I'm personally finding the game easier then the rest by far so far. Money hasn't been an issue as of yet. I'm still sitting on over 7000 with pretty much everything I need already bought.

Just a tip for the side line characters if you want to level them up and not use them. More then likely you will need one at some point and you might have to grind for levels. The tip is before you turn in your missions change your party to just those party members. All that experience goes right to them and don't be surprised if they go up a level or two depending on how much experience you get. I've been doing that and they level up pretty quick!

@Tech...good pointer thanks.

And where is the scarlet plain/pillar or whatever its called.

It's the second land mass you can venture to. It's behind that hand looking statue by the Lush Woodlands.

The scarlet pillars is the second land, you find it after defeating the Berserker King (or whatever he was named).

On a side note, has anyone taken the "slain the mist monster" quest? The monster is supposed to appear between 7 and 9 am on a part of the first of a certain dungeon, but I'm having a hard time finding it in time.

Oh...that place! I assume I need to find a "key" in the lush woodlands to enter?

@Tech...so now you're further than me?

Yup! It's right behind the berserker king, you need to defeat him to be able to interact with it.

I thought the berserker King wasn't to hard. I believe I was level 18 or 19 there and I had forgot to add my skill point to my characters. I had 6 skill points just sitting there for each character. I like to let them build up for a few levels before I allocate them. I hate doing only one at a time!

@Morphtroid I'm not that far yet. I just got the ability to fly higher. Thanks btw for that help!

A tip for the berserker king: Try to get him from behind for a free turn.

Jesus christ, the berserker king was a real tough cookie! I'm glad I invested in my Fortress' defense boost skill, as it was what allowed me to keep my weaker characters alive after he executed one of those attacks that hits the entire party.

Tip on berserker king: he seems to use counter the turn immediately following his super attack. Don't physically attack him on that turn or he'll get in free shots on your characters.

The bounding beasts are pushovers now, though.

Anyone know where to get the key for the locked box in the Valley Spring?

Okay, now I'm playing Etrian Odyssey III to tide me over and get a better idea of what the differences between this and EOIV are. So far...I wish this game had the skill tree from EOIV, because the level requirements for all these crazy skills are completely bananas. I do think I'll miss the creativeness of the classes in EO3, though.

2 more reviews just in. Both 90% one from EGM and the other IGN. Both kinda surprise me as they can be brutal sometimes!! Up to 88% now.

I finally unlocked the Arcanist class

SPOILERS

Not only that, but the arcanist guest member I mentioned earlier actually joined my team for good! That's great since I don't really like the idea of training one from level 1 and I already got used to her... Plus, her character art is special (you can't create a character that looks like her)... Though I may train one myself, just in case.

On a side note, I finally had both balloon explorers as guest members too, the blonde guy is a Fortress and the girl is a Dancer. I thought that was worth mentioning.

By the way, now that some of my characters are level 30, I noticed you can "retire" them to get enhaced characters. Anyone has tried that? I don't really enjoy the idea of retiring my characters.

so she stays with you after that boss 2 battle.... that boss is a hard one .. level 28 and still cant beat it ..

ANYONE KNOW WHERE THE MOTH GARDEN IS (the Number and LETTER on the map ) THANKS

The moth garden is being guarded by the only giant lizard-thing foe in the scalet pillars, you can't miss it.

You need to defeat him or find a way to distract him.

About the second boss, yeah, even though I'm playing on casual she gave me a hard time. My tip is, don't kill her guards because then she'll move to the front line and she'll hit harder.

Wow...it is NOT a good idea to take on the Berserker King when he is being supported by 2 Blood Bears!

Oh great, now I need something to make my airship go higher. I wonder if these fetch quests for other adventurers have anything to do with it.

Those dream eaters in the second land are tough; they keep putting my party to sleep. :/

I have retired a few characters. You get a brand new recruit that starts at half the level of the old character with a maximum starting level of 30. The benefit is that you get extra skill points and stats depending on the level you retired at. The bonus starts at 3-4 stat/skill points and goes up by one every 10 levels. The best benefit is +10 SP and +10 All Stats at level 99.

