22 replies to this topic

[^Leo^]

Here we go. My team is the sovereign cero, the Gunner kirant, the war magus named Magus, the Medic Yosh, Dark Hunter Mav, and the protector DarkKnight(and I may need to edit his name for space). The most support oriented team I've ever seen, but I think it'll work out for now. At least till I get more attackers. I'll get these guys set up, and we'll be ready to go soon.
 
 
gotta find a new image hosting thing. forum doesn't like imgur.
 
ok i'm just having problems with the pictures. does the forum not like png formats? I've never had that problem before.

[Cero]

I've never had a problem with imgur or png files on the forum, can you be more specific on the issue? And if it comes down to it you could just make a album on imgur and add your comments as descriptions to the pics.

[kirant]

Try using Postimage. 

[Fire Blazer]

hmm, yeah, I'm not sure what's up with that. I usually just the img tags and JPGs, PNGs, and GIFs should work with that... hmm. let us know if you need more help, I can see if I can work something out ><

[^Leo^]

success. alright here we go. these screenshots are slightly outdated as i had an issue with the program i'm using(turns out i'm limited to 30 pictures at a time). it crashed right as i was about to finish the first mission, however everything went almost the same, so i'll just type out the differences where they come up. anyway here we go!

 

 

basically there's a large floating castle that the people of the city want to get to for reasons unknown. you as explorers are going to get it done because...well...you're explorers? anyway that's how every EO opens. it was a solid premise for the first game, and it still works now. I don't have a picture of the city right now, but it's nothing special. first stop is the explorers guild to get our party together.

 

 

literally the coolest guild master. can't beat a dark knight for being a badass. anyway here I named the guild FE Nation, and got the team together.

 

first up was DarkKnight(his name got shortened a bit unfortunately) the protector.

Spoiler

he also has two points in hp up. also I changed his name because It was wrong the first time

 

next we have Cero the Sovereign

 

Spoiler

i'm building cero to be a pure support. with my team looking like it does right now I want to keep the heals up as much as possible, and the order moves heal everyone they activate on.

 

 

then there's kirant: the resident gunslinger.

 

Spoiler

not much to say here. kirant wanted a support build, so i'm gonna put some points into gun mastery for bind moves and the rest goes into the support moves. damage will still be very nice though because of the 5 gun mastery points when that time comes.

 

Magus the Magus

 

Spoiler

since everyone else has so much healing potential I decided that Magus would be an attacker. so I equipped him with a sword and put 2 points into the war edge skills and 1 into physical attack.

 

Dark Hunter Mav

 

Spoiler

big change here. I decided against the whip mastery and put a point in the skill that makes it easier to inflict ailments and binds. later put a point back into whip mastery at level 3 I think. swords are better for right now because they can inflict ailments which are better this early than binds are. if an enemy shows up that is hard to kill  before binding them i'll switch over to whips then(or use kirant to take care of it. whichever works better)

 

there are two more people that I have yet to take screenshots of, but i'll get that covered later today. anyway FE Nation is ready to accept it's first mission.

 

Next stop ->

 

 

 

an old ass bitch. one that wants us to go into the labyrinth and grab a "token" that he's hidden in there...which he also decided to mark on the map which kind of defeats the purpose of hiding it if you ask me, but whatever. along with finding this token I had to map out part of the first floor of the dungeon. So lets head out then.

[^Leo^]

turns out the entrance to the labyrinth is right where we started. but I like this picture, so I put it up without the words covering its beauty. anyway heading into this dungeon I already knew what to expect because I have about 6 hours logged on the story mode already, but this time it was with a team balanced very heavily to the side of heals. I honestly didn't know how the fights would go. i'll say now that I was pleasantly surprised with how it all went, but more on that later. the dungeon waits for nobody.

