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Game Mechanics: Ailments and Binds
Status effects have been a part of most JRPGs, and Etrian Odyssey is no exception to that. They're very powerful and can help turn the tide in your favor when you use them, or cause your party to enter a really unfavorable situation, and even get wiped when an enemy uses them.
I wouldn't say they're vital to use in a party, since there are several problems with using them. For one thing, while ailments and binds are powerful, they're not reliable in this game. You have absolutely no control over how long the ailment lasts. So it's possible for an ailment to wear off after 1 turn, which can be infuriating. So why not just inflict it again? Well, that's not something the game really let's you do.
See, inflicting ailments and binds got a big overhaul in EO3. In the first two games, you could inflict ailments and binds as much as you wanted. That's not the case anymore. Now something called Accumulative Resistance got added into the mix. In the first 2 games, it was exclusive to binds and even then it then it worked differently to what I'm about to say here. Now it got overhauled and got extended to apply to ailments as well as binds. As for how it works, every time a target gets inflicted with a specific ailment or bind, they gain a 30% resistance to that specified ailment or bind. So if a target has a 100% resistance to Blind, getting hit with it once lowers it to 70%. And then getting hit with it again lowers it to 40%, and then 10%. If a target has a 0% or lower resistance to an ailment or bind, they are completely immune to it, and cannot be inflicted with that specific ailment or bind anymore. And bosses and FOEs are pretty resistant to them, meaning that it takes less time to make them immune to what you're trying to inflict. There is also no way to reset Accumulative Resistance in EO3, aside from dying, and being hit by Kirin's Retribution skill, which is exclusive to that boss battle only. Which is a plus for your party since they're affected by this too. But when it applies to enemies, that's a big problem and hinders what the Wildling can do. Especially since enemies can't come back from the dead in EO3.
Accumulative Resistance combined with the fact that ailments and binds can wear off after one turn makes them really unreliable as a strategy, and difficult to capitalize on. The other reason is that big fights last a long time in EO3. Without a way to reset Accumulative Resistance and make ailments and binds last longer, it's just better to go on the offensive instead of disabling the enemy. Thankfully EO4 fixed those problems by introducing some skills that reset Accumulative Resistance and forced Ailments and Binds to last 1 extra turn, while the games after that changed it to wear off after a while. Which meant disabling the enemy became a far more reliable strategy in future Etrian Odyssey games. But in this game? I wouldn't make your strategies revolve around them if I were you.
Now ailments and binds follow a different accuracy formula than offensive skills. You can't increase their infliction rates by increasing your character's accuracy rates. The way to do that is to increase your character's LUC and TEC stats, which are the main stats that determine how often an ailment will hit. The formula for inflicting an ailment is as follows:
Ailment Infliction Rate posted:
Ailment Score = (2 * Attacker's LUC + Attacker's TEC) - (2 * Target's LUC + Target's TEC)
If Ailment Score is less than or equal to -18, then X = Skill Accuracy
If Ailment Score is greater than -18, but less than 22, then X = [{1.17 + 0.83 * sin(0.07 * A - 0.20)} * Skill Accuracy]
If Ailment Score is greater than or equal to 22, then X = 2 * Skill Accuracy
Infliction Rate = (X + A Random Number From 0 to 9) * Target's Resistance
If the attacker is a beast, has access to Wild Mastery, and Target's Resistance is not equal to 0, add Wild Mastery's power onto Infliction Rate.
Remaster Notes:
If the difficulty is set to Basic and an enemy unit is being attacked, multiply the Infliction Rate by 1.2.
If the difficulty is set to Basic and a player unit is being attacked, multiply the Infliction Rate by 0.8.
If the difficulty is set to Picnic and an enemy unit is being attacked, multiply the Infliction Rate by 2.
If the difficulty is set to Picnic and a player unit is being attacked, multiply the Infliction Rate by 0.1.
If Infliction Rate is greater than 90, then Infliction Rate = 90
You may have also noticed another factor in what makes disables unreliable in this game. Namely that no matter what you do, disables are capped at a 90% infliction rate at best. While this is good for you in that you are immune to disables at least 10% of the time, this also applies to your enemies. The only thing that bypasses this cap are guaranteed inflictions, such as the self-Sleep component from Lullaby, or the Instant Death component from Kaishaku.
