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Update 91: Deep Darkness
This place is giving me such a headache!
Starting off this update by re-leveling up Double Action. And then I proceed to forget about everyone else. Not that it matters, since they’re not on the exploration team! 
No point in putting it off any longer, let’s go ahead and tackle this floor. 
Wow, we’re at the stairs already? That was fast!
Ah, no. I believe this was a dead end. We need to head that way, first.
Not going down these just yet, though I really wish that was the end of this floor.
Well that sure is a great start to this floor!
Thankfully they did nothing more than just using regular attacks. Anyways, here’s the first new enemy on this floor.
Suicide Hare
Level: 57
HP: 703
STR: 56
VIT: 56
AGI: 42
LUC: 44
TEC: 53
Attack Type: Slash
Exp: 4332
Item Drops:
-Drop 1: Tiny Tooth - 20% Drop Rate. 1 needed for Great Sword (Sword.) 2 needed for Bec de Corbin (Club.) 5 needed for Carabinier (Light Armor.) 7 needed for Cianontedae (Boots.) 8 needed for Eliminator (Club.) 15 needed for Deathly Belt (Accessory.)
--Has a blade-like tip for the sole purpose of killing.
-Drop 2: Demon’s Fur - 10% Drop Rate. 1 needed for Vajrayana Robe (Monk’s ultimate Light Armor. Must be restocked.) 4 needed for Goetia (Book.)
--From a rabbit which murders humans indiscriminately.
-Gold: N/A
Description: A rabbit monster found in the Labyrinth. When threatened, the gases in it destroy all nearby.
Damage Resistances: Slash: 75% Strike: 75% Pierce: 150% Fire: 100% Ice: 100% Volt: 100%
Ailment Resistances: Sleep: 100% Confusion: 100% Plague: 100% Poison: 100% Blind: 100% Curse: 100% Paralysis: 100%
Bind Resistances: Head: 100% Arm: 100% Leg: 100%
Other Resistances: Death: 100% Petrification: 100% Stun: 100%
Skills:
Self-Destruct: Uses the Head. Causes the Suicide Hare to explode, dealing 280% STR-based Strike damage to the entire party, and denies them exp and their item drops. Has an accuracy of 99. Has an action speed of -10.
Suicide Hares are certainly... interesting enemies. The moment they take any bit of damage, they become ticking time bombs. And the lower their health is, the more likely they’ll go boom. So either save them for last, or kill them first as soon as possible. Though it’s pretty easy to take them out, so they aren’t too much of a threat unless you get careless. There’s also a small chance that they’ll do nothing and defend, though this really just wastes their turn.
Alice and Akatsuki don’t even bother with that nonsense.
And a level up for Alice. Honestly, unless you deliberately drag out the battle, you’ll rarely see them explode since they’re pretty easy to kill.
It always pays to be prepared!
I have Alice take TP Up, which increases her maximum TP pool by 10% at level 1. I’m having her take this because I want her to be able to spam Izuna as much as possible, and there’s not many useful skills she can grab at this point.
Do we really hafta do this?
I’m afraid there’s no other choice. And besides, someone must suffer through this madness.
Why do you look so worried?
You’ll know once we go through. Trust me.
Yeesh, who turned out the lights!?
Oh no, we have to move through here in the dark?
Yeeeeep.
Um, look on the bright side. At least we’re not getting a lot of light in our eyes this time.
Did you miss the mapless areas in Stratum 5? Guess what, they return with a vengeance! So the gimmick of this floor is that we have to navigate through mazes without our map telling us where we are. Oh, but that’s not enough! Oh no, there’s more!
So... which way should we go?
Ooh, I think I see the path turning over there!
NO NO NO, not that way!
Eh? What are you all getting all bent outta-
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!
ALICE!
Hey! Don’t dive down there without us!
Yeah, let’s go! ALLEY OOP!
That’s right! Invisible pitfalls. In mapless mazes. Fun for the whole family! 
Oooog... E-everything hurts...
Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to break my fall. N-not that I didn’t appreciate it.
What, no love for your neighborhood bucket of bolts? OW! OOF! G-gonna need a debugging session after that...
Hey there! Glad to see ya’ll are... mostly okay.
Where’s Mr. Robot? I thought he fell down with you.
Um. You’re... Standing on him.
Aw, geez! Sorry about that!
Oops! Sorry, Mr. Robot!
BEEDLEDEE BOOP. Eh, I-I’m fine... I think.
