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So Etrian Odyssey II came out this week. I thought about picking it up, but then realized... hey, I never finished the first one. Played very far into it, but even though it was a game I loved, but always ended up putting it down to do something else and then never picked back up. Atlus is promising Etrian Odyssey II will be the first game on "hard mode", too, so maybe this'll get my RPG chops suitably warmed up. I've already heard from friends playing it that a bunch of the broken tactics I use here aren't viable in the sequel.

So! We're gonna do a playthrough of Etrian Odyssey. This will spoil quite a bit of the original game for you if you haven't finished it, so reader beware. I'll try to keep all the spoilers under the cut. This week we'll be covering character creation and my trip through the first strata of the Labyrinth. This chapter will be a little longer than future ones since EO starts slow, but don't worry, I won't chronicle every single time I beat up purple rats.

Game Start & Character Creation

Etrian Odyssey is a game I love, in part, because it hopelessly blurs the line between Eastern and Western RPGs. Yes, it was designed by a Japanese company and uses a slightly super-deformed anime art style, but the gameplay has more in common with Wizardry than just about any major Japanese RPG of the last five years or so. This is a game about crawling through an apparently brutal and unfair dungeon, surviving by any means necessary, and creating a detailed map of your travels. Unlike mapping in old school PC games, you get to keep your Etrian Odyssey map in your game cart instead of abusing reams of graph paper, but the principle is the same.

So Etrian Odyssey throws you into gameplay naked and alone, with nothing more than a basic interface to acquaint you with the world around you. No cutscenes, no eye candy, just the promise of monster-stomping to come. After stumbling around for a bit, you'll usually find the Explorers' Guild is where you have to go in order to make things happen, and create your future party members who will stomp through the monster-infested forest. First, though, you have to name your Guild!

You can use anything with up to eight letters! I, of course, pick the subtle and sophisticated option.

For this run I'm going to go ahead and create one of every character class. I won't use them all immediately, but these guys will be my primary asskickers for each class. I'll end up making some dupes later on, but at least this time, not for combat purposes. Characters in Etrian Odyssey can learn a wide range of skills, but it's pretty much impossible to teach every character every skill. So instead, you need to have a plan for each guy you make from the start.

First off, Landsknecht. These guys are the dps-type fighting class. They can specialize in swords or axes. I'm going with axes basically because other classes can't use 'em, and I hate wasting equipment. Most of his points will go into Axes and ATK Up, and maybe a splash of Crush so he has something to do in boss fights. The name is admittedly a strained reference at best, but Rhapsody is so much fun to make fun of.

Next, Survivalist. These guys may be the most important class in the game. They're sort of the "ranger" archetype and bow specialists, but their strengths vary wildly depending on how you build them. This one is going to be for attacking, so I'll be investing in Bows for extra damage, and eventually the Apollon attack skill. If you get the reference with his name, I owe you a cookie.

Protector is the tanky-type base fighting class and indispensable on your front line in boss fights. You can actually do wicked damage with them, but it'll be awhile before I'm able to buy those Skills. For now, my focus is getting this guy lots of ranks of Defender ASAP. His name joke is a total gimme, so no cookie for you.

Dark Hunter is one of the classes I won't really be using this week These guys come into their own in the midgame, and it'll be easier to just level him up rapidly then. The name-joke here is also a gimme, though.

Medic is arguably the single most powerful Etrian Odyssey class. In this phase of the game, he'll just be a standard healer, and eventually I'll give him the potent defensive technique Immunize. Later on, you'll watch him become a beast. Get the name gag here, and I'll declare you awesome.

Alchemist is indispensable for boss fights early on in Etrian Odyssey, and you need to build her carefully. They're something of a caster analogue but can access very broken abilities early in the game. Her first Skill is going to be Toxin, which needs to get maxed out quickly, but it's also important to give her the basic Fire skill as soon as possible. This one is a semi-obscure joke, but you're still rad if you get it.

Troubadour, like Dark Hunter, is a guy who won't get a slot in my party until much later on. You won't see him this week, but unlike the vast majority of RPG bards, they can be wicked powerful. This name gag is going to be very obvious if you're the right kind of nerd...

