Woodlings draw near!

Wow, no one who's actually played farther say anything, of course, but... EO3 just made me intensely mistrustful of the organization giving me my orders/missions/etc. without a single word being spoken. In-dungeon gameplay alone! No cutscene, no descriptions, nothing. I was able to get the "waaait a minute, is this mission bullshit?" feeling from nothing more than the B4F boss' behavior--the movement pattern of the black FOE representing the boss before I engaged it, and the kind of moves it used in battle once I did.

Of course, I've always been a huge fan of the series' surprisingly effective minimalistic storytelling. All three games start out with nothing more than "you're a guildmaster or something, I don't know, roll a bunch of blank characters and go explore this dungeon" and it somehow works. The first game suddenly introduced a plot on around the third stratum and had a huge, epic, and (I thought) downright shocking reveal, but even before that, the other major plot twist was that there actually was one.

EO2 wasn't nearly as crazy in that regard, but it was deceptively good at getting you to play along and care about things that are... inferred, at best. There are semi-recurring "characters" in the game who almost completely do not exist--nothing visible on the map or first-person view, no sprite accompanying the text, nothing at all except near-Dinosaur Comics levels of Show-Don't-Tell violation ("Suddenly you see that one baby monster... you know, the one we sort of implied that you saved from a different monster when you beat that one a couple missions ago?") Even though there is actually no gameplay difference whatsoever (you beat the boss, read a bit of text, and get an awesome weapon, the only difference is what that text says) the game actually kills off one of these pseudo-characters if you beat a certain boss without a Survivalist in your party, and I was... really sad about that. You wouldn't think the game could make a Player Punch out of a character whose very existence is about on the same level as Professor Science, but... it does.

EO3 started out with someone asking if you were going to sign up in your own guild and personally lead your men into battle, or if you were going to sit on the sidelines and just order them around or something. That was actually a purely rhetorical question given for literally no reason other than flavor. There is no way to signify a personal character even if you wanted to. It is only brought up as possible suggestions for how you want to self-roleplay as you play the game--you can pretend one of the characters in your party is you, or you can pretend that you're sitting back in the guild hall and they all just answer to you or something. It does get you thinking, though--what is your relationship to your own party, aside from the role of player (navigating all the menus and making all the decisions?) If you're a non-combatant, how did you come across all these other capable adventurers and why do they listen to you? If you're actually in your own party somewhere, which one are you? Are you the Prince who is obviously the leader because everyone else is healed just by basking in your awesomeness, or are you the non-combatant Farmer who is good at exploring and making money but needs real adventurers to protect him? (That's even assuming you have a Prince and/or Farmer in your party, which you certainly don't have to!) Who are you in this game, anyway? They ask you that just to get you thinking, and then let you take it from there.

I don't know how, but somehow, it really is good at reviving people's dead imaginations. (Note: that comic was for EO1. EO2 and 3 do let you quicksave and walk sideways.) You should hear the story of my Ronin, Dark Hunter, Hexer, second Medic, and Troubadour from the first two games sometime--through absolutely nothing at all but my own perceptions (if I roll a character, use him/her for a bit, then ultimately decide to use someone else, I imagine some sort of disappointment or bitterness from the rejected adventurer, etc.) I have come up with a whole saga for that party with enough emotions and betrayal that I could practically write EO fanfiction at this point if I wanted to. After they sort of broke up, I ended up using the Ronin, Dark Hunter, and Hexer in the new EO2 party. I eventually came to a passage that you could only get through if you had a Medic in your party, so I had to temporarily put that Medic back in just to escort him just so he could get me through that spot just so I could explore. I actually genuinely thought "well, this is going to be awkward" when the Medic had to reunite with three of his former colleagues for this, then thought "wait, I'm going insane."

