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EO4 was the first Etrian Odyssey game where I finished the main story, so I'm excited for this LP. Probably should get back to playing that again since I have to do stuff like kill off the dragons (or the remaining dragons if I at least killed one) and do the post-game dungeon.
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Nov 28, 2021 02:51
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Counter to what others are saying, real life shenanigans interfered with me finishing this game just as I was working through the final segment. Which is a shame, because it really is a stellar game and I think was also my first real foray into the EO series after reading some of the LPs?
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Nov 29, 2021 07:03
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Hi, all. Just confirming this isn't dead after two updates. My co-commentator Kinu has had...a hell of a two months, preventing her from adding her thoughts on Update 3, understandably. I expect that I'll get a new update out before year's end at least. Have a nice holiday season! I'm visiting family back home for the week, personally.
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Dec 17, 2021 23:12
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Rea posted:Hi, all. Just confirming this isn't dead after two updates. My co-commentator Kinu has had...a hell of a two months, preventing her from adding her thoughts on Update 3, understandably. I expect that I'll get a new update out before year's end at least. Fair enough. Thanks for the update, and good luck with the holiday season for the both of you! Even without extra bullshit, the end of the year is always a mess.
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Dec 17, 2021 23:40
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yeah, basically we've had a job-related injury meaning my fiancee had to quit her job, the plumbing in our house broke back in november and won't be fixed until january, and i spent hte last week with an impacted wisdom tooth getting the runaround from quack dentists until I *finally* got it removed yesterday, so I haven't had the brainpower for editing updates
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Dec 17, 2021 23:53
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Rea posted:Hi, all. Just confirming this isn't dead after two updates. My co-commentator Kinu has had...a hell of a two months, preventing her from adding her thoughts on Update 3, understandably. I expect that I'll get a new update out before year's end at least. Kinu Nishimura posted:yeah, basically we've had a job-related injury meaning my fiancee had to quit her job, the plumbing in our house broke back in november and won't be fixed until january, and i spent hte last week with an impacted wisdom tooth getting the runaround from quack dentists until I *finally* got it removed yesterday, so I haven't had the brainpower for editing updates drat, that is a hell of a two months. Take all the time you need, and I hope the rest of this year finally starts to shape up. This is a quality LP and I've got no problem with waiting on the next update.
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Dec 18, 2021 01:28
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I do have a question regarding the mechanics. So restoratives are limited to rare drops and some of them are only available late game. So could you take a build route of passive TP regeneration or TP drain to keep your party topped off?
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Dec 19, 2021 21:48
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Several classes have a means of self-regaining TP in some fashion, so sustain isn't actually as bad as it appears. It's a balancing act, and you're given enough free consumables that restore TP, like Hamaos and Amritas, that it isn't too stressful.
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Dec 19, 2021 22:02
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mastersord posted:I do have a question regarding the mechanics. So restoratives are limited to rare drops and some of them are only available late game. So could you take a build route of passive TP regeneration or TP drain to keep your party topped off? The Etrian Odyssey games are very much resource management games once you get past the initial "oh god oh god everything slaughters my whole party oh god" stage. They're generally balanced pretty carefully so that a reasonable (not min-maxed) party can explore between half a level and a whole level on a single trip. After that, they'll start running into sustainability issues. The game supports this design by adding a handful of shortcuts to each level which have to be activated from the far side first. Thus, the general gameplay loop involves pushing for the next landmark (shortcut or stairs) while keeping a careful eye on your HP and TP. It's further supported by random battle enemies being challenging enough that you usually have to expend at least some TP to beat an encounter without risking substantial damage. TP recovery items exist, but, at least the way I play, they're generally reserved for bosses. I rarely use them when exploring. Some classes do have TP recovery, and there are also classes that grant party-wide passive HP recovery (meaning you don't have to spend items or TP to heal the party). Those can help extend expeditions but are never necessary.
