The One and Only Etrian Odyssey Thread (DS)
 

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A lot of recent posts to the Nintendo DS thread have been about this game, so I felt it deserved its own area in order to keep that thread for more general discussion.

So, have at it!

My favorite DS game of all time (or at least at the time of this post).

I'm not sure I want to pay full price for this, although it sounds like an interesting diversion. So I put down a bid on ebay recently, will see if I win..

Own Thread, eh?
 

Cool.

Chris_D: If you really like the 'old school' dungeon crawler type RPGs, this is worth full price (but if you can get it for less, obviously go for it). This is one of the few games I have ever paid full price for, and consider it to be worth every dollar of the purchase.

Pixy: Yeah, this game is addicting as hell. You realize, of course, that I blame your recommendation and assistance for the inordinate amount of time I have spent on this game, right? :)

I am a bit bummed, about an aspect of the game that occurs on a somewhat lower floor


FYI, for those of you playing that may be considering adding the skills...

The best you can get out of the TP Regen Skill is 5pts/combat turn.

The 2-Hit Skill is quite nice, and when maxed out (10 pts), it appears that it will perform a 2-hit slightly less than half the time.

If you have an axe specialist, Stunner is a great skill. I have it maxed out & with my Bardiche in the hands of my level 53 Landsknecht, can wallop out around 350-400pts of damage per shot...with the added chance of stunning the opponent...all for a measly 5 TP/shot

Right now my Land is focusing on swords.... but looking over the Axe skills i wonder if that was a good choice. It seems the sword skills lead to getting an extra attack after your alchemist uses a spell, while the axe skills focus on inflicting status effects with the base attack (more similar to a Dark hunter).

Another question for you Etrian pros. Is there a max to the number of status effects a Troubadour can pile on your party? I'm slowly leveling her up to get Relax and Divinity but i'm curious if on the turns after using those skills it is helpful to start piling on other buffs to slowly make the party stronger/tougher.


I also think Groucho just got sick of hearing about Etrian. :lol:

Wow, you guys are way ahead of me - I'm just happy I beat the next FOE after the ragelope... without getting anyone from my party killed. :)

How many hours have you all put in?

I can't really estimate my playtime because i normally kill 15-20 minutes before bed running into the labyrinth and then back out and try to get some exp and crap to sell. I haven't delved deep enough to make an expedition a time consuming thing.

I do have a question though.

Do you eventually get the ability or an item to save your game while in the dungeon? If not do you get the ability to warp back to a point you are out? Like use a warp wire to escape and save and then something else to teleport to the level you were at. Having to walk back down sounds like it would be awful (depending how deep you were and how convoluted the levels are).

There are warp points at the start of each stratum.

Lovely. That is the assurance i needed.

Two-way warps...? Or do you have to go through the lower levels again?

They are two-way.

hours.
 

I plead the fifth. :)

Many, many, many hours...

But my characters are up around level 53ish! :D

More notes:
I went back to go blast the Golem that gave me a beatdown a while ago. I saved, went, saw, met, and destroyed it...and it gave me no XP. argh. WTF?

Video
 

That was...wow...I don't know what that was...wow...man...yeah. That was amusing, entertaining, and more than a little psychotic, all at the same time. I watched it twice.

I just unlocked the Hexer class. Anybody out there have any playing time/tips about Hexers?

I cant find this game anywhere here in Queens...

Humph
 

I had a little problem originally finding the game in my area too. I ended up finding it at a local GameCrazy (Hollywood Video). Good luck.

I can't see videos at worked (youtube is blocked) so no comments from me on the video.

What exactly did you need to do to unlock Hexer? It sounds like a cool class.

Also, do you guys have your mage just maxing one element or splitting time between 2 elements?

Check out the video when you get the chance, it's.. amusing, if you've played the game.

You unlock the other classes as you play, you can't miss them.

I don't even have the sound turned on, and I find it amusing. :)

I'm on to the third FOE, BTW. Now, this one's a b!tch. >:/

Answers
 

As Pixy said, the extra classes will open themselves up during the natural course of play. You should get the Ronin first, followed by the Hexer.

For my mage, I started him out on Fire. I maxed out the "fire up" skill, and kept "fire" at lvl 4 or so, so it only costs 5tp/shot. After acquiring a few points in "flame" and a couple in "inferno", I started building up the Ice skills. Maxed out the "ice up" and followed the same philosophy w/ the other ice skills. Specializing in both has worked out well, because I have stumbled across a few enemies who are resistant to one (e.g fire), but as a consequence of their resistance will be more susceptible to the other (e.g. ice). Right now I am concentrating on maxing out my "flame" and corresponding Ice skill.

Hmmm..
 

