Gaming Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard

[DarkCrudus]

this game is gonna own =] according to ebgames its being shipped today! woo!

 

[Ferrariman]

The first game was boring and tiring and had way to much grinding. Meh.

 

[Rehehelly]

Iunno..
Maybe i'm not one for the type of game it is, but I found EO 1 to be rather, boring.

 

[Rayder]

Hopefully they balanced out the gameplay in the sequel. The first got too hard too quickly forcing you to level grind just to continue. That crap got old quick.

 

[GuardianHX]

Some people love it. Me being one of them.

The first 3 floors are REALLY slow, but after that, everything speeds up alot (With the exception of leveling up enough to fight Fenrir), though it slows down again around the 8th floor or so (From what I've heard.) and picks up once again on floor 14.

Also, I do believe the European version is more balanced, so it's a bit better. (Though I can't say for sure.)

The story actually starts to pick up after awhile as well, and it becomes quite interesting. :3

It's alot easier if you know which skills to use, and how to arrange your party as well.
Such as having a Medic with Immunize or a Protector with Defender, and having your Alchemist focus on only one or two elemental branches.

Farming at item points and and selling them for money, then resting, and repeating, can net enough cash to buy whatever you need.

I bought, like, 20 Medicas. That made the 4th floor and the 5th a breeze. XD

 

[Commander]

Never been a big fan of this genre due to the sheer tediousness of it.

Might still check it out though.

~Commander

 

[Ruri]

Some people love it. Me being one of them.

The first 3 floors are REALLY slow, but after that, everything speeds up alot (With the exception of leveling up enough to fight Fenrir), though it slows down again around the 8th floor or so (From what I've heard.) and picks up once again on floor 14.

Also, I do believe the European version is more balanced, so it's a bit better. (Though I can't say for sure.)

The story actually starts to pick up after awhile as well, and it becomes quite interesting. :3

It's alot easier if you know which skills to use, and how to arrange your party as well.
Such as having a Medic with Immunize or a Protector with Defender, and having your Alchemist focus on only one or two elemental branches.

Farming at item points and and selling them for money, then resting, and repeating, can net enough cash to buy whatever you need.

I bought, like, 20 Medicas. That made the 4th floor and the 5th a breeze. XD

It depends totally on your party composition and the skills you choose. If you have a good party, there should be no need for any grinding at all (and if you find yourself grinding seriously, you should definitely just kick someone out of your party and replace them -- which will require a bit of time to get the new person's levels up, but it's worth it. Etrian Odyssey is totally unplayable with a badly-chosen party.)

I recommend the following:

Get a Troubadour with maxed Relaxing. Relaxing is the most important skill in the game. Note that Relaxing is percentage-based, so it won't seem to recover much at first (5% TP a turn even when maxed). But the thing is, your TP is always going up as you gain levels, while eventually the cost of your skills will cap. Early on it means you never run out of TP, which helps quite a bit, but in the late game it will let you cast all your most powerful spells every turn, which is an easy win. Note that since is percentage based, all your casters should also max TP up (which will increase their Relaxing TP recovery.)

Second, get a medic with salve 2 as soon as you can. With the troubadour recovering your TP, the medic will eventually be able to cast salve 2 every turn. Max their TP up and TP recovery (which stacks with relaxing), and your medic will be able to cast Salve 2 each turn against bosses very early in the game. After that, only status attacks and one-hit kills can hurt you, and your medic can get skills to guard against those. Get Immunize to reduce being one-shotted by elemental damage. If your Troubadour gets Stamina, that can help guard against being one-shotted by damage, too (50% HP increase at max FTW), but remember that you can only have 3 buffs at once... I hope they fixed that in the sequel, since it really was annoying. But anyway, against tough opponents, your medic should cast Salve 2 every single turn whether you need it or not, since the enemy might hit you and that will let you recover. With Relaxing and maxed TP recovery, they should never be at risk of running out of TP.

If you don't want TP recovery (it does cost 10 skill points for something that Relaxing will eventually do much better), just buy lots of TP-recovering items before major boss fights.

The rest of your party can be whatever you want, really. Bindings help against many early bosses and encounters. Alternatively, a Ronin can do a ton of damage with the right skills. A protector can help reduce damage and keep your party from being killed in one hit from heavy hits.

For an alchemist (or anyone else who can get a poison attack), take poison and max it before you do anything else. Poison's 255 damage a turn will slaughter nearly everything right up until you meet the second strata boss -- even Fenrir is vulnerable to it (well, he's resistant, so you'll have to try a few times, but it'll stick eventually, and then he goes down in like three turns). This is very good for a Relaxing-focused party, since Relaxing doesn't help so much until later levels and you're going to want to mostly invest in expensive skills. Some people complain that Poison gets weaker later on because the damage is capped, but random encounters last more turns later in the game, too, which balances it out. Plus, some enemies resist all elements or magic in general -- but many of those will be affected by poison. Also, it ignores the 'curse' damage-reflection effect, which is sometimes nice.