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Dec 19, 2021 22:12
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mastersord posted:I do have a question regarding the mechanics. So restoratives are limited to rare drops and some of them are only available late game. So could you take a build route of passive TP regeneration or TP drain to keep your party topped off? It should be noted that EO never goes the Megaelixir route of having exclusive 1 time consumables. It can hand you stronger consumables earlier than you can buy them, but you'll always be able to get more later on, and such stronger consumables are never needed to win in the current situation. Crafty thinking and strategizing can get you out of most jams. That being said yeah TP is the main mechanic and the main resource to manage. Basic attacks are really terrible so it's really your TP pool that determines how far you can go in a timely manner. You need to use your skills to clear out encounters, or they will take too long and subsequently destroy you because you absolutely do not want enemies living long enough to damage your party significantly. The more enemies wear you down, the shorter your stay in the dungeon will be. Minimizing that is the key to making it through these games. The specifics vary from game to game though, as each game tends to be balanced differently and has different metas develop. A lot of classes are fairly self-sufficient with TP in this one with the right builds, or TP isn't that big of an issue for them. Though this is mainly due to some design decisions regarding TP restoratives in EO4. Compared with the previous game EO3, where classes can burn through TP so fast, but paradoxically there's so many ways to counteract that. Like there's a skill that you can cast on 1 row to completely nullify TP costs for a turn. You can spam cast this. Predictably it became a very popular cheese strategy. And that TP restoratives are ridiculously easy to farm to to the point where if you take these measures, TP costs are a complete non-issue for the most part.
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Dec 19, 2021 22:26
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mastersord posted:I do have a question regarding the mechanics. So restoratives are limited to rare drops and some of them are only available late game. So could you take a build route of passive TP regeneration or TP drain to keep your party topped off? As others said, short version: clearing one floor per go is a reasonable goal and this game is having shortcuts to checkpoint progress. TP restoration is thus more useful for bosses and you won't reasonably run out of TP restoratives until postgame farming. Having said that, gently caress nectars being on this model. I did activate a party of (or a singular Byeah in whichever class has the reduced/nulled random encounters skill leading the rest of my party, it's been some years)
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Dec 19, 2021 23:40
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Oh wait I forgot this LP already went over the Amrita situation. Yeah the other reason Amrita use isn't really big here (some players even went through the game without using a single one) is because restocking them is a huge loving pain in the rear end and I hate the absolute double nerf they gave them in this game. They restore way less than they did in EO3 from 50/100/All to 30/60/100. And where Amritas only needed 1 material per use to restock in EO3, EO4 for whatever godforsaken reason, increased it to 3 per Amrita. That overkill nerf essentially deleted that series of items from the game to some players, myself included. "Why not just suck it up and grind out the materials?" While the game made it much easier to gather from points normally, to the point where gathering parties aren't necessary at all in this game, it nerfed being able to mass gather stuff like in the DS era, which is just simply no longer possible. Item points can only be gathered from a set number of times per day. It cannot be expanded beyond the 2-4 limit, no exceptions. (Where in EO3 this limit was higher and could be busted open thanks to the Double Crop skill which refills gathering attempts.) Grinding out a huge backroom stock of items is far more time consuming in EO4 to the point where most players just didn't bother. They walked back on nerfs... slightly and eventually at least. I don't think any incarnation of the Amrita needs anymore than 1 material per restock at the very least in later games. Could be misremembering on that front. Not a design decision I was a fan of, fortunately there are ways to be fairly self-sustaining with TP in EO4, which is what players opted to do instead. Also class TP economy was just way better compared to EO3's classes so EO4 classes didn't run dry in a few casts. Usually. There's no such thing as TP drain in this series though, just skills that can restore TP under the right circumstances which is what tended to be invested in. Though usually in other games such skills aren't quite as popular cause you can just pop an Amrita and be on your way, but it vastly depends from game to game. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 05:46
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Not the first EO game I ever played (I think I actually tried the demos for EOU/2/V before), but the first I finished, and I really like it. I have a question for Rea. You mentioned you had to make a bunch of drive blades so you could use your Imperial, but I’m curious how you did it. Not just from a technical perspective, but also from balancing the cost, materials, attack power, forges, and, most importantly, the names and flavor text. Can’t wait to see more!
