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I'm about 3 hours in, and I feel like I'm not really getting what this game wants from me. I've got a protector, survivalist, and landsknecht in my front line, and a healer and alchemist in the back. I'm around level 7, and I've made it to the third floor, where there's some hosed up FOEs and some people guarding a gate which I now have open. The thing stressing me out right now is resources. I am constantly having fights go back and having to Thread back to town, and I'm not sure how the heck I'm supposed to be making 200 gold to cover a Thread, revive(s), and inn stay on every run. It'd be one thing if I was just having runs go bad and having to retry, but I'm now almost out of gold so I basically feel trapped. Should I be trying to spend more time on the first floor to get resources? The fights themselves are weird. I don't understand how to play this game without being able to see turn order. It makes it almost impossible to meaningfully strategize in fights. When my whole front line dies in two hits, it sucks rear end that my healer can't get cure out on the 2nd turn before all the enemies have gone and managed to kill someone, and I have zero visibility into how I could fix this. Any time more than 3 enemies appear, I just Escape. The venom flies are a ridiculous enemy with poison doing 25 damage a turn, I think I've lost party members to them more than any other enemy. What the heck am I supposed to do against them? I'm not sure if I'm down on builds or armor or what. There's some stuff available in town but it's expensive and I have no money, and it only provides like one extra DEF or one extra VIT or whatever, nothing that seems like it'd improve my situation. I've put a point into the stat-up skills for each of my guys, but it seems like those have very diminishing returns, so I've just focused on getting active skills and more weapon damage for the most part. The only character I have who I feel like I understand how to use is the alchemist, since I can just do elemental damage and that does do a lot against most enemies. My survivalist and landsknecht don't feel like they do much, I have yet to get any skills that seem to do significantly more damage than a regular attack. I try using the protector skill to protect the front line but they seem to be squishy as hell anyways, and my protector isn't particularly beefy himself. Nothing really seems like it's clicking at all. My healer just has Cure which makes him loving useless - like I said, by the time he manages to cast that in a fight, there's a good chance his target is already dead. I'm not really sure what I am supposed to be doing to progress. Should I grind up to some target level? Focus on getting money so my armor is less lovely? Make a party of five alchemists since they're the only class who seem like they can do more than 20 damage reliably? Try to get some kind of multi target skills so that a group of four enemies isn't a guaranteed dead party member? Figure out if there's some secret mechanic for getting past the FOEs patrolling in lines on level 2?
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Feb 15, 2024 05:52
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| # ? May 8, 2024 16:28 |
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Turn order in EO1 is just hosed. Due to how the speed formula works, it's essentially random without speed control (agi buffs/debuffs, etc.) AGI / 5 * skill speed. Yes, divided by 5. This causes a bunch of speed stats to effectively be the same, which causes the turn order to be random. Later games turn order is far more predictable and it's much more easy to control how fast your party is. Gathering from item points (the chop/mine/take tiles) are how you get money in 1. Drop rates in EO1 are pretty bad, so they're not gonna make you back money reliably until later in the game. So you want to gather from item points when you can to get a more reliable source of income. You'll definitely want to stock up on lots of supplies to extend your stay in the labyrinth, and restock each time. Also you're going to have to accept that some enemies will destroy your party. It's that kind of game, and pretty much use skills whenever you can to get through encounters as safe as possible. As for Venomflies, either prioritize them fast, or ensure your party is topped off before a battle to minimize the chances of a party member being mauled by a butterfly. As for equipment, you're pretty much right that armor isn't that great (without certain buffs). +1 DEF or VIT isn't gonna do a lot as EO1 operates off of an Attack - Defense principle. So save upgrades for when you see really good secondary boosts, or it's been a while since your last armor purchase. The game pacing in EO1 is pretty much you chipping away at the floors bit by bit as your party gets stronger to make deeper dives each time. Note that the first stratum is kind of a bit weirdly paced, as the later ones tend to be easier to progress in due to slightly smoother level design. It also tends to be worth it to max out skills to really see good effects. As for getting past FOEs, most of them just patrol in a set pattern, so it's just a matter of moving. As for the ones directly blocking your path on floor 2, yeah you gotta fight those. Save them for later once your party is strong enough.
