Etrian Odyssey [DS] (complete segment guide added)

2009-11-29 05:33:12 pm

welcome to the machine

Quote from ShinerCCC:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=934287&topic=45300354 - possible script for Ant's Jaw, Royalant's rare drop, but it unlocks a katana for Ronin which I probably won't be using anyway

That seems to be just one guy who got it once. I'd ignore it. Even if the RNG is completely predictable (i.e. doesn't depend on frame timing or anything like that, is easily manipulated), your initial state would be vastly different from his anyways.

Quote:

Iwaopeln respawns as easily as Fenrir, or after you beat Ren + Tlachtaga. omg leveling abuse!!11

I told you earlier that you'd be better off fighting him repeatedly before killing all the FOEs on b20f and progressing to stratum 5. He respawns instantly, no need to wait 7 days or anything. If you're going to level for etreant that's where you do it.

Quote:

- Cotrangl drops Ice Spine if the killing move was not fire-element. Oh, I guess I can get it on my first runthrough then. But grinding for that money could possibly take longer than getting Failnaught from the secret area of B17F.

Cotrangl can drop the ice spine if the killing move wasn't fire-element. It's still not guaranteed, as my experience with the game has shown. And iirc you need to get more than one ice spine if you want to get more than one arc drawer, too.

[quote="ShinerCCC"]
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=934287&topic=45300354 - possible script for Ant's Jaw, Royalant's rare drop, but it unlocks a katana for Ronin which I probably won't be using anyway[/quote]
That seems to be just one guy who got it once.  I'd ignore it.  Even if the RNG is completely predictable (i.e. doesn't depend on frame timing or anything like that, is easily manipulated), your initial state would be vastly different from his anyways.

[quote]Iwaopeln respawns as easily as Fenrir, or after you beat Ren + Tlachtaga. omg leveling abuse!!11[/quote]
I told you earlier that you'd be better off fighting him repeatedly before killing all the FOEs on b20f and progressing to stratum 5.  He respawns instantly, no need to wait 7 days or anything.  If you're going to level for etreant that's where you do it.

[quote]
- Cotrangl drops Ice Spine if the killing move was not fire-element. Oh, I guess I can get it on my first runthrough then. But grinding for that money could possibly take longer than getting Failnaught from the secret area of B17F.[/quote]
Cotrangl [i]can[/i] drop the ice spine if the killing move wasn't fire-element.  It's still not guaranteed, as my experience with the game has shown.  And iirc you need to get more than one ice spine if you want to get more than one arc drawer, too.

ShinerCCC

Edit history:

ShinerCCC: 2009-12-01 12:16:12 am

2009-11-30 08:47:05 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Yes, the Arc Drawer gets Sold Out. I can deal with having only one Arc Drawer for a bit, my T can use a Mystic Rod until I beat Iwaopeln. I can also get Failnaught from the secret area as a substitute.

I'm not sure if leveling will help me beat Etreant effectively, per se - I have all the skills I want on my test team (except good Multishot and Apollon for my S, because I had to give him Stalker...*sigh*). I guess levelups can go toward HP Up and Salve II. Looking at his AI, binding him doesn't help, because he can use Bearing to purge it all and binding one limb just makes him more likely to use the nasty attack skill that doesn't use it. And it seems he only goes for the guaranteed Resolve if he reads 5 buffs, so if I use a 4 character team Immunize will stick, and also guarantees no Cyclone until he's down to 25% HP. Wish I could use boosted Climax 10 from there, but it says Etreant has 0% success rate for instant death.
Looks like Etreant also uses a OHKO move, but I can just give my guys Jewel Eyes to resist it. Growth may be annoying but outpacing it is a smarter idea than bringing a T to erasure it because a T will be useless for this strategy. In addition, Growth is a blessing in disguise; without Resolve, there's no Resolve->Cyclone combo, and the only way he uses Cyclone is if Growth isn't up while at < 25% HP, and even then, there's only a 25% chance of rolling it. 4 characters also means Twigs will never trigger, it seems, so I don't have to worry about my physical attacks being blocked endlessly.
Now I need to consider the attacks he's left using, which seem pretty vanilla: Thorns, Inferno, and melee. Thorns still does spectacular damage with Immunize, but I can Boost it without fear of it getting Resolve'D away. IIRC correctly, Inferno is his OHKO move, if it kills the target he drains that much HP as well. The Enemy Skill data claims it has more power (110) than Thorns (100), seems scary. Cyclone has 125, for comparison. Sometimes, his Thorns targets the back row. Now I need to consider 4-character setups that can win:
SLM,A. Gets Blazer+Flame, Etreant has 10% physical resist so this can be fast, however the alchemist may be too frail to survive. S gets in there for 1st Turn'ing all my healing and Immunizes, otherwise, Multishot+Caduceus. Only problem is, nobody around to Axcela III my Medic reliably.
DLM,S. ~~Oh yeah, with no Resolve, I can use Blaze Oil again! Although using a D's binds are likely to stick, they drastically alter Etreant's AI, and can set up a Bearing->Cyclone combo.~~ [EDIT: Blaze Oil counts as a buff you idiot] I'll just use the D's mighty Dominator with Blaze Oil, boosting my regular attacks, and settle for that. If I had planned better though, I would probably sprung for Viper instead of Ecstasy. Maybe I'd even nail the 3% ailment resist and poison him for a while.
DDD,M. Make 3 new Ds, give them Duergars, then go tweak-level somewhere, probably the B18F spring with 1st Turn+Inferno to kill forest folk. L1 Bait does more damage than L10 Drain. Punish his widespread Thorns with Bait and keep them healed between boosted Immunizes. Drain on turns where Axcelas and Immunizing is needed. Sounds rock solid except for needing to train a completely new team *_*
SSS,M. Same thing but with Arc Drawers *______*
M,T. Cast Immunize+Relaxing and whittle him down with Caduceus, XD

I've been doing some testing with T,MAA to start with and it's really frustrating! The T can't take much punishment, even while defending. Bringing the L this early on wouldn't be a bad idea because you can learn Blazer as early as level 9 and use it on Fenrir, but if you recall my P,MAA setup beat Fenrir at level 12 or 13 because Fenrir always attacks the front row. A T and L in the front wouldn't last long against his mighty jaws because I won't have good Immunize yet, and I will be massively underleveled. The front will go down before my modest damage can kill him in 6 or 7 turns. But if I could just get Return that would speed things up...maybe I'm thinking of this backwards. I can add a P AFTER I've explored B4F or something, get him up to level 2 or 11 quickly and use him exclusively for parrying Fenrir. I was thinking of tweaking my Fenrir assassination team once I remove the Skolls anyway; probably P,AAS. I can use Ward Chimes to replace the T's Stalker for the sake of that mission. Although it's hard to level a T in the 1st Stratum, having Return to get back to the B3F healing sprinkler seems really good. Paradoxically, I don't think I'll be able to unlock Cut Charm with that setup...maybe I can use the P only down to the second mission (kill Stalker, get Fenrir mission, get Plate early, buy Cut Charms for new T and L).

Anyway, farming more topics:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=934287&topic=44585460 - this guy claims his boosted Poison worked on Fenrir. Huh. Monster Data says Fenrir has 5% base chance of ailments working. The "poison chance" is 250% at L10, 280% at L15, so I guess that's almost a 15% chance at best? 1 in 7 attempts? If I'm going to be segmenting I will absolutely have to find a way to RNG abuse this work, even if I have to bring 10 Axcelas.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=934287&topic=44271563 - Warp Wire glitch, it stays in your inventory if you have 60/60 items. Might help save money in the critical early goings of the game...wait, buying 55 Medicas ain't that cheap.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=934287&topic=44390400 - Sneaking past Fenrir? I wonder...>_>
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=934287&topic=43658050 - paraphrasal of Etreant's skills and how to bind them.
- someone mentioned you have to "fall through every pit" to complete the Royalant quest...please no
- someone mentions the obvious strategy of luring the FOEs to the stairs on Pacman, then jumping upstairs to reset their positions
got to page 26, that's enough for now.

Found a fansite dedicated to the game, they have mirrored the (inaccurate) skill spreadsheet and Terence's text files.
http://www.intothelabyrinth.net/etrianodyssey/downloaded.php

Finally read the stuff on http://www.atlus.com/etrian . The director's diary told me "This is not the type of game you should race through! That's all I wanted to tell you today. This isn't the sort of game where you should have a competition with your friends to see who can finish first." Great, everyone hates me.

I'm not sure if leveling will help me beat Etreant effectively, per se - I have all the skills I want on my test team (except good Multishot and Apollon for my S, because I had to give him Stalker...*sigh*). I guess levelups can go toward HP Up and Salve II. Looking at his AI, binding him doesn't help, because he can use Bearing to purge it all and binding one limb just makes him more likely to use the nasty attack skill that doesn't use it. And it seems he only goes for the guaranteed Resolve if he reads 5 buffs, so if I use a 4 character team Immunize will stick, and also guarantees no Cyclone until he's down to 25% HP. Wish I could use boosted Climax 10 from there, but it says Etreant has 0% success rate for instant death. 
Looks like Etreant also uses a OHKO move, but I can just give my guys Jewel Eyes to resist it. Growth may be annoying but outpacing it is a smarter idea than bringing a T to erasure it because a T will be useless for this strategy. In addition, Growth is a blessing in disguise; without Resolve, there's no Resolve->Cyclone combo, and the only way he uses Cyclone is if Growth isn't up while at < 25% HP, and even then, there's only a 25% chance of rolling it. 4 characters also means Twigs will never trigger, it seems, so I don't have to worry about my physical attacks being blocked endlessly. 
Now I need to consider the attacks he's left using, which seem pretty vanilla: Thorns, Inferno, and melee. Thorns still does spectacular damage with Immunize, but I can Boost it without fear of it getting Resolve'D away. IIRC correctly, Inferno is his OHKO move, if it kills the target he drains that much HP as well. The Enemy Skill data claims it has more power (110) than Thorns (100), seems scary. Cyclone has 125, for comparison. Sometimes, his Thorns targets the back row. Now I need to consider 4-character setups that can win:
SLM,A. Gets Blazer+Flame, Etreant has 10% physical resist so this can be fast, however the alchemist may be too frail to survive. S gets in there for 1st Turn'ing all my healing and Immunizes, otherwise, Multishot+Caduceus. Only problem is, nobody around to Axcela III my Medic reliably.
DLM,S. [s]Oh yeah, with no Resolve, I can use Blaze Oil again! Although using a D's binds are likely to stick, they drastically alter Etreant's AI, and can set up a Bearing->Cyclone combo.[/s] [EDIT: Blaze Oil counts as a buff you idiot] I'll just use the D's mighty Dominator with Blaze Oil, boosting my regular attacks, and settle for that. If I had planned better though, I would probably sprung for Viper instead of Ecstasy. Maybe I'd even nail the 3% ailment resist and poison him for a while.
DDD,M. Make 3 new Ds, give them Duergars, then go tweak-level somewhere, probably the B18F spring with 1st Turn+Inferno to kill forest folk. L1 Bait does more damage than L10 Drain. Punish his widespread Thorns with Bait and keep them healed between boosted Immunizes. Drain on turns where Axcelas and Immunizing is needed. Sounds rock solid except for needing to train a completely new team *_*
SSS,M. Same thing but with Arc Drawers *______*
M,T. Cast Immunize+Relaxing and whittle him down with Caduceus, XD

I've been doing some testing with T,MAA to start with and it's really frustrating! The T can't take much punishment, even while defending. Bringing the L this early on wouldn't be a bad idea because you can learn Blazer as early as level 9 and use it on Fenrir, but if you recall my P,MAA setup beat Fenrir at level 12 or 13 because Fenrir always attacks the front row. A T and L in the front wouldn't last long against his mighty jaws because I won't have good Immunize yet, and I will be massively underleveled. The front will go down before my modest damage can kill him in 6 or 7 turns. But if I could just get Return that would speed things up...maybe I'm thinking of this backwards. I can add a P AFTER I've explored B4F or something, get him up to level 2 or 11 quickly and use him exclusively for parrying Fenrir. I was thinking of tweaking my Fenrir assassination team once I remove the Skolls anyway; probably P,AAS. I can use Ward Chimes to replace the T's Stalker for the sake of that mission. Although it's hard to level a T in the 1st Stratum, having Return to get back to the B3F healing sprinkler seems really good. Paradoxically, I don't think I'll be able to unlock Cut Charm with that setup...maybe I can use the P only down to the second mission (kill Stalker, get Fenrir mission, get Plate early, buy Cut Charms for new T and L).

Anyway, farming more topics:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=934287&topic=44585460 - this guy claims his boosted Poison worked on Fenrir. Huh. Monster Data says Fenrir has 5% base chance of ailments working. The "poison chance" is 250% at L10, 280% at L15, so I guess that's almost a 15% chance at best? 1 in 7 attempts? If I'm going to be segmenting I will absolutely have to find a way to RNG abuse this work, even if I have to bring 10 Axcelas.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=934287&topic=44271563 - Warp Wire glitch, it stays in your inventory if you have 60/60 items. Might help save money in the critical early goings of the game...wait, buying 55 Medicas ain't that cheap.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=934287&topic=44390400 - Sneaking past Fenrir? I wonder...>_>
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=934287&topic=43658050 - paraphrasal of Etreant's skills and how to bind them.
- someone mentioned you have to "fall through every pit" to complete the Royalant quest...please no
- someone mentions the obvious strategy of luring the FOEs to the stairs on Pacman, then jumping upstairs to reset their positions
got to page 26, that's enough for now.

Found a fansite dedicated to the game, they have mirrored the (inaccurate) skill spreadsheet and Terence's text files.
http://www.intothelabyrinth.net/etrianodyssey/downloaded.php

Finally read the stuff on http://www.atlus.com/etrian . The director's diary told me "This is not the type of game you should race through! That's all I wanted to tell you today. This isn't the sort of game where you should have a competition with your friends to see who can finish first." Great, everyone hates me.

VorpalEdge

2009-11-30 08:01:39 pm

welcome to the machine

Quote from ShinerCCC:

And it seems he only goes for the guaranteed Resolve if he reads 5 buffs, so if I use a 4 character team Immunize will stick, and also guarantees no Cyclone until he's down to 25% HP.

huh. That's not a bad idea. You'd be higher-levelled too, since the exp only gets split 4 ways instead of 5. In that case, you'd use MS... DD? LA? T's out because of the buff limit, so S is required for stalker and the M is a given.

ShinerCCC

2009-11-30 11:55:45 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

I can just re-organize my team for the final battle, getting there I will most likely use 5. To get to the fight, I go upstairs, fight some FOE to use my Axcela III and run away, use the west elevator to reset danger counter, then walk across the tree. With the shortcut on B25F and Stalker 10 I don't get into any fights, but if I unlock Gold Chime I won't need my Stalker user if things end up that way. Maybe I could rest my Stalker character (T hopefully...use those 11 skill points on HP up!) to be better prepared for this fight.

