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An interesting thing about the gathering skills and Natural Instinct is that they both stack with each other. So you could put some Take/Chop/Mine Grimoires and put those on your gathering team for even more items, on top of another Natural Instinct Grimoire. Just be sure to have a lot of empty inventory space when you take out your gathering party, because that will fill up fast.
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Dec 2, 2015 01:51
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Dr. Fetus posted:An interesting thing about the gathering skills and Natural Instinct is that they both stack with each other. So you could put some Take/Chop/Mine Grimoires and put those on your gathering team for even more items, on top of another Natural Instinct Grimoire. Just be sure to have a lot of empty inventory space when you take out your gathering party, because that will fill up fast. I don't really know that there's much point to that to begin with, since if you combine a full gather party with gather food, your inventory tends to end up full after 1-2 spots anyway...
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Dec 2, 2015 01:54
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Yeah, in my earlier playthroughs, my gathering party would tend to fill up an empty inventory after 2 or 3 gathering points with high-level Natural Instinct, shortened to 1 or 2 if I had the gathering tea on (gives 5 or so of whatever rare material comes from that point).
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Dec 2, 2015 01:58
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Though there's not much of a need to, aside from the rare stuff to keep a good stock. There are some equipment that require multiple gathering items, but it's mainly a couple axes and some spears. I suppose it's always good for money, but that shouldn't matter for a long rear end time.
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Dec 2, 2015 02:06
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I never bothered with an entire separate party and just used Grimoires to equip the gathering skills when I wanted them.
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Dec 2, 2015 03:27
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  Survivalists were intially introduced in EO1, where they were a fast-acting damage class with quite a few extra abilities that made both battles and exploring the Labyrinth less painful. When EO2 came out around a year later, those who had played EO1 were dismayed to find that not only had Survivalists been nerfed, but that Atlus actually made them the second worst class in the game (arguably the first). Their damage output took a huge hit, and their TP costs got increased as well, leaving them with just a few support abilities in battle and on the field. Four years later, EOU came out in Japan, and...Survivalists were still pretty bad. Their damage hadn't recovered from EO2 at all, and neither had their TP costs. You wanna know what Survivalists were good for in EOU? Being Medics. Efficiency, a passive introduced in EOU, amplified the amount of HP/TP healing that consumable items provided. Combine this with the fact that Survivalists far outspeed Medics, and you had one of the best classes of EO1 being reduced to taking another class's job. Not one of Atlus's finer balance moments. And now we come to EO2U, where Survivalists finally have their own unique niche. While quite a few other classes offer various disables, only Hexers, Dark Hunters, and Survivalists really have the LUC to reliably inflict disables, and Hexers are both slow and have incredibly few methods of dealing damage. Survivalists trade the Hexer's large repetoire of disables for being able to deal pretty considerable burst damage from time to time, and also insane action speed; Survivalists are still one of the fastest classes in the EO2U roster. Finally, with the addition of Illusion Step, Chain Dance, and Scapegoat, Survivalists also the offer the ability to dodge-tank; in fact, their best option for dealing damage relies on them being effective dodge tanks. Stats: Level 1 HP: 31 TP: 23 STR: 5 TEC: 5 VIT: 7 AGI: 10 LUC: 8 Level 50 HP: 212 TP: 223 STR: 23 TEC: 19 VIT: 29 AGI: 38 LUC: 34 Level 99 HP: 489 TP: 422 STR: 44 TEC: 35 VIT: 55 AGI: 72 LUC: 64 Innate weapon choices: Innate armor choices: Common passives: HP Up, TP Up, Speed Up, Curb ATK Up, Natural Instinct Survivalists retain their really bad STR from EO2, but that's okay, because bows and all of the Survivalist's damage skills run off their AGI instead. Speaking of their AGI, it's absolutely sky-high; second-highest in the game, only 2 points behind Gunners at level 99. However, note that not only do guns incur speed and accuracy penalties, almost every gun skill also has really bad speed and accuracy penalties, meaning that their high AGI means nothing outside of damage. Survivalists, on the other hand, act incredibly quickly--they pretty much always go at the start of the turn. Their TEC's bad, but much like Landsknechts, none of their innate skills use it. Their VIT's actually on par with War Magi and Fafnir, and above that of Dark Hunters and Ronin, and they can equip light armor, meaning that putting a Survivalist in the front row isn't a completely awful idea. It's sub-optimal, but it's not a disastrous idea. Their LUC's the third highest out of all the classes, which is good for a class that's going to be spending a lot of time trying to inflict status ailments. Bow Mastery Requirements: None  Required to learn bow skills. Passively increases damage dealt with bows. Flank Shot Requirements: Bow Mastery level 1 Required equipment: Bow Body parts used: Arms  Deals ranged AGI-based Stab damage to one row of enemies. Has a 90% speed modifier and no accuracy modifier at all levels. Flank Shot's decent enough at helping clear out random encounters with just one level. I wouldn't really put that many more points in it unless you've run out of both active skills and passives for your Survivalist to invest in. Blind/Sleep/Paralysis Arrow Requirements: Bow Mastery level 3 Required equipment: Bow Body parts used: Arms  Deals ranged AGI-based Stab damage to one enemy. Attempts to inflict blind/sleep/paralysis on the target. Has a 90% speed modifier and no speed modifier at all levels. A Survivalist's bread-and-butter skills for nearly the entire game. Blind and Paralysis Arrow are both worth maxing out, but Sleep Arrow's a bit less worth investing in. Drop Shot Requirements: Bow Mastery level 5 Required equipment: Bow Body parts used: Arms  Deals ranged AGI-based Stab damage to one enemy. Double is damaged if the enemy is in the back row. Has a 90% speed modifier and +20 base accuracy at all levels. Drop Shot is really useful for random encounters where really annoying enemies are put in the back row. Much like Flank Shot, though, I wouldn't put more than one point in it. Sagittarius Shot Requirements: Drop Shot level 5 Required equipment: Bow Body parts used: Arms  The Survivalist spends a turn preparing Sagittarius Shot. Two turns later, Sagittarius Shot will come down at the start of the turn and deal Stab damage to one enemy. Has a chance to stun the target. Sagittarius Shot cannot be recast while you are waiting for the arrows to come down. If the Survivalist cannot act on the turn the arrows come down (paralysis proc, asleep, panicked, fear proc, petrified, dead), Sagittarius Shot will be cancelled. Has no accuracy modifier at all levels. If you want your Survivalist to contribute more damage in a fight, you could do a lot worse than Sagittarius Shot. It costs quite a lot of TP, but it does the second-most damage out of any Survivalist skill. The stun is, in theory, nice, especially because Sagittarius Shot deals damage and tries to stun at the start of the turn, but it is pretty drat low as far as infliction chances go. Multi-Shot Requirements: Bow Mastery level 7 Required equipment: Bow Body parts used: Arms  Deals two instances of ranged AGI-based Stab damage to one enemy. Has an 80% speed modifier and no accuracy modifier at all levels. Multi-Shot is the Survivalist's most consistent option for damage, and you're going to want to have it maxed out eventually. It sadly does not gain the ability to deal three instances of damage at level 10 like Multihit did in EO1, but oh well. Disabling Shot Requirements: Bow Mastery level 10  Passively gives bow skills a chance to bind hit enemies' legs. Survivalists are accurate enough and leg binds do so little that Disabling Shot wouldn't really be worth it, even if its base chance wasn't terrible. Trick Step Requirements: Speed Up level 1 Body parts used: Legs  Decreases one enemy's accuracy for a set amount of turns. Has a 90% speed modifier at all levels. If you want to be