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Dec 24, 2021 00:05
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Oublietteer posted:Not the first EO game I ever played (I think I actually tried the demos for EOU/2/V before), but the first I finished, and I really like it. If I remember right she mostly copied them from EO Nexus, which has Imperial unlocked from the beginning.
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Dec 25, 2021 08:31
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Here's Update 3. We're back! Kinu is back from A Lot of Things, and I am back from visiting my family. It was a very pleasant trip, I definitely needed a week and change away from work—both professional and personal.
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Dec 27, 2021 21:47
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quote:
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Dec 27, 2021 23:39
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You need to use Double Slash a lot so that you can unlock Volcano.
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I also appreciated that particular interjection.
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Dec 28, 2021 01:07
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The RNG for the box event is rolled for the moment you open the box, so if you're desperate for Amritas (or didn't appreciate the sole thank you note) you can reset and try again. ...On hardware. On Citra the RNG is hosed because its seeds are static for some reason. Not sure what settings you have to muck around with to fix that. Ah, imbuables. Nexus basically shoved them back into the spotlight with imbue skills giving a damage boost, and with weaknesses being standardized as at least 150% non-diminishing damage, an imbue could make an imbuable skill super strong. Not really a tactic in this game, though it is a possible option. Weaknesses start out at 125% generally, and even then the amount of strong imbuable skills isn't that much. Can be something to keep in mind, but as Rea said, conditional fetching is really the more popular use for them. Ah Full Retreat. A very handy backup plan. Yeah the escape rates in 4 are the loving pits, so it can be used as a great way to get out of a bad situation. There is the downside of being sent back to the entrance after use, but chances are if the situation got bad enough to force a usage of that instead of taking chances with the escape rates, you were heading back to town anyways so it's not that much of a downside. If anything the real caveat would probably be the 3 meter cost, as you aren't guaranteed to have that ready if a situation goes really bad.
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Dec 28, 2021 01:50
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I do always like it when quests in games let you unintentionally let you grind and sell the items. It makes for a decent backup source of cash, if not a completely busted source of infinite wealth in for some. Although, money hasn't seemed to be too much of an issue from what I can tell so far.Araxxor posted:The RNG for the box event is rolled for the moment you open the box, so if you're desperate for Amritas (or didn't appreciate the sole thank you note) you can reset and try again. those goshderned adventurers always expecting a reward 
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Dec 28, 2021 02:09
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This may be going back a bit, but holy poo poo the way they handled the shops and materials in this game is horrible. The amount of times I had to farm Small Flowers for Nectars was too drat high, let alone the other things you need to farm for later in the game. Apart from that, I had a great time in this game but my ADHD brain decided to give up near the end of the game for reasons? It’s nice to hear about the EO2U crew. I hope they’re all doing well.
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Dec 29, 2021 22:22
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don't worry, they're all probably doing fine considering i haven't gotten my grubby mitts on them
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Dec 30, 2021 00:41
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Ah, I can't believe I missed this one starting up, EOIV was my first and favorite. It's a bit of a shame I wasn't able to submit a character, I've had an idea rattling around my head for an Arcanist for ages. Wouldn't have worked as well with them starting unlocked though. When I ran a party starting with an Imperial I was using NG+ so I just had them get around the lack of drive blades by starting subclassed as a Landsknecht, which was serviceable and actually kind of interesting with the passives. Also Harper is amazing. That is all.
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Dec 31, 2021 19:55
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I didn't know there was a new EO LP, neat! I recently picked up Nexus on a whim and used your class writeups to build my party, so thanks for those.
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Jan 8, 2022 01:48
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Here's Update 4.
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Jan 28, 2022 16:40
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Ah, Refresh waltz and Freedom waltz. Fun thing: as long as Marlin is alive, those skill will trigger at end of turn. So, petrification? He's going to dance so good his dance can nullify petrification, even if he himself is currently a statue. Same for leg binds and freedom waltz, but that one is marginally less  because you could imagine your dancer wiggling out of the bind before resuming his dance.Needless to say, this makes dancer have the kind of proactive healing that somewhat approaches EO3 monks with a secret royal heritage; although their healing dance don't get the bullshit numbers that monk/princesses got on their protect order. On the other had, add an Arcanist and it's enough passive healing to tide the party over until a bind or disable takes. In other comments: holy moly that's a lot of Pookas and books early on.