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Feb 15, 2024 07:03
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Personally I would recommend not starting with EO1 because it sucks. Or rather, is very primitive compared to the later games.
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Feb 15, 2024 07:56
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The answer in EO1 is to grind. Level is the biggest factor to how you'll do. I wouldn't start with it either.
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Feb 15, 2024 07:59
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If you're really not feeling EO1, feel free to start with the other games. The franchise tends to get more friendly as it goes on. Also yeah unfortunately level is the most important stat in EO1. It is very overcentralizing in a lot of the game's math, and unlike in say, Final Fantasy 5, there's no way to manipulate it. You wanna increase level, you gotta grind. The later games do not have this mechanic. If you know what you're doing, you won't have to like grind, but for a first timer to the series, probably not the best one to start with. Not without lowering the difficulty to basic or picnic. Granted basic won't actually help that much in EO1's earlygame due to how little the modifiers budge the math there. Later games it'd have more of an effect.
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Feb 15, 2024 08:33
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I think I'm ok grinding, so I'll stick with it a bit longer. I assume if I give up and I'm playing the HD ports on Steam Deck, I should just jump to 3? Wonder if they'll ever port the other games. I don't actually mind grinding, it's part of the reason I was interested in these games. My problem really is just that I feel like I'm not making back enough resources per run into the dungeon to pay for grinding (Threads, inn, revives). I've only got one collection point so far, but I'll try to make a point of stopping there every time and seeing if that helps.
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Feb 15, 2024 17:10
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Are you using a thread every time you leave? You can and should manually walk back if you arent in immediate danger.
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Feb 15, 2024 17:34
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In case this isn't clear, you should be opening shortcuts throughout the floor, so the distance between the stairs isn't so large.
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Feb 15, 2024 17:38
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Clarste posted:In case this isn't clear, you should be opening shortcuts throughout the floor, so the distance between the stairs isn't so large. EO1 has very few shortcuts. Most of the “shortcutting” in future trips is from knowing the correct path and from being overleveled for the encounters after you’re done with a floor. The game is pretty rough around the edges, I think you just have to be okay with a decent amount of tedium if you want to play it now. I’d also suggest using a guide for choosing your characters’ skills, there are lots of useless ones. Edit: Early game, you really want to avoid using threads, and should try to walk home. Because your level is such a big part of the damage formula, you should be able to safely go through floors you’ve already beaten without using many resources at all. ShadeofBlue fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Feb 15, 2024 |
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Feb 15, 2024 18:04
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Me going through a lot of EO1 discussion and thinking 'How did I deal with X?' answered with 'oh yeah I spammed Immunize'
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Feb 15, 2024 18:14
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I now have enough gathering skills that I can make money on a run, and I unlocked a shortcut on floor 3 that gets me around a nightmare FOE, so should be smooth sailing from here right im still running from the two venomfly+two mole groups and the two rabbits+two shell guy groups, gah The decision to make floors 2 and 3 of the entire game so weird with the FOE stuff is really something. Is the rest of the game that tricky with their placements?
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Feb 15, 2024 18:36
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FOEs are set up like that to get you to learn how to use movement to avoid them.
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Feb 15, 2024 18:42
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FOEs are a central mechanic of the entire series. For the most part, they're intended as environmental puzzles that you figure out how to bypass until you grow strong enough (several floors later) to come back and kill them. They're generally killable for an optimized party when you first meet them, but that's not the intended progression path. Also, EO1 venomflies are assholes and there's no shame in noping away from them.
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Feb 15, 2024 19:19
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Also there are tiers to FOEs. The Ragelope/Furyhorns and the Kuyuthas in the 2nd floor can be beaten if you treat it like a boss fight, although it might get dicey. The Stalkers on the 3rd floor will absolutely wreck the poo poo out of any level-appropriate party.