absolutely sure that your Survivalist will dodge an attack during Chain Dance (or possibly Scapegoat), leveling up Trick Step is an option. I'd say skip it if you're not paranoid about Chain Dance not dodging anything, though. Chain Dance Requirements: Speed Up level 3 Body parts used: Legs  Raises the chance that enemies will target the Survivalist for one turn, along with increasing the Survivalist's evasion rate. Has a 200% speed modifier at all levels. Chain Dance is basically how you're supposed to set up Hazy Arrow. As such, you're going to want it at a high level by the time Hazy Arrow is also a high level. Outside of that, it also gives the Survivalist the ability to be an actually pretty effective dodge-tank, especially in combination with Illusion Step. Against bosses with random-target attacks, Chain Dance is a pretty decent way of dealing with said attacks. Hazy Arrow Requirements: Multi-Shot level 2, Chain Dance level 4 Required equipment: Bow Body parts used: Arms  Deals ranged AGI-based Stab damage to one enemy. Only usable if the Survivalist evaded an attack on the previous turn. Has a 200% speed modifier at all levels. Does not check for accuracy. Hazy Arrow is the Survivalist's best option for damage, beating out Sagittarius Shot. You're definitely going to want to have this maxed out by the end of the main game/at the start of the postgame. Unfortunately, the "evade an attack" requirement means that you either need to Scapegoat your Survivalist while they have Illusion Step active or if the enemy is blinded, or have a decently high-level Chain Dance. Scapegoat Requirements: Speed Up level 7 Body parts used: Legs  The Survivalist selects one ally to take any incoming damage to the party for a set amount of attacks for one turn. Also reduces the damage the targeted ally takes. Scapegoat's basically a version of Hit-Taker that tanks a lower amount of hits, but can be used on any party member. Provides some pretty decent utility if you have a Protector on your team, or if you want to guarantee your Survivalist will dodge an attack during Illusion Step. If you have a Beast, though, Scapegoat's slightly redundant. Swap Step Requirements: Speed Up level 10 Body parts used: Legs  Targets one ally and allows them to act first for one turn. Levels 1-4 have a chance to fail, while levels 5-10 are guaranteed to work. Swap Step is a godsend for parties with slower classes or skills that have really low speed modifiers. Off the top of my head, you can guarantee that a Medic's healing will go first in the turn, have your Alchemist immediately unload a heavy attack on an enemy, or help your Gunner avoid the increased damage from a Charged skill. Risk Perception Requirements: None  Provides a chance to cancel out blindsides. I wouldn't invest in Risk Perception early on, especially given that I don't really like any of the skills it unlocks, but in the late and postgames, there's quite a lot of encounters you REALLY do not want to get blindsided by, at which point Risk Perception might be worth investing in. Owl-Eye Requirements: Risk Perception level 1  Only usable in the Labyrinth. Shows FOEs, treasure chests, shortcuts, stairs, and material gathering points within a certain range of the party for a certain number of steps. I really do not like field skills in EO games, and Owl-Eye is absolutely no exception. Even if you're really, really new to EO and want help in finding where shortcuts, secret areas, or FOEs are, I'd still really advise against investing in Owl-Eye; paying attention to the top screen will do wonders for finding all of the things Owl-Eye detects. Sneak Attack Requirements: Risk Perception level 3  Only usable in the Labyrinth. Raises the chance of getting a preemptive attack in battle for a certain number of steps. I reiterate: "I really do not like field skills in EO games." If you need preemptive attacks to be able to deal with encounters, you might want to seriously rethink your strategy and party composition. Stalker Requirements: Risk Perception level 5  Only usable in the Labyrinth. Reduces the encounter rate for a certain number of steps. Useful in gathering parties, absolute trash on an actual exploration party. Every battle you don't fight is EXP and drops you're not getting. Resuscitate Requirements: HP Up level 5  Only usable in the Labyrinth. Heals a party member for a set amount of HP. At levels 5-10, it can also revive dead party members. Kind of useful in the postgame, I guess? At levels 6-10 (which you need a Grimoire for), the healing actually becomes really substantial, and really cheap too. Efficiency Requirements: Resuscitate level 3 Body parts used: Head  Increases the amount of HP and TP restored by consumable items for a set amount of turns. Also allows Medicas and Nectars to target an entire row. Has a 90% speed modifier at all levels. I'd say Efficiency is decent, except Survivalists usually have better things to do than be item bots. Efficiency was much more useful in EOU due to the fact that Survivalists did not have said useful things to do--oh, and it was an always-active passive, too. That helped. Illusion Step Force Boost Increases the user's non-base evasion by 999. Adds an extra chaser attack to bow attacks and skills. Damage on the chaser scales linearly from 100% to 300% based on user level. Illusion Step's chaser is nice enough, I suppose, but the real draw to Illusion Step is the evasion increase. It allows for very easy and very reliable setup for Hazy Arrow in combination with Chain Dance or Scapegoat. Summer Rain Force Break Body parts used: Arms Deals 16 instances of ranged AGI-based Stab damage to random targets. Can hit the same target 4 times at most. Damage per hit scales linearly from 150% to 500% based on user level. Has a 70% speed modifier. Summer Rain is useful both as a panic button for random encounters, and for dealing with bosses that summon helpers that do really nasty things if you leave them alive. Rea fucked around with this message at 23:54 on May 8, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2015 07:57
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Efficiency was better in Untold because it was a passive skill there. Now it pretty much got nerfed hard. Oh well, at least Survivalists are usable now. Dunno if I would call Survivalists the kings of damage in EO1. They were great, but I'd say they were behind Axe Landsknecht and the Ronin, who was the actual damage king there. Their real strength was being able to cover multiple roles at once such as damage dealing, and being a very fast support. Then later games nerfed generalizing your skill builds and encouraged specializing instead.
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Dec 4, 2015 08:38
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Dr. Fetus posted:Efficiency was better in Untold because it was a passive skill there. Now it pretty much got nerfed hard. Oh well, at least Survivalists are usable now. I just remember my Survivalist massively outpacing my (admittedly sword-using) Landsknecht for most of EO1.  I've legitimately never used a Survivalist in EOU before, though, so I didn't know Efficiency was a passive. I'll have to edit the post, then.
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Dec 4, 2015 08:54
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Ragnar Homsar posted:Illusion Step "The chaser is meh" 
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Dec 4, 2015 12:25
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The chaser scales up with level to eventually deal very respectable damage, but is fairly unimpressive for a while. The most annoying thing for me about Scapegoat is that it doesn't get up to 4 covers unless you are lucky enough for it to be level 20, so an all-target attack will still hit at least one party member. Combining Scapegoat and Chain Dance made my dodgetank insanely effective in the Survivalist SCC, but their damage output is still just woefully low and the TP costs eat through their dinky little pools way too quickly (at which point everyone dies).
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Dec 4, 2015 15:43
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The other thing to keep in mind with the Chaser is that it stacks with each individual skill. So put on an Attack buff, cast Sagittarius Shot, then activate the Force on the next turn. Spam Multishot and when Sagittarius lands you'll hit a total of 5 times on one turn. Stack on an element for hitting weaknesses or triggering Chasers, and Illusion Step becomes really good even without Hazy Arrow.
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Dec 4, 2015 21:27
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The Chasers also work well with Flank Shot to decimate random encounters without going all out and breaking your gauge with Summer Rain.