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Jan 28, 2022 18:07
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If you're wondering no, you can't actually kill the Bloodbear on your first go like with Narmer in EO3. This can easily be seen on NG+ where the thing's HP just refuses to drop below 50%. Namely cause well, there's that scripted event where it goes down the stairs. Skipping that would require editing quite a few files to account for that possibility, where in EO3 everything involving Narmer only involves 1 floor and skipping 1 event and all that's contained in 1 little file. Through the Scorching Heat is a really good remix of Crest of a Violent Wave from EO3. Certainly makes a hell of an impression on the player when this plays for a miniboss. Though I prefer the EO3 version myself. Also yeah Nightseeker damage is just hosed. I have no idea why their class skill sets their damage so loving sky high. You could knock it down several places, maybe even end off their final class skill at double damage and they'd still be one of the strongest classes in the game! Omobono posted:Ah, Refresh waltz and Freedom waltz. One issue with the first thing that some people will find out the hard way. The check for a game over occurs constantly before any other check in the game. As a result, Refresh Waltz cannot save the party from a game over if an AOE Petrification gets thrown out and lands even if that's in effect. A bit of correction I will put here is that the EO3 LP was wrong in how Protect Order works. It's actually just TEC-based healing applied as a buff, not a direct multiplier to the TEC stat and actually follows the healing formula. It's just so many people used MP as their healer, and Monks automatically reach the 3 * TEC threshold in their healing because their TEC stat is so high that people just automatically assumed Protect Order worked as tripled TEC as healing * Form Qi. Slap that onto a different class, and you'll find that the healing is far less impressive. Though Prince/ss's won't reach triple healing without some help, their healing with Protect Order is still fairly respectable otherwise. My other point is that Regen Waltz itself actually scales better than Protect Order since it has a stronger starting point at level 1, though both of them reach the same maximum healing. That being said yeah the heals will never reach Protect Order's absurd levels of quadrupled TEC as healing. The Dancer's TEC just isn't as impressive as a Monk's, and well, no Form Qi for that huge healing bonus. Depending on your playstyle you can actually run into a lot of Pookas if you scour the maps a lot or take things a bit slow because unlike Pasarans, the RNG isn't quite as dependent there since it's based on a step count range. Though I would really not recommend farming out books because it'll take 50 to max out one character and you'll need less than 250 Pooka kills to max out the party (assuming you get all the one-off books, and don't use any books on party members you are going to dump.) quote:Head binds halve an entity's TEC, which provides three main benefits: makes disables easier to inflict, reduces accuracy, and heavily reduces defense against TEC-based attacks. This had to have been an oversight because just raw halving the TEC stats had so many knock on effects after EO3 started overbuffing TEC. And yes, head binds work as an infliction debuff in EO3 and 4, though if your main inflictor already has more than 22 ailment score than their target, this won't help them. Not only that, this affects TEC-based healing, which won't affect too many cases since most TEC-based heals use the head, but irritatingly it will severely reduce the effectiveness of the Prince/ss's Protect Order and the Dancer's Regen Waltz due to how the healing formula works in EO3 and 4. EOU proceeded to fix this by making it so that head binds only affect the parts of TEC that are actually used in damage formulae. And then after the INT/WIS split in EO5, head binds just halve INT damage. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Jan 28, 2022 |
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Jan 28, 2022 20:27
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I really love these guys’ interactions. Do you have a dictionary you’re referencing for the Cockney stuff, or are you actually familiar with it?
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Jan 29, 2022 00:34
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Half and half. A lot of the more esoteric stuff I do have to look up, but I played enough Great Ace Attorney to have the basics down. 
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Jan 29, 2022 00:46
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When I was a kid, I'd find big sticks and call them swords. Naijou finds a log and calls it a "Fine Weapon"
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Jan 29, 2022 20:50
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He's really into clubbing.
