Guess I'll use it to weather the storm of the first turn. And hey, I get to show of Attack Bait.
Well that was disappointing.
Didn't mean to use Flank Shot. If I used a basic attack Perfect haser would've probably killed it. Since worms is the only person that's guaranteed to die from Freezing Snare, I'll have everyone besides worms defend.
That went a bit how I expected. Freezing Snare can leg bind now (it is named Freezing Snare after all) but nobody got tagged. Now I gotta just autobattle and hope for the best.
Anticlimactic, but I'll take it. I pick up the Venom Ring (which I'll sell), and I beeline to the stairs so I can go to town and leave.
I give everyone a new grimoire to fill up their new slot:
- ant gets PHys ATK Up level 5.
- tank gets Take level 3 (she has nothing else to get)
- bomb gets a Flank Shot level 1 grimoire
- worms gets Mine level 2 (more filler)
- and diddy gets Hard Shell 2, because I wanted the Grimoire up effect
Before I end this post though, why don't we fight an old favorite?
If you never played the first two DS games, you wouldn't know about the history of FOES. In the first game they were really scary enemies for the first dungeon, mostly because you lacked tools to beat them and their level advantage made them hit extremely hard. After the first stratum though, you had more than enough tools to deal with them and they basically felt more like extended random encounters. Most of them didn't have much HP and they didn't do much besides "hit hard", and with most of them lacking any sort of aoe they felt almost impossible to lose to for the most part, Depth Dancer and Bane Lizard are perhaps the most dangerous foes in the series, but in EO1 they were absolutely pathetic! Macabre and Teralich, as the two were called back then, did nothing but hit the player with single target hits! That's absolutely pathetic for postgame foes.
In response to FOES being undertuned in the original, EO2 massively buffed them. They generally hit way harder, they have a lot more aoes, they're bulkier, and they use ailments more. This indirectly massively buffed Climax which, while already significantly buffed, skyrocketed in value since killing FOES was no small feat anymore. After 2, 3 massively nerfed FOES, perhaps to their lowest point ever. FOES never really recovered from the nerfs, though they have definitely gotten more dynamic over the years.
Furyhorn in this patch is a lot like its EO2 incarnation. Baffling Step is a bash attack with splash damage with a chance of panic and Knockdown is now a piercing Stab attack. While it's obviously significantly buffed, it's still the first FOE, and can be bursted down if you spam force breaks.
Ouch, that hits. A nice indirect buff my team got for this fight is that Baffling Step needs to hit in order to attempt to inflict. As long as I don't get hit, I can't get panicked,
It let me revive tank safely.
Perfect Chaser's a-go. Sadly Bait couldn't trigger.
Perfect Chaser Shennanigans. Still no bait trigger. Why can't foes spam their most deadly attack to the front row when i want them to most?
I decide to use Issen, Rose Prison, and Crusade. It's not like Bait was ever going to trigger anyways. It's basically dead now.
Whatever dude. Everyone hates tank lately.
Bleh, I really wanted Perfect Chaser to kill it for a quest. I'll fight another one later. Anyways, my team makes it look pretty simple but this can actually be a pretty rough fight. There's no consistent way to cure three party members at once so your best bet is to use Prevent Order to prevent the ailment from even landing. You can also leg bind it and burst it down quickly because it doesn't have that much HP.
Next update we'll go through the 5th floor, fight some Raptors, and defeat Chimaera,
Is there a convenient way to make a post load with ever gif? I feel like I'll be using a lot and it'd be cleaner if the viewer didn't have to wait a few seconds for a relevant gif to be visible. I can just link the url but that doesn't feel as clean.
Nexus is a weird game. For how severely understaffed it was and for how lazy its translation was, Rushing Raptor is one of the few things they did right. It's closer to the Japanese name than "Raptor" was, and for how the game messed up enemy names numerous times (Jumping Frog being named Frog Lord for example) it was surprising to see something done right.
Anyway, the fight's not much different here. Paralyze Fang is splash. That's it.
Actually, that's not all. It gets out of the hole one turn earlier. You can't wail on it for too long now which does make it a more immediate threat,
Bleh. No blind luck. Only one Bait too.
Decent damage. I was too paranoid with the blind that diddy couldn't give ant a Prelude.
Obligatory "everyone uses the force break at the same time" turn.
Oh yeah that's an annoying part of Rose Prison. The damage is kind of garbage and I only really use it for binds, but most importantly the poison can override my blind at the worst moments.
In my annoyance I just press L and try to kill it.
It didn't appriate the disrespect, but I killed it.
Rushing Raptor drops Luck Necklace, which is really good for my team. Luck increases infliction chance and actually affects evasion more than AGI, but my survivalists appreciate the damage that AGI gives more than the benefits of luck so they won't be using this. ant and tank will definitely get one when I can afford to buy some, but diddy won't because I really care about his turnspeed and giving Preludes as fast as possible.
