(no subject)
Sep. 28th, 2010 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kjorteoStarting out on Etrian Odyssey III! As usual, it has the classic problem of ability triage, in which you have to break abilities down into categories (melee damage/not being useless with the basic "Fight" command, single-target damage skills, multi-target damage skills, elemental damage, HP recovery, status/bind recovery, resurrection, buffs, debuffs, buff/debuff removal, I actually made a spreadsheet to try and sort them all and I assure you there are a lot of categories) and try to decide which ones are most important for an ideal party to be able to do without having to rely on items or something, because you're not going to come even remotely close to having them all. After studying and sorting and agonizing, I have come up with the following party to start: Julian (Prince), Samuel (Hoplite), and Rachael (Monk) in the front row, Simone (Arbalest) and Jonas (Farmer) in the back. Multiclassing is something you only get the ability to do later and I honestly have no idea how much later, so I'll just keep playing and worry about that whenever it happens.
Yes, I have a combat Farmer. Atlus has gone out of their way to trash the Farmers' reputation in this game, even describing them in-game as being the masters of terrain/world manipulation type skills (gathering at item points, etc.) in exchange for being completely useless in battle. Common wisdom in EO games has always been to segregate gathering and adventuring parties--even when actual competent classes happen to have gathering skills, it was just a better idea to spend those skill points elsewhere and have a separate team of throwaway gatherers. With Farmers as allegedly sucky as they are, the whole "keep your fighters over here and your gatherers over there, your gatherers are an insufferable load in anything except gathering" thing was poised to be stronger than ever.
Except... no. I remember EO2, where having a non-combat party go through the dungeon was a colossal pain, having to use encounter-reducing items and running from everything on the way just to get to the gathering point, only to face the damned "Oh no!" mechanic of randomly getting into a fight instead of pulling something when trying to gather. I remember how much it sucked to have my gathering party completely raped by something that my adventurers conceivably could have beaten, had they been there. Besides, some of the Farmers' world manipulation stuff this time around actually looks pretty handy for long treks through the dungeon. They have a safe walking skill that completely turns off damage tiles (of which I still have traumatic flashbacks)! They're the only class in the game this time around with a Scavenge-like passive skill that increases the enemies' item drop rate! And best of all, they're not even as useless in battle as claimed! Sure, they may hit like a mage without the excuse of having spells they're supposed to be using instead, but since there aren't any Dominate-using Dark Hunters anymore in this game, Mystery Seed actually makes them as viable for the class that's in charge of binding things as anything else in the game.
So yeah, I have a Farmer. He's going to learn skills that make walking through the dungeon suck a lot less for everyone, and then he's going to get good at gathering so that if I try it and monsters jump out, the rest of my party is right there to deal with them. So there.
Anyway, EO3 opens, as usual, with a newbie quest in which you have to map a portion of the first floor and show a guard to prove that you know how to map things. As usual, the game won't sell you Warp Wires until you prove yourself worthy by beating this quest. The area they expect you to map is huge, next to impossible to handle in one trip with you at level 1 with newbie starter gear. I imagine the trips to the far corners of the map and that feeling of "whew, made it, but can I make it back? D:" would be particularly brutal this time around... except that Jonas knows To Market (instantly warp out of the dungeon and return to town--basically a Warp Wire in reusable spell form) which means he is already my God damned MVP.
Yes, I have a combat Farmer. Atlus has gone out of their way to trash the Farmers' reputation in this game, even describing them in-game as being the masters of terrain/world manipulation type skills (gathering at item points, etc.) in exchange for being completely useless in battle. Common wisdom in EO games has always been to segregate gathering and adventuring parties--even when actual competent classes happen to have gathering skills, it was just a better idea to spend those skill points elsewhere and have a separate team of throwaway gatherers. With Farmers as allegedly sucky as they are, the whole "keep your fighters over here and your gatherers over there, your gatherers are an insufferable load in anything except gathering" thing was poised to be stronger than ever.
Except... no. I remember EO2, where having a non-combat party go through the dungeon was a colossal pain, having to use encounter-reducing items and running from everything on the way just to get to the gathering point, only to face the damned "Oh no!" mechanic of randomly getting into a fight instead of pulling something when trying to gather. I remember how much it sucked to have my gathering party completely raped by something that my adventurers conceivably could have beaten, had they been there. Besides, some of the Farmers' world manipulation stuff this time around actually looks pretty handy for long treks through the dungeon. They have a safe walking skill that completely turns off damage tiles (of which I still have traumatic flashbacks)! They're the only class in the game this time around with a Scavenge-like passive skill that increases the enemies' item drop rate! And best of all, they're not even as useless in battle as claimed! Sure, they may hit like a mage without the excuse of having spells they're supposed to be using instead, but since there aren't any Dominate-using Dark Hunters anymore in this game, Mystery Seed actually makes them as viable for the class that's in charge of binding things as anything else in the game.
So yeah, I have a Farmer. He's going to learn skills that make walking through the dungeon suck a lot less for everyone, and then he's going to get good at gathering so that if I try it and monsters jump out, the rest of my party is right there to deal with them. So there.
Anyway, EO3 opens, as usual, with a newbie quest in which you have to map a portion of the first floor and show a guard to prove that you know how to map things. As usual, the game won't sell you Warp Wires until you prove yourself worthy by beating this quest. The area they expect you to map is huge, next to impossible to handle in one trip with you at level 1 with newbie starter gear. I imagine the trips to the far corners of the map and that feeling of "whew, made it, but can I make it back? D:" would be particularly brutal this time around... except that Jonas knows To Market (instantly warp out of the dungeon and return to town--basically a Warp Wire in reusable spell form) which means he is already my God damned MVP.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-09-28 11:28 pm (UTC)Exactly. You not only need to be soloing as a Ninja, but you need to be creating clones until your party is full.
Also, someone just shared with me a protip I'm gonna try: getting a book with lots of slots and adding sleep element to it. Just as soon as I get a sleep hammer. Hmmm.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-29 02:41 am (UTC)But yeah, never mind on Ninjas, then. Well, maybe I'll reconsider potential combinations when I can subclass, but I think I'm comfortable writing them off at least until then.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-29 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-29 03:15 am (UTC)I guess my damage output isn't stellar if I have exactly zero Gladiators, four classes that are... okay, not useless at least, but somewhat lacking in big-name boss-killer specials, and one Farmer. On the other hand, maybe someone somewhere in the Prince/Hoplite/Monk/Arbalest group will turn deadly once I grow up a bit and can afford to climb further up their tech trees, who knows. If damage becomes too much of an issue later, then I'll address it later, but I don't really see a Ninja being the answer there either.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-29 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-29 03:32 am (UTC)