Topic: Etrian Odyssey Nexus

I just finished Kingdom Hearts 3 so I'm planning on doing a marathon of the whole EO series. I picked up all the other entries throughout 2018 when I found a cheap copy and picked up Nexus today (juuust in case it's not produced for very long since it's released near the end of the 3DS's life). I haven't gotten around to any of them yet but I'm going to start EOU today and work my way up.

Hah. A group of three tree rats took me 9 turns to kill.

Anyway, it's nice to see the lush woodlands again. Quite nostalgic~

First floor mapped and done. This game definitely starts out different then the norm with the overworld map. Also having the first 2 missions only text based was odd.

First boss wasn't too bad. It did take out one of my characters right at the end before I could finish it off. I hate it when my characters leveling evenly is off.

Sheesh all of a sudden the game just throws a boss at you. I got it very close to death but the thing started killing everyone in one hit. Oh well. Off to grind we go.

@Delibheel The boss after the first main floor that you had map, or one further past that?

It's in the lush woodlands.

Not sure if I should spoil the surprise any further, but when I say "the game throws it at you", I'm being almost literal.

Whenever that happens, I build a new party of characters and include the slain character from my old party, and proceed to grind until their EXP is roughly equal to the other characters in the old party. Then I simply re-insert the older character and go on my way~

This approach got a bit hairy in EO5 when I would keep dropping some of the my characters down two levels to rearrange their skill spread for new boss fights throughout the game, though.

I don’t mind as long as they stay around the same levels. Like, one late level 9 in a team of early level 10s.

But if they lag too far behind then it is kinda annoying. I don’t think that’s super common in these games though.

@Ralizah That's not a half bad idea. I also just picked up the equip item that slowly levels those characters sitting there as well. Guess I need to make at least 4 more characters.

I read dropping the difficulty to picnic is a nice way to recover the 2 lost levels quickly, since you can just mindlessly grind, and you get more exp.

@Spoony_Tech At least modern Etrian games give your characters ways to harvest from the environment effectively so that you don't have to create teams of resource harvesters to run in and chop and mine everything in a given level and then get out before something big and mean kills them.

So I've gotten this game and I think I need to read a little more about the core basics of it as I don't really get the mapping system and got slayed in the first dungeon I entered, on a mission helping a girl to find her dog. LOL, I'm not used to this kind of RPG. 😝

Here's my guild card:

Keep in mind these are region locked, so it will only work in American copies of the game.

Sorry... Total n00b here.

So after discovering the auto-mapping function, I figured that way of playing would be more suitable for me, at least in the beginning. What I focus on now is to grind.

Am I correct that the experience points I've earned on a run disappears when I die during it (it's just the mapping of the labyrinth that is saved)? Because now I'm very cautious and return to the city every once in a while to heal up, buy some new items and save my progress, so that I don't lose the EXP, before returning to the labyrinth. It feels like a very grindy game, with it taking time to level up.

Another question: is there any easy way to earn money? I sell the items the enemies drops, but it doesn't seem I get money from winning battles.

Also: will there be items or skills introduced later on that helps regain TP?

@Quarth

My suggestion (just a suggestion), would be to turn off auto-mapping completely and focus on manually mapping your environment. The dungeons in these games are complex, beautiful, and are designed to be explored, instead of simply navigated, as with most gridders. You still fill in a floor tile whenever you walk on a space, but the dungeons are filled with secrets, fake walls that allow you to take short-cuts, notes, items on the ground, etc. What I do is: as soon as I take a step, I turn toward the walls around me to check for secrets, then map them, and continue doing this throughout a dungeon. If I enter a new area, I'll visually survey it to see if there's an obvious trap or hazard, and then proceed to fill in all the floor tiles as I map out the walls, doors, harvest points, etc. If anything feels weird about a random spot in a dungeon (say, a character gets a weird feeling, or there's a lost shoe, or something), then always mark it on the map, as those spots are usually important for future quests where you'll need to find or slay something. You have a really detailed toolset for marking these dungeons, so take advantage of it.

The mapping system is one of the most unique aspects of these games, and I think it makes sense to fully learn how to manipulate it and get yourself into a particularly Etrian-esque mindset when you enter a dungeon, because it's your mapping skills that will help to keep you alive, more than almost anything else.