 

 

but what a dungeon it is. if you get the chance to play this on a 3ds be sure to have 3d mode on before going into the dungeon for the first time. Atlus did a fantastic job with the 3d effects this time. it really is stunning. however after just a few steps I was interrupted by this guy here

 

 

he reminds us of our quest, and gives some advice on how to survive the dungeon(basically just lets you know that you have to draw your own maps, and how to do that.) iirc he also gives you some medica; a healing item that at this point in the game will fully restore your health no problem. from here I started off to the right because you're told specifically that going to the left is off limits. first time that I've played an EO game and didn't have to map the entire first floor right off from the start. there's actually a significant portion of the first floor that you have to ignore. anyway along the way an event popped up where the leader of the party(DarkKnight at this time) noticed an old whip up in a tree. I had Mav climb up and grab it. I don't know if character class has anything to do with this, but he successfully untangled the whip and brought it back down safely. I then received an item called "worn whip" or something like that. don't know if it actually does anything, but i'm assuming it's related to a quest later. just then as I was moving out of the corridor that the whip was in monsters attacked. the first battle began with these little fellows staring down the party.

 

 

yep. a snail and a hedgehog. now bear in mind the team at this point is offensively very weak. what I didn't expect however is that the team simply doesn't take damage for more than a turn. DarkKnight was able to keep the damage to a minimum with his cover skills, and cero healed back what damage was taken with an order skill. the other three attacked and were able to kill both monsters by turn 3 and got out with only magus losing health at the end(he was hit by the hedgehog at the end of turn two and none of the heals went through before it died). so yeah, much better than I was expecting. all the fights after this went about the same way, and as I was travelling through the dungeon trying to map everything out. until eventually FE nation all levelled up. from here on out when a character levels up i'll be showing just the skill that is increased.

 

DarkKnight

 

Spoiler

hp up is my best option at this point. the only other thing I might have chosen is elemental defense as it can give you healing spells. I didn't need those though considering the rest of my team.

 

Mav

 

Spoiler

I actually upped my sword mastery here. this is an old picture.

 

Magus

 

Spoiler

upped war edge mastery. this increases tp further when a sword is equipped and boosts damage for staves. pretty useful either way, but swords are stronger even after the increase to staff damage.

 

kirant

 

Spoiler

more gun mastery. i'm going straight for those binding rounds at rank 5.

 

and finally cero

 

Spoiler

higher order mastery=better heals. nothing more to report here until later.

 

around this time I was getting closer to finishing the map, and getting closer to finding the "token" in fact there was only one room left to search, and so I entered. at the end of a long and decently wide room sat a solitary chest. a chest that was sitting right where the token on my map was marked.

 

 

aaaaaaand it's a hunk of wood. super anticlimactic if you ask me, but who cares. I got it, and the map is finished. time to get out of this place. everything was peaceful until one of the party notices somethin g out of place...and that was when the fire nation attacked.

 

 

if any of you aren't familiar with etrian odyssey you may not know this, but at the beginning of the game these guys are your worst nightmare. and three of them just showed up on the map, all three blocking an area I had to pass through to get out of the dungeon. luckily these Formido Oppugnatura Exsequens(FOEs for short) move very predictably. they just move in a square around a single space.

 

for anyone interested in what the map looks like at this point

Spoiler

FE nation passes by the final massive deer, and met back up with the soldier from earlier to show that map is finished and the token was collected. from here he tells you that you can return to the city and report your mission completed, or you can continue to explore the dungeon. I opted to go back for the reward which consisted of 500en(the currency of etrian odyssey games) and enough experience to give everyone another level. I don't have pictures for that unfortunately as the game crashed right then( this is when I discovered the limit on screenshots), but this level was no different from level 2. everyone's skill point was used to further carve out their basic image.

​

Stay tuned for the next chapter where we have two new people joining FE nation. Naya the war magus(a healer war magus rather than an attacker like Magus) and Catman the highlander(or possibly a beast depending on if I can get him to agree to it, but i'm working under the assumption that he will be a highlander).

[Cero]

I request that you fight every FOE you come across. We gotta have the tense battles lol.

 

Also I'm so gorgeous. The monsters will be blinded by me. *shot*

[^Leo^]

The boss battles get pretty intense later. Also without significant grinding I will be absolutely decimated by FOEs. This is hard mode brah.

[Cero]

Do it, you must!

[^Leo^]

OBJECTION! *Phoenix Wright pose* seriously though. With the semi-permadeath rule I'm using staying away from FOEs is my only realistic option. As it is most of you won't see the end of the labyrinth if any survive at all. I'll be coming back to them later for the rare materials though.

[kirant]

I demand to see more Fysis Oikein Eidolon.  Or Formido Oppugnatura Exsequens.  Whichever is better to fight.