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Feb 15, 2024 19:54
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I will note that Venomflies are kind of a "hey, afflictions are really loving good in this series, actually" tutorial. I don't remember the specific numbers in EO1, but in general, Poison will do extremely good damage throughout most of the early to mid game and only fall off to "worth applying if it doesn't take too long" in the late game. Blind, Paralyze, etc are all also useful, and binds vary from making fights much easier to making certain postgame bosses possible. Petrify and Curse are the two exceptions, don't bother with those.
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Feb 15, 2024 21:32
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i like in eo3 where the wildling can summon FOEs as their gimmick and if you rush the venomfly and put all your points into it it basically oneshots the first stratum boss
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Feb 15, 2024 21:48
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It does vary a bit by game (mostly on how reliable the class / skills that apply them are), but Binds are maybe the biggest unique aspect of EO's combat. Good use of binds will stop an enemy's best/worst attack before they can use it, letting you reliably take down something that would normally murder you, and probably with less TP than trying to preemptively nuke everything. They work on bosses too, but probably only for a portion of the fight.
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Feb 15, 2024 22:42
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I thought I had a handle on this game and then I reached the wolves  they uh... want me to defeat those guys, huh I'm going to at least need to figure out if there's a faster way to get down to them because even there's no shortcuts on b2f, b4f, or b5f that I've found yet Also goddamn my survivalist is USELESS for damage. She still has her starting bow and the next meaningful upgrade requires four more "gum hides", bah
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Feb 15, 2024 22:50
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Yeah once you get a lot more funds going, you can pretty much buy threads more freely. Until then, just backtrack out of the labyrinth in the earlygame. At least in 1. Later games typically have more ways to generate income so that measure isn't quite as necessary in those games.Handgun Phonics posted:It does vary a bit by game (mostly on how reliable the class / skills that apply them are), but Binds are maybe the biggest unique aspect of EO's combat. Good use of binds will stop an enemy's best/worst attack before they can use it, letting you reliably take down something that would normally murder you, and probably with less TP than trying to preemptively nuke everything. They work on bosses too, but probably only for a portion of the fight. Binds in EO1 are extremely good and can shut down so many of the bosses, especially after HD buffed them to be more usable in the post-game outside of dedicated binding parties. The boss AI in 1 though knows to work around binds, but that can make them more predictable at least and proper ones can lock them out of their more powerful moves. Binds as a status are more powerful in later games when the AI no longer makes such checks and they just generate a ton of free turns due to trying to spam a skill they're not allowed to use. In EO2 they're not quite as good, but they're pretty solid in HD with a dedicated party. They're awful in DS though. Yes that Force skill exists, but it's super slow to build up, and you're not going to be spamming that until late-game. Binds in 3 and 4 are a bit tricky to discuss in how exactly great they are, due to the old accumulative resistance system making them a bit frustrating to use for certain party compositions, while some others don't really care and get a mile from the opening they create. Though 4 tried to apply a lot of bandages to the system before Untold refined it further. abraham linksys posted:I thought I had a handle on this game and then I reached the wolves Yeah some FOEs in 1 you've got to beat. You can avoid some of the wolves, but you want to be prepared to beat them in a bit. You'll really want those gum hides though. No shortcuts on 2 or 4, but 5 has one. The later strata don't have them as weirdly paced. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Feb 15, 2024 |
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Feb 15, 2024 22:54
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for survivalist if you want to spec them for damage just get 5 points in bows then max out multihit. trueshot is pretty meh
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Feb 15, 2024 23:08
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I just got EO3 HD from the sale and I have an idea for how I want to play. Since I need to play the game 3 times for 100% completion, and I've never played this specific EO before, I wanted to try a version where I use all the classes, but not for one playthrough. I was thinking I would make 2 teams, for my first and second playthrough where I use each class once, and then my third team will be a mixture plus the two unlockable classes. My problem is that I'm not sure what classes to use first so both teams are...reasonably balanced. A few things I do know I want. 1. I want my Monk and Sovereign on separate teams. Mostly so each team has a healer in some form and I'm not relying mainly on items. 2. I want my Buccaneer on my second playthrough, because I know it takes them a while to get going and I can use unlocked weapons during my second playthrough so they can do damage until I get enough skill points to really use them. 3. I want Arbalist and Gladiator on separate teams so each one has a good physical attacker. 4. I want Ninja and Wildling on separate teams because I don't know if I will be using the ninja clone option, but I would like the option at least. That's what I have so far. I was wondering if anyone who has played the games might have suggestions as to how to make some balanced parties? And also which one I should use first?