Just did a test run against Etreant using ML,SA and got raped (even though Ambush triggered XD), even though boosted Immunize definitely manages his attacks. Thorns does 50 at max and his regular melee does 30 or less. But he got Growth up, which heals 5% of his max HP, which is 18000, so he was recovering 900 a turn in the face of Caduceus (235) + Blazer (330) + Flame (240) + L1 Multihit (200). After 14 turns of a pointless slugfest he was back at full health. A T is absolutely essential because Erasure is effectively doing 900 damage every turn. In addition, if he doesn't have Growth up, he picks AI tables that have a 25% chance of putting it back up, and also have a 10% or 25% chance of rolling a bugged move and doing nothing. There's also a much lower chance he won't use Inferno as long as I keep Growth down.

I don't think it's worth leveling up a Hexer for Revenge, I won't get anywhere close to 999 HP anyway. Because of Growth and my supreme low level, I need to think of a smart team to fight Etreant. DDD,M is starting to sound like it has merit again because of its ability to punish Thorns so well. Damage output is priority #1 because the fewer turns I take, the fewer Axcela IIIs I need, which means less grinding for money, Shiny Seeds and Oleanders. I can't use a Ronin because the stance counts as a buff ;_; But given the highlighted importance of a T here, maybe I should try TL(axe)M,S. I could rest my Landsnickers but then I would need to get a good axe somewhere. Getting the Statue Arm is a huge sidetrack, I could get Climax (which would barely work) or level a Ronin (would take forever) but has the kind of attack power I need. Bomber Axe is post-game only, which sucks because it would be just perfect here. The unlockable axes are Francisca (1 Space Nail, not bad at all, but the damage is far from optimal) Bhuj (1 gold horn, 1 gold tusk...doesn't sound too painful) and Fasces Axe (10 Death Stem is feasible since I drop by the B23F chop lump anyway, but 5 Space Husks?! nevar).

In other amazing news, however, the Fenrir skip ACTUALLY WORKS. WOW. I guess I can completely ignore Flame, and just grind up Inferno. I think the levels it takes to have a good Fenrir setup in the early going aren't worth going for, it will be easier to just grind on B6F by nuking Waspiors with 1st Turn Inferno. I also don't want to waste those precious early levels on Stalker, when 5 levels of Stalker can easily be bought for 200en in the form of Ward Chimes. I counted the number of steps (when taking the B3F shortcut, whoops) and it's 363 to Fenrir's door. Once I'm there I just have to kill 2 Skolls, maybe only one if the one on the right moves in a good pattern. I'm not sure if I'll need Return in the 1st Stratum any more. I have to contemplate how to beat the 1st floor ASAP now. It looks like the best grinding can be done in that little north-south hallway in A3 on B6F, I just checked and it's easy to sneak by the Cutters. Encounters are more frequent and the groups are either Waspior-Waspior (40%), Waspior-Venomgel-Waspior (40%), or Spider-Venomgel-Spider (20%). Just do 1st turn Inferno and have MTL clean up on any survivors. This is not only more economical for Inferno, Waspiors give more exp than gels (264, Gels are 216 and 231), Spiders give a LOT more (311), it also leads to me unlocking Nectar early so I can bring level 1 characters to B8F and farm the fire-vulnerable enemies there. I don't think I'll be able to count on my L outpacing my S for combined 1st Turn Blazer+Inferno. Hide Boot won't get unlocked, it's too out of the way to grab on B3F, and I don't think 1 point of agility will be enough to offset this.

Protip for Cernunos: everybody whines "omg he uses Glare if you kill his buddies!" more accurately, he uses Glare if he is alone AND has Defend active. When it wears off in 5 turns (or if I Erasure it, heh heh) he will bring back the Curollers, but in the meantime, it looks like you can stall him by using slow Inferno every turn on the Curollers he summons.

Boss levels:
Wolf 14
Skoll 15
Fenrir 18
Pondclaw 26
Cernunos 28
Royalant 32
Cotrangl 38
Iwaropeln 46
Ren & Tlatchtaga 47, 47
Etreant 56
other 5th stratum enemies are in the 50s.

This Terence guy is going to get the biggest shoutout ever in the comments. Disassembly is the best thing ever, him and Sarcoma (Final Fantasy Legend dissassembler guy) are my heroes.

Just did a test run against Etreant using ML,SA and got raped (even though Ambush triggered XD), even though boosted Immunize definitely manages his attacks. Thorns does 50 at max and his regular melee does 30 or less. But he got Growth up, which heals 5% of his max HP, which is 18000, so he was recovering 900 a turn in the face of Caduceus (235) + Blazer (330) + Flame (240) + L1 Multihit (200). After 14 turns of a pointless slugfest he was back at full health. A T is absolutely essential because Erasure is effectively doing 900 damage every turn. In addition, if he doesn't have Growth up, he picks AI tables that have a 25% chance of putting it back up, and also have a 10% or 25% chance of rolling a bugged move and doing nothing. There's also a much lower chance he won't use Inferno as long as I keep Growth down.

I don't think it's worth leveling up a Hexer for Revenge, I won't get anywhere close to 999 HP anyway. Because of Growth and my supreme low level, I need to think of a smart team to fight Etreant. DDD,M is starting to sound like it has merit again because of its ability to punish Thorns so well. Damage output is priority #1 because the fewer turns I take, the fewer Axcela IIIs I need, which means less grinding for money, Shiny Seeds and Oleanders. I can't use a Ronin because the stance counts as a buff ;_; But given the highlighted importance of a T here, maybe I should try TL(axe)M,S. I could rest my Landsnickers but then I would need to get a good axe somewhere. Getting the Statue Arm is a huge sidetrack, I could get Climax (which would barely work) or level a Ronin (would take forever) but has the kind of attack power I need. Bomber Axe is post-game only, which sucks because it would be just perfect here. The unlockable axes are Francisca (1 Space Nail, not bad at all, but the damage is far from optimal) Bhuj (1 gold horn, 1 gold tusk...doesn't sound too painful) and Fasces Axe (10 Death Stem is feasible since I drop by the B23F chop lump anyway, but 5 Space Husks?! nevar).

In other amazing news, however, the Fenrir skip ACTUALLY WORKS. WOW. I guess I can completely ignore Flame, and just grind up Inferno. I think the levels it takes to have a good Fenrir setup in the early going aren't worth going for, it will be easier to just grind on B6F by nuking Waspiors with 1st Turn Inferno. I also don't want to waste those precious early levels on Stalker, when 5 levels of Stalker can easily be bought for 200en in the form of Ward Chimes. I counted the number of steps (when taking the B3F shortcut, whoops) and it's 363 to Fenrir's door. Once I'm there I just have to kill 2 Skolls, maybe only one if the one on the right moves in a good pattern. I'm not sure if I'll need Return in the 1st Stratum any more. I have to contemplate how to beat the 1st floor ASAP now. It looks like the best grinding can be done in that little north-south hallway in A3 on B6F, I just checked and it's easy to sneak by the Cutters. Encounters are more frequent and the groups are either Waspior-Waspior (40%), Waspior-Venomgel-Waspior (40%), or Spider-Venomgel-Spider (20%). Just do 1st turn Inferno and have MTL clean up on any survivors. This is not only more economical for Inferno, Waspiors give more exp than gels (264, Gels are 216 and 231), Spiders give a LOT more (311), it also leads to me unlocking Nectar early so I can bring level 1 characters to B8F and farm the fire-vulnerable enemies there. I don't think I'll be able to count on my L outpacing my S for combined 1st Turn Blazer+Inferno. Hide Boot won't get unlocked, it's too out of the way to grab on B3F, and I don't think 1 point of agility will be enough to offset this.

Protip for Cernunos: everybody whines "omg he uses Glare if you kill his buddies!" more accurately, he uses Glare if he is alone AND has Defend active. When it wears off in 5 turns (or if I Erasure it, heh heh) he will bring back the Curollers, but in the meantime, it looks like you can stall him by using slow Inferno every turn on the Curollers he summons.

Boss levels:
Wolf 14
Skoll 15
Fenrir 18
Pondclaw 26
Cernunos 28
Royalant 32
Cotrangl 38
Iwaropeln 46
Ren & Tlatchtaga 47, 47
Etreant 56
other 5th stratum enemies are in the 50s.

This Terence guy is going to get the biggest shoutout ever in the comments. Disassembly is the best thing ever, him and Sarcoma (Final Fantasy Legend dissassembler guy) are my heroes.

VorpalEdge

2009-12-01 01:11:37 am

welcome to the machine

Quote from ShinerCCC:

I can't use a Ronin because the stance counts as a buff ;_;

Primevil doesn't count ronin stances as a buff when determining what to do. There's a good possibility etreant ignores them too, although I don't know either way. You could check primevil's move rotation to see if this is mentioned there but not for etreant. Not that this matters, since using a ronin would almost certainly be worse, what with having to level it from 1 in the third stratum. A good Bait D would put out just as much damage and would be easier to find equipment for too.

If you're going to use a T then I would recommend DMST, moving the T to the front row for extra bait fodder for etreant. Maybe take an A around for stratums 1/2 but drop him after Cernunos; taking the fifth member out of the party only for Etreant is inefficient, as by that point he's soaked up lots of exp that could be better used by other members of the party. Also, if you're going to level in stratum 2 then do so on B7F if it's at all possible; it's better exp and you can last more than three infernos without heading back to town.

[quote="ShinerCCC"]
I can't use a Ronin because the stance counts as a buff ;_; 
[/quote]

Primevil doesn't count ronin stances as a buff when determining what to do.  There's a good possibility etreant ignores them too, although I don't know either way.  You could check primevil's move rotation to see if this is mentioned there but not for etreant.  Not that this matters, since using a ronin would almost certainly be worse, what with having to level it from 1 in the third stratum.  A good Bait D would put out just as much damage and would be easier to find equipment for too.
 
If you're going to use a T then I would recommend DMST, moving the T to the front row for extra bait fodder for etreant.  Maybe take an A around for stratums 1/2 but drop him after Cernunos; taking the fifth member out of the party only for Etreant is inefficient, as by that point he's soaked up lots of exp that could be better used by other members of the party.  Also, if you're going to level in stratum 2 then do so on B7F if it's at all possible; it's better exp and you can last more than three infernos without heading back to town.

ShinerCCC

Edit history:

ShinerCCC: 2009-12-01 02:36:22 pm

2009-12-01 12:17:50 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Well, gels are a bit resilient against Inferno at first, plus I'd have to make sure I could slip past the Cutter guarding the door to the shortcut. For some reason, on the map he stays still, but one time when I came in the room he wasn't blocking the door. I think it was night. I'll have to see how it's done. I'll also check what kind of encounters can be had on B7F. I don't like staying there because of the damage floor and Assassins.

Also, good news, 4 characters can beat Etreant no problem, it doesn't really matter who you bring as long as they all deal good damage, it comes down to how many Axcela IIIs and Amrita IIs you bring. I rested my L but because my best axe was Halberd (+116 ATK, Francisca actually needs 5 Space Nails, argh) his Crush only did 140 damage. My A's Flame was doing 240. So I quickly got a Hex Marrow from a Treetusk, bought Athanor and suddenly my Flame was doing 340. 74 TEC -> 84 TEC is a huge difference, apparently. I guess the +5 from an Arcana Rod matters too then. Killing another Treetusk for two Ward Gems seems like a good idea, two Angel Rings only means I get a bonus 70 TP to start with, I'm using a boatload of Amrita IIs anyway. So my medic kept using Caduceus, my T kept using Erasure, my S used Multihit whenever available but because his damage was lowest he was usually in charge of throwing Axcela IIIs and Amrita IIs around. Basically your lowest damage dealer becomes in charge of support, but nobody does higher damage than the T's Erasure. Growth is a priority move so Erasure always follows it, meaning he never gets to heal 900. Etreant's Inferno skill always missed for some reason, with Trickery I can certainly make sure of that (base accuracy lowered to 70%). I guess I don't need Jewel Eyes after all. Cyclone came out a few times but Boosted Immunize keeps it under control, it did about 70 damage. I actually almost did beat Etreant last night but I brought one Axcela III too few and had 9 Amrita IIs left, so with no boosted Immunize in the last few turns (about 32) I couldn't quite finish the dirty deed. I should point out my Medic's Caduceus is only level 6 and my S's Multihit is level 4 (with bows at 5) so my damage output is far from optimal. I estimate I used around 15 Amrita IIs. So I guess 7 Axcela IIIs should be enough, the rest can be spent on Amrita IIs.
Levels of the characters used:
LV 43 Medic
LV 45 Survivalist (I bought Sylpheed for him btw, was somewhat helpful I guess)
LV 31 Troubadour (took 5 points in HP Up but Boosted Immunize kept him safe and sound, so that won't be needed for the actual run. in fact this guy can be scrapped on the way down too possibly, songs on 4 characters are less efficient than 5)
LV 44 Alchemist. 3 points in TP Regen helped a lot, it means that over 35 turns I recovered 70 TP, which is 5 Flames for free. Would be 8 if I hadn't moronically leveled Fire Up to 10. So I guess the target level for my A by the end is 43.
I was probably bit overleveled because of some testing/searching I did and stuff.

Sticking with 4 characters for the whole thing is an interesting idea. I'm a firm believer in 1st Turn + Inferno to level up, at high levels it works amazing well around the healing spring of B18F to level as well. It might be easier than abusing Iwaro too, with Divinity 10 I was getting around 1000 exp every fight on 4 people. Given it takes a few seconds to win one of those and several minutes to take down Iwaro that's faster. I should probably kill Iwaro at least twice though, just to make sure I get an Angel Robe for my medic, it's way better than Dino Plate. Trust me, I need the extra TP, Caduceus and Immunize and Salve II takes a lot. (Salve II at level 1 is plenty btw, it heals 120, Etreant can't do more than 75 to me). Actually, given that I need a _dedicated_ supporter, I should consider scrapping ATK Up and Caduceus to get TP Up and TP Regen instead, to ensure I waste fewer turns using Amrita IIs to heal Caduceus. Then I wouldn't need to bother with Mystic Rod either (provided I go for Arcana Rod, won't be expensive when I can mine at B16F), my T can use a Steelsword. The only drawback is, well, less damage everywhere else, and I can't heal + use Axcela III unless I stop doing damage with one character. It also means my buff of choice is definitely Relaxing, not Bravery.