When you die, you lose everything but your map data, which can help you avoid death in the future. To minimize the instances of death in the dungeons, not only should you frequently return to town to heal when your characters are running low on HP/TP, but you should also ALWAYS have at least two ariadne threads for emergency escapes from the dungeon. These are dangerous places, so you want to be prepared to deal with worst-case scenarios.

As for making money: I don't know how many harvest points are available to you at this point, but make sure you mark them on the map, as those, alongside loot drops from monsters, will be your primary form of income generation. Selling items to your vendor will also gradually unlock newer and more powerful weapons/armor/items to purchase from them, so it helps to keep an eye on the bestiary and learn what loot drops from which beasties. Sometimes loot will only drop on special conditions, as when you beat a monster with a certain type of skill.

There are items that help you regain TP, but NEVER NEVER use them outside of battle, as they're rare and often extremely helpful during particularly vicious boss encounters. Think of them like... magnum rounds in a Resident Evil game. You don't waste those on normal zombies. You wait until you're being bullrushed by a Tyrant, y'know?

The one exception is food, as that can't be used during battle. If there's a cooking system in this one, then food can help you keep your TP levels up during a run in a dungeon. But NEVER use items focused solely on TP regeneration unless it's the difference between life and death in a boss battle, because, believe me, it WILL come to that with some of them.

I'm not sure how it is in this one (haven't started yet), but most of these games have classes with passive TP restoration skills, so you could invest in that. There are also usually spots throughout the dungeons (again, MARK THEM ASAP!) that will heal your HP/TP.

@Ralizah Thanks for the advice! I will try mapping on my own, I think I kinda get how it works now. This is my first EO game.

That was excellent advice from @Ralizah. With Etrian Odyssey, you have to get used to the idea that each trip into the labyrinth will only develop the map a little bit more. As Ralizah says, you have to check out all the walls and points of interest. You also need to make sure you've got all the drops from the enemies you've encountered so far. Selling conditional drop items will make much better equipment become available for sale. Look at the Monster Codex to get hints about how to get conditional drops. For example, if a monster is weak to Arm Bind, you might get a conditional drop if you defeat it when its arms are bound.

Make sure you have classes in your party that can do all the main things. In the front row, I find the new Hero class very good, and I personally have a Pugilist for Head/Arm/Leg binds. I always have a Zodiac in the back row for Fire/Ice/Volt, and a Medic, of course. You can actually have a Medic in the front row if you're going to concentrate on the staff skills, but that's another matter. I've left out the status skills like Curse/Petrify etc because I'm not sure which class is best for those yet, but you'll want them eventually.

Harvested items from Chop/Mine/Take points get you the most money (conditional drops are valuable too), but the way to play these games is to stay in a small portion of the labyrinth until you've used up most of your TP, then head back to town. Make sure you have enough money left for a night at the Inn, and gradually buy better equipment. Unfortunately you won't be able to get everything you want in one go, but you'll be able to afford it fast enough.

@MetalKingShield Thanks for excellent advice from you as well! It seems like one needs to move forward in tiny steps. But that's kinda good for smaller play sessions, which is what I have time for nowadays. Will see how I fare onwards.

@Quarth I would also suggest making at least one character of every class. There is an item you get pretty early on called memory conch. Equip that on someone in the back row and all those characters you created will slowly level up over time. You never know when you might need a skill you currently dont have in your party. Plus the good thing will be that character you need you can just dump all their skill point in the one skill if necessary.

https://reinasakuraba.github.io/EO-Skill-Sim/eox/

I forget if I've posted this yet, but I'll just leave this here for those of you who like knowing how you'll want to build a character in advance.

@Quarth Great! It's one of those series that has a slightly higher learning curve than normal (similar to one of Atlus' other big series, Shin Megami Tensei), but I've always found these games to be incredibly rewarding.

@MetalKingShield I always played these games with an extremely similar party set-up (tank, medic, elemental user, pure attacker, and then usually someone who either inflicted binds or ailments), but EO5's bonkers classes really threw me off for a while. In the end, though, it led to some interesting changes, such as playing through the vast majority of the game without a dedicated healer, and learning to adapt to the bunker system (which I'm actually quite fond of now) as opposed to using a protector to line guard every turn.