So, you remember how floor 14 had the pitfalls, which were interconnected with floor 15, essentially combining those 2 to make a gigafloor? Yeah, this is not like that. Floor 23 is there purely to act as a safety net for all of floor 22’s pitfalls. Under Atlus’ twisted definition of a safety net anyway, but I digress. You only have to go through a tiny bit of it and leave the rest of the floor untouched if you want to. And good thing that’s the case, because I don’t plan on exploring it! Not with this party, anyway. So yeah, floor 22’s pitfalls? They’re purely there as a screw you.
This pit was being merciful, because it just dropped us into a campsite room. The rest of the pits will not be as kind.
Oh. These again.
Ow! Hey, is it just me, or are these more painful than those magma splotches from earlier?
Eeeeerg... Oh, they’re worse. Definitely worse.
Oh by the way, damage tiles are back. And they deal 20 points of damage instead of 10. Lovely. Oh, and as for that FOE on the top screen, they’re the main reason I’m holding off on exploring this floor. They’re extremely dangerous to engage, and this party does not stand a chance against them!
Anyways, this FOE follows its patrol path, until you get into its line of sight. At which point, it will turn aggressive and go after you. And it won’t give up until you outright leave the room, so it’s difficult to shake them off.
We really need to work on being aware of our surroundings.
Good grief, what’s with the blindsides? Anyways, here’s a new enemy. I didn’t really cover it in detail the last time we saw it, but I’ll cover it now.
Longicorn
Level: 58
HP: 724
STR: 67
VIT: 55
AGI: 45
LUC: 44
TEC: 53
Attack Type: Slash
Exp: 4461
Item Drops:
-Drop 1: Rending Jaw - 20% Drop Rate. 2 needed for Chauve-souris (Spear.) 3 needed for Struggle (Rapier.) 4 needed for Tricorn (Helmet.) 9 needed for Head Seal (Accessory.)
--It rips and tears any food intended for digestion.
-Drop 2: Longicorn Hull - 10% Drop Rate. 1 needed for Berserk Leather (Gladiator’s ultimate Light Armor. Must be restocked.) 3 needed for Abode (Clothes.) 4 needed for Basilisk (Crossbow.)
--Red shell hard enough to destroy metal.
-Gold: N/A
Description: A monster that hatches from a strange egg. Much is still unknown about this species.
Damage Resistances: Slash: 100% Strike: 100% Pierce: 100% Fire: 100% Ice: 100% Volt: 100%
Ailment Resistances: Sleep: 100% Confusion: 150% Plague: 25% Poison: 25% Blind: 100% Curse: 100% Paralysis: 100%
Bind Resistances: Head: 100% Arm: 100% Leg: 100%
Other Resistances: Death: 100% Petrification: 100% Stun: 100%
Skills:
Cover: Does not use a body part. Protects an ally and takes damage in their place. Has an action speed of +20.
Corroding Acid: Passive skill. Activates upon dying from a physical or elemental attack. Attempts to inflict Plague on the entire party, with a 50% success rate. The Plague ticks for 100 damage.
Throw: ???
Here’s an annoying enemy to deal with. Longicorns have the gimmick of inflicting a status effect upon death. Now normally you could deal with this by just taking them out last, but Longicorns don’t want you to have a say in the matter. If it’s not alone, it’s very likely to spam Cover, forcing you to kill it and unleash the Plague upon your party. And unlike most other enemies with a cast on death passive, you can’t get around this by using Zodiac spells. Despite that, there are answers to dealing with Corroding Acid. Even though elemental attacks trigger Corroding Acid, Almighty attacks don’t. Though there aren’t many options for those kinds of attacks. Sleep and Confusion disables will disable Corroding Acid, so you can just kill it if you can inflict those on it. As a bonus, it’s weak to Confusion, so it’s fairly easy to inflict. Alternatively...
Nice try, but no.
You can just instantly kill them or Petrify it to prevent its passive from going off. And thanks to Cover, they’re very likely to leap to their own deaths for no good reason!
Yeah, that’s where those stairs from earlier lead to. Now that we got all that out of the way, let’s go back to where we were on this floor.
...After Fang gets a level up.
Call Snake is now stronger.
There’s another invisible pitfall over here.
If you’re wondering how you’re supposed to figure out where the pitfalls are... you can’t. Because this floor has no sense of cohesive design to it- wait no, I take that back. This floor- no, this Stratum has a specific design philosophy it follows, which is to annoy the everloving fuck out of the player and waste their time as much as possible.
