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Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City LP - Part 4
This part seems like we get a lot done, but it's really just one guild's quest to avoid getting wrecked by giant parrots. We will move the story forward a little by meeting another important character, though, so at least there's that.
Taking Kujura's advice this time, we proceed carefully and slowly through the second floor. So far, we've run into some weird monsters, but FOE aside, nothing we can't -
NOPE.
This is what replaces the Gigapede in the daytime. It's called a Largebill, presumably because it has a large bill, and it sucks and I hate it. By bolstering our defense with the combined effort of Sagaris and Chelly, we barely scrape off a win.
After filling out a little more of the map, we run into a few more Largebills, and I say "fuck this shit" out loud and go back to town to do some more sailing. We simply don't have enough defense to feasibly continue exploring after running into these bright green hellbeasts, but luckily, just selling one feather from a Largebill unlocks our first piece of medium-weight armor, so it's time to make some fish money.
Harbormaster's biscuits confirmed for the worst biscuits ever.
On the bright side, we kind of kick ass at fishing.
Our search for fish brings us to a very small island, and since it would take so little time to explore it, we disembark. There's a beautiful patch of flowers that we decide to investigate, and we're basking in the wonders of nature when all of a sudden, our feet begin to itch.
Thinking it weird, we continue examining the flowers, but the itching in our feet becomes an unbearable pain, so we remove our boots in a hurry...
...and discover that they are filled with ants. We high-tail it the fuck out of there, bringing some of the ants with us as prisoners of war.
Islands like this often provide a small, one-time monetary reward, so it's worth it to investigate every island we come across while sailing.
Okay, so the ant thing went badly, but we still need money, so we have to continue our journey. We come upon a woman who lives alone on an island, and she's happy to have visitors. Since we're sailors, she insists we take some raisins with us - like the guy who gave us the peas, it seems she makes them herself.
I don't know why we would lie to her like this, because raisins are definitely not delicious, but we take them and continue on our way.
Just south of the woman's island is a shipwreck. Some of the crates appear salvageable, however, and we do need to get some armor...inside, we discover black pepper, a valuable spice worth a fortune on the market. People died in order for us to get this spice, so it's only right that we sell it and maximize their sacrifice, or something.
We want to continue forward, but the dark spots with rocks in them are hidden reefs, and our ship can't continue without risking damage. The Buttress is a fine vessel, but not quite that fine.
The raisins turn out to be a food source for our voyages, and they're awesome. They provide the same amount of distance that sheep cheese does at almost half the price. This will make looking for the lighthouse a considerably less costly event, and we'll be able to earn more from fishing trips this way, too.
Taking the raisins for a spin finds us on an island where the locals fish with nets, and upon inviting us to try it, are amazed at how good we are. Maybe instead of explorers, we should've become fishers? Edgardo would be the captain, of course, but that leaves the problem of who the first mate would be...
The islanders give us the net we practiced with, since we're so good at it, but it costs an arm and a leg to attach to the ship, so we're leaving it at the harbor for now.
See?
Some careful navigation through forceful currents parks us right at the lighthouse's base, and we excitedly return to Inver Port to make known our discovery. As a reward, we're given a foremast, which costs 30 en to equip and doubles our movement speed. Instead of moving one tile at a time, the Buttress can now move two tiles at a time. This, as you can imagine, will greatly increase the area around Armoroad that we can explore.
We're also tasked with taking out the monster bird. There are three options for every sea quest boss, and they're all different party arrangements. The first option for the bird has us fighting with a Ninja, the second puts us alongside a pair of Zodiac brothers, and the third, a team of a Princess, her Hoplite, and a Gladiator.
Since we want to give everyone in the party an EXP boost, we choose to work with Kirikaze, the Ninja. Also, I can make a Touhou reference with this quest, so it's the best.
Kirikaze will always take the leftmost slot in the back row. We've chosen to leave Hitomi behind because she wouldn't do well in a boss fight, so it's the rest of Guild Kickbutt and a Ninja.
30
Ninja: They hide in shadows and use the art of ninpo, the advanced practice of which can create duplicates. Special attackers who work on either line.
Parties can only consist of 5 people. 3 on one line, 2 on the other. But it always looks like there's a 6th slot, right? Looking at the bottom of the screen in battle, doesn't it seem like there's room to squeeze in a sixth party member on the UI? Even when we're arranging our party, there's that haunting -- slot where we don't put anyone.