Actually having an A all the time would suck. I really wanted my 5 character team to abuse elemental Oils for bosses and get the T to use Bravery on them for ridiculous damage with no TP cost. I think I would indeed have to scrap him. I should also point out that Blazer + Inferno does indeed rape every monster in the 5th stratum except Direwolves (fire immune), Burstgels (never saw any but they're fire immune too) and Hellbulls (a little extra HP, back it up with a Survivalist shot). A 4 character team would have to say goodbye to this setup because I think I need 1st Turn Immunize to beat Etreant, it ensures I get an extra turn out of each boosted Immunize, which means I need fewer Axcela IIIs. (btw I bought at least 9 of them and I didn't run out, I'm not sure if they actually do sell out) Scrapping the A seems to be the logical decision if I want an oil setup but then I need a different AoE setup to destroy random encounters (and thereby level in the process, instead of running away all the time and taking hits). Allslash takes too long to get, maybe I could use Tornado to level up? Bait could possibly destroy random encounters but I've heard it has a side effect of reducing the front row's defense slightly and making monsters more likely to target the back row. Hmm. 4 characters would take longer on every boss, all so I can have 20% more experience gained. That's barely single digits in the first floor, not very significant in the 1st stratum overall, especially since the new plan is to bring a bunch of meat shields and run past everything. Heh, I wonder if a bunch of level 1 Protectors with Ward Chimes can actually run past everything, XD (probably not)

Then, once I get to the second stratum, I can visit the B1F secret area and pick up the Rapier (you can sneak around Ragelope to the side of the box, but then he traps you, so just Warp Wire out), and the Plumed Hat (would probably have to endure an encounter though), so I already have some awesome weaponry. If I need another sword Broadsword is unlocked from a mere 1 Steel Lump. I can steal the Down Staff from Moa if that's what's needed. For Hard Sling I would need 3 Sticky Goos, farming gels wouldn't be too hard hopefully.

brb gotta go somewhere
EDIT: back. I had a thought; I don't think a bit of extra experience points can make up for a 5th guy who could do hundreds of points more damage every turn in boss fights. Having a high level helps just for that damage formula, sure, but I don't think I'll gain more than one actual level with one less character. Basically, the same reasons Darkwing Duck used a full party for Dragon Warrior III. This game is more about skill choices than levelups anyway, a team of 5 level 70s with no skill points spent won't beat Etreant. As I lamented earlier, I lose a lot of infrastructure with one less character. That said, for four characters, MST is given, the 4th character can either be the support item user (M is battle medic) or another damage dealer (M becomes support character, no ATK Up?). Etreant is a unique fight IMO, the entire game should not be planned against him. I think I will proceed as planned with my next test run of MLTSA. The L will be getting Blazer 10 ASAP so he will get dropped for Etreant. I strongly want to look into replacing the A with a sword D; although random encounters would be slower until I get Bait, Bravery would become godly because all five members benefit from it, and it also means I don't need to switch to my other A for Royalant or something. My L would need a totally different build though; he should go either Axes (bah, farming for Francisca) or Allslash. I could have Allslash 10 in time for Royalant, then the rest of my skill points can go into 2-Hit or Swords and ATK Up. With no Alchemist, my encounter nuke requires all five characters but is still reliable: 1st Turn Immunize, Bravery, Allslash + Bait. Bait is likely to wreck Direwolves due to their Blazer skill.

One final note about Fenrir skip: I'm not sure if this completes the mission or not. If all it does is give me access to the Geomagnetic Pillar, then all I've earned is a surprise round on Fenrir. But it still unlocks that one Rapier...

Also, good news, 4 characters can beat Etreant no problem, it doesn't really matter who you bring as long as they all deal good damage, it comes down to how many Axcela IIIs and Amrita IIs you bring. I rested my L but because my best axe was Halberd (+116 ATK, Francisca actually needs 5 Space Nails, argh) his Crush only did 140 damage. My A's Flame was doing 240. So I quickly got a Hex Marrow from a Treetusk, bought Athanor and suddenly my Flame was doing 340. 74 TEC -> 84 TEC is a huge difference, apparently. I guess the +5 from an Arcana Rod matters too then. Killing another Treetusk for two Ward Gems seems like a good idea, two Angel Rings only means I get a bonus 70 TP to start with, I'm using a boatload of Amrita IIs anyway. So my medic kept using Caduceus, my T kept using Erasure, my S used Multihit whenever available but because his damage was lowest he was usually in charge of throwing Axcela IIIs and Amrita IIs around. Basically your lowest damage dealer becomes in charge of support, but nobody does higher damage than the T's Erasure. Growth is a priority move so Erasure always follows it, meaning he never gets to heal 900. Etreant's Inferno skill always missed for some reason, with Trickery I can certainly make sure of that (base accuracy lowered to 70%). I guess I don't need Jewel Eyes after all. Cyclone came out a few times but Boosted Immunize keeps it under control, it did about 70 damage. I actually almost did beat Etreant last night but I brought one Axcela III too few and had 9 Amrita IIs left, so with no boosted Immunize in the last few turns (about 32) I couldn't quite finish the dirty deed. I should point out my Medic's Caduceus is only level 6 and my S's Multihit is level 4 (with bows at 5) so my damage output is far from optimal. I estimate I used around 15 Amrita IIs. So I guess 7 Axcela IIIs should be enough, the rest can be spent on Amrita IIs.
Levels of the characters used:
LV 43 Medic
LV 45 Survivalist (I bought Sylpheed for him btw, was somewhat helpful I guess)
LV 31 Troubadour (took 5 points in HP Up but Boosted Immunize kept him safe and sound, so that won't be needed for the actual run. in fact this guy can be scrapped on the way down too possibly, songs on 4 characters are less efficient than 5)
LV 44 Alchemist. 3 points in TP Regen helped a lot, it means that over 35 turns I recovered 70 TP, which is 5 Flames for free. Would be 8 if I hadn't moronically leveled Fire Up to 10. So I guess the target level for my A by the end is 43.
I was probably bit overleveled because of some testing/searching I did and stuff.

Sticking with 4 characters for the whole thing is an interesting idea. I'm a firm believer in 1st Turn + Inferno to level up, at high levels it works amazing well around the healing spring of B18F to level as well. It might be easier than abusing Iwaro too, with Divinity 10 I was getting around 1000 exp every fight on 4 people. Given it takes a few seconds to win one of those and several minutes to take down Iwaro that's faster. I should probably kill Iwaro at least twice though, just to make sure I get an Angel Robe for my medic, it's way better than Dino Plate. Trust me, I need the extra TP, Caduceus and Immunize and Salve II takes a lot. (Salve II at level 1 is plenty btw, it heals 120, Etreant can't do more than 75 to me). Actually, given that I need a _dedicated_ supporter, I should consider scrapping ATK Up and Caduceus to get TP Up and TP Regen instead, to ensure I waste fewer turns using Amrita IIs to heal Caduceus. Then I wouldn't need to bother with Mystic Rod either (provided I go for Arcana Rod, won't be expensive when I can mine at B16F), my T can use a Steelsword. The only drawback is, well, less damage everywhere else, and I can't heal + use Axcela III unless I stop doing damage with one character. It also means my buff of choice is definitely Relaxing, not Bravery.

Actually having an A all the time would suck. I really wanted my 5 character team to abuse elemental Oils for bosses and get the T to use Bravery on them for ridiculous damage with no TP cost. I think I would indeed have to scrap him. I should also point out that Blazer + Inferno does indeed rape every monster in the 5th stratum except Direwolves (fire immune), Burstgels (never saw any but they're fire immune too) and Hellbulls (a little extra HP, back it up with a Survivalist shot). A 4 character team would have to say goodbye to this setup because I think I need 1st Turn Immunize to beat Etreant, it ensures I get an extra turn out of each boosted Immunize, which means I need fewer Axcela IIIs. (btw I bought at least 9 of them and I didn't run out, I'm not sure if they actually do sell out) Scrapping the A seems to be the logical decision if I want an oil setup but then I need a different AoE setup to destroy random encounters (and thereby level in the process, instead of running away all the time and taking hits). Allslash takes too long to get, maybe I could use Tornado to level up? Bait could possibly destroy random encounters but I've heard it has a side effect of reducing the front row's defense slightly and making monsters more likely to target the back row. Hmm. 4 characters would take longer on every boss, all so I can have 20% more experience gained. That's barely single digits in the first floor, not very significant in the 1st stratum overall, especially since the new plan is to bring a bunch of meat shields and run past everything. Heh, I wonder if a bunch of level 1 Protectors with Ward Chimes can actually run past everything, XD (probably not)

Then, once I get to the second stratum, I can visit the B1F secret area and pick up the Rapier (you can sneak around Ragelope to the side of the box, but then he traps you, so just Warp Wire out), and the Plumed Hat (would probably have to endure an encounter though), so I already have some awesome weaponry. If I need another sword Broadsword is unlocked from a mere 1 Steel Lump. I can steal the Down Staff from Moa if that's what's needed. For Hard Sling I would need 3 Sticky Goos, farming gels wouldn't be too hard hopefully.

brb gotta go somewhere
EDIT: back. I had a thought; I don't think a bit of extra experience points can make up for a 5th guy who could do hundreds of points more damage every turn in boss fights. Having a high level helps just for that damage formula, sure, but I don't think I'll gain more than one actual level with one less character. Basically, the same reasons Darkwing Duck used a full party for Dragon Warrior III. This game is more about skill choices than levelups anyway, a team of 5 level 70s with no skill points spent won't beat Etreant. As I lamented earlier, I lose a lot of infrastructure with one less character. That said, for four characters, MST is given, the 4th character can either be the support item user (M is battle medic) or another damage dealer (M becomes support character, no ATK Up?). Etreant is a unique fight IMO, the entire game should not be planned against him. I think I will proceed as planned with my next test run of MLTSA. The L will be getting Blazer 10 ASAP so he will get dropped for Etreant. I strongly want to look into replacing the A with a sword D; although random encounters would be slower until I get Bait, Bravery would become godly because all five members benefit from it, and it also means I don't need to switch to my other A for Royalant or something. My L would need a totally different build though; he should go either Axes (bah, farming for Francisca) or Allslash. I could have Allslash 10 in time for Royalant, then the rest of my skill points can go into 2-Hit or Swords and ATK Up. With no Alchemist, my encounter nuke requires all five characters but is still reliable: 1st Turn Immunize, Bravery, Allslash + Bait. Bait is likely to wreck Direwolves due to their Blazer skill.

One final note about Fenrir skip: I'm not sure if this completes the mission or not. If all it does is give me access to the Geomagnetic Pillar, then all I've earned is a surprise round on Fenrir. But it still unlocks that one Rapier...

ShinerCCC

2009-12-01 07:43:50 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Oh man, I just checked, it works, you can summon-lock Cernunos by spamming Inferno XD

He keeps trying to summon Curollers every turn because he doesn't have his Defend buff up yet. But I think he goes back to doing regular attacks (Glare included) when he gets into low health. I'll have to see how to keep it up for a long time though. Relaxing might help if I can bring that down there. I need an alchemist anyway so I can unlock Hard Shell >_>

I think I'll give said alchemist ice instead, the Curollers are vulnerable to that, and then I can keep him around for Royalant too.

ShinerCCC

2009-12-04 02:09:19 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

I made a new post in the GameFAQs thread but I'm going to paraphrase it again here. I really need help with the number crunch at the start of the game.

Dark Hunters don't do enough damage and are too frail, same with Landsnickers, so I'm doing TMS,AA for my starting team. Second alchemist gets poison, as usual. I need a way to kill one or two of the Skolls in Fenrir's lair. With Poison this also means I can use the Wolves to gain quick levels instead of avoiding all of them. Why ignore Wolves when I can't even kill Skolls? The poison also helps immensely in regular fights because I can just eliminate the enemy of my choice.

Enemies do pretty high damage. Even with lots of Hide Belts, it takes quite a bit of luck to have all my characters survive. Ideally, I want to get to the healing sprinkler on B3F at level 4, that's when I can get Inferno if I skip learning Fire. When I get 1st Turn at level 6, I start winning encounters for free. Salve is an acceptable substitute I guess, either way every other character just defends. I think I should skip Fire because it only does 25 or 30 damage to Venomflies, when they have 41 HP and I have to fight multiples of them it's just too hectic. Inferno is a much better answer. It also means I can give him a burst of exp (117 total, it takes 144 to get from 4 to 5...if I luck manipulate it with a segment so I can get him there safely, maybe with a fodder character in the front that dies off, and then have them all use Poison then there you go, I haven't missed out on Fire at all lolz)

So far the plan is to nap, then grind using the magic spring on B1F until midnight (or morning? probably not, exp on B1F really peters out, even in the hard encounters. 3 moles gives 9 exp, not worth the trouble considering 3 Woodflies gives you 7). Before I head to B2F, I can go on another chop run and buy more Hide Belts or Red Charms before I head out. B2F is really hard at level 3 though. The enemies all do really high damage, Fenders can one-shot a character even if they're defending sometimes. Skipping Fire seems like a better way to deal with Venomflies although Inferno uses half my arsenal of TP. That's fine just for unlocking the Fenrir mission though, I can Poison everything else.

Return should save some walking but I'm not sure how useful it will turn out to be. Might be useful for mapping out B11F and B12F.

I remembered this game can only have one file so that's probably why nobody's testing any of this planning. But if anybody could help me figure out how to start that would help.

I made a new post in the GameFAQs thread but I'm going to paraphrase it again here. I really need help with the number crunch at the start of the game.

Dark Hunters don't do enough damage and are too frail, same with Landsnickers, so I'm doing TMS,AA for my starting team. Second alchemist gets poison, as usual. I need a way to kill one or two of the Skolls in Fenrir's lair. With Poison this also means I can use the Wolves to gain quick levels instead of avoiding all of them. Why ignore Wolves when I can't even kill Skolls? The poison also helps immensely in regular fights because I can just eliminate the enemy of my choice.

Enemies do pretty high damage. Even with lots of Hide Belts, it takes quite a bit of luck to have all my characters survive. Ideally, I want to get to the healing sprinkler on B3F at level 4, that's when I can get Inferno if I skip learning Fire. When I get 1st Turn at level 6, I start winning encounters for free. Salve is an acceptable substitute I guess, either way every other character just defends. I think I should skip Fire because it only does 25 or 30 damage to Venomflies, when they have 41 HP and I have to fight multiples of them it's just too hectic. Inferno is a much better answer. It also means I can give him a burst of exp (117 total, it takes 144 to get from 4 to 5...if I luck manipulate it with a segment so I can get him there safely, maybe with a fodder character in the front that dies off, and then have them all use Poison then there you go, I haven't missed out on Fire at all lolz)

So far the plan is to nap, then grind using the magic spring on B1F until midnight (or morning? probably not, exp on B1F really peters out, even in the hard encounters. 3 moles gives 9 exp, not worth the trouble considering 3 Woodflies gives you 7). Before I head to B2F, I can go on another chop run and buy more Hide Belts or Red Charms before I head out. B2F is really hard at level 3 though. The enemies all do really high damage, Fenders can one-shot a character even if they're defending sometimes. Skipping Fire seems like a better way to deal with Venomflies although Inferno uses half my arsenal of TP. That's fine just for unlocking the Fenrir mission though, I can Poison everything else.

