EOV Rantage!!

[Kimiko]

Whoa, that's a different cookie. The McPherson Five got me ~300k in one run o_o
Too bad he doesn't have Fair Trade as well as Zombie Powder. You could get some bosses down to 4 digits in just three turns. Well, you'd have to travel all the way through the labyrinth from the sixth stratum to where the target is of course; Iorys has a "no wraiths" policy. Might be useful for some other sixth stratum FOEs though; get the status right, then Fair Trade it to death. Or wait, could you do that with Zombie Powder? Or does instakill overwrite other ailments?

[Wolkenritter]

[sebberu]

[Sampson]

Hypnobats

[Kimiko]

I'm getting close to the end of the game now.

[Wolkenritter]

[Kimiko]

Thanks for the tip re:. Next stop: retiring.

Btw, whoever designed these bosses really just picked randomly from a pile of parts, didn't they? You wonder how those things can even stay upright, let alone move around.

Question about the final final boss:

[Wolkenritter]

30F spoilers


I believe Shin Nagasawa is still the monster designer. He also does illustrations for the Pokemon TCG and designed the enemies in Final Fantasy IX.

[Kimiko]

[PLA]

^

[Theresia]

I started the game a few days ago, got it thanks to the EU EShop sale!

I defeated the Second Stratum's Boss at the third try, with every party member alive.
The Third Stratum music theme is rad.

My party is composed of Therian Fencer and Earthlain Dragoon on the front, Therian Rover, Brouni Shaman and Celestrian Warlock in the back row.

I'm still thinking about specializations: I'll go for Chain Fencer, Cannon Bearer, Hunting Hound and Divine Herald for sure, but I'm a bit uncertain about the Warlock, at first I wanted to go with Elemancer, but some of the Omnimancer's skills seem pretty neat, especially Reserve Magic and Altar.

[Sigma]

Decided to start up a new file using 5 Rovers (3 having been Alter Class'd after the first mission) consisting of: Earthlain, Brouni -- Therian, Celestrian, Therian. The Earthlain and Brouni are Hound Rovers whlie the Therians and Celestrian are Hawk Rovers. Having just completed the first stratum, I'm kind of impressed by their initial forays into it. They are weathering random encounters far better than I had hoped, they can be iffy on FOEs (but still win out) at the moment, and was really interesting to watch them obliterate the stratum boss. This is the first party composition that I've had to take on that boss with minimal struggle (they basically sneezed at it); they were level 16. Having 3 Wing Thrash users decimated the mechanics/scripting of the fight.

Now I'm looking forward to what can and can not be achieved within the second stratum. There are quite a few type of encounters that could be interesting in how (badly?) that they could manage through. I'm not expecting their FOE issues to go away either, but the Giraffe FOE is kind of a necessary venture for its bow. I doubt I'll be able to properly take it on until 9th or 10th floor (better armor upgrades) due to it loving to spam its AoE* attack when it gets lower on health. If I do, and can, manage to defeat the Giraffes, I'll probably only go for 4** drops. Then possibly abuse a temporary mining team to convert Copper Shards to Ingots off of the Floor 1 mining points to mitigate over leveling the main team.

* No easy access to a reliable head bind (skill-wise) until after the 2nd Stratum. Yes, technically speaking, I would have access to the binder items from that stone manta ray drop, but that would require farming them.

** The reason for 4 instead of 5 would be that I'm contemplating on giving the Celestrian the Gorgon Arrow bow. Just on the off chance that I might need to quickly shutdown an enemy, thinking about two enemies on the 10th Floor, via Petrification. I doubt that I could just brute force my way with Wing Thrash through those encounters.

[Sigma]

Ended up only farming 3 bows from the Giraffes, got the Gorgon Arrow for the Celestrian, and gave the Brouni the WIS bow from Stoneray's drop. Also, didn't bother with the Giraffes until I got the Gorgon Arrow which led to farming Crystal Gauntlets off the scorpions first. Spotted Hound was, as expected, a semi-struggle if I didn't make them a priority. Where as, the Chiroptekong wasn't as bad due to both Hound users spamming Hunter Shot to shut down his attacks via arm binds.

As for the stratum boss the first attempt was technically successful, but had (the first instance of) 3 deaths in the process. Got Hippogryph stuck in a loop where they would use Sky Dive -> Wing Shield -> Repeat (due to healing off of Wing Shield). What didn't help with that was his attack debuff from Sky Dive. So I scrapped that run and redid the fight, but this came with 3 Addle Gas that I had stored at the Inn. Around the third turn I had enough damage on the boss to activate the first instance of Sky Dive to which led to Black Mist and chucking all 3 Addle Gas to lock out that move and was smooth sailing to the third stratum from there. Finished the Second Stratum at level 29.

Now I'm left with the decision on how to tailor the mastery paths for the Rovers. My initial plan was to have the Hawk users max out Aerial Talons, but I've opted to do something slightly different. The Celestrian is to get it maxed out, but the Therians will focus on getting Million Arrows to 9. The reason being that Million Arrows should see some decent use due to the Leg Binds from the Hound users along with the fact that I now have easy access to both Panic (Addle Gas / Menacing Howl [Hound]) and Blind (Blind Gas / Feather Storm [Hawk]) to eviscerate evasion on an enemy. Plus it will be nice to test this ability out early on for a change.

The Hound users, sadly, don't feel like they're as specialized as the Hawks. They definitely are following a similar path with slight variations here and there that was more or less forced from how the Brouni's SP was spent towards Animal Therapy and getting the Hound to L9. The Earthlain, due to higher STR, is focused on currently getting Arc Shot to 9. They had maxed Hunter Shot, where as the Brouni left that at 5. They both will have Leg Pierce at 9 (Earthlain is already there) and Status ATK Up at 5*.

* It's kind of unknown if this really gets applied to pets, but the atwiki at one point had claimed it did in their testing.


When I initially was thinking of doing this run, I was weighing between doing 5 Fencers, 5 Dragoons, or 5 Rovers. I'm glad I settled on the Rovers as this has been a relatively fun run so far and it feels like this team is just blazing through the floors.

[Sigma]

3rd Stratum:



4th Stratum:



5th Stratum:

[Sigma]

So over the past couple of days I've gotten the Rover party to the superboss (level 93). It didn't end well multiple times, spectacular wipes. Don't know when I will re-attempt it, kind of want to do that Fencer* run now. As for exploring the hellscape, it wasn't all that bad due to the Hawk users having a speed priority skill that is faster than a rare breed. The post-game bosses themselves were not really all that threatening as the party could just weather them out with consistent damage coming from Aerial Talons. The 2 Therians saw a massive drop off in using Million Arrows on bosses. This was mainly due to me being unwilling to upgrade their bows until I could get the ones I wanted; though the skill still functioned as a semi-decent screen clear, when needed, during exploration.

*Don't know if I will post about this run. If I do I'll try to condense it down to 1 post, with spoiler boxes to condense it even further, provided I don't run into a character limit.