The Ninja is one of two classes that capitalizes hard on that phantom sixth slot.
The first thing Kirikaze does is use Bunshin, which creates a second, fully-powered, fully operational clone of herself. If one Ninja is destroyed, they disappear, leaving the other on the field ready to simply create another clone. The Ninja splits their HP and TP in half to use Bunshin, and the TP split in particular might seem like it's not worth it, but Ninja skills are notable for having an extremely low TP cost. Their class skill, Kebari no Sue, also decreases TP cost of a Ninja's skills by 1 per level. It maxes out at level 10 and additionally eliminates the damage penalty from attacking from the back row, so a Ninja can potentially have an entire arsenal of skills on hand that cost virtually nothing to use, and they can use these skills twice per turn, from the safety of the back row, at full damage. They can also increase their evasion to over 100%, and if they get killed in battle, every Ninja, including the clones, can use a skill called Nikudan which causes enormous fire damage to the enemy that killed them.
Clones are also capable of using Bunshin, so one single Ninja in a party by themselves can become six if they have enough evasion to survive repeated Bunshin use, though this of course drops their HP to dangerously low levels. One of the greatest, riskiest strategies in the game is the game to have a solo Ninja attack a boss, split themselves into 6, and then use an attack called Tagen Battou, which kills every clone but also does insanely high damage that becomes even higher with every clone killed by the attack. With 5 clones killed, it's one of the most powerful attacks in the game, but it requires intense optimization to ensure the Ninja is dodgy enough and has enough health to survive long enough to use Bunshin that often.
Ninjas are a gimmick class, but when their gimmick works, it's fantastic.
Meregho Saeno is pretty easy as far as bosses go, so it doesn't take long to defeat it, especially with Kirikaze dealing about 70 damage per turn between the two of her. The boss has about 750 HP, so with Edgardo using his fist skills, Chelly buffing his attack, and Elita taking advantage of the bird's weakness to ice, it goes down quickly. Chelly dies on the turn right before we defeat it, so she ends up retaining zero experience.
Despite successfully killing the bird, Kirikaze didn't find the Swallow's Cowrie. She's disappointed, but thankful for our help anyway. She decides she'll just have to continue searching elsewhere to please this bitch ass moon princess and her impossible requests, leaving us to return to the port.
We're given a script and some money for our troubles. The good thing about sea quests is any character who dies is automatically revived, so we don't have to spend money on dragging Chelly's soul back from the afterlife. The script provides us with the Limit skill Mumyouken, which requires three people to use and inflicts three slash attacks on random enemies. Good for crowd control, but since we need to max our Limit meter to use it, it's not ideal.
Not wanting to push our luck, or do the other two Meregho Saeno variations yet, we return to town. Missy has another quest for us, activated by our mad fishing skills: we are to catch a tanniyn, one of Armoroad's most delicious exports. How are we going to tell a tanniyn apart from the other fish in the sea, though? We might be amazing fishers, but we're not marine biologists.
Oh, that works.
Tanniyn are huge, and require two fishing attempts to catch. The first attempt has us throw a harpoon at the enormous fish, and the second has us successfully kill it. The tanniyn will continue to move even after being speared the first time, so we have to make sure we're on one of the four spaces that its body occupies in order to catch it.
Do you ever feel like you made the wrong choice in life? We are so good at fishing. We should've just been fishermen. Everyone thinks so.
It begins. The real Hoplite party starts now. I'm prepping for something that's not going to happen for a long while, but I want to make sure I'm occasionally investing a point in Anticold as Sagaris levels up.
I also start teaching Edgardo basic healing skills so he can learn Resurrect, because I am suffering.
With the money from fishing and the monetary reward for defeating Meregho Saeno, we finally go and get better armor! For everyone except Elita, that is. Zodiacs can only equip light armor, and Feather Armor is medium-weight, so it's too heavy for her. We buy her a Smart Earring instead, an accessory that provides no defense, but will boost her spell power.
It's nighttime by the time we finish our armor shopping spree, so we head into the Labyrinth to see if we can find a Gigapede. We don't, but we find this instead. It's a one-time-use item at Napier's Firm that grants a hefty discount on one thing, so it's best used on something like an expensive weapon or a piece of armor.
Kujura's advice serves us well as we continue evading the FOES, and after making it past a second one, we run into someone else.
Unlike Kujura, she introduces herself right away - her name is Olympia, and she helps new explorers in the Labyrinth. She hands us a tent and tells us about a safe place to use it, encouraging us to follow her to the campground if we have any more questions.