Return should save some walking but I'm not sure how useful it will turn out to be. Might be useful for mapping out B11F and B12F.

I remembered this game can only have one file so that's probably why nobody's testing any of this planning. But if anybody could help me figure out how to start that would help.

ShinerCCC

2009-12-08 12:29:47 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

The Fenrir skip didn't turn out as well as I thought it would. You get access to B6F's Geomagnetic Pillar but it doesn't complete the mission so you can't open the door. You can, however, visit B1F's secret area, so I grabbed the Rapier and Plumed Hat. The ideal rooms for grinding are the ones with Ragelopes in them, you can fight Waspiors along with gels sometimes, however I didn't do this. Get a Steel Lump ASAP so your T can get a decent sword too. Grinding around the Pillar on B6 is a pain in the ass though, fights only give 85-92 exp, the drops suck, Inferno was always just a few points of damage short for the longest time (character levels seem to make more difference than Inferno skill levels, sheesh), and once the A runs out of TP you have to spend about 85en at the inn again. So you have to moderate your exp grinding with chop runs. If you go to the secret area, add in another 100en overhead cost for Warp Wires (although if that warp wire glitch works that will be awesome). It took a while, but I grinded until I had Immunize 7, which was barely enough to defeat Fenrir. It's possible to teach the T Bravery at this point but Stalker 10 is much more important. Blaze Oil on my L was a godsend. I used Blazer + Inferno to finish off Fenrir and 3 Skolls for a healthy chunk of exp, everybody lived somehow. My A didn't even start learning Flame until B10 grinding. TP Up only adds 1% at each level so I'm getting it last, Flame is needed for Cotrangul. However, I'm convinced you could get by with less grinding, because Fenrir always attacks the front row and a Level 6 Protector is all you would need to choke him out until he runs out of TP. But the only way to do good damage is to get Poison to stick, and with a 5% base chance, I would have to see if there was some kind of luck manipulation that would make it possible. If I got consistent enough at the first three segments I wonder if I could research it on emulator and guarantee a successful poison.

Wolves give tons of exp, wow. The sprinkler also revives dead characters! So it was easy to level off them. Return wasn't that big of a timesaver though, once I cleared out B4 I made a beeline for Fenrir and barely did it. I ran from a Mandrake-Warbull-Mandrake fight to do it, very dicey stuff. When you go for the Fenrir skip, once Fenrir starts chasing you the Skolls all sit still so don't worry about some sort of sketchy collision.

Rollers are scary because they can survive Inferno 1 even with a Staff, but if they're brought to less than 30% of their max HP they always defend so it's a non-issue. yay!

Cernunos got raped, my guys were level 24. I didn't even need to use the free Amritas (or my boosted Relaxing 3, lol) the game has given me to keep up Inferno, he died in 7 turns and he stopped summoning during the last two (health was in the red). My A has 110 TP with his 3 Star Charms equipped. I took the time to learn Cure II as a safety net but I didn't even need it, Cernunos did zero damage to me. He got off a Glare and missed. L's damage with the Rapier, Swords 10 and ATK Up 3 was impressive with about 240 or so. However I've been taking the time to get closer to Blazer 10 because there isn't much of an opportunity for leveling on the way to Cotrangul except for the necessary exploration of B11 and B12, bawww. Medic's ATK Up 5 did about 80 damage with shock'D Down Staff, oh well. Blazer isn't necessary for this fight obviously, which is why I was building up ATK Up on my L. Cernunos takes crap damage from fire so it's not worth using a Bravant on the A.

I got a Sharp Horn, however Firebirds were extremely rare during my grinding from 17 to 24 so I didn't get a single Tailbone. Forget about Hindi. Self Bow is easier to make anyway since I am forced to explore part of the 3rd stratum. I'm worried I didn't grind enough on B10 though, this is my only chance to take advantage of that super, super convenient healing sprinkler, and the experience is still good. It's even better than 3rd stratum exp, seriously, mainly because the enemies are so easy to kill and large in number. Levelups happen very quickly. With Stalker 10 it's so easy to get there too, usually I only have one or two encounters on B7 and that's it until B10. I need to remember to bring an extra Shock Oil for the mandatory Moa kill on B10 as well (Moa takes equal damage from all elements). Immunize 10 makes his damage into a joke but my damage is pretty jokely as well. The room with 3 Armoths, the right side has no Armoth patrolling so you can start there and sneak by along the north wall.

Apollon is AMAZING. It's only level 4 and it did 250 damage to Cerny, my shock shot did 100 or less. Forget about Multihit (4 points in it now), it's a waste of TP, even for the final battle. More shooting means more Amrita throwing becomes necessary. Might as well put those points into TP Up and 1st Turn instead. Well, we'll see how handy it is against Hunters on the Pac-Man floor, otherwise that is pretty much the only worthwhile use of Multihit compared to Apollon or elemental shots. Ren and Ogres will eat too many shots, Multihit takes a lot of TP as well. Dedicated Apollon will make that Moa a lot quicker too. I need a dedicated supporter during the Etreant fight anyway so an Apollon-Axcela III-Amrita II pattern sounds very powerful.

Royalant is coming up. The plan is to switch my fire A to my other A, as poison makes quick work of ants and I can level him easily for some cheesy Ice skills, this worked really well in the previous test run. It's a long fight so Relaxing should help immensely. I don't think I'll be going into it with a Boost though, unless I go up to B8F...not worth it. Viking will definitely be unlocked, I'll go out of my way to unlock Gem Staff and Self Bow as well.

Spare supplies thus far are an Amrita, 2x Amrita II, Axcela II, Theriaca A, and I have a Bravant waiting for me due to the LV 20 Landsnickers quest. Quests still seem like a waste of time though, I got a prompt about that quest while grinding. The rewards are also lousy, although that free Red Charm helps because I'm always strapped for cash at the start, the Axcela II can be acquired before you can unlock it, and normally I wouldn't get Medica II (but somehow I got 10 Tiny Petals this time, that never happens, meanwhile Theriaca A isn't unlocked, FML). My inventory was filling up while grinding, once I got rid of all my Sticky Goos I figured it would be fastest to throw away whatever comes in. Also Medica II is useless. Salve II is going to be crucial for Royalant though. But I only need 1 point for the entire game, 120 HP is plenty since I never get points in HP Up and my characters max out in the 200 range. I'm not sure what my T is going to do once Relaxing is maxed, I can only have Immunize-Relaxing-Oil for buffs. Maybe Bravery, it could come in handy in random encounters. Since I need 8 points to learn Divinity, I'd be level 38 by then, that's already the end of the game. Damn useless Troubadours!

I just checked and Royalant herself is equally vulnerable to all elements, it's her minions that have the "haha I am immune to fire and weak to ice" garbage. I'd make my main alchemist an ice user for the whole game if only for three things: Fenrir, forest folk randoms, and Armorolls. Armorolls take half damage from ice, and they're the most dangerous enemy in the whole game, I need to get that Blazer+Inferno combo for sure. Surprisingly, Pacman enemies take equal damage from all elements, Iwaro is vulnerable to ice and takes half damage from fire, blarg. I guess my A can toss around Freeze Oils while everyone gets ready. A separate poison user isn't too bad against Shelltors anyway, although it only has a 15% base chance to work. Shelltor takes an extra 25% damage from Ice, I'll have to bring some Freeze Oil I guess.

It looks like Iwaro spams Faster if he doesn't have it up, and has more than 70% HP. Looks like I can spam Erasure back to get in free shots at the start, heh heh...

I think this new test run is pretty promising, after this one I think I'll be able to put together a pretty solid segment guide!

Wolves give tons of exp, wow. The sprinkler also revives dead characters! So it was easy to level off them. Return wasn't that big of a timesaver though, once I cleared out B4 I made a beeline for Fenrir and barely did it. I ran from a Mandrake-Warbull-Mandrake fight to do it, very dicey stuff. When you go for the Fenrir skip, once Fenrir starts chasing you the Skolls all sit still so don't worry about some sort of sketchy collision.

Rollers are scary because they can survive Inferno 1 even with a Staff, but if they're brought to less than 30% of their max HP they always defend so it's a non-issue. yay!

Cernunos got raped, my guys were level 24. I didn't even need to use the free Amritas (or my boosted Relaxing 3, lol) the game has given me to keep up Inferno, he died in 7 turns and he stopped summoning during the last two (health was in the red). My A has 110 TP with his 3 Star Charms equipped. I took the time to learn Cure II as a safety net but I didn't even need it, Cernunos did zero damage to me. He got off a Glare and missed. L's damage with the Rapier, Swords 10 and ATK Up 3 was impressive with about 240 or so. However I've been taking the time to get closer to Blazer 10 because there isn't much of an opportunity for leveling on the way to Cotrangul except for the necessary exploration of B11 and B12, bawww. Medic's ATK Up 5 did about 80 damage with shock'D Down Staff, oh well. Blazer isn't necessary for this fight obviously, which is why I was building up ATK Up on my L. Cernunos takes crap damage from fire so it's not worth using a Bravant on the A.

I got a Sharp Horn, however Firebirds were extremely rare during my grinding from 17 to 24 so I didn't get a single Tailbone. Forget about Hindi. Self Bow is easier to make anyway since I am forced to explore part of the 3rd stratum. I'm worried I didn't grind enough on B10 though, this is my only chance to take advantage of that super, super convenient healing sprinkler, and the experience is still good. It's even better than 3rd stratum exp, seriously, mainly because the enemies are so easy to kill and large in number. Levelups happen very quickly. With Stalker 10 it's so easy to get there too, usually I only have one or two encounters on B7 and that's it until B10. I need to remember to bring an extra Shock Oil for the mandatory Moa kill on B10 as well (Moa takes equal damage from all elements). Immunize 10 makes his damage into a joke but my damage is pretty jokely as well. The room with 3 Armoths, the right side has no Armoth patrolling so you can start there and sneak by along the north wall.

Apollon is AMAZING. It's only level 4 and it did 250 damage to Cerny, my shock shot did 100 or less. Forget about Multihit (4 points in it now), it's a waste of TP, even for the final battle. More shooting means more Amrita throwing becomes necessary. Might as well put those points into TP Up and 1st Turn instead. Well, we'll see how handy it is against Hunters on the Pac-Man floor, otherwise that is pretty much the only worthwhile use of Multihit compared to Apollon or elemental shots. Ren and Ogres will eat too many shots, Multihit takes a lot of TP as well. Dedicated Apollon will make that Moa a lot quicker too. I need a dedicated supporter during the Etreant fight anyway so an Apollon-Axcela III-Amrita II pattern sounds very powerful.

Royalant is coming up. The plan is to switch my fire A to my other A, as poison makes quick work of ants and I can level him easily for some cheesy Ice skills, this worked really well in the previous test run. It's a long fight so Relaxing should help immensely. I don't think I'll be going into it with a Boost though, unless I go up to B8F...not worth it. Viking will definitely be unlocked, I'll go out of my way to unlock Gem Staff and Self Bow as well.

Spare supplies thus far are an Amrita, 2x Amrita II, Axcela II, Theriaca A, and I have a Bravant waiting for me due to the LV 20 Landsnickers quest. Quests still seem like a waste of time though, I got a prompt about that quest while grinding. The rewards are also lousy, although that free Red Charm helps because I'm always strapped for cash at the start, the Axcela II can be acquired before you can unlock it, and normally I wouldn't get Medica II (but somehow I got 10 Tiny Petals this time, that never happens, meanwhile Theriaca A isn't unlocked, FML). My inventory was filling up while grinding, once I got rid of all my Sticky Goos I figured it would be fastest to throw away whatever comes in. Also Medica II is useless. Salve II is going to be crucial for Royalant though. But I only need 1 point for the entire game, 120 HP is plenty since I never get points in HP Up and my characters max out in the 200 range. I'm not sure what my T is going to do once Relaxing is maxed, I can only have Immunize-Relaxing-Oil for buffs. Maybe Bravery, it could come in handy in random encounters. Since I need 8 points to learn Divinity, I'd be level 38 by then, that's already the end of the game. Damn useless Troubadours!

I just checked and Royalant herself is equally vulnerable to all elements, it's her minions that have the "haha I am immune to fire and weak to ice" garbage. I'd make my main alchemist an ice user for the whole game if only for three things: Fenrir, forest folk randoms, and Armorolls. Armorolls take half damage from ice, and they're the most dangerous enemy in the whole game, I need to get that Blazer+Inferno combo for sure. Surprisingly, Pacman enemies take equal damage from all elements, Iwaro is vulnerable to ice and takes half damage from fire, blarg. I guess my A can toss around Freeze Oils while everyone gets ready. A separate poison user isn't too bad against Shelltors anyway, although it only has a 15% base chance to work. Shelltor takes an extra 25% damage from Ice, I'll have to bring some Freeze Oil I guess.

It looks like Iwaro spams Faster if he doesn't have it up, and has more than 70% HP. Looks like I can spam Erasure back to get in free shots at the start, heh heh...

I think this new test run is pretty promising, after this one I think I'll be able to put together a pretty solid segment guide!

ShinerCCC

2009-12-09 03:12:47 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

AAAAASSSSSS ROYALANT IS KICKING MY ASS

I didn't take enough time to learn Salve II, but it doesn't matter, Crunch rapes my poison Alchemist in one hit (117 damage) because he's only level 20. (but my main A has 108 hp, hmm) ~~I can guarantee he isn't the target of ordinary melee attacks by giving him a Hide Ring (Royalant's AI targets characters with the lowest Slash resist for melee, lowest crush resist for Crunch)~~ oops these tables have impossible requirements, nevermind. It also seems smart to use Blaze or Shock Oil for this fight so my characters can avoid tripping the L's chaser skill. -_-
The Axcela II seems to help for getting to a Boosted Immunize though.
Another good tactic: kill the first 3 Bloodants, the 4th will join in and fill one spot with a crappy Deathant. heh heh heh~

I am seriously reconsidering this setup, I am going to do one more test run where my main alchemist is an ice user instead of a fire user. I will either bring in the poisoner for Cotrangl and teach him some minimal flame usage (why?! he'll die to Flood and Blizzard) or just fight with 4 characters, or just bring my ice A just to have him sling around Blaze Oils and Amritas, he can die if he has to.