Basically, what this formula means is that with enough LUC and TEC, you can double your ailment success rate. So something like a Gladiator's Arm Breaker skill at level 10 would have a 60% success rate normally. But with enough LUC and TEC, the success rate can increase to 120%. Maybe up to 129% if RNG decides to be generous. And then the cap lowers that to 90% because screw you. However, But if their LUC and TEC stats are too low, well... it would be stuck at 60%. Maybe increasing to 69% depending on what the RNG decides. Did you notice that bug in the formula? Yep, if the Gladiator's Ailment Score was at -17 instead of -18 or lower, the success rate would actually plummet to 21%. This means that having much lower LUC and TEC stats than the enemy is beneficial and gives you a bigger chance of inflicting an ailment than having similar Ailment Scores. Though this applies to the enemies too, so be careful about that!
After all that's calculated, the resulting number is then multiplied by the enemy's resistances. But it doesn't stop there. If the attacker is a Wildling's beast, the bonus chance from Wild Mastery is added to the resulting number after it's run through the enemy's resistances. However, if the enemy is immune to the ailment, than the bonus chance from Wild Mastery is not applied at all.
Now there's check that gets applied, but only in a few select cases. This check is called Lethal Resistance, and it's applied only when trying to inflict Instant Death and Petrification on a boss or most enemies that have a 1% multiplier to those. The Wildling's Wild Mastery normally ignores resistances, so if they used Call Tiger, they would have a 15% chance to kill their target thanks to Wild Mastery. If it weren't for Lethal Resistance anyway. The Lethal Resistance check is actually a failure rate. Technically this can be applied to every disable in the game, but it's only used for Instant Death and Petrification. There are 4 different values it can have, which are listed below. The game rolls a number from 0 to 99, and if the rolled number is below the failure rate, the attempt fails. If it's equal to or above the failure rate, the attempt succeeds. Listed below are those values, and what they effectively reduce Wild Mastery's success rate to:
50%: 7.5% success rate.
60%: 6% success rate.
70%: 4.5% success rate.
90%: 1.5% success rate.
So in the end, a max level Wild Mastery would only have a 1.5% to a 7.5% chance to kill a boss, depending on which boss you're fighting. (If you know how, RNG manipulation can ensure that you kill every boss instantly at the most convenient times for you with Call Tiger.)
As for Petrification... well, due to an oversight, it's impossible to Petrify bosses in this game. You see, the random number that's added onto your infliction rate was meant to range from 0 to 10. Unfortunately due to how part of the RNG formula works and the specific RNG mechanic they used for this formula, the number ranges from 0 to 9 instead. As Izuna only has a base rate of 45% at max level, it can only be doubled to 90%, which can only be increased to a maximum of 99% after the RNG factor gets added in. And since every multiplier paired with a Lethal Resistance check is set to 1%, this always gets rounded down to 0% instead of having a very small chance to be rounded down to 1% instead. As such, you can't instantly win boss fights with Izuna, what a shame.
Remaster Notes: Despite what the game's codex insists, this wasn't fixed for the remaster. Even though it says that bosses only "resist" Petrification, in reality, every single one of them are still immune due to this oversight.
Oh, and the infliction rates I put up for skills in the LP are the base infliction rates, not what could potentially be the actual infliction rates, so keep that in mind. Run those through the formula if you want to know the exact rates. Or just multiply them by 2 and add 9 to the end result to account for best or worst case scenarios.
Ailment Recovery Formula posted:
First, check how many turns it has been since the ailment has been applied. If the ailment was applied this turn, skip recovery. All stats refer to the recovering character. The stats of the ailment applier are not used at all when determining recovery.
A = LUC - (Level * 0.58 + 5.7)
B = A random number between 0 and 10
C = Turns since ailment was applied
If A is less than or equal to -10, then D = B * C
If A is greater than -10 but less than 10, then D = B * C + (sin (A * 0.14) * 20 + 20)
If A is greater than or equal to 10, then D = B * C + 40
Add the values for Waking Chakra to D. If D is greater than 80, then D = 80.