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Jan 29, 2022 21:01
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Getting into this a little later, but Thierry's precious granddaughter. I'm so proud~ Looking forward to it!
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Jan 31, 2022 06:10
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Here's Update 5. Here's the Landsknecht overview, too.
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Feb 16, 2022 22:08
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Link teams are just so satisfying in this game.
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Feb 17, 2022 01:25
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In the Valley Spring there's like a mini puzzle where you have to realize at this point that shortcuts have their walls marked, as there's one at the beginning where one side is marked and the other isn't, and you have to figure out which wall has the shortcut by looking around the dungeon. Which is why there's that weird dud shortcut that doesn't really go anywhere, to clue the player in about the mechanic at that point. Would be absolutely dreadful to go through the game without realizing shortcuts existed. Oh boy, Landsknechts. They can be a good safe vanilla unit to slot in, like the 1 and 2 Landys or the Gladiators from 3. Hell Swift Stab is essentially the Blade Rave analogue from EO3, can't go wrong with that. But if you take the (admittedly small) effort to invest in links, hoo boy you're going to have fun times. A properly set up Link party can just deal so much damage, more than an Imperial Drive even! That being said Links are so loving weird mechanical wise. In technical terms they're like a summon because once that link comes out, there's no stopping it, not even the Landsknecht's death. I find Weapon Parry to be funny purely because it just shows how hosed armor is in these games. Using up a weapon on that equipment slot would provide way more defense than armor ever could, it's silly. Ah diminishing returns, turns out that no, that wasn't a mechanic 2U introduced. It was actually introduced in 4. Those who were familiar with the absolutely buff centric meta of EO3 can easily see why they took steps to counter that hard in 4, what with Berserker Vows being everywhere. That being said it took a few tries to nerf that properly, because for most casual players, chances are you didn't notice in 4 and U, as the effects were just kind of too small. 2U went in the complete opposite extreme, and then 5 finally settled on the additive system. Now if you're taking the game a lot more seriously, or are trying to math out challenge runs (EO4 is a rather popular game for that sort of thing), you'll notice quite quickly how draconic this system actually is, as unlike in U and 2U, nearly everything that affects damage is tagged by it, even things you wouldn't think would be affected (The Nightseeker's Shadow Bite is one example), which can get pretty annoying to work with.
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Feb 17, 2022 02:08
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With each new Etrian LP popping up, my appreciation for the inter-LP continuity continues to grow~ Also, I swear, with each additional person who looks into what lies below Armoroad, 5 people start gibbering madly about "Cthulhu Casino" or "Farmer Ninjas" or something 🤣
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Feb 17, 2022 02:30
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NyoroEevee posted:With each new Etrian LP popping up, my appreciation for the inter-LP continuity continues to grow~ In Ace's case, she's less freaked out by stuff like that and more the in-universe horror of the Deep Ones and the Abyssal God. Cosmic horror deeply unnerves her.
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Feb 17, 2022 03:19
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About Landsknechts, do the multi-target attacks (Spiral Slice, Swift Stab) trigger the class skill on all targets hit? If it does, that seems like it could make those skills more useful.
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Feb 17, 2022 05:22
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rbakervv posted:About Landsknechts, do the multi-target attacks (Spiral Slice, Swift Stab) trigger the class skill on all targets hit? If it does, that seems like it could make those skills more useful. Yes, every target smacked will be tagged with the class skill. Though generally when it comes to AOEing down enemies, you don't really need the damage boost. Chances are they'll be 1 or 2 hits away from death with how random encounters tend to be balanced in this series. Not that Swift Stab isn't useful on a non-Linker mind you, it's one of their best damage skills. Basically a more accurate Blade Rave because Landsknechts have an actual accuracy stat and Gladiators don't. It's just that Linkers would prefer to spend their SP towards making their Links better.
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Feb 17, 2022 12:55
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Here's Update 6. And here's the boss overview! Voting has officially begun.
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Mar 1, 2022 00:29
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Xiaohu, Shelly, Ace.
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