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Feb 15, 2024 23:41
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5 Botanist EO5 is done. Let's talk about the issues with this run, because it was a doozy. 1) The first two strata are absolutely awful. Poison which even at max rank doesn't oneshot a bunch of enemies is your only offense outside basic attacks and unions. Miserable, miserable time. Moles in particular are horrid, and Hippogryph was wretched. Terrible, do not do this. 2) You're playing the ailment lottery all game, much like the 5 Harbinger run, except all your base chances are worse. This leads to very high levels of frustration in almost every fight. It gets a little better once you finally unlock Fortune Necklaces, but not much. 3) Smoke Bomb, hoo boy, where do I begin. First off, this thing is expensive. 36 TP at rank 10 runs even my Celestrian dry in short order. The damage is nice, yes, but it's still nowhere near as much as you might expect from a 1200% damage modifier given that you have almost zero support for it. It's also single-target, which sucks for a bunch of fights, and it's also fire damage, and there are a surprisingly high number of enemies that take basically no damage from fire! Meaning you're still relying on your increasing outdated poison to kill them! 4) "But you have Smokeblight! 50% defense debuff is huge!" Arrrrggghhhhh, Smokeblight!!! Okay, so here's some stuff you might not have realized about Smokeblight that makes it awful to use with Smoke Bomb. See, Smokeblight appears to check the defense debuff when damage is dealt rather than when it's cast, and more importantly it checks after Smoke Bomb removes a debuff. This means that if you have just Smokeblight on a target, or it's the oldest debuff, and you cast Smoke Bomb, you get zero benefit. If you have one smoke debuff and Smokeblight on the target, Smoke Bomb will remove the debuff first, meaning you only get the paltry 15% defense drop. In order to get the full 50% debuff, with this party, the target needs to have two smoke debuffs and Smokeblight active at the same time. This meant that since I had two characters specced for Smoke Bomb, and the Celestrian was the slower, the first Smoke Bomb would eat one debuff and get the 50% damage increase, but the second bigger hit would only get 15% at best, putting the two around equal damage for most of the game despite the huge stat and often weapon difference. This also meant that I had to have most if not all of my party constantly reapplying smoke debuffs and Smokeblight every turn on FOEs and bosses to keep the damage going! If you have any other skill, like for instance if you were running a normal party with a Warlock, they'd absolutely love that huge defense drop, but with Smoke Bomb as basically my only form of offense (until I bought the Cradle Scythe on the last floor of the game, and even then it was better to just Smoke Bomb most things) it was frustrating as hell to deal with this constant juggling, and even then sometimes ailments would just refuse to land for several turns so I sat there doing absolutely nothing while getting wailed on. tl;dr thank god it's over, 2/10, will never do again and neither should you P.S. As a funny final note, I landed the killing blow on Eternal Tyrant with an basic attack for 8 damage. Not really relevant to the run, just thought I should mention it here. 
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Feb 15, 2024 23:57
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I've finally got the Short Bow, which is definitely all I'll need to defeat this boss who (checks notes) one shots anyone in my party, and has multiple friends who can do the same  I killed the wolves loitering around him and a couple others on the previous floor, but at level 12 I feel like I can only 1v1 them and it's tough. Going to be an interesting boss fight.