I've been doing some grinding (really trying hard to find 5 Tailbones, nearly filled my inventory finding two, wtf Atlus why), went back and learned Salve II, got Relaxing up to 7, and Royalant is still pretty tough. Since I'm relying partially on luck to get through the random encounters of the 5th Stratum, why don't I just take that luck and use it to just run away from fights? 'Tis the true speedrunner way, after all. Pros and cons of using ice over fire:

PROS
- Grinding from Gels after Fenrir skip goes over much more smoothly, they take double damage from ice
- far easier ant nest/Royalant fight, no need to switch to some other douche
- ~~non-useless~~ more useful alchemist for Iwaro fight
- Direwolves can be pwned by 1st Freezer, maybe even just 1st Cocytus
- extra damage to Muckdile (for quick exp) and Kingdile when I go to hunt for Failnaught

CONS
- Fenrir himself turns into a jackass, he's immune to ice, Wolves and Skolls take half damage from ice - I will have to completely rely on the one Blaze Oil
- forest folk take half damage from this stuff as well, maybe I should run from them
- Armorolls take half damage, DEFINITELY run away
- I have a dead character versus Cotrangl but I might need him around to get to Cotrangl himself more easily

Anyway it is also definitely worthwhile to grind before Cernunos up to level 28 or 30 or so. The Glowbird-Glowbird-Glowbird-Firebird fight gives about 450 exp and is easy to win with a 1st turn Alchemist skill, and there's also that chance I get a Tailbone out of it too. I just checked on the maps where the best place to grind for Elastics would be though so I will have to check out that place too.

Character tweaks:
T: Relaxing isn't as helpful as I thought thus far. Most of my characters have less than 100 TP so they get back 2 TP per turn at most. If I'm able to boost it though, that should help a lot...but so far, Bravery (or maybe even Shelter?? LOLLL) seems like a better pick.

S: I'm 1st Turning a lot to heal in this Royalant fight, and Apollon just misses a lot because of Duster. Might be worth putting off Apollon levels for maxing 1st Turn (or TP Up, heaven forbid) first. Well, I just got a stun on Royalant on this Apollon shot though...Trickery is AMAZING in the Royalant fight, maybe I should get it up to 5. (skill points beyond 5 just suck). Anybody know if Trickery lasts forever or only 5 turns? Seems to last longer to me.

L: I'm close to maxing ATK Up already, and then the build is complete. Um...guess I'll get TP Up and then HP Up.

M: Salve II is awesome, get it earlier next time!!

Fenrir hasn't respawned yet, but when he does, I will take advantage of him for some quick exp gain in an actual run.

rofl, while typing up this post I managed to defeat Royalant, but the last Bloodant one-shotted my T on the last turn (turn 21) because I forgot to put Immunize back up. 4587 experience to a character I'll never use again, whoopee! Maybe I'll redo the fight. I used my free Amrita and Amrita IIs and somehow, nobody died, guess it was mostly luck. It seems Royalant will target the back row if I don't use skills in a turn, and she has more than 50% HP, and doubly so if everybody is blinded. (Blind rapes Cocytus btw)

[EDIT: just managed to "map" B12F, but I have lots of unpainted squares. It seems drawing a correct map is the important part. now I hope I don't need the pits of B11F ;_;]

It is also worth noting that this stupid mapping mission (and the first one) can be time saved if I save, draw the map, get killed, and then choose to save my map data. I hope SDA won't require me to film the bottom screen.

AAAAASSSSSS ROYALANT IS KICKING MY ASS

I didn't take enough time to learn Salve II, but it doesn't matter, Crunch rapes my poison Alchemist in one hit (117 damage) because he's only level 20. (but my main A has 108 hp, hmm) [s]I can guarantee he isn't the target of ordinary melee attacks by giving him a Hide Ring (Royalant's AI targets characters with the lowest Slash resist for melee, lowest crush resist for Crunch)[/s] oops these tables have impossible requirements, nevermind. It also seems smart to use Blaze or Shock Oil for this fight so my characters can avoid tripping the L's chaser skill. -_-
The Axcela II seems to help for getting to a Boosted Immunize though.
Another good tactic: kill the first 3 Bloodants, the 4th will join in and fill one spot with a crappy Deathant. heh heh heh~

I am seriously reconsidering this setup, I am going to do one more test run where my main alchemist is an ice user instead of a fire user. I will either bring in the poisoner for Cotrangl and teach him some minimal flame usage (why?! he'll die to Flood and Blizzard) or just fight with 4 characters, or just bring my ice A just to have him sling around Blaze Oils and Amritas, he can die if he has to.

I've been doing some grinding (really trying hard to find 5 Tailbones, nearly filled my inventory finding two, wtf Atlus why), went back and learned Salve II, got Relaxing up to 7, and Royalant is still pretty tough. Since I'm relying partially on luck to get through the random encounters of the 5th Stratum, why don't I just take that luck and use it to just run away from fights? 'Tis the true speedrunner way, after all. Pros and cons of using ice over fire:

PROS
- Grinding from Gels after Fenrir skip goes over much more smoothly, they take double damage from ice
- far easier ant nest/Royalant fight, no need to switch to some other douche
- [s]non-useless[/s] more useful alchemist for Iwaro fight
- Direwolves can be pwned by 1st Freezer, maybe even just 1st Cocytus
- extra damage to Muckdile (for quick exp) and Kingdile when I go to hunt for Failnaught

CONS
- Fenrir himself turns into a jackass, he's immune to ice, Wolves and Skolls take half damage from ice - I will have to completely rely on the one Blaze Oil
- forest folk take half damage from this stuff as well, maybe I should run from them
- Armorolls take half damage, DEFINITELY run away
- I have a dead character versus Cotrangl but I might need him around to get to Cotrangl himself more easily

Anyway it is also definitely worthwhile to grind before Cernunos up to level 28 or 30 or so. The Glowbird-Glowbird-Glowbird-Firebird fight gives about 450 exp and is easy to win with a 1st turn Alchemist skill, and there's also that chance I get a Tailbone out of it too. I just checked on the maps where the best place to grind for Elastics would be though so I will have to check out that place too.

Character tweaks:
T: Relaxing isn't as helpful as I thought thus far. Most of my characters have less than 100 TP so they get back 2 TP per turn at most. If I'm able to boost it though, that should help a lot...but so far, Bravery (or maybe even Shelter?? LOLLL) seems like a better pick.

S: I'm 1st Turning a lot to heal in this Royalant fight, and Apollon just misses a lot because of Duster. Might be worth putting off Apollon levels for maxing 1st Turn (or TP Up, heaven forbid) first. Well, I just got a stun on Royalant on this Apollon shot though...Trickery is AMAZING in the Royalant fight, maybe I should get it up to 5. (skill points beyond 5 just suck). Anybody know if Trickery lasts forever or only 5 turns? Seems to last longer to me.

L: I'm close to maxing ATK Up already, and then the build is complete. Um...guess I'll get TP Up and then HP Up.

M: Salve II is awesome, get it earlier next time!!

Fenrir hasn't respawned yet, but when he does, I will take advantage of him for some quick exp gain in an actual run.

rofl, while typing up this post I managed to defeat Royalant, but the last Bloodant one-shotted my T on the last turn (turn 21) because I forgot to put Immunize back up. 4587 experience to a character I'll never use again, whoopee! Maybe I'll redo the fight. I used my free Amrita and Amrita IIs and somehow, nobody died, guess it was mostly luck. It seems Royalant will target the back row if I don't use skills in a turn, and she has more than 50% HP, and doubly so if everybody is blinded. (Blind rapes Cocytus btw)

[EDIT: just managed to "map" B12F, but I have lots of unpainted squares. It seems drawing a correct map is the important part. now I hope I don't need the pits of B11F ;_;]

It is also worth noting that this stupid mapping mission (and the first one) can be time saved if I save, draw the map, get killed, and then choose to save my map data. I hope SDA won't require me to film the bottom screen.

ShinerCCC

2009-12-11 09:15:33 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

let the ranting continue!

The next few segments went okay. I completed the map of B12F pretty easily, wasn't even fully drawn. B11F was a bitch. I drew a nearly perfect map, I fell through every pit and then while stepping on random tiles it said my map was completed. Argh, now I don't know if I need those pits or not; but I do know that a LOT of tile steps are required all of a sudden. I need to draw a big rollercoaster of how to traverse the dungeon with as little turning as possible. This is probably how the game was designed, I bet they counted up all the tiles a player would be *expected* to step on while mapping the place legit.

I grinded way too much on Treefrogs and while hunting for Elastics. I proceeded to the Cotrangl fight at level 32-ish. I easily brought a Take slave around to B13F, when his Take 3 grabbed all the stuff that pile could yield I dumped his easily acquired 7 points into Chop and got a good haul from there too. Unlocked everything I needed: Sea Charm, Amrita II, ~~Axcela II~~.

I forgot how annoying Redclaws are, thankfully you hardly need to worry about them at all. They can easily one-shot a character with their special move and they're highly resistant to slash and fire attacks.

I absolutely beasted Cotrangl though. Erasure got rid of Aquaveil fairly well, although my T died during the fight. I somehow managed to bring him back with the Nectar I picked up on B9F, that was pretty lucky. Sometimes I would plot a devious assault only to have Cody put up Aquaveil when I didn't select Erasure for my attack. Noooo! Relaxing 10 (not boosted, I bought an Axcela II but I didn't even use it) was incredible, I didn't need to stop to use any of the Amritas I didn't bring. I was almost out of TP by the very end. Obviously the more TP your characters have the more effective Relaxing is so those Sea Charms will come in super handy soon. The onslaught never quit, when my L ran out of TP he drank his Blaze Oil and kept swinging. My Alchemist was able to use Flame every turn (well he didn't this time, I accidentally wasted a turn eating a Bravant but this ended up purging Ice Gaze. also had to use a Theriaca A to unbind my A) I obviously killed Cody with a fire attack so no Ice Spine for me, but that's fine, I don't even want it, I'm going with Failnaught for sure. Apollon was amazing again, didn't use Multihit even once while 1st Turning healing spells a lot. I really wish I had those 4 points in 1st Turn instead!

I am in the poorhouse ental wise bigtime, Sea Charms are 4500 each and I need those Amber Rings of 6500 each soon too. I'll need to go on dedicated mine runs for money, but later, I need to tally up how much my Failnaughts and Pattisa will cost me.

Fenrir finally respawned, killed his entire posse for 1234 exp. Also got a White Hide first try, that was really lucky.

So far I've bothered to unlock Steelsword and grab the Brigandine, I'm on my way to visiting B18F twice (DAMN YOU RADHA HALLLLL) so I can unlock the secret area to unlock Mystic Rod, Pattisa and Failnaught. Then it's a loooot of mine runs after that so I can get geared up for most of the rest of the game (only 1 Duergar, the super armors (maybe? Demon Mail can be skipped obv) and my large bag of healing items is needed after that). Actually Amber Rings are pretty expensive, I'll try Pac-Man without them. For some reason Theriaca A didn't unlock but Theriaca B did, I somehow got more Tiny Petals than Bug Wings this time I think.

If I do another test run I will also try Bravery instead of Relaxing on the T. I bet I will get frustrated and quit, then try a more solid run using the fire/Relaxing team.

I'm going to edit the segment guide in the first post now.

let the ranting continue!

The next few segments went okay. I completed the map of B12F pretty easily, wasn't even fully drawn. B11F was a bitch. I drew a nearly perfect map, I fell through every pit and then while stepping on random tiles it said my map was completed. Argh, now I don't know if I need those pits or not; but I do know that a LOT of tile steps are required all of a sudden. I need to draw a big rollercoaster of how to traverse the dungeon with as little turning as possible. This is probably how the game was designed, I bet they counted up all the tiles a player would be *expected* to step on while mapping the place legit.

I grinded way too much on Treefrogs and while hunting for Elastics. I proceeded to the Cotrangl fight at level 32-ish. I easily brought a Take slave around to B13F, when his Take 3 grabbed all the stuff that pile could yield I dumped his easily acquired 7 points into Chop and got a good haul from there too. Unlocked everything I needed: Sea Charm, Amrita II, [s]Axcela II[/s].

I forgot how annoying Redclaws are, thankfully you hardly need to worry about them at all. They can easily one-shot a character with their special move and they're highly resistant to slash and fire attacks.

I absolutely beasted Cotrangl though. Erasure got rid of Aquaveil fairly well, although my T died during the fight. I somehow managed to bring him back with the Nectar I picked up on B9F, that was pretty lucky. Sometimes I would plot a devious assault only to have Cody put up Aquaveil when I didn't select Erasure for my attack. Noooo! Relaxing 10 (not boosted, I bought an Axcela II but I didn't even use it) was incredible, I didn't need to stop to use any of the Amritas I didn't bring. I was almost out of TP by the very end. Obviously the more TP your characters have the more effective Relaxing is so those Sea Charms will come in super handy soon. The onslaught never quit, when my L ran out of TP he drank his Blaze Oil and kept swinging. My Alchemist was able to use Flame every turn (well he didn't this time, I accidentally wasted a turn eating a Bravant but this ended up purging Ice Gaze. also had to use a Theriaca A to unbind my A) I obviously killed Cody with a fire attack so no Ice Spine for me, but that's fine, I don't even want it, I'm going with Failnaught for sure. Apollon was amazing again, didn't use Multihit even once while 1st Turning healing spells a lot. I really wish I had those 4 points in 1st Turn instead!

I am in the poorhouse ental wise bigtime, Sea Charms are 4500 each and I need those Amber Rings of 6500 each soon too. I'll need to go on dedicated mine runs for money, but later, I need to tally up how much my Failnaughts and Pattisa will cost me.

Fenrir finally respawned, killed his entire posse for 1234 exp. Also got a White Hide first try, that was really lucky.

So far I've bothered to unlock Steelsword and grab the Brigandine, I'm on my way to visiting B18F twice (DAMN YOU RADHA HALLLLL) so I can unlock the secret area to unlock Mystic Rod, Pattisa and Failnaught. Then it's a loooot of mine runs after that so I can get geared up for most of the rest of the game (only 1 Duergar, the super armors (maybe? Demon Mail can be skipped obv) and my large bag of healing items is needed after that). Actually Amber Rings are pretty expensive, I'll try Pac-Man without them. For some reason Theriaca A didn't unlock but Theriaca B did, I somehow got more Tiny Petals than Bug Wings this time I think.

If I do another test run I will also try Bravery instead of Relaxing on the T. I bet I will get frustrated and quit, then try a more solid run using the fire/Relaxing team.

I'm going to edit the segment guide in the first post now.