Oh, by the way, I changed my mind a bit about how I want my party to develop once I get the ability to subclass. I'm now thinking of keeping Rachael in the front row and learning Fist Mastery after all (no skills for it, she'll just use the Fight command when she's not healing, but... ten points in Fist Mastery so she can be a decent source of Crush damage, at least.) Because someone has to be in the back row with Jonas (you can't have four in front and one in back, sorry,) and because most of Julian's buffs aren't dependent on his stats (level 10 Attack Order makes the target do 45% more damage, period, it doesn't matter whether it was cast by a master wizard or a dumb fighter) and he was pretty happy with just being a Prince with maybe one or two quick cheap prerequisite-free skills to steal from some other class without actually getting too deeply into it, I may actually turn him into a Ninja/Prince, put him in the back, and max his Ninja Class Skill (which would make all his skills cost 9 TP less and let his Fight command do full melee damage from the back row.) The Class Skill would be the only Ninja thing he'd know; he would otherwise ignore the Ninja skills and focus the Prince buffs. But hey, I was looking for a casual subclass (before this, I had him subbing Wildling just for two quick prerequisite-free five-point enemy debuffs) and this cheapens his skills (which can be expensive when maxed) and solves the "I have three front-line melee fighters and one Arbalist whose entire strategy is going to revolve around Front Mortar, what do I do D:" problem. So, it is now projected to look like this:

Mo/Pr, Ho/Wi, Ar/Fa (putting Simone on the top right due to Knighthood bug)
===
Ni/Pr, Ni/Fa

SHIT.

Dominate doesn't reapply existing binds.

DOMINATE DOESN'T REAPPLY EXISTING BINDS.

In other words, if someone is bound in the legs but nowhere else, and you Dominate, it ignores the legs and binds the head and arms, rather than giving fresh new binds for all three.

Meaning that, with the 30F bonus boss' ridiculous recovery-from-binds rate (it is basically impossible for any bind to stay on for more than two rounds at most,) the old leg bind will wear off that round, meaning that he will begin the round after being Dominated with (in this case) a bound head and arms but free legs.

This makes it impossible to keep him completely under control, and ruins Ecstasy, which was by far my planned biggest damage source. Without Ecstasy, it is impossible for my current party to beat him within 13 rounds (at which point he throws Begone for an instant game over.)

Me: 0
Boss: 3

Fffffffffffffffffffff--

Okay. Okay. I can do this. I, uh, I need a different strategy, obviously. Dominate doesn't work as well as I was hoping it would, and there's no way I can out-damage his round-13-Begone timetable without Ecstasy, so I guess all that's left is to call in the only other way to survive it--Begone cannot be prevented (he will use it even if fully bound) or survived under normal circumstances (it hits for roughly 10,000 damage per person to the entire party in a game where your theoretical max HP is 999 and what you actually have at this point is probably closer to 500-700 depending on class, and things like being in the back row or defending do not affect this at all) but it can be endured with the Protector's "the party is completely invincible this round, absolutely everything does 0 damage, period" Limit Break skill Painless. Thus, I believe it is time for the "your job is to spam Painless every single round (because if he's not bound, Begone is far from the only skill he has we need to worry about) while everyone else feeds you Axcela IIs so you can keep doing it"-build Protector.

Let's see... with a Protector, I can probably just anti-element the Anger/Sadness/Mercy combo and completely ignore both Rests, meaning in one 13-round wave, I'll only need eight Painlesses, or 16 Axcela IIs per 13 rounds. Damage-wise, without Ecstasy I'm probably looking at 1000-1500 damage/round depending on whether I have Frailty support and who else happens to have time to attack when they're not busy keeping the Protector hopped up on goofballs Axcela IIs. With the boss' 25,000 HP, that puts me at victory in somewhere between 17 and 25 rounds (assuming my luck holds and I go all 25 rounds with him following the pattern and not deciding to get cute and throw his "I have a 3% chance every round to ignore the pattern and use this instead" move Heatskin or something,) which means a maximum of two 13-round waves, which means 16 Painlesses, or 32 Axcela IIs.

I currently have 12.

Fuck, time to go digging for Pop Leaves again. ;_;

Beat the bonus boss on 28F. Whew.

That actually wouldn't have been so bad (I more or less had him beat within three rounds,) except for his damned conditional drop--the finishing blow must be a Bash-type attack. My party is pretty... specialized as far as damage output goes. With a Ronin/Dark Hunter/War Magus in front and Hexer/Gunner in the back, it is almost guaranteed that I will be killing whatever stands in my way via either Slash, Pierce, or Fire. If whatever stands in my way isn't weak to any of those, so help me I will make it weak to them with the Hexer's Dampen. Masters of killing things dead, we are. Masters of killing things dead with Bash, we are not.

