Topic: Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan

I had to rest characters in the demo because I realized I put some points where I shouldn't have...

Also, Target finally delivered! Got my game two hours ago! Loving the mini-dungeon.

Finished off the Berserker King (not too hard) last night and made it to the scarlet pillars!!

God, those dragons are a real pain when they start flying around on the side of the map you're on!

What does the dragon look like on the Map?

BTW, the enemies on the upper plain on the World Map scared the crap out of me. They never go lower, do they?

Heh, you can't miss them. They're huge, and take up, like, 6 to 9 squares on the map. They move fast, too, so if you don't get somewhere fast and they come in your direction, they'll really mess up your guild by slapping your balloon with their tails.
Don't worry, though, they don't seem to show up until you find something to make your balloon go higher, and the game announces their presence quite dramatically.

No, you're safe from higher elevation enemies until you find that certain something to make your balloon go higher. (Except for the dragons, who will evidently attack you anywhere if you fall within their enormous range).

I got about 2/3rds way to the end before I picked up EO IV. The story is slow in coming with Etrian Odyssey III (and EO in general I guess) but once it kicks in, you'll get really into it. I fought some epic bosses in that game and I stopped just when things were about to get even crazier.

It seems that as the series progresses, it gets easier. I remember EO II being extremely hard. EO III felt a bit easier especially when the passive skills of the Lord? class kicked in (although I still got killed once in a while).

I ordered the game on Amazon, looks like i'll be getting the game soon, but for now, i'll be playing Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Mirror of Fate. So far, I think I agree more with NintendoLife's review then IGN, the circle pad was a problem for IGN, really?

I'd argue that it's just gets more balanced as it goes along. Plus, veterans get more used to the formula, too.

Has anyone beaten the Hollow Queen?! I've been trying all day, but still I fail.

If you can't do it after several attempts, you're usually either underleveled, under-equipped or your party needs to be rebuilt. I was a little overleveled, but I think I just nailed her with Blind + Head Bind and smashed her to pieces with Bursts and magical prowess.

In other news, my whole party reached level 70 at the foot of Yggdrasil, so I retired them. Currently farming Ice Pincers. I eat an EXP ^^^ food myself and feed Happiness Hares to the Pincers to make them shiny. Then I use Holy Gift and kill them. Result? Ten times the EXP. Usually I get around 150k EXP a kill with each kill taking about a minute. Don't forget that monsters have conditional drops, which only drop after performing certain actions in battle. Conditional drops appear as orange text in the monster codex. You can even fight the big bosses (they respawn every 30 game days) of the lands to get special conditionals. ie. making the Hollow Queen kill herself with Curse damage nets you a Cursed Eye. Alternatively, you can use a Formaldehyde and kill the boss normally to get its conditional drop. Formaldehyde are limited in number, though.

Here's a link to the skill simulator for the Japanese version... It lets you set a class and subclass along with current level and retirement level, calculates the Skill Points you'll have and then lets you invest them in both skill trees to your satisfaction. The limit before beating the post-game stuff is a level 70 characters that retired at level 70 before, with a subclass, for a grand total of 85 (69 levels + 8 from retire + 5 from subclass + 3 starting) skill points.

Beat my first and second Bounding Beast. Those things are tough, I gotta tell ya.

You're making my head spin!! I guess ill understand better when I get to that level. I'm still just barely past level 20 with 3 characters.

I hit the second labyrinth tonight and boy do I feel under leveled. Need to do a bit of grinding before I move on to far here!

All of my people are level 29 now and I've explored pretty much every inch of all three floors of the Misty Ravine except for the boss chamber. The maps for the levels of that maze are filled with annotations! I figure I'll go kill whatever's behind that door tomorrow and rescue that little girl.

It's so easy to get money in this game. In previous EO games I always had to fight for hours just to scrape together enough money to buy a new piece of armor or two. In this one, I just bought the highest-quality weapons and armor available for my crew and I still have over $13,000 left.

Fully leveled-up Power Break for my Landsknecht plus significantly leveled-up taunt for my Fortress made those things significantly easier to deal with when I was underleveled. Once you get those in place, and remember to renew them every three turns or so, you can just wail on the things until they go down.

I'm wondering if I should pick this up and wonder how long the game really is?
How many hours have you guys put into it so far?

@RedPandas I just beat the 2nd boss after 26 hours.

Well, the Moth's Garden is a thoroughly unnerving place to explore. One wrong move and you could have three of four of those things swarming you.

I beat her on my second try. My suggestion: have the vessel focus on binding her. The head is most important, but arms and feet don't hurt either. Also, the vessel is fairly effective at poisoning her, which helps a lot. It also helps if you have a powerful Fortress able to cast Line Shield, too. And don't worry about attacking the two minions to either side of her, as she'll just summon new ones as soon as those die.

I didn't use blind, but that definitely couldn't hurt.

If none of that helps, then you might just be under-leveled.

Combining the time I spent on the demo and the time I've spent with the full game (which makes sense given that the save data from the demo transfers over to the full retail copy), I'm 27 hours in to the game and have just unlocked the third major area of the game. There's still several hours of gameplay left in the first two major areas, though, what with quests, extra dungeons, etc. Supposedly, there are two more major in-game areas, followed by a ton of post-game content.

In other words, this is a big game.

I don't have a Landsknecht, I prefer having a dancer along. Guard Tempo + Regen Waltz = one constantly-fully-healed Fortress.

I like leaving my fortress in the back round taunting and defending, with healing wall, every time she defends she gains a little health (and so do my arcanist and medic) so she'll always in good condition.

Patch up(medic) is also pretty useful, when a battle ends, all your characters are healed.... My characters heal like 50 hp.

I'm starting to wonder if a dancer wouldn't have been a better choice than the sniper. The sniper doesn't really do great damage and more often than not she's just the character I use to slap binds on enemies.