 

(Seriously though, what is the power difference between EO's FOEs and Persona Q's FOEs?  The Card Soldiers in Persona Q were reasonable but others got insane from time to time.  Especially all the guys at the Pride Festival)

[^Leo^]

FOEs are reasonable on the easier difficulties. At worst you have to be about 5 levels higher than what the rest of the floor requires. Often they are easier* than the floor boss if there is one(except for the fact that some have crazy annoying status effects. One of those is the deer here. It can panic your characters making them hurt themselves and each other and otherwise waste turns that could be spent killing it or running). I don't know how hard they are on hard mode though. Never tried to play an EO game on anything other than normal and picnic.

[Fire Blazer]

The backgrounds on this game are so pretty. I need to reference them for my own project(s), lol

 

I think on my EOU1 save I set it to Normal or Picnic too. I'm not a fan of making things too difficult, especially in games where it's a matter of tedious elements (e.g. simply more HP, more time, more items, more grinding, whatever).

 

Anyhow, maybe I'll just read your LP and not actually play the game myself. also, I'm kind of curious what program you're using for screenshots (sorry if you mentioned it and I missed it)

[^Leo^]

Nope never mentioned it. The program I'm using is called HANS(don't ask me what that acronym is, I don't know). Brand new thing in the 3ds homebrew scene. Basically it lets you take screenshots, force games to run at the higher clock speed that the new 3ds has access to, and load 3ds game mods even though there are very few of them atm. Pretty cool stuff, but unfortunately it's still very early in development and still has a lot of bugs.

[^Leo^]

Day two. the day where you see the rest of the first floor, and meet three new characters.

 

Catman the beast

 

Spoiler

looking at the different skill effects the beasts seem to be a mixture of attack and extremely high health. in fact the force break skill triples his health temporarily. along with that tiger blow is a very useful skill as it hits hard and heals based on the damage.

 

Yosh the medic

 

Spoiler

not much to say. yosh is going to have better heals than anyone else by the second stratum(floor 6 iirc)

 

Naya the war mage(support style)

 

Spoiler

she's going to have heals and buffs. i'm also gunning for that random disease skill. it's a pretty great thing to have as it can inflict any ailment poison seems to show up more often than any other

 

alright, with introductions over it's time to get started. if you check out the map from day one you'll notice I only covered about half of the first floor for the mission.

 

the first battle went beautifully. about 10 steps or so into the labyrinth these guys showed up

 

 

I already knew that this would be an easy fight. it was two moles and...I don't remember what that thing on the left is anymore, but it was something just as weak as the moles. the setup I have right here is very support oriented. even more so than the group from the first run. everyone here has a heavy focus on keeping others alive, so I wasn't worried about losing someone this time around. what I was worried about was having the fights drag on so long that I would start to run out of tp before the end of the room. turns out this was way off base, catman has about twice the damage a protector does. at level 1 he was dishing out heavier hits than DarkKnight was at level 3. i'd also like to point out his health. keep in mind protectors are supposed to be the teams tank. check out the difference here. I really can't wait to see how he turns out later. I can't say much about yosh and naya yet, as both of them start to bloom later when they have some skills to back them up. anyway the fight ended quickly without much drama.

 

about two minutes later I came across a dead end. most of those have events so I figured i'd check it out. turns out there was something

 

 

yep, a hedgehog. one of those little guys that tries to kill you on a regular basis. he got his quills stuck in the roots of that tree right there. so naturally you have a choice to just leave it there, or you can try to set it free. thinking I might get an item or something from letting it go, I pick that. on the off chance something bad happens I send DarkKnight since he can take a hit really well. it's a good thing I did too because the little bastard scratched DarkKnights face dealing 30 damage. that would have dropped my squishier guys without a problem, and to top it off I got absolutely nothing from letting him go. no medica, no money, nothing. this crap right here is why I love atlus. they're not afraid to screw over their players.

 

being rather annoyed about the hedgehog I walked back and forth for a few minutes looking for more of them to kill, and somewhere along I way I came across this.