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Dec 4, 2015 23:32
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  Whoops, wait, wrong game. Medics in EO started as supports who could make your party near-immortal while contribuging significant damage in the lategame. Said near-immortality was thanks to one particular skill, Immunize; on the tin, Immunize was just a buff that gave your party extra resistance to elemental attacks. Immunize, however, had two very important internal aspects that made it supremely broken. The first was that "resistance to all elements" meant "resistance to all types of damage," since the different types of physical attacks are technically "elements." The second, and the absolutely broken part, was that EO1's damage formula meant that (in the interest of length, I'm leaving a lot out here) defense buffs would make certain damage types go from triple-digit damage to single-digit. Combine that with the fact that Medics are already healers, and it became incredibly difficult for your party to ever die outside of being disabled or having buffs purged. Unsurprisingly, when EO2 came around, Atlus severely nerfed Medics. They didn't try to balance Immunize, or even just leave its numbers as is and let EO2's new defense formula do the work--the ability was flat-out cut entirely. While Medics did gain Salve 3, which completely restored every party member's HP, and CPR, which gave each party member a chance to survive mortal damage (55% at max level), it wasn't enough to compensate for the fact that Medics really only did one job, and they weren't even that great at it due to being really slow. While Medics technically weren't in EO3, Monks were basically just Medics with a different name and different attire. Monks were really, really good--they didn't really suffer from the same slowness issue that Medics did thanks to EO3 completely redesigning how fast or slow characters are, and thanks to subclassing, could do the job of Sovereigns (who first appeared in EO3 under the name Prince/Princess) better than Sovereigns themselves when they didn't need to heal. Then, in EO4, Medics reappeared with the male portraits sporting pretty much the same clothes as EO1/2 Medics, while the female portraits wore schoolgirl outfits for reasons I'm still unsure of. EO4 Medics were very, very good at their job--in fact, they were a little too good, as they healed for way more than the party would ever really need. An Arcanist with a Medic subclass was, pretty obviously, "inferior" to an actual Medic due to how subclassing in EO4 worked, but they still did the job of healing the party well enough that they were preferred over a Medic main class. And then we come to EOU. Thanks to the action speed changes from EO3 becoming the new series standard, Medics avoided the same major slowness issue that plagued them in EO1/2...aside from the upper-level healing skills, which tended to incur speed penalties. The EO4 issue of being too good at their job without much else to do popped up again, though. Which leads us to EO2U, where Atlus has finally put in a skill that allows Medics to put the fact that they tend to heal for more than necessary to work: Overheal. I'll leave what Overheal actually does for later in this discussion, but suffice to say it provides a really drat good reason for putting a Medic in the party compared to any other class. The Combat Medic build also is finally usable again; it kind of requires a party being built around one particular skill, but man oh man is it effective with the right party composition. Stats: Level 1: HP: 27 TP: 37 STR: 6 TEC: 9 VIT: 6 AGI: 6 LUC: 8 Level 50: HP: 184 TP: 288 STR: 30 TEC: 37 VIT: 30 AGI: 26 LUC: 20 Level 99: HP: 428 TP: 540 STR: 58 TEC: 70 VIT: 57 AGI: 50 LUC: 35 Innate weapon choices: Innate armor choices: Common passives: HP Up, TP Up, Phys ATK Up, Elem DEF Up, Take For STR and AGI, Medics have pretty middle-of-the-road values; not great, but not awful. Their TEC is pretty great, second-highest value out of all the classes, while their VIT is similarly middle-of-the-road like STR and AGI. A good thing, too, since healing skills use TEC and VIT in their calculations. Medics don't have good LUC, though. In fact, they actually have the lowest LUC out of any class, which not only means they inflict disables less often, they're more susceptible to being disabled than any other class. Heal Mastery Requirements: None  Required to learn healing skills. Increases the health that healing skills restore. Cure Requirements: Heal Mastery level 1 Body parts used: Head  Restores one party member's HP. The most basic healing skill Medics have, and the cheapest. I'd say it's not worth leveling it up, but it honestly doesn't lose out on a lot of healing compared to, well, Healing, and it has a much higher speed modifier. Salve Requirements: Cure level 5 Body parts used: Head  Restores the entire party's HP. Much like Cure, Salve outclasses its beefier sibling Salve 2 by having a much higher speed modifier. You definitely want Salve maxed out, since it's what you'll be using most of the time if you're not relying solely on a Beast. Unbind Requirements: Heal Mastery level 3 Body parts used: Head  Removes binds. The amount of binds removed depends on Unbind's level, and the range increases from single-target, to row-target, to all-party as the skill is leveled up. Has an 80% speed modifier at all levels. You'll probably want Unbind leveled up to at least 5 at some point. I personally wouldn't go beyond that; if your front row or party are fully bound, chances are you've been screwed by a boss that binds every body part of your entire party, at which point Unbind isn't going to help much. Removing two binds from one row is usually good enough. Refresh Requirements: Heal Mastery level 3 Body parts used: Head  Removes status ailments. Leveling up Refresh upgrades it from being single-target, to row-target, to all-party. Unlike EO2, Refresh purges all status ailments starting from level 1. Has an 80% speed modifier at all levels. Unlike Unbind, you'll probably want Refresh maxed out by the end of the main game and the postgame, mostly because your entire party being tagged with ailments isn't that unlikely, and isn't as big an indicator of you being screwed as your entire party being fully bound is. The TP cost is massive at that point, though, so you might want to put on a Refresh Grimoire to lower it. Revive Requirements: Unbind level 3, Refresh level 3 Body parts used: Head  Brings a dead party member back to life. Has an 80% speed modifier at all levels. A skill you should probably take, and definitely take to level 20 if you do. In EO2, Revive was kind of weak due to the fact that it left whoever it revived at pretty low HP, even at higher levels. That is very much not the case here; in fact, Revive is a skill you definitely want at level 20, because look at how much it heals! 