Finding a safe route through these mapless mazes is purely trial and error. You basically have to hope for the best and if you guess wrong, well it’s either time to climb back up to B22F or just give up and thread out because the FOEs on that floor can very easily ruin your day and it’s not worth trying to get past them in some cases. Even pitfall hell in EO1 had a line of logic you could follow to find out where its invisible pitfalls were. If you’re wondering what I’m referring to, I’m talking about B27F in that game. If you do decide to look up that floor, try not to have a heart attack.
The only saving grace is that when you fall down a pitfall, your position on the map is revealed, which is a very small mercy. Then again, these pits just send you directly down to the tile below, and don’t teleport you to a different position, so it’s just Atlus cutting out some busywork on the player’s side there. Speaking of teleporters, unlike the first two games, this game’s 6th Stratum is completely devoid of them, thank god! The ones in the 5th Stratum were thankfully the last we saw of them. I mean, could you imagine how diabolical teleporter mazes in mapless rooms would be? Okay something happened of the sort in EO2U’s 6th Stratum, but in that case it’s just really a few teleporters added to mapless rooms instead of outright teleporter mazes.
You could just look up a map to circumvent the whole thing (and quite frankly, I wouldn’t blame you. You coward.) Though all you would be left with in that case is just a bunch of mapless rooms that you would have to take a specific route through. Truly riveting gameplay.
Honestly, this Stratum is really just unenjoyable to go through. EO1’s 6th Stratum at least had enemies that would rip you apart at a moment’s notice so there was something keeping you on your toes there. The random encounters in this Stratum are really boring to fight. So really aside from the annoyances, this Stratum really has nothing interesting going for it. And the worst part is that the invisible pitfalls isn’t the worst this Stratum has to offer.
That’s the end of this mapless section.
Oh sweet sweet light! Baby, how I’ve missed you!
I wouldn’t celebrate this early just yet.
Yeah, take a wild guess at what’s behind that door.
...Damn it!
You dirty son of a glitch!
Alice, I would really like to know how ya keep avoiding that...
Oh, Akatsuki just taught me how to that nimble, I guess!
I’m afraid I won’t be able to teach you the Ninja arts that easily, Mr. Sidney. I’m not sure if you can be that quick on your feet while lugging that huge crossbow around...
Eeerrrruuuggghhh...
D7 Chop Point:
Polyamide Fiber: 60% Gather Rate. 1 needed for Chauve-souris (Spear.) 6 needed for Mons Meg (Crossbow.)
-Sturdy string that rarely snaps or frays.
Star Driftwood: 40% Gather Rate. 1 needed for Shaternal (Crossbow.) 6 needed for Fangtianhuaji (Spear.)
-Glitters like the night sky when illuminated in the dark.
Stardust Twig: Rare. 1 needed for Fatal Magatama (Accessory.) 3 needed for Antioch Gun (Gun.) 5 needed for Sentence Hammer (Club.)
-Branch of unknown origin that may or may not be natural.
Common Gather Periods: 3 to 17.
Rare Gather Periods: 1 to 4.
Here’s the first Chop Point on this floor. Just unlocks some more equipment. I’ll gather from here later.
And here we go again.
Ha ha! Not going down this time!
I wish I could say the same.
Goddammit Sidney.
There’s a pitfall here.
Akatsuki got a level up while I was stumbling through the rooms.
Tagen Battou now has a base damage of 69%, and a skill multiplier of 107%.
Silver Octopus
Level: 59
HP: 724
STR: 54
VIT: 52
AGI: 47
LUC: 45
TEC: 60
Attack Type: Pierce
Exp: 4352
Item Drops:
-Drop 1: Blue Tentacle - 25% Drop Rate. 1 needed for Struggle (Rapier) and Crescent Robe (Clothes.) 3 needed for Great Sword (Sword.)
--Its coloration is as if the octopus mimicked the ocean.
-Drop 2: N/A
-Gold: N/A
Description: An octopus mutated by the forest miasma to become capable of wielding spells against its foes.
Damage Resistances: Slash: 150% Strike: 100% Pierce: 100% Fire: 25% Ice: 25% Volt: 25%
Ailment Resistances: Sleep: 100% Confusion: 50% Plague: 100% Poison: 100% Blind: 100% Curse: 100% Paralysis: 100%
Bind Resistances: Head: 100% Arm: 50% Leg: 100%
Other Resistances: Death: 100% Petrification: 100% Stun: 100%
Skills:
Zone Icicle: Uses the Head. Deals 50% Ice damage to the entire party. Has an action speed of +0. Has an accuracy of 99.
All these things can do is cast an AOE Ice attack. Exciting. Oh and I guess their severe elemental resistances are also worth mentioning, I guess. Screw you for using a Zodiac? Who shouldn’t even be using their elemental skills at this point in the game.