So, to get started, I'll form up my party with Landsknecht and Protector at the front, and Medic, Alchemist, and Survivalist in the back. EO's front row/back row mechanic works pretty much the way you think it does, but contributes to one particularly broken tactic you'll see later on.

Next stop is Radha Hall, if I want to... y'know, do any adventuring. Radha Hall issues Missions, which are basically things you have to do in order to advance the plot. For now, I have to go into the first floor of the dungeon and map out a certain area. This is as close as EO gets to a tutorial sequence. It's just one where you can die. A lot.

I need to gear up at Shilleka's shop, which is where you buy all of your weapons, armor, accessories (which are random things you can plop into armor slots), and one really good Item I can't get yet. I also can't afford anything but about the crappiest weapons for now. There's also Ceft Apothecary to sell healing items, but I make a point of never using these in EO. Early in the game they're just a waste of money (which can be tight), and a well-built Medic should leave you not needing them.

What's interesting about Shilleka's and the Apothecary is the way new equipment unlocks. You have to earn it by finding things in the dungeon, bringing them back, and selling them until you've sold the right combination of stuff to get something good. If you miss items, then yes, you can get screwed on equipment. Fortunately, monsters drop items at the end of battles, and most of what you need can be acquired almost purely through monster fights. There's another source of items to exploit, but I'll get into that later.

I've got my crappy equipment and my crappy level one characters! Time to head into the dungeon and fight purple rats! And horrible, horrible butterflies that destroy you.

1ST STRATUM: B1F

Despite this being the tiny first floor of the dungeon, you spend approximately a million years on the map before the game is willing to let you explore freely. If you're playing the game for the first time, this is kind of a blessing, since it lets you get adjusted to the difficulty curve. This is my second run through here, so I'm going to gloss over it as quick as possible. The next few floors are a lot more interesting.

When you first enter, the game lets you allocate Skill Points. I went over my plans for each character earlier on, but some more details are worth it. You get three Skill Points to spend at level 1, and then one extra point at every subsequent level. Eventually you can opt to lower a character's experience by ten levels so you can respec them, but I'd rather not.

Next, your goal is... to successfully walk forward. Can you handle it?? If you do this successfully, you make it to the soldier guy who gives you the rest of the your quest. You'd be surprised how many people get killed by rats and butterflies before they manage this.

From here, you have to fill in a particular area of the first floor map. This involves walking around, which changes the color of the map tiles, and then you can draw lines to indicate walls, and put in little notations about interesting or useful features.There are also a few one-time events scattered through the dungeon. Some are good, some bad, and you have basically no way of knowing which is which. The worst of them is the event that asks you lay down in a field of flowers. This results in immediate attack by a horde of deadly venomous purple butterflies who will tear your party apart if you trigger the event too early.

When you've finished, which will definitely take multiple runs, you can take your sad little mini-map to the soldier dude. It should look like roughly what's in the screencap. He'll grant you his approval and then let you go back to the Radha to turn your Mission in. Doing so unlocks all sorts of useful and interesting things, like the Warp Wire at Shilleka's.

The Warp Wire is... basically that item from most roguelikes that lets you blip out of the Dungeon instantly. It's a mere 100 en. It is your best friend. You can also start taking Quests at the Pub; most are simply exercises in fetching X amount of Y thing, but I'll mention a few. Generally you should do them all, since... well, that's what the game is about. It also helps keep you up to level and in good equipment for missions.

Another trip should finish off your map of the first floor, which should look roughly like the screencap when it's all done. Note the star-shaped points on the map; these are resource nodes. Each node can be mined by Chopping, Taking, or Mining, depending on the node type. Nodes yield up resources endlessly until you run out of Chops, Takes, or Mines for the day. Your daily number depends on how many Skill Points you invest in the relevant skill.

Problem: points you invest in harvesting actions are points you're not investing in asskicking. Putting points from your main characters into harvesting makes them weaker. What's the solution for finishing that one quest that calls for Hardwood, which you can only get on B1F by Chopping at a node? Why... simply make a character whose only mission in life is to max out their Chop skill!

