EO Rantage

[Isabelyes]

Alright!
Because I'm lazy, I'm gonna control - copy it (It isn't mine).

Behold; the strategy that made me replay the whole game:




It depends totally on your party composition and the skills you choose.
If you have a good party, there should be no need for any grinding at all (and if you find yourself grinding seriously, you should definitely just kick someone out of your party and replace them -- which will require a bit of time to get the new person's levels up, but it's worth it. Etrian Odyssey is totally unplayable with a badly-chosen party.)

I recommend the following:

Get a Troubadour with maxed Relaxing.

Relaxing is the most important skill in the game.
Note that Relaxing is percentage-based,
so it won't seem to recover much at first (5% TP a turn even when maxed).

But the thing is, your TP is always going up as you gain levels,
while eventually the cost of your skills will cap.

Early on it means you never run out of TP,
which helps quite a bit, but in the late game it will let you cast all your most powerful spells every turn,
which is an easy win.
Note that since is percentage based,
all your casters should also max TP up (which will increase their Relaxing TP recovery.)

Second, get a medic with salve 2 as soon as you can.
With the troubadour recovering your TP,
the medic will eventually be able to cast salve 2 every turn.

Max their TP up and TP recovery (which stacks with relaxing),
and your medic will be able to cast Salve 2 each turn against bosses very early in the game.
After that, only status attacks and one-hit kills can hurt you,
and your medic can get skills to guard against those.

Get Immunize to reduce being one-shotted by elemental damage.
If your Troubadour gets Stamina, that can help guard against being one-shotted by damage, too (50% HP increase at max FTW),
but remember that you can only have 3 buffs at once...
I hope they fixed that in the sequel, since it really was annoying.

But anyway, against tough opponents, your medic should cast Salve 2 every single turn whether you need it or not,
since the enemy might hit you and that will let you recover.
With Relaxing and maxed TP recovery,
they should never be at risk of running out of TP.

If you don't want TP recovery
(it does cost 10 skill points for something that Relaxing will eventually do much better),
just buy lots of TP-recovering items before major boss fights.

The rest of your party can be whatever you want, really.
Bindings help against many early bosses and encounters.
Alternatively, a Ronin can do a ton of damage with the right skills.

A protector can help reduce damage
and keep your party from being killed in one hit from heavy hits.

For an alchemist (or anyone else who can get a poison attack),
take poison and max it before you do anything else.
Poison's 255 damage a turn will slaughter nearly everything right up until you meet the second strata boss -- even Fenrir is vulnerable to it
(well, he's resistant, so you'll have to try a few times,
but it'll stick eventually, and then he goes down in like three turns).

This is very good for a Relaxing-focused party,
since Relaxing doesn't help so much until later levels
and you're going to want to mostly invest in expensive skills.
Some people complain that Poison gets weaker later on
because the damage is capped,
but random encounters last more turns later in the game, too, which balances it out.
Plus, some enemies resist all elements or magic in general --
but many of those will be affected by poison.

Also, it ignores the 'curse' damage-reflection effect, which is sometimes nice.

More importantly, Poison has another hidden advantage when combined with Relaxing:
Poison damage and Relaxing recovery are applied at the same time.
This lets your alchemist (and the rest of your party) recover TP
by using poison to kill random encounters.

Once my alchemist was high enough level to regain decently far about 6 TP a turn,
random encounters were no longer a threat.
After you have poison,
have your alchemist go straight for the top-rank elemental attacks.
Fire is good, but it doesn't really matter which;
as long as you skip the first- and second- rank skills,
you'll have enough to get the top-rank attacks in every element,
eventually (although focus on maxing one first.)
These cost lots of TP, but with relaxing you can afford it.

Everyone else should get their most expensive damage techniques,
since your Troubadour's Relaxing ability will let you spam them relentlessly.

It's hard to know what else a Troubadour should get
(because of the stupid 3-buff limit).
Erasure can help a huge amount against some opponents, so put one point in it.

