Etrian Odyssey

Didn't even bother attempting a fight against it in the first playthrough. Much of the New Game Plus has been solely to farm money to buy the best possible weapons and equipment.

(Difficulty aside, I didn't attempt to fight it because I made the mistake of letting Arken go to another planet and watching the credits before releasing and defeating the SD. I felt like I finished the game the cheap way, so I made some preparations and then started the NG+).

I already did that as well.

Beat Hippogriff! I was caught off guard by how much damage it did at first, but I pushed through. Beat it on my first try, too. I ended up afflicting stone on it near the end right after I binded it with Chain Blast so the last half of it's HP bar was mad easy.

Anywho, third stratum is so cool and creepy i love it.

Wait, you get to type in your own legendary title??? i can't wait to have the title "Pimp Daddy".

Stabdaddy.

My party (all five members) are now at level 98. Last night I got the rare drop from Zombie Dragon and bought the Gustav (then fully upgraded it) for my Dragoon. She also has that strong gear from the Corrupted Ulna material.

I have a question, in the upcoming EOX, even if there are 19 classes, can you still choose only five members for your party?

Yes. Speaking of which

For those of you who don't read Japanese, if that's what I think it is, it's the announcement trailer for the free character portrait DLC. Which portraits, you ask? Every single one from all five past games.

oh my god that is so hype

anyway, third stratum is kicking my ass like wtf. i mean, i guess that's what i get for dungeon crawling at night but still. i need to rethink how i approach random encounters.

also: i made my masurao a blade dancer and he dies so quickly like damn. i might have to equip him with armor for random encounters and only give him four katanas for boss fights.

edited 21st May '18 10:02:01 AM by EpicBleye

New trailer for EOX :D

I'm surprised the male Nightseeker got new art.

Oh, finally got to the Stratum 3 boss. It's, uh, really hard. I ended up losing after getting the boss to about 1/3rd health because he activated this skill called "grave" during his turn... after I launched a barrage of offensive skills myself.

So because he did something I had no control over or had any reason to expect I lost. That was frustrating.

I'll give it another go because this fight doesn't actually seem THAT hard, but it's definitely annoying because it's going to be a slog.

edit: apparently it's just coincidence that he never used "grave" in my previous attempt for his first couple phases. still, it's a stupid skill.

Edited by EpicBleye on Jul 2nd 2018 at 2:10:21 PM

Forgive the double post, but

Beat the undead king! What an unoriginal name! So unoriginal that Solor felt the need to comment on it I found out what caused Grave to fuck up my team so bad, and it's because my masurao's one skill that cut the line 2-8 times activated right when Grave happened, so of course the skeleton's attacked my team almost 16 times in a row. yikes.

Other than that the fight was pretty easy. i'm sure i'll need to farm him down the line for some sick equipment, but right now he's too much of a headache to bother with, especially since I wont have Lili to help cushion things.

Now the crystal caverns. Man, if EO V does one thing right it's the stratum environments. This place is absolutely gorgeous and unlike anything I've seen before i mean i totally have but i'm glad that EO V manages to create such a unique setting in just one tree. I'm also glad to get away from that bloody graveyard because (despite how cool it was) it was starting to get tiring looking at it.

This game definitely isn't messing around with its difficulty and i'm super glad about that. i'm excited to really dive in to this stratum and find what it has to offer. probably a lot of crystals and danger.

Just wait until you reach the fifth stratum. By far the most thematically beautiful stage I've seen in a video game since Misty Peaks in 2013.

I'm playing through IV and right now I think that multi-classing in these games is a trap.

Or just plain bad.

Multi-classing must be done with consideration to passive skill combos.

Sub-classing is godlike and adds a ton of potential to (nearly) every class in the game.

But you can't look at it as "a character having two classes", you have to look at it as "the sub-class increasing the potential of the main class".

Yeah. Basically the idea is that you want a Nightseeker with an Arcanist's bonuses to Ailments, or any damage class with a Bushi's Bloodrage to boost their damage. Combinations like that. Something that reinforces your existing strengths, rather than spreading your points randomly over disparate skills.

And quite frankly, multiclassing is still worth it even if you invest zero points into your subclass because it just gives you 5 points for free.

Edited by Clarste on Jul 14th 2018 at 1:08:14 AM

A Fortress with Dancer training can get evasion to stack on top of their durability, plus passive attack bonuses from sword dance and the confusion proc, also the healing dances are handy for them to use to further shore up their toughness.

You're probably doing something wrong, then, because sub-classes are where you take IV and break its difficulty in half.

soooo umm

any tips for the hippogryth?

i thought i had a decent party for him (masurao, pugilist, harbinger, botanist and...magician guy?) and was around the right level (27-ish) buuut ended up being killed in about 3 turns.

playing around with party comp atm (and trying out a rover) so any suggestions would be great

Hippogryph went down really easy in my playthrough- I beat him on my first try.

He doesn't have a lot of health, so I'd do an all out offense to kill him asap.

Electric damage is his weakness, so focus on doing a lot of that (be it with jars or whatever).

His sky dive attack he does at 75%, 50%, and 25% health roughly, but if you deal damage fast enough you should really only ever see it once or twice. Bind his arms to stop it completely though.

Pugilist should have a skill that does a lot of electric damage. But generally speaking an all out offense is the best strategy here.

Edited by EpicBleye on Jul 16th 2018 at 8:10:46 AM

You can just do enough damage to cancel his defensive stance.

If you have either a Warlock or a Necromancer with you, try investing a Skill Point to unlock Chain Blast, a Union Skill that has a very high chance of fully binding an enemy or boss.

Chain Blast allows Barrage pugilists to unlock their true potential.

I've started playing Etrian Odyssey V again. I haven't gotten very far since I got distracted by other games (as in I didn't get past the first floor), but I've just beaten my first FOE. Still feels really good to beat an FOE for the first time.