(no subject)

[kjorteo]

I have progressed far enough in my second EO3 run to have unlocked Shoguns, and taken a break from plot-furthering to train up the newest addition to my guild and possibly my team (depending on whether Shoguns are actually as good as I'm hoping they are,) Felix. (I actually have a good reason for that name, too! It's a ... reference, sort of. Anyway,) I went with that unhappy-looking fellow on the far left, who looks like he's perpetually forcing himself to remain icy and aloof as a personal favor because it keeps him just slightly too restrained to murder everyone around him. (Oops, I guess it's too late to name him Jan-S, isn't it? Oh, well, Felix is still appropriate.)

The storyteller in me is trying so hard to interpret his coldness and the fact that I basically stopped the game to focus exclusively on him as a Poo-in-Earthbound-esque "meanwhile, here's an extended shot of this character being hardcore in preparation for his joining the party" sequence, complete with what I can only assume is sadistic and borderline abusive training meant to deliberately turn him into a cold-hearted killer, but ... I don't know. It's a little hard to see it as a Training From Hell montage when his entire regimen from levels 28 (where he started) to 72 has consisted solely of him attempting to run away from Scylla.

Anyway, going for a Shogun/Gladiator build with emphasis on Second Sword/Katana Mastery, 5-Ring Sword supported by Berserker Vow/Charge, TP Up, and I'm thinking maybe Bloody Lance if I have spare skill points. Definitely no Kaishaku, no matter how thematically appropriate it would be for him.

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I don't know what Scylla is, but come on! His master puts him in some environment with something so able to kill him that his only recourse is to run? That's ultimate training montage material! Then you get the climactic bit where he finally manages to kill it, and in his exhaustion, flops against the dying corpse in a moment of commiseration over how difficult their lives were, knowing that he'll look back on this exhausted moment with envy soon now that his training is complete and he's going to have to find out what task harder than this he could possibly be being trained for and I just looked at your Fail icon who wears a brown shirt with purple pants, honestly

[kjorteo]

Scylla is a sea quest boss, and that statement was a catty reference to a well-known EO3 RNG exploit I mercilessly abused:

* Go make like you're going to start a sea quest, it'll ask you to save first, agree and save, then reset the game (this basically flushes everything before this point that would have thrown off the RNG)
* Reload, go back to picking a sea quest, it doesn't matter whether you save again or not
* Pick the quest "For a Mutated Girl" in Trade City Aeaea (this is a boss battle against Scylla with one NPC Wildling forced into your team in the back row)
* Put exactly one person in the front row, specifically in the very first slot. He is perfectly safe and will basically not participate in this fight at all, so it honestly doesn't matter if it's a level 1 Farmer with no equipment whatsoever or anything (in fact this is a great way to train them if that's what you're working with)
* On the first turn, choose "Escape"

If seeded properly, the RNG will ensure that the fight then plays out like this:
* Scylla will use an attack called "Embrace" which will miss both you and the Wildling
* You will attempt to run away and fail
* The wildling will summon his tiger pet, which always introduces itself by attempting an instant-death-on-all-enemies deal. Due to RNG hax it will actually work, Scylla dies, you win

This can be repeated however many times you want (just do the quest again) though you have to reset between fights and DO NOT MOCK JUMPMAN, HE IS THE JUMPIEST MAN IN COMMODORE 64 HISTORY

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Okay well that is significantly less dramatic than running away from something for good reason and IF HE'S SO JUMPY WHY CAN'T HE FALL MORE THAN TWO INCHES 8<

[kjorteo]

Hence my dilemma about assigning a narrative to this and HIS NAME IS JUMPMAN NOT OKAY-AT-FALLINGMAN OKAY

[davidn]

The only task harder than Scylla - hand him a DS and ask him to complete Etrian Odyssey 3!

Levels 28 to 72, though - that's a tall order. Just how long/how many times have you been going around the sea quest reset loop?

[kjorteo]

Um ... a lot. I wasn't really counting. I can tell you that the first few got me roughly 2 levels each, whereas by the 70-72 range it averaged out to 2.5 "fights" per level.

But I'm done now, and my new party (now with more Felix and less Jonas) is back to slaughtering everything on the floors for which they are now vastly overleveled!

[davidn]

Nothing is over-levelled for the sixth stratum! Even the maximum level possible in the game frankly sounds insufficient. Although having said that, I haven't bothered to boost everyone up to 80 since defeating my first dragon - that might help me a little.

But I'm getting attached to my EO1 party now - and I thought that having one Etrian Odyssey game going on was more than enough...

[kjorteo]

On one hand, I definitely understand what it's like to get attached to your Etrian Odyssey parties! On the other, I've fixated so much on all of mine by now that I find it completely impossible to fathom someone else's playthrough. Like, how do you even play EO1 without Cedrick? What developments do the later strata have without his her reveal? And Heaven help us all if you move on to EO2, in which I swear I spent the entire game paying more attention to the perceived Team Marble drama than the actual story.