(no subject)

[kjorteo]

I have been receiving some extremely unsubtle hints that "HEY, JUST SO YOU KNOW, THE DRAGON PUPS ON B9F CAN CALL THEIR MOTHERS IN BATTLE IF YOU WAIT LONG ENOUGH." I had never seen them do it, though, even when deliberately stalling and defending to drag the battle out to around turn 20 or so. Which was kind of a shame; you know how I like filling out the bestiary.

Oh well, I thought, they'll probably be standalone enemies on a later floor anyway or something.

Turns out I was right, if by "standalone enemies" you mean FOEs and by "a later floor" you mean the very next floor, B10F. I actually got in a fight with one thinking it was one of those worm things from B9F because they have the exact same habit of being completely dormant and inactive at night (but one happened to be parked directly in front of a treasure chest I wanted, so you know...) only to get in a fight with a Mother Dragon instead.

Which kicked my ass, by the way. Then I reloaded and tried again just in case it was a fluke and I got unlucky near the end or something, and it did it again.

Oh.

Comments

[davidn]

It's quite rare, but it does happen... perhaps there's a limit on how many enemies can be there at a time, or have had appeared in a single fight. I also encountered the Mother Dragons for the first time on the tenth floor - at first I had thought the FOE patterns would be similar throughout the game of visible slow-moving monsters, but now, with them sneaking up on you during fights, "A new monster has entered the fray!" has become the scariest thing ever. And I've learned to keep the party's back away from the walls, because otherwise, you're just dead.

However, because of gradual improvement, just an hour ago I found myself able to defeat five of them in a row as they slowly crawled over the room to get to me and join a single fight, with only a slight panic. Some of this is thanks to things I'm trying out with subclasses (as I might as well experiment if I'm going to retire people eventually) - having extra Prince actions on the Farmer is quite wonderful, as it only takes a turn to put Prevent Order on the entire party, and you have redundancy in two Royal Veils, so that even if one of the two takes a knock to the shoulder, they'll be back at full health and boosting the party by the next turn.

[kjorteo]

Play an EO game for long enough, and you start to get a sense of identifying FOEs based on their movement. In EO2, for example, I knew before even fighting any of them that the new FOEs near the end of the bonus stratum had to be Icekings, just because I had already fought Firekings and Voltkings in previous strata and these mysterious new ones had the exact same "slow movement, take one step for every two steps the player takes" pattern. (Which, in EO3, instead identifies them as Abyssal Deaths, at least in the second stratum.) So, like I said, when I saw the FOEs on B10F had the exact same way of being completely deactivated at night as the worm things on B9F, I just assumed... but was wrong.

I've actually never been in B10F during the day, so you'll have to explain to me what you mean by them sneaking up or what having one's back to a wall does to anything....

Two Prevent Orders and two Royal Veils! That's... actually a really good idea, and I even have two sub-Princes, but the Monk/Prince just has absolutely no room in her build whatsoever for any more skills, so I don't think I can pull that off myself. Damn. Oh, well.... You still have to keep me updated on your experiments--I really want to know if you're struggling with it as much as I did, and what you ultimately come up with once you figure it out!

[davidn]

I've got so used to exploring during the night now that daylight changes come as a complete surprise to me - I got into the habit on the second floor, when I didn't like the Bigbeaks, and it had the further advantage that if I got all the resources before midnight then I could gather another load of them on my way back up and get double the money.

The dragons - actually, a couple of FOEs on the third stratum - seem only to move while you're in combat, staying still when you're walking by but advancing one square for every two turns while you're distracted fighting, and it's very easy to forget that they're there. The part about the wall is something that's general to all FOEs and not just the dragons, but I noticed it more with them - when you escape from an FOE battle, the game puts you back one square, and if there's a wall behind you, then it becomes a "You cannot escape from this battle!" And if it's a new FOE that you've just accidentally got into combat with because you forgot they were sneaking up on you... then you have no chance.

I meant to take a moment (or a long time) to work out my permanent subclasses once everyone reached level 40 ,therefore getting the extra skill point, but my existing party just worked out so well that I sort of forgot to do it, and am now approaching level 50 where I might reconsider. To deal with things that do a lot of damage to the party in general, I thought of introducing a Hoplite, but - odd as this may sound - I sort of didn't want to copy your own method for doing this! For now, the regeneration offered by Party Heal from the monk and double Royal Veil does a decent job (and the Prince is subclassed as a Monk, too, so can heal further if the need arises).

The thought had occurred to me to subclass my Gladiator as an Arbalist, just to take advantage of the extra accuracy offered (for things like Nine Smashes) - but I'm not entirely sure if it would work, or if that combination offers any other advantage whatsoever (it would, for example, mainly land her with a heap of useless Crossbow skills).

I write so much more than I intend to about this game, every single time...

[kjorteo]

That doesn't strike me as the most TP-friendly build ever, but then again, my Gladiator is a Prince, so what would I know. :)

There would be the matter of mutually exclusive weapons skills, yes--you'd have to decide whether she's meant to have hammers, swords, or crossbows at that point, and stop wasting skill points on whatever you didn't pick of the three. It... could work if you did what my Hoplite did with his Wildling sub, maybe, where you almost completely ignore it except for splashing a quick five or tend points into prerequisite-free random helpful skill (Proper Form and/or Pop Flares in this case) rather than digging too deeply into the subclass. I personally went with the sword route for Bind Cut and Blade Rave anyway, but... it could work! Maybe. Who knows.