This Survivalist is never going to be even half the badass my main one is. Instead, she exists to Chop at nodes and make me filthy rich (and unlock the Hand Axe). If you notice the map icon next to the node on the right, that's a Warp that lets you pass through the wall there. You can actually make tons of easy money by simply using the warp to go directly to that node and then Chopping at it until you're tapped out.

1ST STRATUM: B2F

Yes. This floor of the dungeon introduces you to the game's bosses and mini-bosses, F.O.E.s. They're my favorite feature of EO. See, F.O.E.s for the most part don't sit in one place waiting for you to show up and kill them. They move around the map in a set pattern, letting you dodge them. If you get unlucky and get into a random encounter around an F.O.E, the F.O.E. Can barge into the fight and start killing you. Even when you kill one, eventually it will respawn (along with whatever awesome item it drops).

The F.O.E.s you first encounter here are quite weak by the standards of later floors, but if you wander into the Ragelope fight with poor skills or an exhausted party, you are going to die so hard. The secret to beating it easily is to use your Alchemist's Poison ability to badstat it. Poison is a mild inconvenience in most RPGs, but in Etrian Odyssey it does damage per turn based on how many Skill Points you've invested in the Skill, topping out at 255 damage per turn. This lets your Alchemist shred through most early F.O.E.s if you can keep her alive, by just Poisoning and then following up with Fire.

There's another F.O.E. wandering around called the Kuyutha, but he's much crappier and eaiser to beat than the Ragelope. There's also a jerk monster called the Fender that uses the Ragelope's sprite, so don't have a heart attack when you inevitably run into it as a random encounter. Anyway, when you've managed to map out B2F, it should look roughly like the screenshot. I should note that the "empty" areas in each map are actually secret areas full of stuff, but we can't get there yet.

1ST STRATUM: B3F

Sure, you've fought F.O.E.s, but by EO's standards they're baby wussy F.O.E.s. The third floor introduces you to your first Serious Business fight for EO, the Stalker. These guys resist physical damage, have huge HP and do something like 80 points of damage per attack. There are two ways to survive this battle. Poison tactics work just fine for damage, but now is really when you need to start using Defender and Immunize to reduce the monster's attack damage. With both abilities maxed (unlikely at this point), you can reduce the Stalker's 80 damage per attack down to roughly 8.

The cool thing about beating the Stalker is the Scythe item it drops when it dies. It doesn't unlock anything super-great, but it does sell for a massive 900 en. There are roughly four Stalkers to kill off on this floor, so you can easily solve any money problems you're having by killing them off. Even if you survive a battle with only one character left, the 900 en should cover any reviving expenses with plenty to spare.

You also run into a mild bit of story in this floor, as you'll encounter NPC adventurers named Tlatchga (gesundheit) and Ren who inform you that you're too much of a miserable n00b to move forward because of the deadly horrible wolves. Sure enough, if you go back to the Radha, they talk about how it's much too dangerous to proceed because of the wolves... unless you agree to kill the wolves.

Yes, they want you to kill the wolves so amazingly dangerous that other guys made you leave the dungeon because you sucked too much to face them. At least the Radha is a realistic bureaucracy. Or, at this point, they're just fucking with me.

Even better: when you return to B3F after taking the wolf-killing mission, Ren and Tlachtga greet you, and Ren informs you of this:

... so why in god's name did you throw me out of the dungeon to begin with? I'm an adventuring party, I think the chances of me stabbing every wolf I run across of my own volition are actually pretty good.

Anyway, here's roughly what the finished B3F map looks like. Be absolutely sure you find the warp, getting around is a huge pain in the butt without it. Also note that Tlachtga is waiting to give you a free full-heal in the last room before the corridor that leads to the stairway.

1ST STRATUM: B4F

Awesome, Wolves! Actually, as F.O.E.s go, they're disappointing. You should be able to wipe them out in one turn now, even if you don't use Poison. The main difficulty when fighting Wolves is that every other Wolf on the floor starts homing in on you during combat. If you are struggling against them, then you may find a Wolf's buddies joining in the fight and TPKing you right quick.