ShinerCCC

2009-12-14 01:37:46 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Hmm, some stuff to add:

- Get Cleaver for L, nothing else to do with his skill points anyway and it might be useful for an extra 40% damage to Hunters
- GET RECOVERY FOR T ARRRRGH WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS BEFORE
- Bring 2 or 3 Nectars and several Theriaca Bs to Pac-Man. If Apollon lands while S is cursed he takes half of the 1000 damage he just dealt to Diabolix.
- Level up 3 of the miners, it saves TONS of time. With 30 mines a trip only brings about 3k, and the weapons I want to get alone cost 45k. Bigger hauls = less time walking and less time having to chop down Sickwoods and less time spinning the clock at the inn. Sea Charms are 4500, Amber Rings are 6500, Nectars and Theriaca Bs are 500, an Amrita II I need to bring for my M for the B19F trek is 900. This stuff is really, really expensive.
- Boosted Immunize is essential to beat the Desouler and Kingdile. On Desouler I got ridiculously lucky, a Slash missed my Alchemist and he managed to shoot a Flame when he charged up again, then another before his super slow Slash skill. A got 3000 exp, and the drop. YES! Trickery 5 is also immensely useful.
- Multihit may be more useful than I thought, I can use it to down those annoying tree spirit FOEs on B18F and B19F since I'm making short trips to the spring anyway. Confusion and Curse ruin my Alchemist, the main source of damage for me. I'd better give him an Amber Ring or two since I'm going to be using boosted Relaxing on Pac-Man anyway. Also, with Failnaught, my S somehow has more attack power than my L, who has ATK Up and Swords maxed. He usually does more damage in combat too. especially since Apollon is so beast. No fair!

Right now I'm having a lot of trouble with this long segment. My guys are level 34, L just learned Cleaver, T just learned Recovery, and M just learned Caduceus. I need to remember to Erasure an Ogre the turn it shows up no matter what, with regular Immunize he can deal 200 damage with a swing, which is enough to one-shot anyone on my team. I think Hunters are going to be a larger problem. This segment is still pretty fun once you start winning though, unfortunately I'm going to be really busy with finals this week (got one in 8 hours oops) so it might have to wait for my flight home.

Hmm, some stuff to add:

- Get Cleaver for L, nothing else to do with his skill points anyway and it might be useful for an extra 40% damage to Hunters
- GET RECOVERY FOR T ARRRRGH WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS BEFORE
- Bring 2 or 3 Nectars and several Theriaca Bs to Pac-Man. If Apollon lands while S is cursed he takes half of the 1000 damage he just dealt to Diabolix.
- Level up 3 of the miners, it saves TONS of time. With 30 mines a trip only brings about 3k, and the weapons I want to get alone cost 45k. Bigger hauls = less time walking and less time having to chop down Sickwoods and less time spinning the clock at the inn. Sea Charms are 4500, Amber Rings are 6500, Nectars and Theriaca Bs are 500, an Amrita II I need to bring for my M for the B19F trek is 900. This stuff is really, really expensive.
- Boosted Immunize is essential to beat the Desouler and Kingdile. On Desouler I got ridiculously lucky, a Slash missed my Alchemist and he managed to shoot a Flame when he charged up again, then another before his super slow Slash skill. A got 3000 exp, and the drop. YES! Trickery 5 is also immensely useful.
- Multihit may be more useful than I thought, I can use it to down those annoying tree spirit FOEs on B18F and B19F since I'm making short trips to the spring anyway. Confusion and Curse ruin my Alchemist, the main source of damage for me. I'd better give him an Amber Ring or two since I'm going to be using boosted Relaxing on Pac-Man anyway. Also, with Failnaught, my S somehow has more attack power than my L, who has ATK Up and Swords maxed. He usually does more damage in combat too. especially since Apollon is so beast. No fair!

Right now I'm having a lot of trouble with this long segment. My guys are level 34, L just learned Cleaver, T just learned Recovery, and M just learned Caduceus. I need to remember to Erasure an Ogre the turn it shows up no matter what, with regular Immunize he can deal 200 damage with a swing, which is enough to one-shot anyone on my team. I think Hunters are going to be a larger problem. This segment is still pretty fun once you start winning though, unfortunately I'm going to be really busy with finals this week (got one in 8 hours oops) so it might have to wait for my flight home.

ShinerCCC

Edit history:

ShinerCCC: 2009-12-15 09:27:42 pm

2009-12-15 01:12:00 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

forgot to add one thing:

- buy only one Steelsword. When you touch B18F you can undertake the "Under construction" quest which will get you a Steelsword for a very cheap cost.
- Multihit 5 isn't entirely useless but I hardly ever get the chance to use it, S is too busy firing off 1st Turns or Apollons or Trickery. He hardly even has time left for regular shooting.
- could replace my fire A's element with volt, then I could use him for pretty much the entire game.
- it's easy to encounter Bud and slaughter him for an M Leaf, quick 5k in the bank before I go to the secret area.

I think I've discovered the make-or-break difference to beating Pac-Man: If you go left you get annihilated by multiple Ogres and Hunters. If you go right you have about 4 turns to kill a single Cruella until an Ogre joins in, which you kill on its own. Basically you kill the entire southern half very slowly, almost one enemy at a time, and it can be done all in the same fight. I overgrinded a little for this and accidentally ended the fight, lost my Boosted Relaxing >_<. It ends with 2x Ogre however, they can almost one-shot the A so be careful. My M has about 120 TP so you can't get away with spamming Salve II. Try to use Apollon to completely nuke one in advance. Or, better yet, save your Boosted Immunize for them. This huge fight should give about 8500 experience. Head north next.

With one trip to the healing spring simply to restore my L's TP (use Amrita II next time) I cleared out Pac-Man with great ease. Iwaro came after me but you can run from him flawlessly as long as your T keeps lulling him with Erasure, he casts Faster every turn he doesn't have it while above 70% health. When it came time to go mano a birdo, Feathers absolutely raped me, it does about 170 to 180 damage to its random targets! I wasted my boosted Immunize in the first turn too...so here's the new plan, this will probably work. Attack from behind to set up Boosted Cleaver, Boosted Relaxing, Caduceus, Boosted Apollon, Freeze Oil on L. L swings, T sings, M keeps attacking (gets next Freeze Oil), S tosses in Trickery to help stop Voltwing. Iwaro has very low defense so he gets below 70% surprisingly quick. A just throws Freeze Oils and Axcela IIs if the medic doesn't have a boost ready, once Iwaro goes red I'm on a 5 turn clock to kill him while boosted Immunize lasts. Hopefully Rockbeak won't rape my damage dealers. Boosted Apollon can do 1400 to Iwaro and Hunters. What a deal for that TP cost...I think wearing a Bear Glove will increase the damage by several points. My base damage seems to be 345, I heard Apollon can multiply it by as much as 5x...

It seems my S doesn't run out of TP ever with Boosted Relaxing. yay.

Okay. Going to try to beat Iwaro again, faster this time.

EDIT: I HATE PACMAN!!!!!
after slogging my way down there in 15 minutes or something, I go fight the first Cruella and everybody but my A gets confused. A reaches for Theriaca B, he gets lashed by Cruella and arrow'D by my S. I sit through "Your party is powerless to act!" for 3 agonizing turns before I game over. why can't I stop playing this game

SUPER EXTRA EDIT:
Of course this game was going to be on Ultima Garden. No time attacks, just some low level entries. Google Translator seems to do better than I remember but it's still kind of incomprehensible. Protip: sound out words instead of reading them. Bird, when pronounced with a Japanese bent, is obviously Bard. (for example, Angel Blade becomes "enjeru bureido"...uh, don't ask)

If I'm reading this low-level final boss report right, if you have over 70 defense and an Adamas equipped Etreant's attacks do 2-10 damage to you. Makes sense, boosted Immunize is 85% damage reduction and Adamas gives 15% physical resist, that adds up to complete physical immunity. I guess the level difference % thing is calculated later in the damage formula. Better make sure I get some while farming!

Also, better translations of Etreant's attacks, for fun:
Thorns - Sauzandoneiru, or "1000 Nail". Wow, he's actually Cactuar!
Twigs - Google says it's "1000 tree defenses". huh? XD
Cyclone - Google translated and called it "root Cyclone", now I know why it's a leg-using skill
Inferno = Inferno
Growth - literally Etanititsuri, エタニティツリー. 8 any T 3? I have no idea what this could be.
Resolve - "proud of the King", according to Google. Interesting choice of English, it literally describes his resolve but because your buffs go away you think of the word "dissolve" instead.
Bearing - "majesty of the King". More like bearing forward to snap the bounds...this isn't about speedrunning at all. This is GameFAQs BS.

There's also some sort of Japanese wiki but I have no idea if it's helpful or not, it's too hard to make sense of
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www15.atwiki.jp/sekaiju_maze/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dultima%2Bgarden%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3D8Fi%26sa%3DX&rurl=translate.google.ca&usg=ALkJrhh754ai7FLyAv8JoOFRB4YwjAd6vw

Looks like it mentions there's going to be a third Etrian Odyssey! Yay!

Can a mod move this to Newer Consoles yet? I'm getting pretty serious about this route. Nobody's comparing times with me, this is hardly a casual speedrun at all. I only posted it here initially because this might never come to fruition and it's a pain to record and submit DS games. I'm pretty surprised at the number of views this has. I'd record the run posthaste too but my roommate's really nice camera is missing. D:

forgot to add one thing:

- buy only one Steelsword. When you touch B18F you can undertake the "Under construction" quest which will get you a Steelsword for a very cheap cost.
- Multihit 5 isn't entirely useless but I hardly ever get the chance to use it, S is too busy firing off 1st Turns or Apollons or Trickery. He hardly even has time left for regular shooting.
- could replace my fire A's element with volt, then I could use him for pretty much the entire game.
- it's easy to encounter Bud and slaughter him for an M Leaf, quick 5k in the bank before I go to the secret area.

I think I've discovered the make-or-break difference to beating Pac-Man: If you go left you get annihilated by multiple Ogres and Hunters. If you go right you have about 4 turns to kill a single Cruella until an Ogre joins in, which you kill on its own. Basically you kill the entire southern half very slowly, almost one enemy at a time, and it can be done all in the same fight. I overgrinded a little for this and accidentally ended the fight, lost my Boosted Relaxing >_<. It ends with 2x Ogre however, they can almost one-shot the A so be careful. My M has about 120 TP so you can't get away with spamming Salve II. Try to use Apollon to completely nuke one in advance. Or, better yet, save your Boosted Immunize for them. This huge fight should give about 8500 experience. Head north next.

With one trip to the healing spring simply to restore my L's TP (use Amrita II next time) I cleared out Pac-Man with great ease. Iwaro came after me but you can run from him flawlessly as long as your T keeps lulling him with Erasure, he casts Faster every turn he doesn't have it while above 70% health. When it came time to go mano a birdo, Feathers absolutely raped me, it does about 170 to 180 damage to its random targets! I wasted my boosted Immunize in the first turn too...so here's the new plan, this will probably work. Attack from behind to set up Boosted Cleaver, Boosted Relaxing, Caduceus, Boosted Apollon, Freeze Oil on L. L swings, T sings, M keeps attacking (gets next Freeze Oil), S tosses in Trickery to help stop Voltwing. Iwaro has very low defense so he gets below 70% surprisingly quick. A just throws Freeze Oils and Axcela IIs if the medic doesn't have a boost ready, once Iwaro goes red I'm on a 5 turn clock to kill him while boosted Immunize lasts. Hopefully Rockbeak won't rape my damage dealers. Boosted Apollon can do 1400 to Iwaro and Hunters. What a deal for that TP cost...I think wearing a Bear Glove will increase the damage by several points. My base damage seems to be 345, I heard Apollon can multiply it by as much as 5x...

It seems my S doesn't run out of TP ever with Boosted Relaxing. yay.

Okay. Going to try to beat Iwaro again, faster this time.

EDIT: I HATE PACMAN!!!!!
after slogging my way down there in 15 minutes or something, I go fight the first Cruella and everybody but my A gets confused. A reaches for Theriaca B, he gets lashed by Cruella and arrow'D by my S. I sit through "Your party is powerless to act!" for 3 agonizing turns before I game over. why can't I stop playing this game

SUPER EXTRA EDIT:
Of course this game was going to be on Ultima Garden. No time attacks, just some low level entries. Google Translator seems to do better than I remember but it's still kind of incomprehensible. Protip: sound out words instead of reading them. Bird, when pronounced with a Japanese bent, is obviously Bard. (for example, Angel Blade becomes "enjeru bureido"...uh, don't ask)

If I'm reading this low-level final boss report right, if you have over 70 defense and an Adamas equipped Etreant's attacks do 2-10 damage to you. Makes sense, boosted Immunize is 85% damage reduction and Adamas gives 15% physical resist, that adds up to [b]complete physical immunity[/b]. I guess the level difference % thing is calculated later in the damage formula. Better make sure I get some while farming!

Also, better translations of Etreant's attacks, for fun:
Thorns - Sauzandoneiru, or "1000 Nail". Wow, he's actually Cactuar!
Twigs - Google says it's "1000 tree defenses". huh? XD
Cyclone - Google translated and called it "root Cyclone", now I know why it's a leg-using skill
Inferno = Inferno
Growth - literally Etanititsuri, エタニティツリー. 8 any T 3? I have no idea what this could be.
Resolve - "proud of the King", according to Google. Interesting choice of English, it literally describes his resolve but because your buffs go away you think of the word "dissolve" instead.
Bearing - "majesty of the King". More like bearing forward to snap the bounds...this isn't about speedrunning at all. This is GameFAQs BS.

There's also some sort of Japanese wiki but I have no idea if it's helpful or not, it's too hard to make sense of
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www15.atwiki.jp/sekaiju_maze/&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dultima%2Bgarden%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3D8Fi%26sa%3DX&rurl=translate.google.ca&usg=ALkJrhh754ai7FLyAv8JoOFRB4YwjAd6vw

Looks like it mentions there's going to be a third Etrian Odyssey! Yay!

Can a mod move this to Newer Consoles yet? I'm getting pretty serious about this route. Nobody's comparing times with me, this is hardly a casual speedrun at all. I only posted it here initially because this might never come to fruition and it's a pain to record and submit DS games. I'm pretty surprised at the number of views this has. I'd record the run posthaste too but my roommate's really nice camera is missing. D:

ShinerCCC

2009-12-18 05:05:29 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

I've attempted this same segment many, many times and I STILL CAN'T DO IT! On one attempt I actually got to Iwaro and pulled a real "Casey at the bat" and used my boosted Immunize too early. Then his Feathers did 180 to anybody that got hit even with Immunize up. I guess that's what happens when you're 10 levels below the boss's.