Roll a number between 0 and 99. If this number is less than D, recover from the ailment.
This formula means that no one is guaranteed to recover from a given disable on any turn, since there's always going to be at least a 20% chance to fail to recover. If you're particularly unlucky, it's possible for the disable to last for the whole battle. LUC is a big part of recovering from ailments, and if it's too low for the level your party member is at, you're essentially punished. The Monk's Waking Chakra skill can help stack the odds in your favor in recovering from an ailment, but it's not guaranteed to cause it to wear off. All it really does is make it so that LUC and turn count are not nearly as big of a factor in the formula.
Ailments:
There are 3 different categories of what can disable enemies (and your party.) Ailments, Binds, and Other. I'll be covering Ailments first. Ailments can only be applied one at a time, and they don't stack at all. However, there's something else you should know about them. See, there's a hierarchy of ailments. In all the Etrian Odyssey games, certain ailments have priority over others, and can override what's considered by the game to be weaker ailments. However, what the game considers to be weaker ailments cannot override what's considered to be stronger ailments. The ailment hierarchy is as follows:
1. Instant Death
2. Petrification
3. Curse
4. Plague
5. Poison
6. Sleep
7. Confusion
8. Paralysis
9. Blind
To give an example, a Blinded enemy can be Poisoned, but a Poisoned enemy cannot be Blinded at all. Any attempts to do so will always fail, so keep that in mind! This also applies to your party. Now let's talk about the ailments.
Blind: The target has their accuracy reduced by 67%. Their evasion is also disabled.
Methods of infliction:
Buccaneer: Lights Out – 42% to 70% infliction rate
Arbalist: Smoke Grenade – 30% to 80% infliction rate
Blind isn't one of the strongest disables since all it does is heavily reduce the target's accuracy, which can be handy sometimes but might just end up being a minor annoyance, depending on the situation. It also prevents the target from being able to dodge any attacks (after all, you can't dodge what you can't see.) But because of that, it's usually one of the easiest ailments to land, and can pretty much ensure that low accuracy attacks will miss most of the time. HIT forges apply their accuracy boost after the accuracy reduction from the Blind is applied, so those can help offset the accuracy loss.
Paralysis: Has a 49 out of 99 chance to prevent the target from doing anything on their turn. Disables the target's evasion. Will prevent the use of Limit skills if the ailment prevents the target from acting.
Methods of infliction:
Monk: Kikouken – 30% to 50% infliction rate
Wildling: Call Cow – 25% to 50% infliction rate; Call Lion – 30% to 57% infliction rate
Yggdroid: EM Barrier – 30% to 50% infliction rate
Slightly more nasty than being Blinded. While Blind causes the target's accuracy to plummet, Paralysis can outright stop them from doing anything. And even if the effect doesn't activate, the target's evasion will still be disabled.
If you're wondering why Paralysis is a 49/99 chance instead of just a straight 50%, a mistake in the RNG code causes it to be a little more effective than intended. This mistake happens quite a few times elsewhere in the game's code for other RNG related effects, so if you see more weird numbers like that, that's why.
Confusion: Targets cannot choose their actions at all, and can only use regular attacks. Randomly attacks enemies, allies, or themselves while inflicted with this. Has a 50 out of 99 chance to attack the opposite side, and a 49 out of 99 chance to attack their own side. After that, an entirely random target on the given side is chosen to be attacked. If enemy units are chosen to attack their own side, the target's VIT is ignored when it comes to calculating the base hit. If player units are chosen to attack their own side, the target's VIT is used in place of their armor for attacker's base hit. Ability multiplier is not affected in the damage formula no matter what. If the target attacks the opposite side, the damage formula functions as normal. Disables evasion and prevents use of Limit skills.