800 HP is enough to revive pretty much any class but a very high-level Beast at full HP. The TP cost gets pretty steep there, but Medics can eat the TP cost by the time you'd be able to get level 20 Revive. I assume this was done to compensate for the fact that Nectar IIIs and Nectall IIs no longer exist in EO2U. High Regen Requirements: Revive level 2 Body parts used: Head  Applies a buff to one ally which recovers their HP at the end of every turn for a set amount of turns. The game says "Also increases ailment/bind recovery," but the @wiki says it increases the buff owner's resistance to bind and ailments, which seems too specific to be Google Translate being Google Translate. Has an 80% speed modifier at all levels. A pretty decent skill if you have a Beast or Scapegoated party member on your team. Otherwise pretty meh, since it only targets 1 person at a time. Healing Requirements: Heal Mastery level 5 Body parts used: Head  Restores one party member's HP. Has a 90% speed modifier at all levels. Healing's main disadvantage over Cure is that it's much, much slower. Cure is already faster than Healing at level 1, and the fact that Cure gets faster with level ups while Healing is always slow does not help at all. Line Heal Requirements: Healing level 3 Body parts used: Head  Restores HP to one row. Has an 80% speed modifier at all levels. Line Heal has the same problem that Healing does: it's really slow, which you almost certainly do not want when you need to ensure your party won't die. Salve 2 Requirements: Line Heal level 5 Body parts used: Head  Restoeres HP to the entire party. Has a 70% speed modifier at all levels. Same issue as Healing and Line Heal: incredibly slow. Take it if you want for emergencies where you don't want to use Medical Miracle for some reason, I suppose. Chase Heal Requirements: Heal Mastery level 7 Body parts used: Head  Targets one party member. When that party member takes damage, for a certain number of times per turn, the Medic will immediately heal them. Every time Chase Heal activates, its chance of activating again for that turn goes down. Chase Heal, much like High Regen, is very good if you have a Beast or Scapegoated party member. It's immediate healing, unlike High Regen, but it's also unreliable. Delayed Heal Requirements: Chase Heal level 5 Body parts used: Head  The Medic prepares to heal the party. On the start of the next turn, Delayed Heal will activate. Oh man. Delayed Heal, in EOU, required a lot smaller point investment, and was basically all a Medic needed for the first two Strata or so. Here, the amount of skill points you need to invest has been massively increased. The amount it actually heals for also ate a massive, massive nerf. Overheal Requirements: Heal Mastery level 10 Body parts used: Head  Increases the amount of HP restored by the healing skill used next turn, and allows healing skills to increase the max HP of whoever is healed by the amount of healing that goes over the patient's max HP, up to a certain percentage of their normal max HP, for one turn. Has no speed modifier at all levels. Overheal was a skill I thought was trash when I first played EO2U, because I was trying to combo it with Salve 2. Then I did a 5 Medics single-class challenge run, where I very heavily abused Overheal combined with Salve. That run completely changed my opinion of Overheal. Overheal is a skill you need to combine with a fast-acting healing skill like Salve (or have a Survivalist with Swap Step in the party for). When properly used, Overheal can make your party functionally immortal to almost everything the game throws at them (or, alternatively, the party member that is tanking all of the party's damage). You really be knowing when you need to use Overheal, which involves knowing boss patterns, because just blindly spamming Overheal + a healing skill could lead you to not overhealing your party when you need to. Staff Mastery Requirements: None  Required to learn staff skills. Increases damage dealt with staves. Also increases the Medic's TP pool. Heavy Strike Requirements: Staff Mastery level 1 Required equipment: Staff Body parts used: Arms  Deals melee STR-based Bash damage to one enemy. Attempts to stun the target. Has no accuracy modifier at all levels. Not worth leveling up. The damage is really bad compared to Vital Hit in almost every situation because Heavy Strike uses the user's STR, which is inferior to how the other two attack skills calculate their damage. As for the stun, Medics also have the lowest LUC out of any class, so, uh, good luck trying to stun anything with it. Medical Rod Requirements: Staff Mastery level 5 Required equipment: Staff Body parts used: Arms  Deals melee Bash damage to one enemy. Inflicts a debuff that reduces the target's resistance to Fire/Ice/Volt for a set amount of turns. Medical Rod uses the user's TEC for calculating damage instead of their STR. Has no speed modifeir and no accuracy modifier at all levels. Medical Rod has a use if you have a party with elemental attackers and a Medic, but no Troubador or Sovereign. Otherwise it's really mediocre. The damage is really low to compensate for the fact that it substitues TEC for STR when calculating damage. Vital Hit Requirements: Staff Mastery level 10 Required equipment: Staff Body parts used: Arms  Deals melee Bash damage to one enemy. Vital Hit's damage is based off the normal damage multiplier, which is then multiplied by the average HP percentage of the party. Vital Hit uses the average of the user's TEC and VIT in place of STR in the damage formula. Has no speed or accuracy modifier at all levels. If you're building a Combat Medic, this is the skill you absolutely want to rush for. Vital Hit isn't just the Medic's best damage skill, it can become even more powerful if you build parts of your party around it. Let's say four of your party members are at 100% when you use a level 20 Vital Hit, and you have a Beast that's used Desperation. Desperation counts as the Beast being at 300% HP, so Vital Hit calculates the party's average HP as 140%, which means that a level 20 Vital Hit would deal 749% damage. Things get even more insane if you have two Medics in the party; if you have one buff the entire party up to 200% HP with Overheal, Vital Hit will deal 1070% damage. I say two Medics because you obviously can't Overheal the party and then use Vital Hit on the same turn (remember that Overheal's effect only lasts for one turn). Final Gift Requirements: HP Up level 3  When the Medic dies, they have a chance to restore the party's HP based on a percentage of their max HP. If your Medic dies, you have much more serious problems than trying to restore the rest of your party's HP. Skip it. Scavenge Requirements: TP Up level 3  Raises the rate at which monsters drop items. Not as incredibly broken as it was in EO2, but you're probably going to want to get levels in TP Up by the late game, and Medics sometimes have leftover skill points, so why not? It might make grinding for rare drops in the lategame less painful. Safe Passage Requirements: Elem DEF Up level 3  Reduces the damage the party takes from damage tiles for a certain number of steps. Damage tiles show up a few times in EO2U starting with the 2nd Stratum, but I'd advise holding off on unlocking and leveling up Safe Passage until the 4th Stratum or so. The duration and damage reduced at low levels are pretty bad, in addition to the fact that you're essentially throwing away 3 skill points on Elem DEF Up early on. Steady Hands Force Boost Increases the amount of HP restored from healing skills by 170%. Reduces the TP cost of healing skills by 50%. Increases the speed of healing skills by 500%. Steady Hands is a decent Forse Boost, ruined by... Medical Miracle Force Break Body parts used: Head Restores the entire party's HP. Dispels all ailments, binds, and debuffs. Revives any dead party members, and heals them as well. Healing power scales linearly from 300% to 900% based on user level. Has a 500% speed modifier. The ultimate panic button. As long as your Medic can survive damage, and don't get hit with debilitating disables, you can always fix even the worst of situations. Rea fucked around with this message at 06:52 on May 3, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2015 12:00
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I'd like to kindly ask Realga to show us her medical license...
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Dec 6, 2015 14:22
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Dec 6, 2015 16:34
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So is Realga using the Medi Gun or the Quick-Fix? Well ATK Up actually boosted the Medic's STR stat by 300%. Though given the damage formula in EO1, that didn't necessarily mean it tripled the Medic's damage output, so a 90% damage boost would be kind of about right. Caduceus was so ridiculous back then. Nothing in EO1 resisted or were immune to stuns, so on top of dealing good damage, it flat out had an 75% chance to stun something, which was ridiculous. Incidentally, if you had 4 Beasts with Desperation active, and one of them could Overheal the party, that would boost Vital Hit's damage to 2434%. Though such a setup would be impractical and probably can't actually happen.