Let's progress through the fifth floor. Strangely. I don't find many encounters this time and that'll end up hurting a lot in the long run.
Hey a preemptive.
Forest Rat, as it was renamed, was an enemy whose absence in this game always bothered me. I mean, why isn't the first enemy in the series in this game when a lot of enemies in the original made it? Anyways, of all enemies in the first stratum it actually has the highest STR of them all. It has Deadly Incisor, a two-hit single target attack with low accuracy.Its high STR means this hits very hard, so hopefully you can blind it or bind its arms since it's resistant to head binds.
First turn was nothing special. I used Drop Shot on the rare Sunflower and killed it and tried to blind the Forest Rat with all I could. Sadly, I didn't land anything.
I'm so glad diddy of all people managed to land that blind. Look at how much damage that is! If it hit twice it would've been overkill.
Also it looks like Sunflower's AI needs adjustments or something. For a mage enemy it seems a bit too likely to do a basic attack which is basically just a wasted turn.
With the Forest Rat on the cusp of death, I just autobattle the formation away.
I run into the event for the "The Nameless Flower" quest and just force break it.
No biggie, in a few steps I run into a formation with a King Snail in it. King Snail now has Sticky Mucous, a move that attempts to leg bind your entire party. I think. Citra RNG is weird and I've never actually seen it.
I'm uh, actually at the end of floor 5 before. I've said this countless times, but Citra has really weird rng. You can consistently find the same formation over and over or go through an entire floor and only manage to find a few enemies. If you want to play this, please play on official firmware. I've played ealier versions of this and never got the weird RNG I've gotten on Citra on my 3ds.
I turn in "The Nameless Flower" and "a Braggart's Tale" and get a few level ups. Perfect Chaser, Attack Bait, Saggitarius, Speed Up, and Song Mastery are all levelled.
I guess I should kill Furyhorn again but try to get its conditional.
That works.
Let's fight this then. Like the other Raptor, it's only in the hole for one turn now.
Perfect Chaser stuff. No blind sadly.
diddy's turn speed really is an issue here.
It's turn 4, so time to spam force breaks.
No head bind, but you get to see the new and improved Menacing Glare. It now tries to inflict fear on top of dropping your defense. You'd think the menacing stare of a huge raptor would already do this, but Atlus didn't think so.
I should stress "Menacing Glare still lowers your defense". It destroyed ant through that arm bind which I didn't expect it to. Oops.
Ah well, my team autobattled to victory.
If you want more proof on "Citra RNG sucks", I found so few enemies that my weapons are pretty out of date. ant has Wakizashi, which is a massive 17 less atk than the best weapon, which requires 3 Owl Beaks and one Metal Hulll. I can get the Beast Bow and Rafflesia Bow by just grinding money, but getting ant his new katana will take quite a while. While we're here, let's just take a glance at the several formations I missed out while exploring:
(literally a flying lizard)
I gained a few levels. Same as last time. Bomb's just levelling Saggitarius to level 5 and then going for Hazy Arrow.
Oh and because of Citra RNG I literally never found the King Snail. I guess I'll just use Kodachi. It's the second-best katana but a significant 7 atk weaker. I also give tank Ice Prelude so my team can be imbued a bit quicker, plus she gets a lot of filler turns.
Time to kill Chimaera. Unlike the Raptors, his AI isn't changed. In fact, a majority of bosses are untouched. Bosses are a bit controversial in this game to say the least, and outside of some egregious examples they were left the same.
Usual setup.
Double downed on blind. No luck.
Nice Perfect Chaser damage. I forgot about Great Blaze, though. I don't have Elemental Bait to capitalize on it. At least it missed, since my team's bad tec makes it probably the scariest part of the fight.
Finally got that blind it. honestly with how little aoe this boss has I really should've just given tank Double Attack.
Force break turn. Managed to land arm bind, which is actually not what I wanted since I can't counter Double Strike for Baits.
I learned from Terrible Hunter and got rid of its debuff. This is probably one of the few times I'll ever even use Shelter Song. My team will basically never use it.
diddy contributed to Perfect Chaser because he had nothing else to do. tank foolishly used Bait again.
I try to leg bind Chimaera because Snake Pile can be an issue if he ever actually lands a hit.
While I will be using Blind Arrow a majority of the time, I can't undersell the other ailments. Doubling down on Sleep Arrow just turns it into a stun, and if I do want to take advantage of the ailment I can use it to sleep bomb with Saggitarius, stall while diddy reapplies buffs, or sleep bomb with Rose Prison if that situation actually comes up.
It's over.
