EMD Rantage!

[Dangerus]

I wish I had as much trouble. I dunno. Maybe I like working with my favorite classes.

[Fluffernuff]

i'm currently fort-training my "secondary" team for things like fort defense, rescue teams, or even just as a second team for a change of pace..

i've yet to actually do a field test for synergy, but..
Protector
Prince
Princess
Dancer

given how Sovereign's TP regen works.... and the 2 vastly different "trees" they have to dump points into... AND the "rarely affect themselves" nature of orders, i'm kinda eager to see how 2 of them work together. Protector also has their "Wall" skills which ALSO offer even more TP regen to the sovereigns, along with being the best pair with them.
The dancer was sorta thrown in as -the- damage dealer. i havent ACTUALLY done any damage testing, but i BELIEVE dances stack with orders because of how dances actually work mechanically. theyre not status chances or buffs because they dont flag the sovereign's TP regen. i think its a separate field of influence... so it should in theory stack if all things are consistent
I also chose dance because multiple auto-attacks. and the "Arms" on sovereign skills are actually INSANE damage boosts, ESPECIALLY on weakness (easily 2-3x damage from my admittedly small scale "what if" testing)

there's another build idea i have if anyone wants to play with it (my guild isnt developed enough for more members):
Landy
Dancer
Gunner
Soveriegn
All out auto-attack Linking mayhem

[Hong]

Have not been around in some time.

I'm going to post some complaints about the game. Don't read this and go "Wow, stop bitching about every little thing! Don't be so negative! I have no social awareness!". I like this game and enjoy it and I'm probably going to play like games. Now that I've completed the main game, I just wanted to convey my thoughts on some of the bad stuff in the appropriate thread.

1) The music is good, but the protocol and application is poor. At the start they had it right, but they quickly abandon the more tranquil tracks for most of the dungeons. What is worse is the DOE encounter music, and how that's handled. IMO it should only begin to play as it physically draws closer to your party. It should start quiet, then reach full volume when it's on screen. In general, in some areas I feel the composer should have been able to choose something else. His talent is amazing, and it's hard to say whether or not he got to decide on all of this, but I don't think they always made the best of his abilities. Again, don't get the wrong idea: The music is excellent, as it always is. Just a matter of using it well and picking the right songs for the right place.

2) The AI is idiotic. While one can argue "You can disable their skills!", it became an issue when my Ninja and Gunner now end up with all of their skills disabled because the AI will not use them properly. Disabling a skill is thus just a bandaid solution; the core problem is the AI itself. No AI can be perfect, but I can't help but feel even a little extra tuning could make a massive difference. Even if this game has a hundred monsters or something I can't help but feel they could have improved the context sensitivity a bit. Hell, give me the game for a few weeks and I'll program better routines for how some of these skills are used by the AI.

3) Equipment is too much quantity and not enough quality or distinction. You can get something with like 9 Def and +HP, then one dungeon get gear in the same slot that is 10 Def and +HP. There's not enough ways to give certain classes more of their core stats or at least something useful throughout the game, which can be resolved by having more diversity in equipment. In short, I rather them have had fewer equipment, but having a greater contrast in power and stats. Especially the stuff that is unlocked from materials, yet has literally no inherent stats and has lower base atk/def than options with slots. What!

4) The main game is "short". Actually, this is not a fair complaint because it seems about fair for a regular game, and while i won't spoil anything, there's something to do after you beat it. Suppose having the "Etrian" name in the title has me expect a ridiculously long adventure I'm unlikely to complete. Disregard this.

5) You can't speed the game up enough. Even with instant messages and skipped spell effects, it gets way out of hand later on when you enter a room and there's like eight enemies all using AOE abilities. It's annoying because a lot of the abilities do like 1 damage or give an irrelevant debuff and like three enemies will do the exact same thing. This could have been averted by "rolling" the animation of abilities that affect multiple targets, that is to say, by starting the animation for the next target affected before finishing with the current. That said, just being able to hold L or something to skip things would have been nice.

[zamisk]

Once I finish EOIV, should I buy this or EOI? I'm on the fence. I'm not interested in the U's.

[Hong]

[Dangerus]

[Maxine MagicFox]

I'm dearly loving the game myself but I have to agree with just about everything you said Hong. I think it's a wonderful beautiful product with flaws. I REALLY REALLY hope that it becomes its own spin off series, though, because I would like to see a #2 that improves on the formula. Because my god this game is so addictive.

I really wish I had more time to play it

[sponge7325]

Okay, so last night I was playing this, and I was getting ready to fight the boss of the fourth dungeon, despite feeling somewhat underleveled for it I had a ton of revival items on hand so I thought why the heck not. So I head down to my farthest Search Fort (It's right behind a normal fort to protect the Search Fort from breaking), and run on down a floor. Once I get to the next floor, the game tells me there's a DOE attacking my base on this floor. Despite the music once again reminding me that "YOU DON'T WANT TO GET NEAR THAT THING DANGIT", I decided that I still had to get to the bottom regardless because I put quite a bit of money into preparing for the boss. So I get to the room with the stairs, and out comes the DOE. What I was planning on doing was just trying to sneak past it and get down the stairs, but it decides that it's going to ruin that plan and just summon a truckload of enemies to stop me. I start freaking out a bit, not because the enemies that he spawned, I just wanted to get out of that room ASAP. Luckily, my Hexer actually decides to use Evil Eye and actually gets Fear on every enemy. She didn't have Suicide Word at the time, which kind of sucked, but the enemies were stunned for long enough that I could get my Landy and Prince to kill them off before Fear wore off. Not only that, but somehow, I did over 100 damage to the DOE multiple times. I wasn't exactly paying attention though so I had NO IDEA how did that. Then I got cocky and said, "Hey, I'm doin' good! Let's kill this thing and be done with it!". Welp, as soon as that Fear ran out, the DOE decided to just Panic everybody. I lost around 2 or 3 Yggdrasil leaves because everyone was just murdering eachother, luckily though I got my Landy to get to the stairs, and we went down. We were hit pretty hard, but I still decided that we should still at least try the boss. I beat it with little trouble, at least compared to what I had just attempted to fight. DOEs mean business.

Also, quick question, if your exploration team fights off a DOE on a fort with other members in it, will both teams fight the DOE, or can you only use one? Because having 8 people fight a DOE sounds so cool imo.

EDIT: Also, I have been having a tiny tad bit of HP troubles replacing my Medic with a Prince, but overall I do not regret the decision at all. My Prince even does more damage than my Landy at times, plus buffs and everything agh its to good. Also, Monarch March is just as amazing as it was in EO3.

[Jarelo]

[Fluffernuff]

[Hong]

[Dangerus]

[Wolkenritter]

Uhhh... you can use any team to beat the big 3 dragons. The only real catch is that you're forced to run a Protector if you try fight them on Expert mode, and for the Blizzard Lord you need to have a Troubadour to remove his buffs. Other than those two, that's it really.

As for the story mode party, the only real stand out is Ricky. Gunner is downright the best damage dealing class in the game, but everything is perfectly beatable without one.

[Dangerus]

Thanks for the input.

Since this is Etrian Mystery Dungeon though, I think now is the time to get back on that subject.

For starters, the quests are piling up.

[Maxine MagicFox]

First DOE down. Exploration of Floor 4 continues.

By the way, it happened so quick and I was too busy being overly excited, does the game save after defeating a DOE and if I've defeated it does it return? Or is it like a boss - once conquered it will never return. The game has lead me to believe that it's like a boss and the idea is to kill these things. I think.