Methods of infliction:
Gladiator: Crushing Blow – 25% to 50% infliction rate
Wildling: Call Elephant – 25% to 50% infliction rate
Despite being low on the ailment hierarchy, this is one of the most deadly ailments in the game. It flat out prevents you from choosing an action for your characters, and they can't dodge attacks at all. So it kind of acts like all 3 binds at once. This ailment is capable of making strategies completely fall apart, and should be cured as soon as possible. Of course this also means that this is a powerful ailment to inflict on enemies. While taking damage from their regular attacks can hurt, it's much better than being hit by one of their damage skills and could potentially shut then down for a long time.
Sleep: Target cannot act while inflicted with this. When attacked, the target will wake up, dispelling the ailment. If a physical attack was used to awaken the target, the damage dealt is boosted by 50%. Does not provide a damage boost to elemental attacks. (Note: The attacking stat does not matter.) Disables evasion and prevents use of Limit skills.
Methods of infliction:
Ninja: Fukubari – 10% to 40% infliction rate
Wildling: Call Owl – 25% to 50% infliction rate
Farmer: Lullaby – 15% to 60% infliction rate
This ailment can also ruin a battle for you depending on the circumstances. Not only does it disable your characters until they wake up, if they take damage from a physical attack, they take even more damage, which can possibly kill them. As for trying to use Sleep to give someone a huge damage boost, that is a thing you can do in this game (it's a strategy known as Sleep Bombing.) but a lot of the best damage skills are multi-hit skills, and only the first hit will get the damage boost. Not something that can really help you that much in this game. It's easier to pull off in the later EO games.
Poison: Targets inflicted with this take a set amount of damage at the end of the turn. The amount of damage dealt depends on what was used to inflict it in the first place.
Methods of infliction:
Ninja: Makabishi – 40% to 60% infliction rate; 15 to 50 damage ticks
Wildling: Call Insect – 40% infliction rate; 50 to 350 damage ticks
Despite being high up on the ailment hierarchy, this is probably one of the worst ailments in the game. Well, when your party tries to use it anyway. It's much more deadly in the hands of the enemy. When your party tries to make use of it, the best they can do is take a really small chunk of HP. And the amount of damage player based Poison can deal becomes more insignificant as the game goes on. When an enemy uses it, it can give your party a bad time. If your party gets low on HP and gets inflicted with this, the Poison could end up killing them all.
The damage formula for Poison damage is Base damage + a random number from 1 to 10.
As for how much Poison damage a weapon with Poison Forges could deal, the formula for that is (Weapon Attack / 2) + a random number from 1 to 10.
Yeah, Poison Forges are pretty much useless since the strongest weapon in the game has a Weapon Attack power of 225. And if you think that's useless, the Poison Gas item, which infects every enemy with Poison has a base damage of 0! Yeah. I don't even know what was the devs problem with Poison since having the enemy take damage was much less useful than locking them down. Fortunately, they caught on in the later EO games and improved how much damage Poison could deal, and lowered it on the Ailment Hierarchy.
Plague: Targets inflicted with this take a set amount of damage at the end of the turn. The amount of damage dealt depends on what was used to inflict it in the first place. At the end of the turn, any of the target's allies have a 10% chance of being infected. This chance is influenced by the target's and party's TEC and LUC stats.
Methods of infliction:
Wildling: Call Ooze – 40% infliction rate; 30 to 300 damage ticks
Kind of a weird ailment, and this is the only game it made an appearance in. It's basically the same thing as Poison, except it's contagious. And like Poison, it's more useful for the enemies than it is for the players. The player based Plague deals even less damage than the strongest Poison skill they can use!
The damage formula for Plague damage is Base damage + a random number from 1 to 10.
As for how much Plague damage a weapon with Plague Forges could deal, the formula for that is (Weapon Attack / 2) + a random number from 1 to 10. Yeah, it's the same thing, and equally useless. Most things I've said about Poison can apply here.
Curse: Whenever the target attacks, they will also take damage in return. The damage is equal to half the total damage they dealt that turn. The damage does not take effect until the target's action is used up. Meaning that damage from attacks that hit multiple times or multiple enemies will be added up, and half of that total will be dealt to the target when attack is finished. If the target kills someone, they won't take Curse damage if the attack was single target. And if the attack hit multiple people, the targets that died won't have the damage they took applied to how much Curse damage the target takes.