All locked chests have quests at the Inn that give you the key. If it's not available yet, it should be later. The adventures do indeed give you some special items and parts for fullfilling their requests. However, the ability to fly higher is not one of them. Just thought I'd tell you so you don't end up wasting hours trying to get food for them.

Well, amazingly, with very little grinding and multiple retires, my whole team is level 65 at the 4th land, on Normal difficulty. Minions get Follow Trace -> Assassinated by my Nightseeker almost immediately (I got three double assassinations in a row yesterday, including multiple FOEs later) or poisoned and take 700+ damage a turn. I might have to retire them all and change things up.

Ah, thanks. I'd forgotten about the quests since I completed all of the ones available earlier. And yeah, I just discovered what I needed to make my ship go higher. Thanks, though. Weirdly, after I got one really nice item from one of the other adventurers after giving her a Sakura Trout, she took off. I haven't seen her since. Another group was stranded in the second land, and since i helped them, I haven't seem them since either .Weird. The bounding beasts don't seem to be regenerating either. I was hoping they'd come back so I could farm them for their item drops.

Sounds like you found a bit of a game breaker there. I should probably make a Nightseeker. I haven't bothered creating any characters outside of my first team (thanks to harvesting materials from the dungeons becoming much more accessible, I don't have to create teams whose sole purpose in life is to devote skill points to chopping/pulling herbs/whatever like I did in the first game). I might rest some of my characters soon, as some of their skill point distributions aren't optimal.

FOEs on the map respawn after exactly one week of in game time. The easiest way to get them to spawn is to go to the Inn in Tharsis and sleep for seven days. The Inn costs roughly the total of your active character's levels per day, so you can lower the price to the minimum of 50em by temporarily changing your party to a singular new recruit while you rest. The Red and Blue Balloon adventures give you two ship items and one accessory each for every land. So, if you want everything, complete their requests several times each. They usually respawn once a day, although they may only appear on the map at certain times of day. The Blue one tends to requests rare plants and fish whilst the red one requests rare meat and birds.

Also, I think I broke the game as soon as I reached level 60 in the fourth land. Here's my favourite combinations of classes/subclasses, though. If you haven't unlocked the last three classes, don't read, since these builds use all three.

Nightseeker -> Arcanist – A master proficiency for a Nightseeker makes him deal 280% damage to ailing foes, while a maxed Shadow Bite does 440% damage. So, against an ailing foe a single Shadow Bite deals around 1200% damage. Half the time Follow Trace will activate and hit a second time for 80% normal damage, raising it to around 1700% average damage. That's pretty high. If the enemy was ailing with Poison that's another 750 damage every turn. Assassinate works around 70% of the time against healthy foes for me and 90% of the time when the foe is ailing. Arcanist subclass allows the Nightseeker to restore 8 TP every time they inflict an ailment and greatly increases the odds of doing so in the first place. Options include investing in Eye skills to lower all enemies' attack and defense at once, or Bracing Walk to heal the whole party with every step.

Bushi -> Nightseeker – A master proficiency and a few points in Healing Way makes a Bushi heal 90 HP and 12 TP every normal attack. Master the Nightseeker's Blade Flurry and they can equip a Mace and a Katana at once. The result is that they can use all of their Mace and Katana skills as well as double strike on normal attacks for 180+ HP and 24 TP free recovery. Plus, they have their own skill that boosts damage when two weapons are equipped, making it a natural combination. Options include higher level Blood Rage since the health penalty matters less with dual Nightseeker recovery and Endure for free revival once per battle. Great endurance.

Runemaster -> Imperialist – A Runemaster's greatest foes is their limited TP pool. Using maxed Runic Gleam, Runic Flare, Runic Guidance and Rune Mastery allows them to deal impressive damage. Toss in the Imperial's Damage Boost for 16% more damage, Converter to recover 5 TP on every weakness hit and Finisher to recover 5 TP every enemy killed and you get a powerful mage that doesn't need to worry about TP much as long as they play their cards right.