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Dec 6, 2015 20:00
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Dr. Fetus posted:So is Realga using the Medi Gun or the Quick-Fix? If we go by my Medi Gun names:  A mixture of both, though heavily relying on the Medi Gun. And yeah, as far as I'm concerned, the "best" party composition for Vital Hit is, well, 5 Medics. Three on the front line spamming Vital Hit, two on the back line spamming Overheal and Salve. If we assume the party stays at 190% average HP for when the three Vital Hits go off, that is effectively 3049% damage per turn. Very little in the game can stand up to that kind of consistent damage output. Rea fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Dec 6, 2015 |
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Dec 6, 2015 20:04
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Update 9: Remnants of a Dead World Here's our new "party." I bought a Kagenui for Nadia, took Hrothgar's Sword off Zack and gave it to Colette, put the Iron Nail and Trust Collar Wulfgar gave us on Ursa, and bought an additional Kagenui for Milly. Bows use AGI to calculate their damage instead of STR, so Milly isn't totally useless after she's casted her songs--just mostly. Colette has a level 10 War Edge Mastery, which unlocks Ailing Slash, the War Magus's best damage skill. It does 350% damage at level 10 (Colette only has a level 6 Ailing Slash right now, though), but if the target has a status ailment or the War Magus has War Edge Power active, it deals 770% damage. Level 20 is even more insane: it deals 440% damage without an ailment, but deals 1100% with an ailment. She also has one level in Vampire, unlocked with level 5 Ailing Slash, which heals her row for around 10% of whatever damage she deals to enemies with ailments. Ursa has level 9 Hit-Taker now, which further reduces the damage she tanks and protects one more time per turn. I also leveled up Loyalty Mastery to level 7 to unlock Beast Roar, which inflicts an attack down debuff on every enemy. Nadia's build hasn't changed from Chimaera. Milly has Song Mastery leveled up to 5; this didn't actually unlock anything I wanted to use yet, but it does reduce the TP cost of Song skills to ((0.9 * normalTP) - 2), which is great, because her level 9 Warrior Song, which gives the whole party an attack buff, would've cost 20 TP otherwise. She also has Shelter Song, which gives the party a defense buff, leveled up to 5.  As soon as we enter FOEbucks, Regina talks to us. I got quite a lot of money from grinding up the guild to level 14/15 (and from other sources), so I might as well do some town development. Maybe it'll lead to some good Grimoire Trade opportunities, I dunno. Improving the South Ward brought in Gunners for Grimoire Trading. But, more importantly, right after that:  Every five improvements or so, the Ward you're upgrading ranks up. Basically, more people start to live there, and any class-based customer groups get better, meaning you get better Grimoire Trade opportunities. Each Ward has two specific classes you can get Grimoire Trades from. Note that none of the Wards contain Beast, Highlander, or Fafnir guilds. You can still find normal Grimoire Trade partners of each class, which is really weird, especially for Fafnir. I invest some money in the West Ward, unlocking both the Alchemist Union... ...and the War Lore Study Society. Might as well see if this ever leads to any useful Grimoires for Colette. I got the West Ward to a Rank Up and stopped Town Development there for now. Onto cleaning up the two FOEs we haven't killed yet.   Raptor HP: 3484, STR: 19, VIT: 14 Skills:
Its jaws tear through a human, and its fangs secrete a paralyzing toxin. Even now that we've killed Chimaera, Raptors are still somewhat dicey to fight. Without blinding them or otherwise disabling Paralyze Fang (which hits a row for pretty big damage and attempts to paralyze them), we basically have no chance of killing it before it kills us. We also need some serious damage to chew through nearly 4000 HP (remember that Chimaera started at 5500 HP after being dropped in traps four times). I'm not entirely confident Nadia can blind the Raptor, so I have Colette user her Force Boost. She doesn't get the Vampire heal this way, but oh well. The Raptor hits hard even outside of Paralyze Fang, so I have Ursa use Desperation and start tanking. I need as much damage as I can get out of everyone. And I have Milly buff up the party's damage. Mind you, this is just the Raptor's basic attack with Hit-Taker's damage reduction in effect. These things hurt. I make no apologies for the use of Google Translate. Milly has a Healing Rhythm Grimoire equipped. Whenever she has buffs, she is healed at the end of a turn.   Whenever you activate Transform, the battle music changes to Bloody Fight. Alright, time to admit: I'm slightly cheating here. The only way to get a Fafnir into a Classic mode game is to use New Game+ on a Story mode save. However, doing this with a Fafnir that doesn't have all of his story-granted abilities means you get a Fafnir that is permanently missing several of the abilities that make him actually good. So, I imported a 4th Stratum Story save I had, where Ranger has all of his powers. Ranger is far more powerful than Fafnir should be at this point, but his absurdly tiny TP pool and serious lack of skill points early on makes this less obscenely broken than you'd think. Any abilities granted by Transform have red backgrounds. The three at the top are special, one-use-per-Transform abilities granted by defeating certain bosses. The Wave skills are based on Fafnir's current Flame/Freeze/Shock Sabre level, and actually are TEC-dependent skills that use the head. They're also purely elemental, unlike the Sabres. This is why Fafnir has a TEC stat well above pretty much every other physical damage dealer in the game. War Song pauses the duration of all current buffs on the party, and prevents enemies from dispelling them. Vampire in action. Ice Wave hits the enemy with 10 random-target Ice attacks, while Delayed Chase activates after any elemental attack, and deals Cut+(Element last used) composite damage. Ranger's heal here is from Self-Regenerate, which is given after a certain boss later on. It regenerates 30% of his max HP at the end of every turn. The fight's not going to last for long; why not use True Endurance? Accelerate is a supremely broken ability, which you will see in action shortly. Same reasoning as using True Endurance. Milly has nothing useful to do this turn, so I have her cast Ice Prelude on Ranger. The Preludes are basically elemental Oils as skills, except for one thing: because they're technically elemental attack buffs, they do not count as normal attack buffs like Warrior Song, meaning that they give their full attack buff even if the user has a normal attack buff on them already. It's not much at this point, but why not?  Yes, I did not edit this GIF. Accelerate lets Ranger perform 3 different actions in one turn, and they all go first in the turn order. Crusade buffs the damage the party deals and reduces the damage the party takes by 50% each for one turn. It also stacks fully with attack buffs and other Force Boosts. Can you guess what I'm setting up here? This is gonna hurt. Ranger opens his turn by dealing a little over 500 damage with Ice Wave... Meteor Smash is a one-use-per-Transform Bash attack that deals pretty hefty damage. It's unlocked when you kill Chimaera in Story mode. And finally...  Akashic Nova is the final upgrade to Transform you get in Story mode. It replaces Ignition Ray, deals composite Fire+Ice+Volt damage to all enemies, and might be slightly overpowered for this point in the game. I go back to town at this point because everyone's Force is spent.  Back to your regular scheduled programming. Luck Necklace is unlocked by selling 1 Brass Fang. It provides +3 LUC. I considered buying one for Nadia, but decided not to. Stun Gas is unlocked by selling 1 Brass Fang as well. It tries to inflict paralysis on every enemy with a pretty low chance. Worthless. And onto FOEbucks, where Regina starts talking to us immediately: Grimoire Recycling is now unlocked. Basically, we can just dump a bunch of trash Grimoires we don't want onto Regina, and after a while in the Labyrinth, the next time we enter FOEbucks, she'll give us a random Grimoire of a level that's based on how many Grimoires we recycled and what level they were. It's basically a fancy way to delete Grimoires and get a little something in return. I don't use it much, though. Also, Regina is a liar, because she immediately starts talking again right after that: At this point, I remembered I still had the Poison Damage 2x food on, and tried to swap it out for Max TP Up...only to realize I was out of Rye. A quick trip back to 1F later, and Regina has one more thing to say when I come back: And we can now advertise to two different Wards at once for an ad campaign. ...too bad I already have one running and didn't feel like cancelling it. Let's go finish off the Terrible Hunter and be done with the 1st Stratum.  Terrible Hunter HP: 5280, STR: 20, VIT: 16 Skills:
The leader of the raptor population. Do not go up against it if you are not prepared! You can probably infer this, but the Terrible Hunter is basically the Raptor but even harder to fight (its HP is just shy of 200 less than Chimaera's was after the traps). I'd really advise having a Troubador or Sovereign on hand to dispel Menacing Glare--you really do not want the Terrible Hunter hitting harder than it already does. I do pretty much the same stuff I did for the Raptor: Ailing Slash, Delayed Chase, Blind Arrow, Warrior Song. Except this time Nadia blinds the thing on the first turn, essentially wasting War Edge Power. Bah. I'm not kidding when I say every action I've taken up till now is identical to how the Raptor fight played out. Even Ranger's Accelerate actions are the same: Ice Wave -> Meteor Smash -> Akashic Nova. With Crusade to amp the damage. It's not as much as it was versus the Raptor, but it's still way above the curve for this point in the game. Here's what True Endurance's end-of-turn retaliation attack looks like. Yes, Crusade boosts its damage. Consider that I have only two notable damage dealers, and the Terrible Hunter is already on the ropes on the 5th turn. Here's Ranger's major downside for almost all of the game: outside of Transform, he's really mediocre. His damage is meh at best and he's pretty fragile. It won't be until maybe the very late game, definitely postgame, that we'll be seeing Ranger at his most powerful. At that point, lots of stuff will die very quickly due to the fact that the Fafnir class is balanced around the Story mode party, which is best described as "four defensive supports and Fafnir." Menacing Glare reduces a row's physical defense; however, because we had Shelter Song on, it just nullified Shelter Song. Back to town, since I used everyone's Force. Dragon Scimitar is unlocked by selling 1 Brass Claw. Still a downgrade from Hrothgar's Sword. It's the only thing we unlocked here. This quest is unlocked when you reach 6F, and it's very special. It's part of a quest line that's exclusive to Classic. It's also the only quest I'm taking for now. Ginnungagap is an entirely new five-floor labyrinth added in EO2U. It didn't exist at all in the original EO2. In Story mode, Ginnungagap is basically where everything important happens, much like EOU's Gladsheim, which was also a entirely new labyrinth added for Story mode purposes. Being able to access the Story mode labyrinth is actually a massive improvement EO2U made over EOU. In EOU, Classic mode parties couldn't access Gladsheim, full stop. Not only did this lock you out of being able to 100% the game in a pure Classic mode run, due to several enemies, bosses, and items only existing in Gladsheim, but it also meant that Classic mode parties were pretty much always underleveled compared to what EOU expects the party to be. It wasn't that big a deal on Normal and obviously meant nothing on Picnic, but it makes Classic on Expert in EOU one of the least fun experiences in the series. The farthest I've ever gotten with Classic Expert in EOU is the Queen Ant, and I was quite a few levels below where the Story mode party should've been despite fighting every battle I could've. Classic mode parties actually get off better than the Story mode party with regards to Ginnungagap; in Story mode, Ginnungagap is just something you have to do as part of the plot, meaning you don't get the money or EXP rewards from quests. Once we accept the quest, this happens when we leave town: SYSTEM: You walk along the titanic valley, and see ancient ruins that stretch down along the cliff, across the length of the rocky floor.  SYSTEM: Your task is now to investigate these ruins at the bottom of this great gorge. The left door just leads to a dead end.   Jackalope HP: 97, STR: 8, VIT: 8 Skills:
Though it looks like a bunny, it is likely to swing a powerful fist if threatened!  If you want a good indicator of when you should be fighting Jackalopes, the game gave 9 EXP to every party member here. Remember that Sunflowers are enemies from 2F. The Story party starts exploring Ginnungagap MUCH earlier than Classic parties do. I literally just use Auto-Battle for everything because none of the encounters pose any threat at all. A big, empty room for pretty much no reason. SYSTEM: If you wish to further explore the dungeon, then you will have to eliminate the beast before you now. If you are ready, draw your weapons and attack the monster!   Mercenary Boar HP: 672, STR: 9, VIT: 9 Skills:
I really don't know why Scarlet Rain plays here. Even in the context of fighting this thing at levels 4 to 5 with the Story mode party, it still makes no sense. This thing is weak enough that all I have to show you is how much damage I did in one turn: Yeah. Nadia was 1 EXP from a level up before. Hooray, I suppose. I level up Paralysis Arrow with it. Slightly more damage. These drawbridges have their own dynamic map icon. Put one down where a bridge is, and the icon will orient itself to the same direction as the bridge, indicate whether the bridge is raised or lowered, and show where you can manipulate the bridge from. SYSTEM: There must have been a bridge here once, but there is none now, and only a thick darkness spreads before you. As you ponder what to do, you notice something like a switch on the floor before you. SYSTEM: Though you blink in wonderment at seeing the marvelous bridge in action, you compose yourself and continue exploring. The drawbridges on B1F basically function as 2 things: shortcuts, and primary components in FOE puzzles we'll see later. You can also see how the map icons change in response to raising or lowering the bridge.  Haggis HP: 546, STR: 11, VIT: 10 Skills:
Haggises are dicks. They start the battle asleep, yeah, but they require more damage to take down than you'd expect, and Holy Shock HURTS. You'd best burst these things down very quickly, or you will regret it. Thankfully, Haggises have a Stab weakness, so Nadia can deal decent damage to them, especially from sleep. Neither of the Haggises ended up using Holy Shock, so the battle was, on the whole, uninteresting. We'll get that treasure soon enough. Yeah, the Mercenary Boar model gets reused for this FOE. Here's the FOE's gimmick, and the floor's main gimmick as well: when you lower this bridge... The Boar Captain aggros towards your party. It takes one step for every step your party takes, but they're generally positioned around one-tile wide passages, meaning you either have to take the long way around... Or you can just fight them. Boar Captain HP: 1728, STR: 20, VIT: 17 Skills:
A chief amongst the wereboar population, leading its kind into battle with abandon. Boar Captains aren't that strong as far as FOEs go. They hit decently hard, but that weakness to being blinded seriously throws a wrench into their damage output. They can summon Wereboars and perform a very hard-hitting combo attack with them, but you can almost certainly kill them before it gets to that. The strategy here is very simple: kill the Boar Captain as fast as possible. I use War Edge Power just to get more damage in case Nadia doesn't blind the thing. I'll hold off on Desperation utnil Ursa's HP dips low enough. Ranger's TP is lowered from using Sabres during random encounters, so I skip using Delayed Chase and just go straight to Transform. I'm banking on the Boar Captain's weakness to blind here. And Milly does her usual Warrior Song opener. I also use War Song because why not. Dammit. Oh well, War Edge Power's active anyway. Double dammit. Should've used Desperation; I forgot that Boar Captains do hit very hard, and tanking their hits 3 times is way more than Ursa can handle. Setting up for next turn. For most of the early game, you can expect me to repeat the same actions with Ranger, due to his currently low max TP. Milly's turn is better spent reviving Ursa than casting another buff. Triple dammit. Okay, now I'm scrambling to end the fight as soon as possible. I don't want to be on the receiving end of Command Boars. I did more damage than I thought over two turns. Ranger's Accelerate actions alone'll probably either kill the Boar Captain or put it very low. Better safe than sorry. Like I said, same combo. Even down to using Crusade. Ranger artificially inflates my power a little, but most well-constructed parties can take down Boar Captains easily enough at this point. I'll go through the way you're intended to get around the Boar Captain later, but for now I just opt to lower a shortcut bridge and head back to town after expending everyone's Force. Blind Gas is basically a low-level Blinding Curse. It has a fairly low chance of inflicting blind on every enemy in a fight. It even uses the user's LUC stat to calculate the blind infliction chance. Yeah, I wasn't kidding when I said Holy Shock hurts. If the main hit was on either Colette or Ranger, it would've killed them. The splash damage also really hurts, and can easily finish off someone who's even slightly hurt. Remember that Haggises tend to come in pairs, too! That was the last encounter in Ginnungagap before I went back to town. Selling all our materials netted us: Antler Staff is unlocked by selling 1 Strange Horn. It gives +8 TP and +2 VIT, which is useful for Chloe in Story mode, given that you'll be visiting Ginnungagap before you even finish 1F, but is pretty bad now. Fushuu is unlocked by selling 1 Timeworn Hilt. It gives +10 TP and 63 ATK. It's a very big upgrade over Ranger's Warabide, so I buy one for him. Hachigane is unlocked by selling 1 Chipped Blade. It gives +5 HP and +10 DEF, but I don't buy it for anyone. Leather Shoes are unlocked by selling 1 Black Muzzle. It gives +3 DEF and +1 STR. Again, another bit of equipment you're intended to buy much earlier in Story. Next time: we go through more of Ginnungagap B1F, and hopefully at least reach that giant lizard the guard mentioned.
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Dec 8, 2015 23:13
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Jeez, Fafnir is a tad overpowered, isn't he? What's the story party? Faffie, Sovereign, War Magus, Survivalist and what, an Hexer? Maybe they should have used another damage dealer instead of the WM so there would have been no need to overtune the only DPS in the party.