You know something worth mentioning is that in these enemies’ AI files, they were originally programmed to use stronger versions of the skills I listed for them. Except for whatever reason, that change seems to have been reverted for nearly every single enemy in this Stratum, so I guess the dev team thought they were too strong or something? Which in my opinion, was not the right call to make.
Hmm, it seems that these enemies’ abilities in combat are lacking.
That’s because you two keep turning them all to stone before they can do anything! I feel sorry for them.
Yeah, save some for the rest of us! Uhh, except for the Dragonflies. You can take those.
Nothing much to them. If you’re really having trouble dealing with them, Anticold or Ice Prophecy is an option for dealing with them.
Another pitfall here.
And another he- oh goddammit! I completely forgot that there was a pitfall here!
What’s that weird looking bumpy thing?
Dunno. Don’t remember seeing that on the trips down here before.
Might as well show off this thing.
Whoa, that’s uhhh... Really creepy.
Um, do any of you hear baaing noises? Like, from sheep?
...Somehow I get the feeling that we should run. Very fast.
If you’re wondering what that just did, pay attention to the bottom screen of that GIF. I included it for a reason.
If you don’t get it, that wall eye just alerted every FOE in the room to our presence.
These wall eyes will alert every FOE in the room that we exist if we step in a 3x2 area in front of them, which I’ve marked. I’ll also mark the eyes with the event icon. It’s not gonna be used for anything else anyway, since there are no events in the 6th Stratum.
Ah, geez. This is looking pretty ugly.
N-n-nice sheep.
Get close to me, everyone.
Sorry, but we won’t be sheep feed today. Or ever!
Well since I’m trapped, I might as well warp back to town. If you’re wondering if Alice could instantly kill those FOEs, she can’t. They’re immune to both Instant Death and Petrification. Anyways, floor 23 was a new floor, so there’s some new town dialogue for us.
I caught lots of fish! So many that I shared them with everyone in Armoroad. You should have seen how happy they were! Everyone said they wish every day could be that peaceful... And you know what I said to that?
What?
Hee hee, we won’t let them down there! Hopefully.
I feel a twinge of worry when I watch you nowadays... Remember the maxim, “More haste, less speed.” Why not stop and relax? Why be in such a tizzy? If you wind up dead, we wouldn’t be able to have these chats over tea anymore. It would be so selfish of you to rob me of one of my few enjoyable pasttimes... Understood?
Aha... Understood.
Let’s see what equipment we’ve unlocked.
The Doutanuki is a slight upgrade in damage, but the Katana made from Kujura’s drop is 1 point stronger than it.
The Vajrayana Robe is the Monk’s ultimate armor. A nice amount of defense, and a boost to both TEC and HP. Oh, and I guess there’s that STR boost as well, which would be nice for Punch Monks. Actually at this point in the game, Punch Monks would be fairly decent since their fist power would start to catch up with weapons.
And that’s it for equipment unlocks. You probably won’t see too many of those at this point in the game on your own playthroughs. I don’t know if you noticed, but you might want to take a closer look at the drop rates on the 6th Stratum enemies. Yeah, they’ve tanked in comparison to the drop rates from the enemies in the main game! Better get to spamming Lucky Hammer if there’s a specific piece of equipment you want!
Where are you all headed off to? And what’s waiting for you when you get there? ...Well, I guess you’ll find out when you make it there, right? Good lucks to you!
Every explorer in Armoroad wishes they could be a part of the Tidehunt Guild. All eyes are on you now. Remember that and try to set a good example when you’re in the Labyrinth.
I’ve heard rumors that you’re fighting against what caused the Calamity a century ago. If those rumors are true, that means that the restoration of Armoroad is on your shoulders. Win this battle, no matter what it takes, and you will have truly returned peace to our city. ...Though I must admit, it’s irritating that these old bones can’t do a thing to help...
Ehhh, if you’ve been through what we have, you probably wouldn’t feel that way.
The evil one’s traps will only get worse from here on out... Do not allow yourself to succumb! You’re Armoroad’s last hope left! Do whatever it takes to come back from this mission alive!
My sister kept talking about the Tidehunt Guild. Looks like she can’t take her mind off of you! But don’t go to the home office every time... Stop by the Deep City branch sometimes too, okay?
You must not fail. I know that the Abyssal King prays for your success from somewhere.
Let us hope that our mission actually works out this time.
Gonna stop here for now, since exploring the rest of the floor is gonna make this update too big. (And I really am not in the mood to explore the floor at the moment.) We’ll tackle the rest of the floor next time.