It seems a little suspicious, actually, for someone to be so nice without expecting anything in return. It could be a trap, but we follow her anyway, because if she's not lying, camping would be a real treat.
Upon reaching the area Olympia pointed out, we are relieved to discover it is, in fact, a safe place to camp.
We take the opportunity to question her about her motives, but all she says is she has her reasons. If we become as strong as she thinks we will, then she'll tell us about them...
But she refuses to say anything more after that, simply shaking her head when we try asking her to elaborate. Despite her friendly nature, it seems like she's still just as mysterious as Kujura. We ask her if she has any advice, and she tells us about the hidden passages in the Labyrinth. It's knowledge we already have, so we pitch a tent and camp for a while. Camping restores the party's HP and TP, and with a Farmer with Camp Mastery, it will revive dead characters and restore petrified ones. Naturally, Hitomi has been given a point in this very skill.
62
After our rest, we continue forging a path through the Labyrinth when we realize that the deeper we go, the muddier the ground seems to become. It slows our movements, and a chill goes down our back as we realize that we may be too slow to outrun any FOEs that see us while we're struggling in this deep, thick mud...
But Hitomi is a Farmer.
And Farmers can learn a skill called Rain or Shine, which nullifies "trap floors", which mud is classified as. It costs 10 TP to use, and since she conveniently happens to have 26 max TP right now, that means one Rain or Shine and one To Market per floor. If we want to quickly avoid FOEs, we'll have to be smart about when Hitomi uses Rain or Shine until she gets higher TP.
Hitomi hikes up her skirt and uses her muck-raking skills to navigate us out of the mud, and after activating a shortcut to ensure we don't have to come this way again, we return to town to contemplate our meetings with Kujura and Olympia. Neither of their motivations are apparent, but they've both given us valuable advice, asking nothing in return...perhaps we'll meet them again during our journey to discover the Labyrinth's secrets. For now, though, Guild Kickbutt sleeps.
To be continued in Part 5
I really hate raisins, guys, but I bet Edgardo likes them a lot. Old people like prunes and raisins and stuff. I didn't think that was universally true before I worked at a nursing home, but it really is an immutable fact of life. You have to pay taxes, you will die, and you will enjoy prunes when you reach nursing home age.
Taking Kujura's advice this time, we proceed carefully and slowly through the second floor. So far, we've run into some weird monsters, but FOE aside, nothing we can't -
NOPE.
This is what replaces the Gigapede in the daytime. It's called a Largebill, presumably because it has a large bill, and it sucks and I hate it. By bolstering our defense with the combined effort of Sagaris and Chelly, we barely scrape off a win.
After filling out a little more of the map, we run into a few more Largebills, and I say "fuck this shit" out loud and go back to town to do some more sailing. We simply don't have enough defense to feasibly continue exploring after running into these bright green hellbeasts, but luckily, just selling one feather from a Largebill unlocks our first piece of medium-weight armor, so it's time to make some fish money.
Harbormaster's biscuits confirmed for the worst biscuits ever.
On the bright side, we kind of kick ass at fishing.
Our search for fish brings us to a very small island, and since it would take so little time to explore it, we disembark. There's a beautiful patch of flowers that we decide to investigate, and we're basking in the wonders of nature when all of a sudden, our feet begin to itch.
Thinking it weird, we continue examining the flowers, but the itching in our feet becomes an unbearable pain, so we remove our boots in a hurry...
...and discover that they are filled with ants. We high-tail it the fuck out of there, bringing some of the ants with us as prisoners of war.
Islands like this often provide a small, one-time monetary reward, so it's worth it to investigate every island we come across while sailing.
Okay, so the ant thing went badly, but we still need money, so we have to continue our journey. We come upon a woman who lives alone on an island, and she's happy to have visitors. Since we're sailors, she insists we take some raisins with us - like the guy who gave us the peas, it seems she makes them herself.
I don't know why we would lie to her like this, because raisins are definitely not delicious, but we take them and continue on our way.
Just south of the woman's island is a shipwreck. Some of the crates appear salvageable, however, and we do need to get some armor...inside, we discover black pepper, a valuable spice worth a fortune on the market. People died in order for us to get this spice, so it's only right that we sell it and maximize their sacrifice, or something.
We want to continue forward, but the dark spots with rocks in them are hidden reefs, and our ship can't continue without risking damage. The Buttress is a fine vessel, but not quite that fine.