The only other interesting feature of 4F is its Mining nodes, which yield up Pyroxene. Hit them after you've mapped the level. You need Pyroxene to finish a quest, and the other stuff you can get from mining the nodes also unlocks some great items. The easy way to handle this is to make a Mining-type Mule Survivalist. There are some Taking nodes on B3F you may want to harvest while on the way up, so no harm in making a Taking Mule for the trip, too. Finally, why not bring along your Chopping Mule for some extra cash from B1F?

Now, hauling around three level 1 Survivalists only leaves two slots in your party for characters who don't suck. They pretty much have to be your Medic and Protector, who both need to frontline (where you may notice your Medic isn't a bad attacker). Now, buy up the best bows you can for your Survivalists and get ready to take the plunge. You should find that your Mules level up at an amazing rate, and as long as you successfully dodge around F.O.E.s you should have no trouble hitting the three different types of nodes, unlocking tons of new items, finishing the quest, and turning an enormous profit when you sell your inventory back to Shilleka.

1ST STRATUM: B5F

The head wolf baddie you need to beat, Fenrir, lurks in this floor's extensive map. You may find your progress slowing significantly, because of this asshole: the Warbull. This guy isn't a F.O.E., but has just enough HP that it's hard to kill him in one turn without burning precious TP. He spawns quite frequently in random encounters, and can do heavy damage to your characters. Blargh.

One thing you can do to make whacking these guys easier is to find a particularly good weapon stuffed in a chest way over on the west side of the map. It's called the Boar Spear. It's a powerful... sword.

Uh... yeah. Look, just shut up and equip it.

Fenrir's "dread lair" is, as you can see, right in the middle of the map's spiraling corridors. Don't step inside until you've managed to get there with roughly 90% of your Medic's TP intact. Inside you've got a nasty gauntlet of boss battles awaiting you.

The three F.O.E.s in the front are turbo-Wolves with identical sprites called Skolls. You can take them out in roughly one turn, so no need to waste defensive Skills on them (but feel free to cut loose with your Alchemist). You need to pick off all of them as rapidly as possible, as the close quarters these fights take place in make F.O.E.s hopping in to ongoing battles very likely. The rear-center F.O.E. Is Fenrir, and the four F.O.E.s behind him are more Skolls. If you fight Fenrir at his starting position and can't take him out in one turn, the Skolls are going to join him again you, and you can easily end up overwhelmed.

If you approach to one tile away from Fenrir and begin walking backwards, he will follow you elsewhere in his lair. If you fight him in a nice corner area you'll have plenty of time to fight him before Skolls can crash the party. That said, I just plowed into him head-on. With strong Skills, especially Poison + Flame + Apollon and Defender + Immunize up, you can take Fenrir out in two turns and take very little damage. After that, the other Skolls disappear and you can map out the rest of the lair before moving on.

If you head down the stairs after Fenrir's lair, you head down to the beginning of the 2nd Stratum and the Glowing Pink Light that's like a free Warp Wire home. Ren and Tlachtga also show up to say you're rad, the posers. Yeah, you didn't think I was so badass when you threw me out of the third floor for no reason. Anyway, if you take the Pink Light home you can then warp back to B6F via the Geomagnetic Field, which cuts down on travel time.

Beating Fenrir unlocks some new quests at the Pub once you turn the mission in. Two of them are second stratum quests you don't need to worry about yet, but two actually call for you to do some more running around in the first stratum. One is collecting Insect Eyes, which just means you need to take an Alchemist in to kill a bunch of Woodflies or Venomflies with magic. The other involves kill a Spider F.O.E. On BF5 that's ridiculously weak, to the point where you might one-shot it. Mop up that stuff and you're ready to move on.

Me, I'm ready to put EO down until next week's Original Content Day rolls around-- this was a lot of gaming! It took me about four days of playing, interspersed with movies and errands, to clear this part of the game. Part of that is just how damned long they make you spend in the first stratum, and the upcoming parts of the game should be a little quicker.

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