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Feb 16, 2024 01:14
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12 is pretty underleveled for Fenrir. You're taking 27% extra damage and have a 22% damage penalty against him. Around 15 or so is about par territory. Anymore than that is overkill unless your builds are really bad. I would say once you reach the boss, try taking on the orange FOEs throughout the strata as a final bit of training. The red FOEs are most likely out of your league though. Try not to run from too many fights unless absolutely necessary. EO1 severely punishes being underleveled compared to the later games. FOEs are good sources of exp if you need to climb levels. They respawn after several days if you want to repeat the process. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Feb 16, 2024 |
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Feb 16, 2024 01:41
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Araxxor posted:12 is pretty underleveled for Fenrir. You're taking 27% extra damage and have a 22% damage penalty against him. Around 15 or so is about par territory. Anymore than that is overkill unless your builds are really bad. Ah, being that underleveled explains a lot. I might find a recommended level list for this game's floors/bosses. I definitely don't mind grinding, but have been running from some fights just to make sure I have enough resources to keep moving, so it makes sense that I'm underleveled. I actually did get all the deer FOEs on level 2, and a couple on level 4/5 so I kinda assumed I was ready for the boss. Had no idea FOEs respawned - good to know if I ever decide to level new characters, since I was wondering if there would be any good repeatable XP source for them.
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Feb 16, 2024 02:44
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SimplyUnknown1 posted:I just got EO3 HD from the sale and I have an idea for how I want to play. Since I need to play the game 3 times for 100% completion, and I've never played this specific EO before, I wanted to try a version where I use all the classes, but not for one playthrough. I was thinking I would make 2 teams, for my first and second playthrough where I use each class once, and then my third team will be a mixture plus the two unlockable classes. My problem is that I'm not sure what classes to use first so both teams are...reasonably balanced. For first team, this is just me but I'd say Gladiator/Hoplite/Wildling/Monk/Zodiac is a great beginner team. Wildling can carry you through the first stratum, Hoplite makes bosses way safer, Zodiac clears random encounters for most of the game, Monk has more straightforward/reliable early game healing, Gladiator is just good consistent damage the whole game. Only real issue is that wildling locks you out of the hoplite subclassing ninja.
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Feb 16, 2024 03:38
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abraham linksys posted:Ah, being that underleveled explains a lot. I might find a recommended level list for this game's floors/bosses. I definitely don't mind grinding, but have been running from some fights just to make sure I have enough resources to keep moving, so it makes sense that I'm underleveled. I actually did get all the deer FOEs on level 2, and a couple on level 4/5 so I kinda assumed I was ready for the boss. A good rule of thumb that works for most EO games is to be level 14-15 for the first stratum boss, and then add an extra 10-11 levels per stratum.
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Feb 16, 2024 06:34
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I have made it to level 6! Getting owned by butterflies has been replaced by getting owned by weird jellies, but I am making progress! I'm going to review the class guides in the LP before I move on so I don't accidentally build myself into a corner - mostly I just wish they had the stat tables visible in the game (does that improve in later games?). My original plan was that if I ended up getting bored of EO1, I'd just buy EO3 and switch to that, but the games are no longer discounted on Steam so I am more or less locked in. I do really like playing this on the Steam Deck. Might be the game that uses the least amount of power out of the box of anything I've played; can get a solid 6 hours of gameplay whereas even something like Great Ace Attorney is closer to 4.
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Feb 16, 2024 17:35
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i'm happy to read these updates and i think it's cool you're sticking with it  the early levels in EO1 are brutal and it's a very different kind of experience from the later games. i don't agree with people calling it bad (i enjoyed the hell out of my myself playing it when the remaster came out) but it takes a certain mindset to get into itstrangely i felt like EO1 had sort of an inverse difficulty curve where the hardest part of the game was at the start, middle portion is decently challenging and the last parts of the game are relatively easy
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Feb 16, 2024 17:45
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abraham linksys posted:mostly I just wish they had the stat tables visible in the game (does that improve in later games?). No, if you want the actual numbers on skills and stuff you're stuck with the internet.
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Feb 16, 2024 18:16
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later games do a better job telling you the specifcis of the skill and what increases with level but yeah if you want hard numbers youre locked to the internet.