Methods of infliction:
Monk: Darkness Fist – 30% to 60% infliction rate
Generally considered to be the most useless ailment in the entire series when used by the player. But when an enemy uses it, it can make the player's life a lot harder. This is because EO falls under the JRPG rule of players dealing more damage to enemies than what enemies can deal to them in terms of sheer numbers. The worst part is that since Curse so high up on the Ailment Hierarchy, it can't be overridden with a better Ailment if you happened to inflict this on your target. It also means that it won't go away easily when it's applied to your party.
Well there's a semi-cheesy strategy you can use that involves Curse. While you can't send in a bunch of weaklings to take large amounts of damage so the target will take Curse damage, the target will still take Curse damage if the people they tried to attack happened to be under an endure effect, like the Indomitable Limit. But there's not really a lot of places you can pull that off in the game and Curse is a hard ailment to inflict.
Petrification: The effects of this skill differ depending on whoever is inflicted by this ailment. When an enemy gets inflicted with this, they die instantly. If your party members get inflicted with this, they are permanently immobilized and cannot act until the ailment is dispelled. Their resistances to every damage type (except for Almighty) is set to 50%, no matter what equipment they're wearing. Disables evasion and prevents the use of Limit skills. This is the only ailment that cannot wear off on its own and persists outside of battle. It must be dispelled with the use of a skill or item. If your entire party gets Petrified, it counts as a game over.
Methods of infliction:
Ninja: Izuna – 25% to 45% infliction rate
And here's the worst ailment to be hit by. Petrification permanently disables your party members and it persists outside of battle, forcing you to cure it instead of waiting for it to wear off. Now Petrified allies aren't counted as dead, so they can still be attacked and gain exp. Of course if they die, they can be revived and they'll be turned back to normal upon revival.
Binds:
Now here's the 2nd category, binds. There are 3 different kinds of binds: Head, Arm, and Leg binds. When a body part is bound, skills that make use of that body part won't be usable until the bind falls off. Not only that, but each bind applies a side effect that can make life hard for the party. Unlike Ailments, binds do stack with them, and with other binds. So it's possible to be hit with all 3 binds at once (and you'll be in big trouble if that happens.) Binds are especially effective on enemies, because while the game will prevent you from selecting skills that use a bound body part, it doesn't apply the same courtesy to the enemy. Meaning that they can waste several turns trying to cast an unusable skill. If you're playing the first game, that doesn't apply. Most bosses will just stop using skills that require a bound body part if you happen to land the right one on them. No idea why the later EO games dropped that.
Head Bind: Cannot use Head skills. Target has their TEC stat halved, which causes them to take more damage from TEC attacks, and deal considerably less TEC damage. This also means that TEC-based healing and accuracy is lowered, as well as making it easier to inflict the victim with a disable, and also making it harder for the victim to inflict their targets with a disable. (Outside of the infliction rate bug.)
Methods of infliction:
Buccaneer: Hanging – 42% to 60% infliction rate
Wildling: Call Bird – 25% to 50% infliction rate
Farmer: Strange Seeds – 20% to 60% infliction rate
Probably one of the worst binds a support can be hit by. A lot of support skills use the head, so this can completely shut them down. Head Binding an enemy can give a huge damage boost to your Zodiac if you're using one.
Arm Bind: Cannot use Arm skills. The damage output from the target's STR attacks is halved.
Methods of infliction:
Gladiator: Arm Breaker – 40% to 60% infliction rate
Wildling: Call Snake – 25% to 50% infliction rate
Farmer: Strange Seeds – 20% to 60% infliction rate
The worst bind a physical attacker can be hit by. Most physical attacks use the Arms, and even if they have access to attacks that use other body parts, their damage output won't be stellar. A very good bind to use against enemies that make use of physical attacks since that will utterly tank their damage output. Add in a Hoplite's defenses on top of that, and your team will be taking no damage.
Leg Bind: Cannot use Leg skills. Disables the target's evasion and prevents them from escaping from battle.