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Dec 8, 2015 23:48
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Omobono posted:Jeez, Fafnir is a tad overpowered, isn't he? Protector instead of Hexer, but otherwise yes. Also again, keep in mind that Ranger is quite a bit more powerful than a Fafnir should be at this point, but it was either have him be in this state or not have what is basically the star class of the game for a Classic mode run.
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Dec 8, 2015 23:51
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Haha, Ranger's great. His music's great, his powers are great and his character in Story is great. 
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Dec 8, 2015 23:53
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Omobono posted:Jeez, Fafnir is a tad overpowered, isn't he? Fafnir doesn't gain Transform until the fight with the Mercenary Boar. The Story party basically goes to Ginnungagap after the very first mission, and the fight is basically a tutorial on using Force. Classic Mode basically goes, "this dude's here, kill it." And then never speaks of it again. The Story mode party isn't really a low damage party. Fafnir himself is a strong damage dealer, and flat out the strongest class in the game. You also have Chloe, who wrecks a lot of things with Ailing Slash. And you have Flavio, who admittedly doesn't become that great until he has the skill points for all his vital skills. It just doesn't compare to what a Classic party is capable of. The Story party is actually really strong. It's just that the game was kind of designed to screw the Story party over in some places, but not so much a Classic party. Also if there's any weak spots in the Story party you have issues with, well there's always making use of Grimoire stones. And that's actually a valid option in this game compared to how Untold handled those.
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Dec 9, 2015 00:02
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Omobono posted:Jeez, Fafnir is a tad overpowered, isn't he? This is just the tip of the iceberg my friend. He's been known to solo bonus bosses and even some of the DLC bosses.
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Dec 9, 2015 01:37
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That was a wonderful update.
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Dec 9, 2015 01:46
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Omobono posted:Jeez, Fafnir is a tad overpowered, isn't he? Chloe picks up the slack later in the game and Flavio's not awful either. But yeah, Fafnir is a murder-machine on wheels. Ragnar Homsar posted:
Raveptor doesn't roll off the tongue as well as Ravelope. 
Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Dec 9, 2015 |
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Dec 9, 2015 03:08
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The Art of Etrian Odyssey II: Part 1 You might be wondering, "who asked for updates based around the EO artbooks?" The answer is "no-one," but unfortunately I left my recording 3DS at my house before coming back to my dorm room for finals week (wanted to cut down on the stuff I needed to move out before going home for break), and as such can't start work on Update 10 until Thursday at the earliest. I thought about stuff to write updates about because my actually difficult final was on Monday while I have a final that's basically a formality for another class on Thursday, and figured that I might as well discuss what the EO artbooks have for EO2 and EO2U. I figure that artbooks aren't a lot of peoples' thing, but I find them kinda interesting. These kinds of updates'll probably just be random bits from artbooks with some commentary from me, without any real pattern. Note that both EO1/EO2 share an artbook, as do EOU/EO2U, so some stuff from the other game might show up on occasion (especially for class sketches in the EO1/2 artbook).  And we begin with some illustrations of different portraits used on the EO2 boxart. What I find kind of weird about these illustrations is: a) They lack the usual "fade to complete black" thing that Yuji Himukai (the series' character designer) usually does to show distance. b) The War Magus is holding both a sword and a staff, when every other illustration (including the actual WM portraits) shows them holding a weird combination of a sword and a staff that I presume is a War Edge. c) The Gunner's illustration is really strange; I frankly can't tell how she's holding the gun, her hat looks bigger relative to her head compared to her normal portrait, and she seems really small compared to everyone else in the portrait. Worth noting that for the US EO2 boxart, the Gunner art was replaced by her normal in-game portrait.  Tthe top half of this page has art used for the "SQ2 Pianosketch" (SQ being how Atlus abbreviates EO's Japanese name, Sekaiju no Meikyuu) CD, which I'm fairly certain was given as a bonus for those who preordered EO2 in Japan, and contains piano versions of early versions of songs from EO2's soundtrack. Pretty much every EO game has some kind of early soundtrack preorder bonus, and they all have art of different portraits wearing different, more modern clothes. In this case, we have Gunner 2 and Troubador 2 wearing winter outfits, with the Gunner wearing what I think are either Jack Frost earmuffs or headphones. Dr. Fetus found a translation of the comic, if you don't mind some slight English errors:    On the top left of these two pages, you can see the EO2 soundtrack's cover. Kind of uninteresting outside of the really weird pose the Gunner's in. On the top right, you can see a random illustration of Gunner 2 that I presume is there just to fill space. She certainly looks angry about something. And on the bottom, you can see an illustration of a Protector/Beast/War Magus, Medic/Gunner party exploring the 2nd Stratum. Seems a bit of an overly-defensive party to me, but what do I know. You can also see Himukai's super-deformed style that doesn't really pop up in the actual EO games, or even on the boxes for that matter, but which he uses quite a bit in the artbooks.  These are closer to illustrations for EO1, but it's such a weird departure from Himukai's normal EO style (at least I'm reasonably certain these were drawn by Himukai) that I wanted to show it off. If it makes any sense, I'd say these illustrations, and the style overall actually, are kind of closer to what exploring is described as in the games rather than how people playing the games experience it. When NPCs in EO games describe exploring, it's usually painted in a pretty bleak light--constant references to astounding death numbers in the Labyrinth and terrifying monsters. That illustration in the bottom-left especially kind of embodies what I'm talking about; it's a very stark contrast from how the Labyrinth looks in-game, no?  And now we reach the actual design part of the artbook.   Landsknecht art and sketches. (Yes, Landsknechts are called Swordmen in Japan.) Right off the bat on the sketch page, something immediately jumps out: properly-proportioned sketches of character designs! After playing EO1 and 2 for so long and getting used to the super-deformed style, seeing the blue-haired and red-haired Landsknechts with proportions closer to actual human beings kind of weirded me out. There's also sketches of Hexer, Survivalist, Ronin, Alchemist, and Protector designs which all seem to be based off Landsknecht 1--aside from that, I don't know what the context of those is. You can also notice that Himukai tends to give great preference to one portrait design per gender for any given class. Note that Landsknecht 1 and 2 take up a lot of the page, while Landsknecht 3 and 4 just get sketches of the upper parts of their EO1 portraits. Quite a few of the sketches of Landsknecht 2 have a scarf tied around her hair. I kinda wish that was kept for the final design, it looks neat.   Survivalist art and sketches. (Survivalists are called Rangers in Japan.) What I assume are the earliest sketches of Survivalists (the 1 and 2 proper-proportion sketches in the bottom left and the SD-style 2 sketch in the top right) feature Survivalists without their hats. The bottom left sketch also has Survivalist 1 holding a crossbow, which pretty obviously didn't make it to the final designs. I guess traditional bows and arrows fit a class based around agility and field support better than crossbows.   Protector art and sketches. (Protectors are called Paladins in Japan.) Quite a lot of the sketch page focuses on the design of the Protectors' armor, shields, and swords. Makes sense for a class whose entire job is being very durable. Not a lot changed from start to finish with regards to Protector designs, if the sketch page is any indication. If you're wondering why Protector 2 seems to show up in a lot of EO art, incidentally, she's something of a mascot for Himukai's EO work, along with Medic 2. Shows up in a lot of the small comics and extra art that Himukai draws.   Dark Hunter art and sketches. I don't have a whole lot to say about Dark Hunters. Much like Protectors, they didn't change a lot from conception to final portraits. Dark Hunter 4 always looked like a Disgaea character to me. Couldn't tell you why.   Medic art and sketches. Medic 3 (the orange-haired male one with earrings and rings) is my absolute favorite portrait in EO and I'm really sad he's not featured in pretty much any of the extra art or the sketch page for Medics. Never cared much for Medic 1, and the sketch of him and Medic 2 in the bottom left kind of shows why. He has a creepy look in his eyes, I dunno. Almost looks like the Medic from TF2 if he saw his patients less as canvases for experiments and instead took a more..."personal" interest in them. Also, if anyone can tell me what the context for that sketch in the bottom right is, I'd appreciate it. Again, like Protectors and Dark Hunters, Medics pretty much have the same design from start to finish. Clothes that seem easy to manuever in with a doctor's coat worn on top. You can also see a sketch of Himukai's interpretation of Angie Thompson from Trauma Center on the right. Derek Stiles and her made cameo appearances in EO2, but were cut entirely from EO2U.   