The raisins turn out to be a food source for our voyages, and they're awesome. They provide the same amount of distance that sheep cheese does at almost half the price. This will make looking for the lighthouse a considerably less costly event, and we'll be able to earn more from fishing trips this way, too.
Taking the raisins for a spin finds us on an island where the locals fish with nets, and upon inviting us to try it, are amazed at how good we are. Maybe instead of explorers, we should've become fishers? Edgardo would be the captain, of course, but that leaves the problem of who the first mate would be...
The islanders give us the net we practiced with, since we're so good at it, but it costs an arm and a leg to attach to the ship, so we're leaving it at the harbor for now.
See?
Some careful navigation through forceful currents parks us right at the lighthouse's base, and we excitedly return to Inver Port to make known our discovery. As a reward, we're given a foremast, which costs 30 en to equip and doubles our movement speed. Instead of moving one tile at a time, the Buttress can now move two tiles at a time. This, as you can imagine, will greatly increase the area around Armoroad that we can explore.
We're also tasked with taking out the monster bird. There are three options for every sea quest boss, and they're all different party arrangements. The first option for the bird has us fighting with a Ninja, the second puts us alongside a pair of Zodiac brothers, and the third, a team of a Princess, her Hoplite, and a Gladiator.
Since we want to give everyone in the party an EXP boost, we choose to work with Kirikaze, the Ninja. Also, I can make a Touhou reference with this quest, so it's the best.
Kirikaze will always take the leftmost slot in the back row. We've chosen to leave Hitomi behind because she wouldn't do well in a boss fight, so it's the rest of Guild Kickbutt and a Ninja.
30Ninja: They hide in shadows and use the art of ninpo, the advanced practice of which can create duplicates. Special attackers who work on either line.
Parties can only consist of 5 people. 3 on one line, 2 on the other. But it always looks like there's a 6th slot, right? Looking at the bottom of the screen in battle, doesn't it seem like there's room to squeeze in a sixth party member on the UI? Even when we're arranging our party, there's that haunting -- slot where we don't put anyone.
The Ninja is one of two classes that capitalizes hard on that phantom sixth slot.
The first thing Kirikaze does is use Bunshin, which creates a second, fully-powered, fully operational clone of herself. If one Ninja is destroyed, they disappear, leaving the other on the field ready to simply create another clone. The Ninja splits their HP and TP in half to use Bunshin, and the TP split in particular might seem like it's not worth it, but Ninja skills are notable for having an extremely low TP cost. Their class skill, Kebari no Sue, also decreases TP cost of a Ninja's skills by 1 per level. It maxes out at level 10 and additionally eliminates the damage penalty from attacking from the back row, so a Ninja can potentially have an entire arsenal of skills on hand that cost virtually nothing to use, and they can use these skills twice per turn, from the safety of the back row, at full damage. They can also increase their evasion to over 100%, and if they get killed in battle, every Ninja, including the clones, can use a skill called Nikudan which causes enormous fire damage to the enemy that killed them.
Clones are also capable of using Bunshin, so one single Ninja in a party by themselves can become six if they have enough evasion to survive repeated Bunshin use, though this of course drops their HP to dangerously low levels. One of the greatest, riskiest strategies in the game is the game to have a solo Ninja attack a boss, split themselves into 6, and then use an attack called Tagen Battou, which kills every clone but also does insanely high damage that becomes even higher with every clone killed by the attack. With 5 clones killed, it's one of the most powerful attacks in the game, but it requires intense optimization to ensure the Ninja is dodgy enough and has enough health to survive long enough to use Bunshin that often.
Ninjas are a gimmick class, but when their gimmick works, it's fantastic.
Meregho Saeno is pretty easy as far as bosses go, so it doesn't take long to defeat it, especially with Kirikaze dealing about 70 damage per turn between the two of her. The boss has about 750 HP, so with Edgardo using his fist skills, Chelly buffing his attack, and Elita taking advantage of the bird's weakness to ice, it goes down quickly. Chelly dies on the turn right before we defeat it, so she ends up retaining zero experience.
Despite successfully killing the bird, Kirikaze didn't find the Swallow's Cowrie. She's disappointed, but thankful for our help anyway. She decides she'll just have to continue searching elsewhere to please this bitch ass moon princess and her impossible requests, leaving us to return to the port.