Pretty much the only way it was even possible was to swap out my Gunner for the Protector (the fourth time I've ever actually needed the Protector for anything, after the three "I'm going after elemental dragons, get your Anti-Element-knowing ass over here" occasions) so that she could Smite. And even then, Smite was... somewhat underwhelming. After buffing the Protector with Warmight and softening the boss up with Dampen and Frailty, Smite was good for about 390-400 damage. For comparison, the Ronin's Midreba (fairly standard attack) was good for roughly 1300-ish overall (3 hits at roughly 450 each) under the same conditions, and the Dark Hunter's Ecstasy (major damage but it only works on enemies that are completely bound, but since I opened up with Dominate to keep him from slaughtering me anyway....) was good for a little over 2000.

The hardest part was when I got him down to a sliver of health, then had to have everyone just sit there and defend while the Protector took an astounding five rounds to finish the job (compared to the fact that I got him down to said sliver in the first place in three....) Of course the binds wore off, and of course there was nothing I could do about it--the Dark Hunter didn't have enough Force to Dominate again, any of his attack+maybe have a chance of binding moves would have killed the boss, and while the Hexer had attack-free bind attempts, he was usually too busy keeping the boss Dampened (or else the Protector's damage dropped down to 90 D:) or being confused or dead. I'm amazed I actually pulled it off in the end--he definitely had more than enough chances to kill me with his devastating party-wide attacks and wasted almost all of them doing a regular standard attack against the one or two people on my entire team who could actually take it. (But only because they were defending.)

Anyway, I did it, hooray. Now, unless I happen to feel like completing the equipment registry (which would involve backtracking to unlock extremely inferior equipment I happened to miss because I only turned in 9 of that particular type of giblet from the enemies on floor 6 way back when I was actually on floor 6, instead of 10) the one and only thing left to do is take out the 30F bonus stratum endboss. I've already confirmed that there are but one missing slot each in my enemy bestiary and enemy drop compendium--once I kill the bonus endboss and take his drop, that will complete both lists. :D (As stated above, though, the unlocked equipment registry is a bit more sad.)

Getting back into Etrian Odyssey 2 now that I'm finally free of Trauma Center: UTK2. I recall being very close to finishing it before it just happened to fall into the cracks of my backlog. I like the feeling of accomplishment when I can actually cross something off of my backlog, and Etrian Odyssey 3 is coming (I already preordered it to get that sweet-looking art book preorder bonus) so I thought that taking care of EO2 real quick would be a wise move.

I have three things left to do: beat the bonus boss on 28F, beat the bonus boss on 30F, and find and defeat the WarMECH-like super rare, super tough "you probably won't encounter one, but woe unto you if you do" random encounter on 30F. I need to build levels for goals one and two anyway, so I figured I'd have a go at trying for three by wandering around on 30F. (If I see it, yay, otherwise, experience is good for putting me in position for the other two, so yay.)

I forgot that the problem with hunting for an elusive yet obscenely tough random encounter is that you can have the somewhat disappointing end result where you actually find one after about forty minutes, and then lose to it. And that a game over means you don't get to keep that experience you got while looking, either.

Oops.

I just took out one of the super dragons in Etrian Odyssey 2. For those unfamiliar, Etrian Odyssey had three big dragons (one for each element) as special Omega WEAPON-like ridiculously overpowered bonus bosses. They were notorious for absolutely requiring specific team builds due to their nasty tricks. They're back in EO2 and they're just as powerful and will eat your face just as much, though they are slightly less cheap about it. They no longer require a highly specific team makeup and build following a highly specific preplanned move list every round, and can be taken down with just about anyone, but good luck on that, no matter who you have.

Another example of change from cheap to insanely difficult (but fair:) they used to have one "common" drop (which really wasn't, but it was compared to the rare one...) and one drop that was just about Everquest levels of rare, requiring insane amounts of farming (on the super dragons!) if you ever hoped to see one. Now, the common drop still can fail but it probably won't (I think it's like 80% chance of getting it now?) without modification--if anyone on the team has Scavenge, that pushes it well over 100%. The rare drop has been changed to a common but conditional drop--it's pretty much guaranteed yours if the finishing blow when you killed it was of whatever element that dragon represents (killing the ice dragon with an ice spell, for example.) Of course, that means you have to kill a super dragon with its own element, to which they are naturally pretty much immune.

Below the cut: a turn-by-turn account of my attempts to defeat and get the conditional drop from Drake, the ice dragon, with my party. It was an epic battle, to be sure.
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