More importantly, Poison has another hidden advantage when combined with Relaxing: Poison damage and Relaxing recovery are applied at the same time. This lets your alchemist (and the rest of your party) recover TP by using poison to kill random encounters. Once my alchemist was high enough level to regain decently far about 6 TP a turn, random encounters were no longer a threat. After you have poison, have your alchemist go straight for the top-rank elemental attacks. Fire is good, but it doesn't really matter which; as long as you skip the first- and second- rank skills, you'll have enough to get the top-rank attacks in every element, eventually (although focus on maxing one first.) These cost lots of TP, but with relaxing you can afford it.

Everyone else should get their most expensive damage techniques, since your Troubadour's Relaxing ability will let you spam them relentlessly.

It's hard to know what else a Troubadour should get (because of the stupid 3-buff limit). Erasure can help a huge amount against some opponents, so put one point in it. Put one point in their attack-up and defense-up buffs, too -- not because they help much with just one point (they don't, and they're not worth a precious buff slot), but because they reverse the corrisponding stat-down affects, which can be extremely dangerous. Even if your enemy uses an extremely powerful stat-down effect, even one point in the appropriate stat-up song will let you reverse it easily.

Also, don't forget items. The item that recovers status ailments (Thercia A or B, I think?) affects your entire party. Always bring several of those, and several nectars.

Oh, and if you're ever unsure what your Troubadour should get, go for Divinity. The buff limit means that you'll want it eventually (you're just going to run out of useful slots for other Troubadour powers), and 30% xp boost is a big thing -- a party with Divinity is always going to be a few levels above one without it. (You might say 'eh, I'll just grind more', but no matter how much you grind -- up until level 70, anyway -- you'll always be lower level than a party with Divinity would be if they wasted the same amount of time.) It also lets you change your party much more easily, and helps eliminate grinding.

 

[ConraDargo]

this game is gonna own =] according to ebgames its being shipped today! woo!

Cool I'm glad to hear that!

I'm keeping an eye on it, won't purchase it but I'm willing to give it a go since I thought the first game was kinda fun and stuff. Hopefully this sequel will play even better

 

[Doomsday Forte]

Geez Ruri, that all almost makes me want to take up the first EO again.

 

[MyauChanDesu]

the first one was way too boring, but i'll still try the second one...

 

[GuardianHX]

Some people love it. Me being one of them.

The first 3 floors are REALLY slow, but after that, everything speeds up alot (With the exception of leveling up enough to fight Fenrir), though it slows down again around the 8th floor or so (From what I've heard.) and picks up once again on floor 14.

Also, I do believe the European version is more balanced, so it's a bit better. (Though I can't say for sure.)

The story actually starts to pick up after awhile as well, and it becomes quite interesting. :3

It's alot easier if you know which skills to use, and how to arrange your party as well.
Such as having a Medic with Immunize or a Protector with Defender, and having your Alchemist focus on only one or two elemental branches.

Farming at item points and and selling them for money, then resting, and repeating, can net enough cash to buy whatever you need.

I bought, like, 20 Medicas. That made the 4th floor and the 5th a breeze. XD

It depends totally on your party composition and the skills you choose. If you have a good party, there should be no need for any grinding at all (and if you find yourself grinding seriously, you should definitely just kick someone out of your party and replace them -- which will require a bit of time to get the new person's levels up, but it's worth it. Etrian Odyssey is totally unplayable with a badly-chosen party.)

I recommend the following:

Get a Troubadour with maxed Relaxing. Relaxing is the most important skill in the game. Note that Relaxing is percentage-based, so it won't seem to recover much at first (5% TP a turn even when maxed). But the thing is, your TP is always going up as you gain levels, while eventually the cost of your skills will cap. Early on it means you never run out of TP, which helps quite a bit, but in the late game it will let you cast all your most powerful spells every turn, which is an easy win. Note that since is percentage based, all your casters should also max TP up (which will increase their Relaxing TP recovery.)

Second, get a medic with salve 2 as soon as you can. With the troubadour recovering your TP, the medic will eventually be able to cast salve 2 every turn. Max their TP up and TP recovery (which stacks with relaxing), and your medic will be able to cast Salve 2 each turn against bosses very early in the game. After that, only status attacks and one-hit kills can hurt you, and your medic can get skills to guard against those. Get Immunize to reduce being one-shotted by elemental damage. If your Troubadour gets Stamina, that can help guard against being one-shotted by damage, too (50% HP increase at max FTW), but remember that you can only have 3 buffs at once... I hope they fixed that in the sequel, since it really was annoying. But anyway, against tough opponents, your medic should cast Salve 2 every single turn whether you need it or not, since the enemy might hit you and that will let you recover. With Relaxing and maxed TP recovery, they should never be at risk of running out of TP.

If you don't want TP recovery (it does cost 10 skill points for something that Relaxing will eventually do much better), just buy lots of TP-recovering items before major boss fights.

The rest of your party can be whatever you want, really. Bindings help against many early bosses and encounters. Alternatively, a Ronin can do a ton of damage with the right skills. A protector can help reduce damage and keep your party from being killed in one hit from heavy hits.