What an easy fight. He never landed a hit! This team took a while to get started, but it's starting to hit its stride and it only goes up from here. The scariest bosses are those with good accuracy or ways to stop evasion, and as long as I play smartly I can beat every fight in the game as long as I play properly.
A lot of people take criticism with this game's bosses and say that "tanks are mandatory" but I heavily disagree. While I agree that both tanks are extremely good, you can absolutely play without them if you know what you're doing. I've played this game a lot so I know the gist of how many fights play out, but I choose not to be fully informed. If I knew 100% was Chimaera was doing I could've killed him two or three turns faster, but I don't think it's fun if everything is predictable. Tanks are really really good in this game and have high rewards for the low effort needed. In 2u almost everything is viable. Tanks are arguably at their strongest ever, every DPS can deal heavy damage if properly enabled, ailments range from "pretty consistent" to "basically guaranteed", supports have lots of shared skills to help add heavy damage in the mix, and evasion is consistent enough for tactical dodging being a completely viable way to stop damage.
Next up, a Ginungagap and Floor 6.
Nexus is a weird game. For how severely understaffed it was and for how lazy its translation was, Rushing Raptor is one of the few things they did right. It's closer to the Japanese name than "Raptor" was, and for how the game messed up enemy names numerous times (Jumping Frog being named Frog Lord for example) it was surprising to see something done right.
Anyway, the fight's not much different here. Paralyze Fang is splash. That's it.
Actually, that's not all. It gets out of the hole one turn earlier. You can't wail on it for too long now which does make it a more immediate threat,
Bleh. No blind luck. Only one Bait too.
Decent damage. I was too paranoid with the blind that diddy couldn't give ant a Prelude.
Obligatory "everyone uses the force break at the same time" turn.
Oh yeah that's an annoying part of Rose Prison. The damage is kind of garbage and I only really use it for binds, but most importantly the poison can override my blind at the worst moments.
In my annoyance I just press L and try to kill it.
It didn't appriate the disrespect, but I killed it.
Rushing Raptor drops Luck Necklace, which is really good for my team. Luck increases infliction chance and actually affects evasion more than AGI, but my survivalists appreciate the damage that AGI gives more than the benefits of luck so they won't be using this. ant and tank will definitely get one when I can afford to buy some, but diddy won't because I really care about his turnspeed and giving Preludes as fast as possible.
Let's progress through the fifth floor. Strangely. I don't find many encounters this time and that'll end up hurting a lot in the long run.
Hey a preemptive.
Forest Rat, as it was renamed, was an enemy whose absence in this game always bothered me. I mean, why isn't the first enemy in the series in this game when a lot of enemies in the original made it? Anyways, of all enemies in the first stratum it actually has the highest STR of them all. It has Deadly Incisor, a two-hit single target attack with low accuracy.Its high STR means this hits very hard, so hopefully you can blind it or bind its arms since it's resistant to head binds.
First turn was nothing special. I used Drop Shot on the rare Sunflower and killed it and tried to blind the Forest Rat with all I could. Sadly, I didn't land anything.
I'm so glad diddy of all people managed to land that blind. Look at how much damage that is! If it hit twice it would've been overkill.
Also it looks like Sunflower's AI needs adjustments or something. For a mage enemy it seems a bit too likely to do a basic attack which is basically just a wasted turn.
With the Forest Rat on the cusp of death, I just autobattle the formation away.
I run into the event for the "The Nameless Flower" quest and just force break it.
No biggie, in a few steps I run into a formation with a King Snail in it. King Snail now has Sticky Mucous, a move that attempts to leg bind your entire party. I think. Citra RNG is weird and I've never actually seen it.
I'm uh, actually at the end of floor 5 before. I've said this countless times, but Citra has really weird rng. You can consistently find the same formation over and over or go through an entire floor and only manage to find a few enemies. If you want to play this, please play on official firmware. I've played ealier versions of this and never got the weird RNG I've gotten on Citra on my 3ds.
I turn in "The Nameless Flower" and "a Braggart's Tale" and get a few level ups. Perfect Chaser, Attack Bait, Saggitarius, Speed Up, and Song Mastery are all levelled.
I guess I should kill Furyhorn again but try to get its conditional.
That works.
Let's fight this then. Like the other Raptor, it's only in the hole for one turn now.
Perfect Chaser stuff. No blind sadly.
diddy's turn speed really is an issue here.
It's turn 4, so time to spam force breaks.
No head bind, but you get to see the new and improved Menacing Glare. It now tries to inflict fear on top of dropping your defense. You'd think the menacing stare of a huge raptor would already do this, but Atlus didn't think so.
I should stress "Menacing Glare still lowers your defense". It destroyed ant through that arm bind which I didn't expect it to. Oops.