We're given a script and some money for our troubles. The good thing about sea quests is any character who dies is automatically revived, so we don't have to spend money on dragging Chelly's soul back from the afterlife. The script provides us with the Limit skill Mumyouken, which requires three people to use and inflicts three slash attacks on random enemies. Good for crowd control, but since we need to max our Limit meter to use it, it's not ideal.
Not wanting to push our luck, or do the other two Meregho Saeno variations yet, we return to town. Missy has another quest for us, activated by our mad fishing skills: we are to catch a tanniyn, one of Armoroad's most delicious exports. How are we going to tell a tanniyn apart from the other fish in the sea, though? We might be amazing fishers, but we're not marine biologists.
Oh, that works.
Tanniyn are huge, and require two fishing attempts to catch. The first attempt has us throw a harpoon at the enormous fish, and the second has us successfully kill it. The tanniyn will continue to move even after being speared the first time, so we have to make sure we're on one of the four spaces that its body occupies in order to catch it.
Do you ever feel like you made the wrong choice in life? We are so good at fishing. We should've just been fishermen. Everyone thinks so.
It begins. The real Hoplite party starts now. I'm prepping for something that's not going to happen for a long while, but I want to make sure I'm occasionally investing a point in Anticold as Sagaris levels up.
I also start teaching Edgardo basic healing skills so he can learn Resurrect, because I am suffering.
With the money from fishing and the monetary reward for defeating Meregho Saeno, we finally go and get better armor! For everyone except Elita, that is. Zodiacs can only equip light armor, and Feather Armor is medium-weight, so it's too heavy for her. We buy her a Smart Earring instead, an accessory that provides no defense, but will boost her spell power.
It's nighttime by the time we finish our armor shopping spree, so we head into the Labyrinth to see if we can find a Gigapede. We don't, but we find this instead. It's a one-time-use item at Napier's Firm that grants a hefty discount on one thing, so it's best used on something like an expensive weapon or a piece of armor.
Kujura's advice serves us well as we continue evading the FOES, and after making it past a second one, we run into someone else.
Unlike Kujura, she introduces herself right away - her name is Olympia, and she helps new explorers in the Labyrinth. She hands us a tent and tells us about a safe place to use it, encouraging us to follow her to the campground if we have any more questions.
It seems a little suspicious, actually, for someone to be so nice without expecting anything in return. It could be a trap, but we follow her anyway, because if she's not lying, camping would be a real treat.
Upon reaching the area Olympia pointed out, we are relieved to discover it is, in fact, a safe place to camp.
We take the opportunity to question her about her motives, but all she says is she has her reasons. If we become as strong as she thinks we will, then she'll tell us about them...
But she refuses to say anything more after that, simply shaking her head when we try asking her to elaborate. Despite her friendly nature, it seems like she's still just as mysterious as Kujura. We ask her if she has any advice, and she tells us about the hidden passages in the Labyrinth. It's knowledge we already have, so we pitch a tent and camp for a while. Camping restores the party's HP and TP, and with a Farmer with Camp Mastery, it will revive dead characters and restore petrified ones. Naturally, Hitomi has been given a point in this very skill.
62After our rest, we continue forging a path through the Labyrinth when we realize that the deeper we go, the muddier the ground seems to become. It slows our movements, and a chill goes down our back as we realize that we may be too slow to outrun any FOEs that see us while we're struggling in this deep, thick mud...
But Hitomi is a Farmer.
And Farmers can learn a skill called Rain or Shine, which nullifies "trap floors", which mud is classified as. It costs 10 TP to use, and since she conveniently happens to have 26 max TP right now, that means one Rain or Shine and one To Market per floor. If we want to quickly avoid FOEs, we'll have to be smart about when Hitomi uses Rain or Shine until she gets higher TP.
Hitomi hikes up her skirt and uses her muck-raking skills to navigate us out of the mud, and after activating a shortcut to ensure we don't have to come this way again, we return to town to contemplate our meetings with Kujura and Olympia. Neither of their motivations are apparent, but they've both given us valuable advice, asking nothing in return...perhaps we'll meet them again during our journey to discover the Labyrinth's secrets. For now, though, Guild Kickbutt sleeps.
To be continued in Part 5
I really hate raisins, guys, but I bet Edgardo likes them a lot. Old people like prunes and raisins and stuff. I didn't think that was universally true before I worked at a nursing home, but it really is an immutable fact of life. You have to pay taxes, you will die, and you will enjoy prunes when you reach nursing home age.