Further observations:
- Bear Glove seems to boost Apollon damage from 1000 to 1100 versus Diabolix. I just found out Cruella has 25% physical resist so that's why Apollon does only 750 or 800 to her...but she has 2300 HP as opposed to Diabolix's 3200. Better adjust my strategies accordingly. I'm also about 8 levels lower than they are. awesome. Ogres, Hunters and Iwaro are all level 46.
- My L has a Stud Vest and my T has the Brigandine from the chest. They seem to take equal damage, and have similar defense. This is good since my L has 260 HP and my T has 180. lol.
- Recovery is only level 2, or 3 if I go grind first. This is only a 30% faster recovery speed (or 50%), it still takes 4 turns to recover from status either way. If I can only have 2 points in a song, maybe I should make it Ifrit (do 15% more damage, take 25% less from Hunter's Blazer which would be WONDERFUL) or Shelter (15% more defense...um, might be helpful). Stamina would be best (20% more max HP...) now that I think about it but I won't have enough levels to put into HP Up.
- Cruella and Diabolix only use their status skills if nobody in the group has the related status. By using Theriaca B frequently, I would only be inviting them screwing up my ranks again. (might be better than attacking though, they usually do 70 or 80 damage with their attack) By letting one person get status'D for sure I am actually controlling them. My L is not fazed by curse at all because Blazer doesn't trigger curse. However, confusion has absolutely ruined runs because if my Medic gets confused, I'm pretty much dead because that means I can't immunize. Same with S getting confused, if he can't 1st Turn the Immunize people die. The mere threat of my alchemist being cursed has disturbed my sleep (not really), if I tell him to Inferno and then all of a sudden CURRRRRSE, he's dead and my speed is ruined. (see http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=36139946 ) When Diabolix is around I am forced to play it safe and use Fire. Flame is usable if my A is at full health. ;_;
So I think maybe I need 3 of those Amber Rings on my Alchemist. Seriously. Well, Curse and Siren only have a 50% chance of working, an Amber Ring only improves your ailment resist by 20% which means anybody with a ring has their chance lowered from 50% to 40%. This is not a fundamental improvement, this is not a viable strat, this is a waste of 6,500en. I'd be better off spending it on more Theriaca Bs. BUT, 3 Amber Rings on my Alchemist means he would only have a 10% chance of being cursed, and once I'm victorious in the first big battle of Pac-Man I can swap back to Sea Charms and visit the spring upstairs. This whole "nuke everybody with Blazer constantly" thing worked a lot better when Diabolix and Cruella reliably had their heads sealed all the time. ...I'm tempted to consider making my L a pure Axe swinger.

Anyway I think I need to make at least one team member Amber Ring-less, once he gets confused and then cursed (this makes him attack a team member AND THEN take curse damage for it) I can expectantly use Salve II all the time. It doesn't matter if the T gets confused or cursed because once he sings he can't do all that much damage, especially to ogres. I usually have him tossing around items. Medica II can be very useful, sometimes I need Salve II and Immunize on the same turn. He's basically HP bulk for the frontline. I'm tempted to take my medic off the frontline too...

On one attempt that was going well, it was down to a Diabolix and the last two Ogres. All 3 attacked my medic, who was at decent health, and he died. ULTIMATE RAGE. Given that the Diabolix has a 1 in 5 chance of picking him, and Ogres have front-row-preference they had a 90% chance of picking the front row and then a 10% chance of picking him, with the lowest HP (well my T usually has lower HP, then it would be 30%). I was stupidly pissed. I contemplated farming for a Moss Ring because I found out I can easily squeeze in a fight with Bud on the initial trip to B18F when I inspect the tree, but not only would getting 4 more be slower than mine runs but a Moss Ring costs a ridiculous 200,000en. Forget that.

Also Cleaver is pretty dope because it helps me destroy Redbeaks. Cleaver + T shot kills redbeak while Alchemist uses Flame on either a Mandrake or Druid. But I suppose I should pick Tornado, because Tornado + Inferno would let me win in one turn. It's only 2 more TP and it does the same damage to the center target. When Blazer isn't available (???) it would be handy, and it could help in the early going maybe. I don't see how though, I don't use my L until the second stratum and by that point I'm relying on Inferno to nuke everything. Any early points in Blazer will only help kill Pondclaw too. I should contemplate picking another element though. Here's the real way boss damage %s break down, fire/ice/elec:

Fenrir: 150/0/100
Cernunos: 50/100/150
Royalant: 100/100/100 (Bloodants and Deathants are 50/125/100)
Cotrangl: 125/0/75
Iwaropeln: 50/125/50
Etreant: 100/100/100 (90/90/90 for physical elements)

Volt seems like the other tempting option. Gels take double damage from ice and lightning, but making my main A an Ice user will make Fenrir a lot harder to kill. Thor will let me kill Cernunos a pinch faster, but Stingmaws are immune to lightning so I would have to be more careful on B10F. My A would retain his support role versus Iwaro. He can still do decent damage to Cody I guess. And best of all, I wouldn't need to swap him out for the ant nest. Maybe I should spin this on its head and just use him for the ant nest, period. In the previous test run, I didn't enjoy having him there because the damage seemed so low and he'd run out of TP too quick, but now I have Relaxing to recoup the cost a little bit. Is it really faster to train another idiot character, and have a weaker character for the rest of the game, especially one who will need those levels to do a raw higher % of damage to the final boss over 40 turns? Since I know I only have to kill one Servant, perhaps I can just bring some extra Freeze Oil instead. Royalant's minions will be killed with Blazer regardless; in fact it will be more convenient that way, then I can use Freeze Oil instead of Shock Oil (for fear of triggering Freezer prematurely). Heck, maybe I'll even use Ifrit on them >_>
Deathant encounters won't be that annoying either. Instead of poisoning the ant and having my physical characters attack whatever the other monster is, I'll Flame the other monster and use physical attacks on the Deathant. Next test run I'll take these characters to level 28 or until my inventory fills up. 3rd stratum was a little hard right after Cernunos.
Plus I bet Flame and Inferno have the shortest attack animations, and that's what really matters.

I'm going to go have a huge brawl with Royalant for the purpose of gaining some levels. Bye.

Further observations:
- Bear Glove seems to boost Apollon damage from 1000 to 1100 versus Diabolix. I just found out Cruella has 25% physical resist so that's why Apollon does only 750 or 800 to her...but she has 2300 HP as opposed to Diabolix's 3200. Better adjust my strategies accordingly. I'm also about 8 levels lower than they are. awesome. Ogres, Hunters and Iwaro are all level 46.
- My L has a Stud Vest and my T has the Brigandine from the chest. They seem to take equal damage, and have similar defense. This is good since my L has 260 HP and my T has 180. lol.
- Recovery is only level 2, or 3 if I go grind first. This is only a 30% faster recovery speed (or 50%), it still takes 4 turns to recover from status either way. If I can only have 2 points in a song, maybe I should make it Ifrit (do 15% more damage, take 25% less from Hunter's Blazer which would be WONDERFUL) or Shelter (15% more defense...um, might be helpful). Stamina would be best (20% more max HP...) now that I think about it but I won't have enough levels to put into HP Up.
- Cruella and Diabolix only use their status skills if nobody in the group has the related status. By using Theriaca B frequently, I would only be inviting them screwing up my ranks again. (might be better than attacking though, they usually do 70 or 80 damage with their attack) By letting one person get status'D for sure I am actually controlling them. My L is not fazed by curse at all because Blazer doesn't trigger curse. However, confusion has absolutely ruined runs because if my Medic gets confused, I'm pretty much dead because that means I can't immunize. Same with S getting confused, if he can't 1st Turn the Immunize people die. The mere threat of my alchemist being cursed has disturbed my sleep (not really), if I tell him to Inferno and then all of a sudden CURRRRRSE, he's dead and my speed is ruined. (see http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=36139946 ) When Diabolix is around I am forced to play it safe and use Fire. Flame is usable if my A is at full health. ;_;
So I think maybe I need 3 of those Amber Rings on my Alchemist. Seriously. Well, Curse and Siren only have a 50% chance of working, an Amber Ring only improves your ailment resist by 20% which means anybody with a ring has their chance lowered from 50% to 40%. This is not a fundamental improvement, this is not a viable strat, this is a waste of 6,500en. I'd be better off spending it on more Theriaca Bs. BUT, 3 Amber Rings on my Alchemist means he would only have a 10% chance of being cursed, and once I'm victorious in the first big battle of Pac-Man I can swap back to Sea Charms and visit the spring upstairs. This whole "nuke everybody with Blazer constantly" thing worked a lot better when Diabolix and Cruella reliably had their heads sealed all the time. ...I'm tempted to consider making my L a pure Axe swinger.

Anyway I think I need to make at least one team member Amber Ring-less, once he gets confused and then cursed (this makes him attack a team member AND THEN take curse damage for it) I can expectantly use Salve II all the time. It doesn't matter if the T gets confused or cursed because once he sings he can't do all that much damage, especially to ogres. I usually have him tossing around items. Medica II can be very useful, sometimes I need Salve II and Immunize on the same turn. He's basically HP bulk for the frontline. I'm tempted to take my medic off the frontline too...

On one attempt that was going well, it was down to a Diabolix and the last two Ogres. All 3 attacked my medic, who was at decent health, and he died. ULTIMATE RAGE. Given that the Diabolix has a 1 in 5 chance of picking him, and Ogres have front-row-preference they had a 90% chance of picking the front row and then a 10% chance of picking him, with the lowest HP (well my T usually has lower HP, then it would be 30%). I was stupidly pissed. I contemplated farming for a Moss Ring because I found out I can easily squeeze in a fight with Bud on the initial trip to B18F when I inspect the tree, but not only would getting 4 more be slower than mine runs but a Moss Ring costs a ridiculous 200,000en. Forget that.

Also Cleaver is pretty dope because it helps me destroy Redbeaks. Cleaver + T shot kills redbeak while Alchemist uses Flame on either a Mandrake or Druid. But I suppose I should pick Tornado, because Tornado + Inferno would let me win in one turn. It's only 2 more TP and it does the same damage to the center target. When Blazer isn't available (???) it would be handy, and it could help in the early going maybe. I don't see how though, I don't use my L until the second stratum and by that point I'm relying on Inferno to nuke everything. Any early points in Blazer will only help kill Pondclaw too. I should contemplate picking another element though. Here's the real way boss damage %s break down, fire/ice/elec:

Fenrir: 150/0/100
Cernunos: 50/100/150
Royalant: 100/100/100 (Bloodants and Deathants are 50/125/100)
Cotrangl: 125/0/75
Iwaropeln: 50/125/50
Etreant: 100/100/100 (90/90/90 for physical elements)

Volt seems like the other tempting option. Gels take double damage from ice and lightning, but making my main A an Ice user will make Fenrir a lot harder to kill. Thor will let me kill Cernunos a pinch faster, but Stingmaws are immune to lightning so I would have to be more careful on B10F. My A would retain his support role versus Iwaro. He can still do decent damage to Cody I guess. And best of all, I wouldn't need to swap him out for the ant nest. Maybe I should spin this on its head and just use him for the ant nest, period. In the previous test run, I didn't enjoy having him there because the damage seemed so low and he'd run out of TP too quick, but now I have Relaxing to recoup the cost a little bit. Is it really faster to train another idiot character, and have a weaker character for the rest of the game, especially one who will need those levels to do a raw higher % of damage to the final boss over 40 turns? Since I know I only have to kill one Servant, perhaps I can just bring some extra Freeze Oil instead. Royalant's minions will be killed with Blazer regardless; in fact it will be more convenient that way, then I can use Freeze Oil instead of Shock Oil (for fear of triggering Freezer prematurely). Heck, maybe I'll even use Ifrit on them >_>
Deathant encounters won't be that annoying either. Instead of poisoning the ant and having my physical characters attack whatever the other monster is, I'll Flame the other monster and use physical attacks on the Deathant. Next test run I'll take these characters to level 28 or until my inventory fills up. 3rd stratum was a little hard right after Cernunos.
Plus I bet Flame and Inferno have the shortest attack animations, and that's what really matters.

I'm going to go have a huge brawl with Royalant for the purpose of gaining some levels. Bye.

ShinerCCC

2009-12-19 12:47:56 am

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Royalant only gave 4000 exp...still a quick 1 level gained. I don't think I'll do that in the real run, the fight took quite a while. It's just to simulate me somehow being an even higher level even though I may have already overgrinded while getting Self Bow.

I went overboard and gave my S one Amber Ring, took away my T's Amber Ring, and got two more so my A would have all 3. He got hit with a confuse at one point randomly but I had to Theriaca B anyway. It was definitely the solution I needed, I got away with Flame and Inferno nonstop, and even with 128 TP boosted Relaxing is enough to keep it up. Actually I used my Nectar II from the quest to revive him when he got whipped and confuse-shotted by my S. NOTHING I COULD DO. Thankfully my T used the Nectar II and my M's Immunize hit him right on time. Also a bit inconvenient to get boosted Relaxing for him back on, and I had to use an Amrita II after I had to settle for not-Inferno. I guess it's something I could manipulate away for the real run.

buuut yeah! I did it! I finally overcame Pac-Man! I accidentally used boosted Relaxing and then Iwaro walked into me so it was wasted, should have been watching the map to see who was who. I think in the first giant conflict my medic came very close to dying (4 HP left I think) after taking 2 melees but I somehow pulled through. At the end of it I was staring down the two Ogres AND a Diablolix, so I busted out boosted Immunize and let them taste the all-out. That made things a lot easier to control. I tried going around to the north but that's where Iwaro bonked into me. I think this made the Hunter completely disappear though so I'd better try stalling him out again.

The other corners were annoying, there was one Ogre left, the other stragglers were mere Cruellas. Boosted Relaxing isn't needed for Iwaro because the only skills that get used are healing skills and the occasional Apollon. Boosted Recovery would be better, because I got a bit unlucky with a lot of Voltwings and my guys were scarily locked down for a bit. Trickery 5 was a godsend, maybe I boost that instead of Apollon for an extra 5% miss rate. ...no, 200 or 300 damage would be better.

The first Apollon is kind of a trigger for "no more free turns thanks to Erasure" so use Immunize right before it lands. I was scared I jumped the gun on boosted Immunize (my S was paralyzed right when I needed it, no regular Immunize up at the time either!!) but the last few turns were over quickly. My A should have used my remaining Axcela IIs to get another boosted skill instead of spamming Flame, I think.
I also missed a lot of attacks strangely, I guess I had some bad luck. I took something like 12 turns to win.

I took two trips to the healing spring after the big 30 turn brawl, if I plan better I can reduce that to the final one before Iwaro.

