Etrian Odyssey 2

[General Spoon]

What do you mean my party that averaged Lv13 dropped the first boss in 4 turns? Fenrir took me at least twice as long as this Chimera loser. EO2's Hexer poison > EO1's Alchemist poison.

[Original Alear]

Later on revenge >>>>> poison but poison is pretty awesome for the first 2 stratums atvl since it drops just about everything in one turn at level 10.

[General Spoon]

Assuming that trends in this game are similar to the previous game, this is what I expect with regard to FOEs:

1st Stratum: Avoid FOEs for a while, then come back to kill the weaker ones, and kill the stronger ones later (has happened)

2nd Stratum: Some of the weaker FOEs can be killed by the time I reach the 3rd floor in this Stratum.

3rd Stratum: FOEs can be handled on sight, but I'll have to leave after one, two at most.

4th Stratum: FOEs are piss easy and can be handled on sight.

5th Stratum: Like the 4th Stratum, only easier.

6th Stratum: FOEs will either take a long time to down or will be quick and strong enough to possibly down guys before dying.

[Furby]

5th Sanctum's FOEs can rape a good leveled party.

[General Spoon]

I'm running P DH WM G H

My thoughts on them:

Protector: Provoke is being leveled up, and is expected to be awesome. 1 level in En Gaurde is plenty, as further levels into it do not provide enough return to justify the investment.

Dark Hunter: There seems to be no point to running a sword DH. The bind skills still need more investment before they start working more than they fail.

War Magus: With immunize gone in EO2, its harder to justify building up a battle medic when I could just take one of these.

Gunner: Love the damage output on this class. I put two points into fireshot for the first stratum, because I expected lots of monsters in it to be weak to fire, and I was correct. Maxxed ricochet is pretty neat against single targets, especially with the War Might buff.

Hexer: Poison is still boss this early in the game.

[Original Alear]

5th Sanctum's FOEs can rape a good leveled party.

Also, the third level stratum FOEs that are hydras are pretty deadly IIRC, but easily avoidable.

[General Spoon]

I am not impressed by the Redwood FOEs (monkey FOEs on floor 7). I can down them on sight in like 4 turns. Provoke allows for nice things like neutering them.

Edited November 3, 2010 by General Spoon

[General Spoon]

I am however impressed by the inescapable dicks living on floor 8 who pop up in corners when you pass by. The first time I saw one I was like "Oh hey, I recognize this from the first game. That's just a Moa hiding in the corner. Imma go kill it." Then right after I walked onto its space I was like "Oh wait, Moas are regular enemies now." And then when I found out that flight was impossible from the sword dick who was raping my team I was like "Crap. I'd have killed him if my gunner hadn't missed that last shot/I hadn't wasted time trying to flee."

...I could probably kill one, actually. Imma go do that now.

Edited November 4, 2010 by General Spoon

[General Spoon]

The money from the Beast Wing windfall I got way back when I killed Chimaranoob is just about gone.

[General Spoon]

Should probably also mention that after a bit of tinkering I was able to kill Hellion in 4 turns with about a Lv20 party. Party formation was:

P WM DH

G H

This is important because the person standing in the front row next to the protector is likely to die. What I did was have my Protector use Provoke on the first turn, which has the effect of keeping the squishy DPS from being wiped out by embrace and inferno. WM casts War Might on Gunner, DH uses Cuffs, Gunner uses Ricochet (and spams it for the rest of the fight), and the Hexer uses Poison (the quicker Hellion gets poisoned, the shorter the battle). Fortunately, Hellion got poisoned on the first turn.

Only like 1 of my guys got confused the previous turn, so I had the WM use a Therica B on that person. I had the protector and DH use smite and cuffs (the plan was for the DH to always use cuffs unless Hellions arms were already bound, because if I would want my DH doing anything else, that would mean that my protector had already died, which would probably mean I'm already screwed), respectively. Unfortunately, neither of them succeeded in binding its arms, so that meant that the WM was killed by embrace, which didn't really affect anything because I could just use Medica IIs to heal the protector. And Hellion died at the end of the fourth turn.

Poison seems to have a low chance of success against bosses now. The damage is still good, but it doesn't seem to work often enough for it to be worth my time. It seems like now would be a good time to rest characters to regain skill points I have spent in earlygame skills.

As long as my protector can survive every enemy attack for 1 round, things shouldn't be a problem.

[Original Alear]

Hmm. I didn't rest till postgame, but I suppose if you want to spend the extra grind-time it's no problem.

My party for most of the game was

Axe L R

H M G

[General Spoon]

Eh, I find that my WG is plenty good at keeping my party healthy when combined with items. I'd rather have have that over a healbot that takes forever to be able to DPS.

[General Spoon]

The subboss party on floor 15, while it initially seemed difficult, was easily destroyed on my 3rd attempt at it. By this time I had learned to bind the arms of one and the head of the other, and then to focus fire on the one whose arms I bound. That, and revenge Hexer is lol. Average party level is 32.

[General Spoon]

And now Scylla is dead as well, and on my first attempt too. Party level was about 33. It only took 6 turns, which the boss spent doing basically nothing because its head was sealed.

[General Spoon]

I just realized I've never used any force skills. Lol.

[General Spoon]

Finally, a boss that doesn't just roll over and die right away! Harpulia was a bit more difficult than the bosses up to this point, taking 10 turns to kill, and requiring me to revive party members a few teams. Average party level when I fought it was like Lv42.

[General Spoon]

Colossus was also a pushover. Average party level was like 52, which is more than I had expected based on my level progression to this point.

[General Spoon]

The final story boss is dead, with my party being at like Lv55 when I killed him. His second form took 17 turns, mostly because I kept having to revive my Hexer after every fucking AoE attack of his.