Broke into the 3rd stratum a couple days ago. Spoilers about 2nd stratum boss and some other random things forthcoming, including a very interesting oddity I ran into during an ocean quest splurge.
[spoiler]First thing I decided to do was...uh, suit up and try to tackle the 2nd stratum boss without upgrading my armors to the best available at the time, mainly because I wanted to see the manner in which I would be annihilated.
At first, boss wasn't doing anything that made me want to yell besides the evasion buff it gave itself from time to time.
Blinding him was nice...followed by complaining when Ocean Wave or whatever that crap all accuracy attack is decided to hit 3 out of my 5 people, killing my Monk (Rika). Not sure if I was even under any status effects/binds either (Monk sure wasn't though).
Aside from that, smooth sailing throughout until Ocean Melody.
Me: "...Uh oh."
Party wide sleep attack + Ocean Wave or whatever it's called = Uh I don't think that would end very well for me.
Got lucky as hell with sleep not hitting my Buccaneer (Iris) or my Zodiac (Pandora). Proceed to not be surprised Rika gets OHKO'd again in this battle (And to breath a sigh of relief when I didn't see Ocean Wave go nuke my sleeping characters).
Thankfully I killed the sucker with everyone alive by battle's end, even if I did have to burn all my Amrita IIs and some Nectars.
Yay subclassing unlock time at the next area, then exploring B9F.
New battle theme already. Surprising, but whatever, it's a pretty rad theme.
I did my usual ritual of "Go find the nearest FOE and die horribly to it". Don't remember it's name, but it basically screwed me when head bind got slapped on everyone and...well, you guess the rest
.
Explored almost everywhere on B9F, unlocked all shortcuts I could to reach B10F as quickly as possible, then went back to B8F and grind spammed my main team to lv30 so I could retire them all for some bonus stats and skill points.
I also took this chance to put in a Wildling in place of my Zodiac since my Arbalist (X) covers the elemental attack zone well enough.
Now to start figuring out a good subclass for everyone, then relevel the team to 26 and go look for spots to use my shiny new key.[/spoiler]
Now then, about that oddity I ran into during an ocean quest.
[spoiler]Was fighting Hammerhead with the Princess, Hoplite, and Warrior NPCs. My two characters I took for this fight were my Arbalist and my Monk. Business as usual chipping its HP down. Switched X to the front row and the Hoplite to the back row so X could go crazy with Front Mortar until his TP was emptied, then swap him back.
Thing is, on the turned I was gonna swap him into the back, the Hoplite used Bodyguard on my Monk. Not sure why considering she had more than enough HP to take anything this boss could dish out.
What happened next was most surprising.
After X went into the back row, Hammerhead attacked my Monk. Instead of Bodyguard triggering on the Hoplite and him taking the blow, it got triggered on X and he took the blow. Only 37 dmg taken, but still...why would it assume my Arbalist was the one that activated Bodyguard and take the blow? I hadn't really setup sub classes at this point (Wanted lv30 before getting serious about them, hence the reason my main team all took farmer sub class until that time xD).
In any case, most amusing that was.[/spoiler]
One final thing to say about a certain ocean quest boss...
[spoiler]Ghost Ship and its Thunder Cannon can go die in a car fire. Thanks.[/spoiler]
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