Ah well, my team autobattled to victory.
If you want more proof on "Citra RNG sucks", I found so few enemies that my weapons are pretty out of date. ant has Wakizashi, which is a massive 17 less atk than the best weapon, which requires 3 Owl Beaks and one Metal Hulll. I can get the Beast Bow and Rafflesia Bow by just grinding money, but getting ant his new katana will take quite a while. While we're here, let's just take a glance at the several formations I missed out while exploring:
(literally a flying lizard)I gained a few levels. Same as last time. Bomb's just levelling Saggitarius to level 5 and then going for Hazy Arrow.
Oh and because of Citra RNG I literally never found the King Snail. I guess I'll just use Kodachi. It's the second-best katana but a significant 7 atk weaker. I also give tank Ice Prelude so my team can be imbued a bit quicker, plus she gets a lot of filler turns.
Time to kill Chimaera. Unlike the Raptors, his AI isn't changed. In fact, a majority of bosses are untouched. Bosses are a bit controversial in this game to say the least, and outside of some egregious examples they were left the same.
Usual setup.
Double downed on blind. No luck.
Nice Perfect Chaser damage. I forgot about Great Blaze, though. I don't have Elemental Bait to capitalize on it. At least it missed, since my team's bad tec makes it probably the scariest part of the fight.
Finally got that blind it. honestly with how little aoe this boss has I really should've just given tank Double Attack.
Force break turn. Managed to land arm bind, which is actually not what I wanted since I can't counter Double Strike for Baits.
I learned from Terrible Hunter and got rid of its debuff. This is probably one of the few times I'll ever even use Shelter Song. My team will basically never use it.
diddy contributed to Perfect Chaser because he had nothing else to do. tank foolishly used Bait again.
I try to leg bind Chimaera because Snake Pile can be an issue if he ever actually lands a hit.
While I will be using Blind Arrow a majority of the time, I can't undersell the other ailments. Doubling down on Sleep Arrow just turns it into a stun, and if I do want to take advantage of the ailment I can use it to sleep bomb with Saggitarius, stall while diddy reapplies buffs, or sleep bomb with Rose Prison if that situation actually comes up.
It's over.
What an easy fight. He never landed a hit! This team took a while to get started, but it's starting to hit its stride and it only goes up from here. The scariest bosses are those with good accuracy or ways to stop evasion, and as long as I play smartly I can beat every fight in the game as long as I play properly.
A lot of people take criticism with this game's bosses and say that "tanks are mandatory" but I heavily disagree. While I agree that both tanks are extremely good, you can absolutely play without them if you know what you're doing. I've played this game a lot so I know the gist of how many fights play out, but I choose not to be fully informed. If I knew 100% was Chimaera was doing I could've killed him two or three turns faster, but I don't think it's fun if everything is predictable. Tanks are really really good in this game and have high rewards for the low effort needed. In 2u almost everything is viable. Tanks are arguably at their strongest ever, every DPS can deal heavy damage if properly enabled, ailments range from "pretty consistent" to "basically guaranteed", supports have lots of shared skills to help add heavy damage in the mix, and evasion is consistent enough for tactical dodging being a completely viable way to stop damage.
Next up, a Ginungagap and Floor 6.
is a welcome addition for seasoned players seeking a greater challenge. It takes an already engaging RPG experience and elevates it to new heights of difficulty. The adjustments made to enemy encounters and boss battles provide a fresh and demanding experience that tests players' strategic thinking and adaptability.
For those who have mastered the game's mechanics and are hungry for a more punishing adventure, the hard patch delivers. It rewards careful planning, optimal party composition, and precise execution. The increased difficulty breathes new life into the game, offering a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction as players overcome the formidable obstacles.
However, it's important to recognize that the hard patch caters specifically to experienced players. It may not be suitable for newcomers or those who prefer a more casual experience. It requires a deep understanding of the game's mechanics and a willingness to embrace a significant challenge.
Overall, the hard patch for "Etrian Odyssey 2: Untold" is a commendable addition that enhances the game's replayability and offers a thrilling test for dedicated players seeking an even more demanding adventure.
revanced
For those who have mastered the game's mechanics and are hungry for a more punishing adventure, the hard patch delivers. It rewards careful planning, optimal party composition, and precise execution. The increased difficulty breathes new life into the game, offering a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction as players overcome the formidable obstacles.
However, it's important to recognize that the hard patch caters specifically to experienced players. It may not be suitable for newcomers or those who prefer a more casual experience. It requires a deep understanding of the game's mechanics and a willingness to embrace a significant challenge.
Overall, the hard patch for "Etrian Odyssey 2: Untold" is a commendable addition that enhances the game's replayability and offers a thrilling test for dedicated players seeking an even more demanding adventure.
revanced