Ifrit is AMAZING. Blazer goes from doing 1/2 my A's health to 1/3rd, which greatly opens up my options in combat. I think this seals the deal for being a fire user. I can put 3 or 4 points into it too. I'm getting Bravery 1 for Ren & Stimpy though, it counteracts Sapping. If my side has a head bind and an arm bind, there is a fork for what Stimpy will do. (if I don't use a skill, there's two more options, but that just won't happen) If I'm sapped, she'll keep up bindings or use a nasty status ailment attack. If I'm not sapped, there's a 90% chance she'll put it back up, wasting her turn. Guess I'd better keep my Theriaca Bs and Amber Rings.

Ren is much more annoying though. At this point, my RNG hates me. My fate in combat is to have my L die on the second turn to Kubiuchi, because she alwas targets who has the highest HP. I don't have a Moss Ring so I can't have someone else take the fall. Jewel Eye can't be unlocked either. Erasure works on Iai but Ren is a hax Ronin and she doesn't need to be in that stance to unleash moves. Ren is the most intelligent, most human enemy in the whole game. She targets the highest HP with her OHKO move and the lowest HP with her other moves. If I Erasure her stance, there are chances she'll spend turns putting it back up; but the problem is, Iai is always followed up by a Kubiuchi. Ouch. I'm better off dealing with Kesagiri, it will make Trickery 5 a lot more effective. Also, it looks like she always tries to "finish off" my characters with less than 50% HP, so I should probably spam Salve II to encourage Kesagiri usage.

Cleaver is better for me than Tornado, I guess. If there's more than one enemy in Pac-Man I use Blazer anyway.

right before I decided to post this, I fought them one more time and used Cleaver on the first turn instead. L survived the Kubiuchi. T died due to being confused and Hyosetsu-assassinated though. But screw him, he doesn't need experience any more, this was actually a favorable outcome. For some reason Sapping didn't recur much either. 1 Theriaca A was needed to remove a head bind on the medic, 1 Theriaca B didn't get used due to my A getting STUNNED, of all things. I just remembered I got a stun-lock on Dinolich, heh heh.

I went overboard and gave my S one Amber Ring, took away my T's Amber Ring, and got two more so my A would have all 3. He got hit with a confuse at one point randomly but I had to Theriaca B anyway. It was definitely the solution I needed, I got away with Flame and Inferno nonstop, and even with 128 TP boosted Relaxing is enough to keep it up. Actually I used my Nectar II from the quest to revive him when he got whipped and confuse-shotted by my S. NOTHING I COULD DO. Thankfully my T used the Nectar II and my M's Immunize hit him right on time. Also a bit inconvenient to get boosted Relaxing for him back on, and I had to use an Amrita II after I had to settle for not-Inferno. I guess it's something I could manipulate away for the real run.

buuut yeah! I did it! I finally overcame Pac-Man! I accidentally used boosted Relaxing and then Iwaro walked into me so it was wasted, should have been watching the map to see who was who. I think in the first giant conflict my medic came very close to dying (4 HP left I think) after taking 2 melees but I somehow pulled through. At the end of it I was staring down the two Ogres AND a Diablolix, so I busted out boosted Immunize and let them taste the all-out. That made things a lot easier to control. I tried going around to the north but that's where Iwaro  bonked into me. I think this made the Hunter completely disappear though so I'd better try stalling him out again.

The other corners were annoying, there was one Ogre left, the other stragglers were mere Cruellas. Boosted Relaxing isn't needed for Iwaro because the only skills that get used are healing skills and the occasional Apollon. Boosted Recovery would be better, because I got a bit unlucky with a lot of Voltwings and my guys were scarily locked down for a bit. Trickery 5 was a godsend, maybe I boost that instead of Apollon for an extra 5% miss rate. ...no, 200 or 300 damage would be better.

The first Apollon is kind of a trigger for "no more free turns thanks to Erasure" so use Immunize right before it lands. I was scared I jumped the gun on boosted Immunize (my S was paralyzed right when I needed it, no regular Immunize up at the time either!!) but the last few turns were over quickly. My A should have used my remaining Axcela IIs to get another boosted skill instead of spamming Flame, I think.
I also missed a lot of attacks strangely, I guess I had some bad luck. I took something like 12 turns to win.

I took two trips to the healing spring after the big 30 turn brawl, if I plan better I can reduce that to the final one before Iwaro.

Ifrit is AMAZING. Blazer goes from doing 1/2 my A's health to 1/3rd, which greatly opens up my options in combat. I think this seals the deal for being a fire user. I can put 3 or 4 points into it too. I'm getting Bravery 1 for Ren & Stimpy though, it counteracts Sapping. If my side has a head bind and an arm bind, there is a fork for what Stimpy will do. (if I don't use a skill, there's two more options, but that just won't happen) If I'm sapped, she'll keep up bindings or use a nasty status ailment attack. If I'm not sapped, there's a 90% chance she'll put it back up, wasting her turn. Guess I'd better keep my Theriaca Bs and Amber Rings.

Ren is much more annoying though. At this point, my RNG hates me. My fate in combat is to have my L die on the second turn to Kubiuchi, because she alwas targets who has the highest HP. I don't have a Moss Ring so I can't have someone else take the fall. Jewel Eye can't be unlocked either. Erasure works on Iai but Ren is a hax Ronin and she doesn't need to be in that stance to unleash moves. Ren is the most intelligent, most human enemy in the whole game. She targets the highest HP with her OHKO move and the lowest HP with her other moves. If I Erasure her stance, there are chances she'll spend turns putting it back up; but the problem is, Iai is always followed up by a Kubiuchi. Ouch. I'm better off dealing with Kesagiri, it will make Trickery 5 a lot more effective. Also, it looks like she always tries to "finish off" my characters with less than 50% HP, so I should probably spam Salve II to encourage Kesagiri usage.

Cleaver is better for me than Tornado, I guess. If there's more than one enemy in Pac-Man I use Blazer anyway.

right before I decided to post this, I fought them one more time and used Cleaver on the first turn instead. L survived the Kubiuchi. T died due to being confused and Hyosetsu-assassinated though. But screw him, he doesn't need experience any more, this was actually a favorable outcome. For some reason Sapping didn't recur much either. 1 Theriaca A was needed to remove a head bind on the medic, 1 Theriaca B didn't get used due to my A getting STUNNED, of all things. I just remembered I got a stun-lock on Dinolich, heh heh.

ShinerCCC

2009-12-19 05:37:26 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

I killed the Desouler on the bridge in 4 turns, he's a wimp if you erase his Charge. But I forgot about the mandatory Kingdile...learning from my mistake, I brought an Axcela III and barely killed him on turn 6. Boosted Immunize and Trickery makes the fight doable. My L died, which was just perfect.

Treetusk does pretty big damage but not as big as Kingdile. They also give absurdly high exp. They have a chance to just defend, it seems. Between Apollon, Cleaver and Caduceus, I have tons of control over which drop I want. The best strat is to start with Ifrit and then spam Salve II every turn. The objective is only to kill it, not kill it well.

Two segments left and this test run is finished. wtf I procrastinate on finals soooo much.

ShinerCCC

2009-12-20 01:10:55 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

I have discovered dickery in this game.

I went out of my way to grind for two Sand Twigs I mysteriously never got so I could unlock Rose Ring. But I just found out that when two team members use attacks that don't have a Speed rating (i.e. 'Quick Attack' style moves like Blazer and 1st Turn) their order is not determined by AGI but completely randomly instead. I tested with my L's agility at 69, a good 16 points higher than my S, and then again with the L's AGI gear removed, and got the same 7-turn result of these moves going first: 1st Turn, 1st Turn, Blazer, 1st Turn, 1st Turn, (don't remember), Blazer. At least this means I can look into the future of the next segment and plan ahead. It also means I can start using Sylpheed right away.

Unlocking the shortcut on B25F is such. a. goddamn. PAIN! Some fights are unwinnable unless Blazer goes off first (5x Armoroll, anything with Muskoids).

My guys are the following level:
L: 41
T: 40
M: 40 (Caduceus is LV 7, no skill points wasted this time)
S: 41 (1st Turn is LV 9, sweet)
A: 39 (TP Regen is LV 3)

I put a point into HP Up and DEF Up on my L, I could have put it into Cleaver...I'm going to see if he's more efficient at damaging Etreant. Sure there's a 10% loss but his TP using skill effectively costs half as much as the A's Flame. It means I could also skip farming the TEC gear from Treetusks.

I have discovered dickery in this game.

I went out of my way to grind for two Sand Twigs I mysteriously never got so I could unlock Rose Ring. But I just found out that when two team members use attacks that don't have a Speed rating (i.e. 'Quick Attack' style moves like Blazer and 1st Turn) their order is not determined by AGI but completely randomly instead. I tested with my L's agility at 69, a good 16 points higher than my S, and then again with the L's AGI gear removed, and got the same 7-turn result of these moves going first: 1st Turn, 1st Turn, Blazer, 1st Turn, 1st Turn, (don't remember), Blazer. At least this means I can look into the future of the next segment and plan ahead. It also means I can start using Sylpheed right away.

Unlocking the shortcut on B25F is such. a. goddamn. PAIN! Some fights are unwinnable unless Blazer goes off first (5x Armoroll, anything with Muskoids).

My guys are the following level:
L: 41
T: 40
M: 40 (Caduceus is LV 7, no skill points wasted this time)
S: 41 (1st Turn is LV 9, sweet)
A: 39 (TP Regen is LV 3)

I put a point into HP Up and DEF Up on my L, I could have put it into Cleaver...I'm going to see if he's more efficient at damaging Etreant. Sure there's a 10% loss but his TP using skill effectively costs half as much as the A's Flame. It means I could also skip farming the TEC gear from Treetusks.

VorpalEdge

2009-12-20 01:46:14 pm

welcome to the machine

You only need one point in 1st turn.

ShinerCCC

2009-12-20 04:20:11 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

I'm aware of that but I'm pumping it so it can be cheaper to use. For the final battle my 4 characters are:

- a main attacker
- T for constant Erasure
- Medic, uses Caduceus when available
- Survivalist who alternates between Apollon and item usage, but a lot of 1st Turning is still necessary. less 1st turning = fewer Amrita IIs used for him

If it turns out he still has tons of TP to burn maybe I will give him the missing 5 points needed to max Multihit.

Right now I'm grinding for Adamas just to see if it will help. If it does, I guess it doesn't matter because I would need 4 of them anyway.

ShinerCCC

2009-12-26 02:58:37 pm

Yes, a worthless avatar riding my posts.

Adamas helps the Medic a lot because his defense is so low.

Anyway Etreant was pretty easy. (I was so engrossed in the fight that I missed a bus stop, nearly missed my flight home <_<) I think I only need 5 Axcela IIIs this time. The Apollon pacing thing worked exactly as I imagined it. The damage on Caduceus isn't all that impressive against Etreant, especially considering how high the TP cost is, but it's still damage. My Flame did less damage than the previous practice run because my A was 2 or 3 levels lower, so I think I'll definitely have to keep him around for Royalant. Inferno + Blazer can be kept up with Relaxing I guess. I need to move a Sea Charm to my T though, he had just enough TP to use Erasure on every turn except one (his shot only did 60 damage, boo) as the fight ended. I somehow unlocked Blood Mail in my 5th stratum adventures so that's a defense boost of 10 for my T if I think I need it (I almost certainly won't, the T is a defensive powerhouse). The S and T have huge defense (around 70), the M and A are vulnerable (~45 defense), they're the only reason I need to keep up with Salve II. I guess this means that if I get an Angel Robe (fat chance, I almost went insane trying to beat Pac-Man) I could stick to Cure II and save on Amrita II uses, and also animation time (Salve II takes forever in combat. Did I mention in the Japanese version it's called "Area Cure"?)

I decided to go dick around in the 6th stratum. Teralich eats me alive, Shelllord is immune to fire. I'll have to go beat Songbird and get Mobius Alb before I rest to change my primary element to volt.

Regarding randomness in this game, it seems combat uses an ugly Dragon Warrior III type deal of your fate being completely deterministic. It's completely knowable if 1st Turn or Blazer will go off first. But what kind of fight you get into is completely random. What square the fight takes place on, and what monsters you face, is what can change. So once again, diligent segmenting can save the day I guess.

It might be worth picking up the Arc Drawer if I can spare the cash (probably not). It's a substantial boost in attack power for my S. Apollon did about 750 damage to Etreant, I think it stunned him once too.

Now I have nothing to do on the flight back...well, I'm going to go buy F-Zero Maximum Velocity at the pawn shop tomorrow probably. When I get back I might re-post the key information on the Newer Consoles board. If I can't get my hands on a good camera I'll get Aftermath to do the run or something.

Adamas helps the Medic a lot because his defense is so low.

Anyway Etreant was pretty easy. (I was so engrossed in the fight that I missed a bus stop, nearly missed my flight home <_<) I think I only need 5 Axcela IIIs this time. The Apollon pacing thing worked exactly as I imagined it. The damage on Caduceus isn't all that impressive against Etreant, especially considering how high the TP cost is, but it's still damage. My Flame did less damage than the previous practice run because my A was 2 or 3 levels lower, so I think I'll definitely have to keep him around for Royalant. Inferno + Blazer can be kept up with Relaxing I guess. I need to move a Sea Charm to my T though, he had just enough TP to use Erasure on every turn except one (his shot only did 60 damage, boo) as the fight ended. I somehow unlocked Blood Mail in my 5th stratum adventures so that's a defense boost of 10 for my T if I think I need it (I almost certainly won't, the T is a defensive powerhouse). The S and T have huge defense (around 70), the M and A are vulnerable (~45 defense), they're the only reason I need to keep up with Salve II. I guess this means that if I get an Angel Robe (fat chance, I almost went insane trying to beat Pac-Man) I could stick to Cure II and save on Amrita II uses, and also animation time (Salve II takes forever in combat. Did I mention in the Japanese version it's called "Area Cure"?)

I decided to go dick around in the 6th stratum. Teralich eats me alive, Shelllord is immune to fire. I'll have to go beat Songbird and get Mobius Alb before I rest to change my primary element to volt.

Regarding randomness in this game, it seems combat uses an ugly Dragon Warrior III type deal of your fate being completely deterministic. It's completely knowable if 1st Turn or Blazer will go off first. But what kind of fight you get into is completely random. What square the fight takes place on, and what monsters you face, is what can change. So once again, diligent segmenting can save the day I guess.

It might be worth picking up the Arc Drawer if I can spare the cash (probably not). It's a substantial boost in attack power for my S. Apollon did about 750 damage to Etreant, I think it stunned him once too.

Now I have nothing to do on the flight back...well, I'm going to go buy F-Zero Maximum Velocity at the pawn shop tomorrow probably. When I get back I might re-post the key information on the Newer Consoles board. If I can't get my hands on a good camera I'll get Aftermath to do the run or something.

SDA Forum Index -> Community -> Casual Speedrunning -> Etrian Odyssey [DS] (complete segment guide added)