Alchemist art and sketches. Now here's something actually interesting. Alchemists used to have shirts and dresses with pretty intricate designs on them. Don't entirely know why that aspect of their design was dropped, to be honest. Alchemists also used to have one HUGE hand device instead of two smaller ones. While this was dropped for EO1/2 Alchemists, Arthur from EOU uses a device almost identical to the one in the properly-proportioned sketch of Alchemist 1.  Troubador art. (Troubadors are called Bards in Japan, which is usually slightly-hilariously translated as "Bird" by Google Translate.) I like the male Troubador designs (especially 3), but could really go without the female designs--especially Troubador 2, who looks a bit too young to be in those clothes. She's, sadly, also something of an EO mascot for Himukai. She doesn't show up as much as Protector 2 and Medic 2, but she's still recurring, and also showed up again as a Dancer portrait in EO4. I omitted the sketch page because it really isn't that interesting, aside from an early sketch of Troubador 2 where she doesn't even have the weird leg bits that the final design does.   Ronin art and sketches. (Ronin are called Bushido in Japan.) Sketch page edited to remove really weird sketch of Ronin 2 in underwear. The general idea behind the design for Ronin didn't change much from start to finish, but there's a few incidental changes here and there. Ronin 2 lost the torn jacket she had going from EO1 to 2 for...some reason, and that sketch towards the bottom indicates that Ronin 4 was originally also supposed to have a torn jacket + chestwraps. I guess Himukai decided to change her clothing to differentiate her from Ronin 2. Ronin 3 also lost the scar over his right eye and demented look in his left eye in exchange for something that more resembles an age-hardened swordsman. Ronin 4's also the only one smart enough to wear boots intsead of sandals in EO2. Walking around a maze full of traps where you have to move very quickly seems like the wrong situation for wearing sandals, but I could be wrong. I'll stop with character portraits for now, since that's roughly half of the class roster, and instead shift to environment art. I'm also switching to the EOU/EO2U artbook for environment art, since its scans are much higher quality than the EO1/2 artbook.  The Central City of High Lagaard and the Duke's Palace. It was kind of hard to notice in the original EO2 and isn't something you'd really catch just looking at stuff normally, but the symbol over the door in the Duke's Palace is the insignia of the Grand Duchy. The shoulders of Dubois's clothes also have the insignia on them.  The Explorers Guild and Flaus Inn.  Sitoth Trading and the Stickleback Bar.  The Ducal Restaurant, or FOEbucks, as we know it. I assume the more generic-looking food on the table and counter are the results of the monster-based food designs not being finalized when the background was drawn. We never really fight anything that looks like a lobster, for instance.  The Forest Entrance.  The 1st Stratum: Ancient Forest. I feel like there was more that could've been done with the whole ruins aspect of the 1st Stratum. Oh well.  The 2nd Stratum: Auburn Thicket. Your guess is as good as mine as to what those marble pillars as tall as the trees are for. Aside from that, Auburn Thicket's design isn't terribly interesting as far as EO Strata go, but I really dig the fall colors used for the trees--especially in EO2U, where everything doesn't just devolve into a mess of pixels and poor draw distance once you look more than 3 tiles ahead of your position.  Ginnungagap. For what's supposed to be millenia-old derelict ruins, Ginnungagap looks pretty well-kept for its age. Hmm...  The Town Development view of Lagaard. Every Ward is pictured as they are at the highest ranks. Quite a difference from the town menu view of Lagaard pictured above, huh? It also gives a pretty good reference for the sheer size of Yggdrasil: look at that castle-looking building that I assume is the Duke's Palace. Consider how big it must be for a royal building. Now, compare it to Yggdrasil. Yeah.  The chasm outside of Lagaard, where we access Ginnungagap from. This isn't actually used in game; it's just used in some promotional stuff, notably Atlus USA's English website for EO2U.  Ginnungagap design art. And that's all for now. Next time, whenever I decide to write one of these again: the other half of the character roster, and NPC art. Also probably other things. Maybe. I dunno. Rea fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Dec 9, 2015 09:42
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your unyuuji process is much cleaner than my strategy of "flail a large black paintbrush tool over the weird poo poo"
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Dec 9, 2015 14:57
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Dear me, there appears to be a large black block in the Ronin sketches. I wonder why that could be. And there is no mystery as to the nature of the Warmage's weapon! It is clearly a sword duct taped to a staff.
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Dec 9, 2015 15:28
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Apparently, the blonde Dark Hunter used to have a bit of a  going on for her...and was fairly tall...drat it woman, you'll not sway me from the pink haired one! 
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Dec 10, 2015 06:50
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Yeah, Himukai can draw properly proportioned characters just fine. He's just not great at drawing super deformed characters (though he has been getting better about it), which pretty much all the character portraits in the EO games are. Zodiac 2 got hit pretty hard by it. She looked like an adult in the concept art. Then ended up getting horribly squashed.
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Dec 10, 2015 07:13
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Dr. Fetus posted:Yeah, Himukai can draw properly proportioned characters just fine. He's just not great at drawing super deformed characters (though he has been getting better about it), which pretty much all the character portraits in the EO games are. Zodiac 2 got hit pretty hard by it. She looked like an adult in the concept art. Then ended up getting horribly squashed. For reference re: Zodiac 2:  All of the classes in the EO3 artbook have their sections introduced with normal-proportioned illustrations of two portraits.  Like so. Incidentally, words cannot express how upset I am we did not get giant buff Monk instead of the old man Monk. If the extras section is to be believed, he was originally supposed to be the Guildmaster, too!
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Dec 10, 2015 07:20
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Think I'm only going to click on the fafnir transformation music once per update. I know it always plays when the fafnir transforms, but I guess this update consisting of multiple FOE fights where every party member went all out so of course he'll transform made the music wear thin on me.
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Dec 10, 2015 08:24
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You think it's wearing thin now, imagine the postgame, where Ranger'll be able to Transform multiple times in a fight. Also imagine being the guy who is forced by the game to listen to it.
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Dec 10, 2015 08:36
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Rawkking posted:Think I'm only going to click on the fafnir transformation music once per update. I know it always plays when the fafnir transforms, but I guess this update consisting of multiple FOE fights where every party member went all out so of course he'll transform made the music wear thin on me. No more games...
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Dec 10, 2015 08:51
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I never got tired of the song. Or at least, I don't think I did...
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Dec 10, 2015 08:53
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Huh, so the Medic was a Minecraft character before Minecraft even existed.
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Dec 10, 2015 21:01
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Will the next update have more games?
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Dec 10, 2015 22:23
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Junpei Hyde posted:Will the next update have more games? "No more games" was actually the secret message from atlus regarding the eo series
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Dec 10, 2015 22:47
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Hivac posted:"No more games" was actually the secret message from atlus regarding the eo series I'd wait another year or two before we get too worried about EO5. In other news, I am back home and now have my recording 3DS. Next update probably within a few days.
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Dec 11, 2015 00:18
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I watched a let's play of this game on YouTube, and the transformed Fafnir has a different sprite. Does it change over the course of story mode?
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Dec 11, 2015 00:49
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