Methods of infliction:
Ninja: Kagenui – 33% to 60% infliction rate
Wildling: Call Mole – 25% to 50% infliction rate
Farmer: Strange Seeds – 20% to 60% infliction rate
An annoying bind to be hit by, but also the weakest bind in the game. There are honestly not too many skills that uses the legs, and while disabling the target's evasion can be handy/deadly, it's not exactly as debilitating as being hit by a Head or Arm bind. Still, don't underestimate it, as some enemies can capitalize on this very easily.
Other:
And here's the last category of Status Effects. These aren't affected by Accumulative Resistance and don't fall into the other 2 categories. Technically Petrification falls under here, but only when applied to the enemies. It's just another ailment when applied to your party.
Death: Dead enemies are permanently out of the battle while dead party members cannot act until revived. There are also ways to instantly kill the target without dealing a specific amount of damage. Instant Death ignores endure effects.
Methods of infliction:
Ninja: Kubikiri – 7% to 20% infliction rate
Wildling: Call Tiger – 5% to 20% infliction rate
Shogun: Kaishaku – Always procs upon activation. Activation rate is a 30% to 60% chance against targets that are below 10% to 15% HP. Ignores resistances and immunities entirely. Cannot activate against the Abyssal God.
Instant Death got a pretty big buff in this game (when used by the enemies. For the players, it got a big nerf.) For one thing, it's not considered an ailment anymore, so skills that can protect you against ailments no longer work against it. And the rates at which you can inflict it got a massive nerf. As for inflicting it on bosses, well believe it or not, you can actually kill them with Instant Death in this game! This is because most bosses have a 1% resistance to it instead of being immune to it. Only 2 bosses in the whole game are immune to Instant Death. (Boy, EO1 and 2 Dark Hunters would have a field day in this game.)
Kubikiri is nice against random encounters, but it's not gonna proc often when fighting FOEs. And it won't work at all against bosses since it'll have a 60% success rate at best, which gets rounded down to 0%.
Call Tiger by itself won't be killing any bosses, it's the bonus chance provided by Wild Mastery. But in the end, it only has a 1.5% to a 7.5% chance to kill a boss instantly. (Unless you were to manipulate the RNG to get a kill on the first turn.)
Kaishaku is a special ability. For one thing, it completely ignores the target's resistances and immunities when it procs. This includes Lethal Resistance, as it skips that check entirely. Granted the target has to be under a certain HP threshold and the ability has to proc in the first place.
Stun: Target cannot act for the current turn. Cannot be inflicted on targets that already took an action.
Methods of infliction:
Gladiator: Stun Attack – 20% to 55% infliction rate
Wildling: Call Lion – 30% to 57% infliction rate
Shogun: Hilt Strike – 30% to 50% infliction rate
This isn't actually considered to be a true ailment since it only lasts for one turn. However, because of that, Stuns aren't affected by accumulative resistance at all. You can inflict this as many times as you want, and it stacks with ailments and binds! But good luck with inflicting it, since this game lacks a guaranteed method of doing so, and FOEs and bosses are pretty resistant to it. And chances are that your Gladiator and Shogun have better things to do other than using weak attacks in an attempt to inflict it. As a kicker, their low TEC and LUC stats drop their chances of inflicting Stun even further. Sure, there's the Wildling's Lion, but that beast falls asleep every time it attacks, so it's not also a reliable way of inflicting Stun. The other thing is that you have to make sure that the Stun is inflicted before the enemy makes their move, otherwise it has no effect. So the Gladiator is terrible class to try to inflict Stuns with since they're really slow. At least the Shogun and the Lion are fairly speedy. In short, not really something worth making use of.
Overall, ailments and binds can be powerful and turn the tide in your favor if you get lucky. But as the game goes on, they get far less effective to use against bosses and FOEs since they get more and more resistant to them. The fact that you can't inflict ailments repeatedly and that you have no control over how long they last really makes them unreliable to revolve your strategies around. If you really want to make use of ailments, just play the later Etrian Odyssey games where disabling enemies with them is a much more viable strategy.