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Feb 16, 2024 18:22
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I bought EO1 for the DS back in the day and put it down near the start of the fourth stratum or so. Later on (at least 8 years) I picked it again when I had a 3DS, started over with a fresh party but didn't finish it yet again. I kept all my DS cartridges and at some point after finishing Untold 1 last year I quickly booted it up. I had made it to the very start of the fifth stratum, wow. Now the skill trees and such are quite different from EO1 (HD) to EOU1, but just looking at my Protector I felt like I made some questionable skill choices. Several points in TP Up, no commitment to particular skills... I quickly turned the game off instead of looking at any other characters... What I am saying here, even with no clue what you are doing you can get quite far into the game. It's that early game that can be particularly rough.
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Feb 16, 2024 19:24
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I'm reading through the Let's Play class guides and laughing really hard at what this game chooses to not reveal. The Cure skills having speed modifiers that make them impossible to use as emergency heals I felt a little bad using guides since I feel like puzzling out a build can be a fun thing in some games, but I would have made so many terrible choices in this left to my own devices, goddamn. Even if I just was handed the scaling tables, I'm not sure I would have ever guessed the way some of these skills work in practice.
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Feb 16, 2024 19:29
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Genuinely there's no shame in looking up skill numbers, so much is hidden and respeccing is punishing. You'll have such a better experience simply knowing what skills actually do.
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Feb 16, 2024 19:50
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From EO4 and onwards it becomes much easier to build blind because they mostly cut it out when it comes to useless prerequisite skills and weird skill breakpoints (partly because they stop allowing every skill to go all the way up to 10 anymore.)
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Feb 16, 2024 19:54
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yeah and they generally note quirks of the skills in the skill descriptions in the later games
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Feb 16, 2024 19:58
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I have no idea how to use 5 masurao, they really just don't seem to have any synergy that I can see the closest I can come up with is two blade dancers using hell slash and the other three all using swallow soar??? aaaaaaaa gotta find those posts in the thread from when someone else was doing 5 masurao before
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Feb 16, 2024 22:21
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Yeah it's a lot harder to build yourself into a corner in later games (around EO4's time imo), namely cause the skill balancing got a lot better. Even the less optimal skill builds will still have your team be wrecking balls. I will note some of the LPs are a bit outdated when it comes to HD since they did update some skills and mechanics. Binds are actually pretty good in EO1, they're also way better in HD and especially post-game because the game tips the scales in your favor a ton in 1. Oh and some skill balancing was tweaked. Provoke went from nearly useless to genuinely making the Protector a good class instead of a mere obligation to have on your party in 1. Healing Touch is also just genuinely absurd instead of questionably useless. quote:-Cloak and Provoke mechanics have been changed to be far more effective. Also if you get to EO2, don't let the Beast's writeup for 2's LPs scare you off from using it. Beast is a MUCH better class in 2 HD than it was in DS.
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Feb 16, 2024 22:29
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That LP was made before the HD versions were probably even thought of lol. The entire purpose was to let people know of the hilarious amounts of bullshit in that game. I find it a lot of fun, but when the enemies aren't beating you over the head with level difference, the labyrinth is just being kinda rude.
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Feb 16, 2024 22:53
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| # ? May 8, 2024 16:28 |
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Endorph posted:For first team, this is just me but I'd say Gladiator/Hoplite/Wildling/Monk/Zodiac is a great beginner team. Wildling can carry you through the first stratum, Hoplite makes bosses way safer, Zodiac clears random encounters for most of the game, Monk has more straightforward/reliable early game healing, Gladiator is just good consistent damage the whole game. Only real issue is that wildling locks you out of the hoplite subclassing ninja. Thank you for the advice! That sounds like a great team, but will that make it harder for my second team to get through since they would have some pretty squishy classes and no real tanks to handle the hits? I know they'll have the later game armor and such, but once I get to the point where the weapons and armor will match the point of the game I'm playing, will I wind up in trouble?
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Feb 16, 2024 23:03
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