For an alchemist (or anyone else who can get a poison attack), take poison and max it before you do anything else. Poison's 255 damage a turn will slaughter nearly everything right up until you meet the second strata boss -- even Fenrir is vulnerable to it (well, he's resistant, so you'll have to try a few times, but it'll stick eventually, and then he goes down in like three turns). This is very good for a Relaxing-focused party, since Relaxing doesn't help so much until later levels and you're going to want to mostly invest in expensive skills. Some people complain that Poison gets weaker later on because the damage is capped, but random encounters last more turns later in the game, too, which balances it out. Plus, some enemies resist all elements or magic in general -- but many of those will be affected by poison. Also, it ignores the 'curse' damage-reflection effect, which is sometimes nice.

More importantly, Poison has another hidden advantage when combined with Relaxing: Poison damage and Relaxing recovery are applied at the same time. This lets your alchemist (and the rest of your party) recover TP by using poison to kill random encounters. Once my alchemist was high enough level to regain decently far about 6 TP a turn, random encounters were no longer a threat. After you have poison, have your alchemist go straight for the top-rank elemental attacks. Fire is good, but it doesn't really matter which; as long as you skip the first- and second- rank skills, you'll have enough to get the top-rank attacks in every element, eventually (although focus on maxing one first.) These cost lots of TP, but with relaxing you can afford it.

Everyone else should get their most expensive damage techniques, since your Troubadour's Relaxing ability will let you spam them relentlessly.

It's hard to know what else a Troubadour should get (because of the stupid 3-buff limit). Erasure can help a huge amount against some opponents, so put one point in it. Put one point in their attack-up and defense-up buffs, too -- not because they help much with just one point (they don't, and they're not worth a precious buff slot), but because they reverse the corrisponding stat-down affects, which can be extremely dangerous. Even if your enemy uses an extremely powerful stat-down effect, even one point in the appropriate stat-up song will let you reverse it easily.

Also, don't forget items. The item that recovers status ailments (Thercia A or B, I think?) affects your entire party. Always bring several of those, and several nectars.

Oh, and if you're ever unsure what your Troubadour should get, go for Divinity. The buff limit means that you'll want it eventually (you're just going to run out of useful slots for other Troubadour powers), and 30% xp boost is a big thing -- a party with Divinity is always going to be a few levels above one without it. (You might say 'eh, I'll just grind more', but no matter how much you grind -- up until level 70, anyway -- you'll always be lower level than a party with Divinity would be if they wasted the same amount of time.) It also lets you change your party much more easily, and helps eliminate grinding.

Wow, I've read a few faqs and stuff, but your post is one of the most helpful things so far! I just started a Troubadour, so now I know what I should focus on the most.

Excuse me while I copy your entire post into a text document to stick on my flashcard.

 

[ojsinnerz.]

God.... I really need to finish the first one faster.... I'm only at Lv 14....

 

[Private|Par]

I had NO idea how to use skills in the first one.... And I died in my first battle. It looks like a great game... But I have no idea how the combat WORKS.

 

[Kaos]

I'm on floor 20 in the first one.

The sheer number of FOEs on this floor... my god.

Thank god they don't respawn for 14 days.

 

[dgwillia]

i gave up on the floor with the ants/ant queen, that floor was unfair >_>, you kill one ant 2 more spawn, frieken get right infront of the queen and get swarmed by 2 different ant teams, >_> got to the queen and all my characters were in the red with little to no mp.

 

[Ruri]

i gave up on the floor with the ants/ant queen, that floor was unfair >_>, you kill one ant 2 more spawn, frieken get right infront of the queen and get swarmed by 2 different ant teams, >_> got to the queen and all my characters were in the red with little to no mp.

You're not supposed to attack the ants around the queen (it's suicide, the queen will keep respawning them and they'll slaughter you.) You're supposed to attack the queen directly. It's not an easy fight, so bring recovery items.

In the other parts of the ant lair, there are 'guardants', I think they're called, that you have to kill to stop the ants in that area from respawning (they're immobile in the corner. Obviously, it's important to reach them fast.) But the ones near the queen will only stop respawning when the queen is dead.

 

[HeatMan Advance]

People already have EO II and they say it's great.

I'm glad I finished the first one a week ago. Now I just have to totally finish all the side quest and find all the monsters and items.

 

[El-ahrairah]

People need to dump it, then.

...Please, of course.

 

[anime_junkie]

I never even got past Floor 26 in the first one...

Amazing game, though. My favorite RPG on the DS. The music is excellent, here's hoping the music in II will be just as good! Oh, and forget the optimal party builds, My team will have a Gunner, Dark Hunter, Protector, Alchemist, Medic. Because Dark Hunters are AWESOME. I love binds, they save my ass so much. Do you get all the classes at the start, or do they make you unlock classes, like in the first?

 

[DarkCrudus]

People need to dump it, then.

...Please, of course.

i know rite v.v i keep checkin here to see if its been dumped ever 5seconds it feels like and it aint here