Things that cast the Curse ailment on you suck. When hexed, you suffer half the damage you inflict on the enemy. argh. This particularly sucks when a character is capable of causing ~500HP in damage in a single shot.

The 20th floor looks like it is going to be UGLY.

The plot has really started to kick in, still requires grinding though.

Toyed around with the Hexer class a little bit. Not overly impressed, but I can see where it would be useful at the higher levels, assuming that the skill progression was well planned in advance.

Heh, I just got to the fifth floor myself. I'm strong enough to take out the two Stalkers, though... no more running around them! :D

I'm now fully exploring floor 3. I just owned the Stalker once but now when i run into them they kick me around. Once there were two and i did not last that long. :lol:

I'm trying to level my Dark Hunter now to get some extra points in the binding attacks. I need a higher bind rate.

fun stuff
 

Yeah...that's one of the really fun addictive elements. Its really fun to go inflict a merciless beatdown after doing some leveling up on a FOE that once kicked your party's *&&.

Floor 20 is turning into a power leveling fiesta.

OK, so I've gone through the whole fourth floor - where's this alpha wolf they're talking about (Fenrir)?

Hmmm...
 

Keep Going...

I would advise you to spend a little time leveling before you "keep going" though...

Good luck!

Ok, I think I'll jump on the Etrian Odyssey bandwagon also, seeing as how I just walked into a store and saw that the price of the game has now dropped to $29.99 CDN. Take away from that the couple of bucks in store credit I have left there and it's $27.99. Apparently, according to Amazon.com, this game has now been discontinued, and I guess it won't drop in price any further.

Looks like this game has now been discontinued. I saw a few for $29.99 CDN at an HMV here in Toronto yesterday. Just to be safe, I'm going to pick it up today. The only places I've ever seen them selling at here were at EB Games and HMV. The game seems to have dried up at most/some HMVs, and I haven't seen it at my local EBs in a while either.

I picked it up on Amazon when it came out, $30 there, $40 in stores. -eek-

I got my littlest brother hooked on the game.

He started playing it and then called me that evening bemoaning the fact that, "A butterfly kicked my ass."

:lol:

He thinks it is also really hard but agrees it kind of hooks you to keep up the grind. He is also only 13 so he never played the grinding RPGs that i grew up with.

Nice! :lol:

I'm in the middle of the fif stratum right now, going back and forth from exploring that to trying to get a few quests done and also refighting previous bosses in hopes of good rare drops. I was playing it in the car the other night on the was to the symphony and my girlfriend says "You're STILL playing that game?!" Has it really been that long?

Fun stuff, xmiyux! :D

I just found the Fenrir... darn pack of wolves! I think I need to level more.

I just picked this up today at Gamestop used for 25. It has the manual and everything, and they didn't have it new so there you go. I only know about this game from this thread, but I'm excited to get into it later today after work.

Do people have any non-spoiler tips to increase my enjoyment of the game. I don't have a lot of "dungeon-crawler" experience except for maybe Vagrant Story which I don't remember being good at due to not really knowing what to do, and getting stuck somewhere and giving up.

It is really pretty self-explanatory with little chance of getting lost. Just be ready for the grind.

The important thing is to start out with a decent party. Have a heavy hitter, a medic, and an alchemist. Then pick two other classes you like. I run with a Landsknekt, Dark Hunter (the front line), Alchemist, Troubadour, Medic (the back line).

Five in your party at a time? Sounds fun.

Oh, so the grind is fun? I didn't mind leveling up in old games too much. However I did enjoy breaking it up in different towns and villages. I'm assuming there are no new towns or villages. So other than different areas of the dungeon, what keeps the game exciting?

See, I HATE all the towns and villages in RPGs (especially modern ones, ugh), I consider them needless, boring downtime from killing monsters and finding treasure. Yeah, Etrian Odyssey is basically all dungeon crawling.. the cartography adds a bit to it as well, as well as the quest system.

Really? You even hated them in older RPG's? I don't know I like going into people's houses and stealing stuff out of their cupboards. I like interacting with characters, and I also enjoy leveling up my characters. I do like to have a story as well.

Is the game beatable? I probably will find all this out when I play it, but being bored at work I figured I would ask this question. Believe me, I don't mind grinding. I have gotten my characters up to level 99 in FF3, Chrono Trigger, and FF7. (I know you hate FF7 Pixy, but I didn't find it that bad. FF3 was my introduction to RPG's back when I was in 8th grade so I don't have an insane amount of RPG experience.)

I'm just trying to get a feel for the game. Everyone here seems to enjoy it so much that I'm sure I'll find it highly addictive.

OK, I'm at about a level 4, and I can already see the appeal. This game is really fun. I love quests and mission based games, when they aren't flying a hard to control plane around.

Level 4 already? And you just picked it up today?! Dang, how long have you been playing?