 

 

these doors can't be opened right away. you need to find a key which is usually hidden pretty far into the labyrinth. the only reason I know about them at all is because I accidently found one in Etrian Odyssey Untold:millenium girl. not sure what's behind this particular door, but from what I understand it can be anything from a chest with rare items to a hidden boss. pretty excited to find out later. getting back to exploring I came across a new monster.

 

 

this one here is bad news. they show up alone one the first floor which is good news, but it's still quite the fight. it hit kirant for about 3/4 of his health on the first turn, so I had to heal him up right away on turn two. turn three I got the crawler(that's it's name btw) down to half. catman was able to keep his own health topped off by using tiger blow, and DarkKnight kept the back line alive with his shielding moves. And finally turn four had the team drop the crawler. Pretty suprising that one monster took that long to kill. after the fight I had to heal up a few people on the team, but on the other hand the three new guys leveled up.

 

first up we have Catman

Spoiler

I upped his loyalty mastery so I can get protect and hit taker as quickly as possible. btw lick wounds is a healing move that can target anyone on your team. at higher ranks it's a pretty decent heal too.

 

next is Naya

Spoiler

yeah, I have put every point into war lore mastery. I want artery as fast as possible, but what i'm really going for is random disease. after that i'm going to grab war heal line.

 

and finally Yosh

Spoiler

more heal mastery. makes the heals more powerful. at the next rank i'll go for heal mastery again for unbind and refresh. unbind speaks for itself, and refresh heals ailments. very important for fighting in later floors where monsters can inflict ailments left and right.

 

soon after I found the stairs to the second floor. fairly uneventful as far as traversing labyrinths go, but it is only the first floor after all. anyway here are the stairs just in case you don't know what those look like

 

 

as with any other EO game once you've covered enough of a floor you can jump straight to the stairs from anywhere that floor jump is available including other floors that you have mapped completely. very useful for when you forget an Ariadne thread(which I constantly do). for anyone who doesn't know what i'm talking about Ariadne threads let you escape the labyrinth immediately. these can be your best friend in certain situations, so if you decide to start playing etrian odyssey make sure you always carry at least one.

 

almost completed map of floor one(I couldn't enter the locked door)

Spoiler

as you can see i'm pretty thorough about placing chests, gather points, healing spots, and doors. also if there's any spot with special events locked to quests I leave a note to mark it(there's a little red triangle icon that lets you mark a space with a message. pretty useful for when you don't want to forget where a quest item is or if you want to specify whether a healing spot is for hp, tp, or both. I don't do that, but i'm sure it would be nice to know.)

 

and last I remembered to take a screenshot of the town this time.

 

 

gaze upon it and bask in it's glorious visage. the thing that says renovating shop is a café which serves a pretty awesome purpose later. i'll cover that later though when it opens up. for now i'll say half of it's purpose is to serve as your guild house(same kind of thing from the other EO games. especially the first untold.)

 

and that's it for today. I don't have work tomorrow so expect some more.

 

Hint for tomorrow: new characters to introduce tomorrow. they won't be in from level one because i'll be bringing them up to speed tonight, but you should look forward to two new attackers. one for each line.

[kirant]

You know, reading this, I would think that it might help me understand the team strategies a bit more if you explain all the skills.  I can kind of guess them (ex - Lick Wounds is a self-heal), but it confuses me a little what that plan is.

[^Leo^]

I had considered that actually. Some of them are pretty self explanatory(however lick wounds is actually just a heal in general), but for the most part people who haven't played the game won't know what, just for an example, the skill drop shot does. For the record it does massive damage to the back line. Not exactly on the nose with the name on that case. I'll work it in with the next thing I put up. Should be soon(if I ever get a day off at work. Keep getting called in)

[^Leo^]

Day three: getting the new guys caught up.

 

since two new people joined i knew i would have to get them, and the other two that joined for the last entry, caught up with the rest of FE Nation. so this entry is going to be all about quests(later today i'll be going up to the second floor, so we'll get to see new monsters, and stuff then). anyway with the summary out of the way lets get to introducing the new members.

 

Lune the Gunner

Spoiler

another gunner, but Lune is going to be focused on elemental damage instead of supporting like Kirant. i'm going this route because of the other new recruit who is a landsknecht that I want to be a linker(follows up any elemental damage with attacks. very useful). anyway the first two points go into gun mastery for extra damage, and unlocked medic bullet automatically. the third point I put into phys ATK up(fairly self explanatory).

