Binds are important for stronger, non-FOE enemies, but yeah, I'm thinking I'll replace my Sniper with someone else when I get the chance.

I beat the Hollow Queen. I had Wufan bind and poison her, and then just let my Nightseeker spam biding slash, healing when necessary...

Phew...leveled up at 20 and now I can fly up.

Get ready to be put to sleep.......a lot! Prepare for it.

I'm expecting at some point in the game that the ship will be able to go even higher. Certain portions of the map are still too tall for my ship to reach, but they have resources on them.

I hope at some point in the game I'll be strong enough to attack those stupid dragons...

Also, I only have a few quests left to complete for the first two lands, and I can beat any of the monsters in them. It's about time to head on to land 3, I think.

For the heck of it I tried to take on a sheep in the scarlet pillars...all I did was go to sleep and get destroyed.

That's not even the half of it. Just wait till you enter the second labyrinth. Regular enemies get a bit stronger and put you to sleep!

@MERG Another quote fail! Face palm!!

Hey...what can I say!

Just beat the Berserker King. And you know what? Tough. He was tough. My Fortress could take his hits no problem, but everyone else? Not even close. And they all have the best armor at this point, and are at level 16-18. It was a long and arduous battle. The Bloody Bears almost came back to join the bettle (I beat them, then napped)

This game isn't nearly as rage-inducing as the first one was.

Does anyone know what is the max level your team can reach without retiring them?

Sweet jesus, the Sacred Mountains suck. Tornadoes everywhere, confusing geography, tons of overpowered monsters. Also, apparently there are crevices in the caves of this land that actually do huge damage to your party when you try to go through them because of icicles or something.

So, evidently the level cap is 70 at first, but you can raise this by defeating bosses post-game.

@Ralizah — So the game is beatable without having to retire your guild members? I last played Etrian Odyssey II and on that game you had to retire your team members to raise their max level by one. Is it completely different for this game?

I know I'm behind most of you guys but I just got passed the Berserker King. In my party I have a Landsnecht, Nightseeker, and Dancer in the front row and Sniper, Medic in the back row. Wasn't sure if the dynamics would work but it is coming along. The Landsnects' ability to heal the whole party as they venture forth is a godsend! Medic is a no brainer with her ability to heal whole rows of people. The Dancer is awesome for regenerating a row of characters' hp during battle, and the Sniper is awesome for tactically going for the whole row of enemies or one in each row. My weakest link is the Nightseeker. He has been the first to go down (and the reason for do-overs) and his ability except for the knife thing doesn't really add to the group dynamics.

The Berserker king was not that hard despite me having to do a do-over. His counterattack brought my Nightseeker down but I have to admit I had not paid much attention to hp. Anyway, the Landsnecht was awesome! He has the ability to lower an enemy's strength of attack and there were several times that the Berserker King was about to unleash something nasty only to be stunned (or something to that effect. In all, it took me around 1/2 hour to put him down.

I've been trying to complete all the QR quests. So far I've completed 3 of them. One thing that bothers me in this game is that the number to stor your stuff is so low. You can onlystore 10 different items with a total of 60 when storing multiples of those 10. Anyway, with the Berserker king down, it may get me close to 20th level for all my characters.

Storage room goes up with the game.

Dang I forgot about the qr quests. I couldn't even do two of them when I scan them last week. Now to go find which page those were on!

The only bonus for retiring now is additional skill points and a boost in all stats. The boosts don't stack; only the most recent bonus applies. Thus, it's not really worth retiring until you want to either change a character's class or a character reaches the level cap.

There's a lot of them on this page.

Unless your Landsnecht is link-based, your Nightseeker should actually deal more damage eventually. Focus on maxing his Blade Flurry, Sand Throw and Nerve Throw abilities along with his proficiency. Blind an enemy and their accuracy will be crippled, plus all of the Nightseeker's attacks will deal double damage–triple at master proficiency. End game, they are a very nice class. Shadow Bite with Status Mastery and master level proficiency deals very high damage and may trigger twice with Follow Trace, while Assassinate has a high rate of instant death, often instantly killing ailing FOEs and normal enemies. Their Poison is also among the best in the game, dealing over 700 points of damage a turn when Venom Throw is maxed out, compared to the Arcanist's 300.

Also, when the Berserker King is charging for an attack, any time you deal over a certain amount of damage he'll flinch, regardless of who did the attacking, and be unable to pull off his super attack. IMO, early game, Runemasters are the easiest to deal high damage with, especially given the myriad of elemental weaknesses enemies have. I finished that battle in a few minutes, mostly because my Runemaster could put out so much damage compared to my other characters.

POST-GAME SPOILERS.

So, I finally reached the 6th stratum after killing the final boss. Take the Echoing Library and make every wall a bookcase soaked in blood. Slap some charcoal tiles on the floor, hide creepy notes everywhere and fill the place with miasma; viola, the Hall of Darkness. There is no normal music aside from a dark ambiance track. The battle music sounds like something out of an sci-fi movie when aliens are attacking. Also, the first FOE in the area is a Dreameater pallet swap, except instead of putting your characters to sleep he Petrifies them. There is nothing more annoying than having your whole party Petrified and wiped out in one attack.

Just a suggestion for anyone who has yet to reach the Sacred Mountains... FIND SOMEONE WHO CAN BIND THE ENEMY'S HEAD PRETTY RELIABLY. The Tusked Crusher is an absolute nightmare. His one attack hits the entire party, and every time he uses the ability it gets stronger. Lowering his attack doesn't seem to help, and buffing defense didn't do much for me either. But the moment I was able to bind his head, he was helpless, and I finished him off easily. These things are all over the third land, so definitely look into a good binding character.