Put one point in their attack-up and defense-up buffs, too --
not because they help much with just one point
(they don't, and they're not worth a precious buff slot),
but because they reverse the corrisponding stat-down affects,
which can be extremely dangerous.
Even if your enemy uses an extremely powerful stat-down effect,
even one point in the appropriate stat-up song will let you reverse it easily.

Also, don't forget items.
The item that recovers status ailments (Thercia A or B, I think?) affects your entire party.
Always bring several of those, and several nectars.

Oh, and if you're ever unsure what your Troubadour should get,
go for Divinity.
The buff limit means that you'll want it eventually (you're just going to run out of useful slots for other Troubadour powers),
and 30% xp boost is a big thing -- a party with Divinity is always going to be a few levels above one without it.

(You might say 'eh, I'll just grind more', but no matter how much you grind --
up until level 70, anyway -- you'll always be lower level
than a party with Divinity would be if they wasted the same amount of time.)
It also lets you change your party much more easily, and helps eliminate grinding.


I hope you'll like it as much as i did!

[negzee]

I was never a big user of relaxing because I never levelled my characters up far enough that it made much of a difference. I was just quite stingy with TP and tried to stick with plain physical attacks if I didn't really need to use TP to get through a battle. I'm a very boring EO player that way.

Damn. Imma need to try some elements from this strategy on my next play-through.

Thanks, isabelyes!

[Isabelyes]

Inorite?

I'm just like you :3
If it weren't for this strategy, I'd never have discovered the awesomeness that is a troubadour. (Wait...What?)

Now, I wanted to say something else, but I forgot...

[negzee]

Oh I had a troubadour and I loved him. I just didn't make use of relaxing.

[Kinokokao]

I fucking love Relaxing and use it on nearly every FOE and Boss.

And, totally agree, only 3 buffs makes me sad.

[Sampson]

3 buffs make my Ronin sad, too.

And in retrospect, maybe spending 10 points in TP up wasn't such a good idea for my Troubador, since they have Relaxing and their skills are cheap TP-wise. HP up was a good idea (I started using one post-game), and the only buff I'd choose next that I don't have enough points for is Stamina, but I wouldn't use it much, anyway.

[Maxine MagicFox]

"From a random corner, suddenly, FOE"

It was kinda funny today. I'm cursing out this Roller (B3F) that has just killed my Dark Hunter and my sister looks on my screen. I'm not paying much attention to my map at the time and just trying to get through the random battle when she points and is like "What's that red dot that just showed up on your map next to you?"

My reaction: O_O "OH FUCK!" and that sentence sprung to mind. x_x

"I take it that's a bad thing?"
"It's a FOE."
"A FOE? Oh! Wait, you're playing that game with that weird video you showed me! Kewl!! Let me see it!!" *evil grin*
Obviously, I couldn't escape fast enough. It invaded my random encounter - which wowed her even more, making that evil grin widen - and then she watched as my party was annihilated by the Kuyutha that had attacked me. x_x She walked away laughing at me and saying "God that game must be so irritating to play."

T-T

[Kimiko]

Lol

[Kinokokao]

[Isabelyes]

LOL, I've heard you talk about that XD
Always made me smile.

On a differrent note: Maxine, don't you think your sister should know a little more about the games you've designed a website about?

[noodles]

there is like no one in my huge family who likes the same stuff I do

oh, but when I say "huge family" I mean the people I DON'T live with. I only live with my parents. My older brothers like video games and that's about it

[Isabelyes]

Inorite?

everyone in my "family" dislikes my DS.
OH POOR ME!!1!

BTW, Your name made me remember something.
Have you ever seen the "Cyanide and Happiness" Short about how much two guys love noodles?

[noodles]

yes, there is always someone who shows it to me wherever I go

I appreciate the thought ^^;

[Sampson]

That was one of my first posts, I believe.

[Isabelyes]

Lol