 

Karino the Landy

Spoiler

as I said already he's going to be a linker. there are a few other ways to build a landy, but this is my favorite. for now though I put a point into sword mastery to unlock raging edge which is just a powered up basic attack. a point into tp up, and phys atk up to get closer to unlocking the chase skills(these are what make your landy a linker. they were originally called link skills, thus the title of "linker"). the force skill is really cool for landsknechts too. after you activate it every attack becomes a critical for three turns. it may not have the great utility that some of the other ones have, but if you want to just wreck a difficult boss real quick that's the way to do it.

 

I had a whole lot typed out here, but it disappeared for some odd reason. I really don't know what happened. anyway i'm going to condense it a bit this time since i'm really lazy and I want to get to the second floor faster XD.

 

on to the quests. the first one was to sell the shop some stuff to let them make a new type of shield. since I had already done this they just told me to go back to the bar and pick up the reward. Karino, DarkKnight, and Lune all leveled up. Karino and DarkKnight didn't unlock any new skills. Karino's damage was increased whereas DarkKnight got another point in shield mastery which brought him closer to having the wall skills that void elemental damage. Lune unlocked the elemental damage skills.

 

the second quest was to pick up some spring water from the first floor of the labyrinth. nothing exciting happened along the way, and since I already knew where the water was it didn't take very long to find it.

 

 

after picking it up I was told I should return to the town to pick up the reward, but since I had already accepted a third quest as well I decided to stay and finish that up. this quest was to get three needles for some dude that wanted them so he could make nectars, a revival item. the actual item is called "rat needle" which you get from beating the hedgehogs. surprisingly enough this quest took much longer than I expected. I kept running into every monster OTHER than the hedgehogs. desire sensor too stronk. eventually I got bored trying to hunt these guys down(and sometimes fighting them, but not picking up any rat needles), so I decided to try and fight one of the FOEs as per cero's request.

 

 

I'll start by saying this: big. fucking. mistake. he used baffling step to panic Karino, Catman, and Naya, kicked DarkKnight in the face a few times, and nearly killed Lune before I was able to escape. basically i'm not going to do that again any time soon.

 

anyway a few minutes later I was able to grab the last rat needle and returned to town to pick up the rewards for the two quests.

 

More levelling up!

 

Karino

Spoiler

\

he actually levelled up twice from the rewards. I put both points towards getting him closer to the chaser skills. i'm probably going to be rushing for those as fast as possible so I can carve out an image pretty quickly, and fill the other stuff in later.

​

DarkKnight

Spoiler

don't think I need to describe what that is. since he's up to level 5 now I may have to bench him for a little while to give everyone else a chance to catch up. I may not though because protectors are just so good

 

Catman

Spoiler

another one that levelled up twice. the first point went towards the loyalty thing which unlocked "hit taker" and "protect(?)" hit taker lets him absorb a few hits for the entire team whereas protect lets him absorb all hits directed at a single character. both also decrease the damage that catman takes during the turn as well. I have a feeling he's going to synergize very well with DarkKnight because of these two skills. double damage reductions and protecting the whole team? sounds good to me. I put the other point into hp up so he'll be able to keep that up for longer.

 

Lune

Spoiler

up to level 4. I increased fire rounds over the other two because right now there are far more enemies with a weakness to fire than the other elements. the other point went towards more physical attack.

 

Naya

Spoiler

when the deer almost killed naya it had me pretty worried, so I increased her hp...probably a knee jerk reaction, but I don't want to lose any characters this early.

 

By the by I've decided to amend the permadeath(If i mentioned this already I apologize, but my memory is shot): instead of having characters gone permanently when they die i'll be able to revive them during the same battle in which they died. if the battle ends with dead characters though they're gone. should make the boss fights more manageable, and leave me with more options.

 

anyway i'll have more up later today, but for now i'm gonna grab some lunch...might play some undertale too before I get back to this. haven't decided.

[^Leo^]

Doing this let's play makes it incredibly difficult to want to play the game, so I'm gonna give up on this for now. I may come back to it from time to time, but honestly I'm just not enjoying playing it at all.

Edit: because of the let's play. I love the game itself.

[Cero]

I can understand that. Screenshot LP's take a lot of work.