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Update 36: Musical Security

Are you sure it’s okay for you to leave Ren’s side?

She’s in somewhat stable condition, though not cured from that malady. Surprisingly, Haru made a rather potent herbal mix to keep her in this world for longer. _{Never knew his knowledge of plants went that far.}

Aha, it was something of a desperate measure. I’m just glad that it worked.

If you hurry, you may be able to keep her anchored to this world for who knows how long.

Alright. If you say so. Come on, you two. Let’s get to her inn as fast as we can!

When ya get back, we’re helping that girl first thing for good, ya hear?!

Oh don’t you worry, we’ll deal with that Imperial in no time!

Here’s the party that was voted in. We’ll be taking on the- whoa wait hang on.

There we go! I used 2 Oblivion Pearls on everyone, because level 55 is massively overkill for the next dungeon.

I decided to reconfigure my setups to be more optimal while I was at it. Punishment now has a multiplier of 400%, meaning that she deals 4 points of pure damage for each point of LIFE she is missing. Oh yes, this gets very ridiculous, especially when damage tiles are everywhere in this game, allowing for very easy setup.

I also got Cure II up to level 7, giving it a base heal of 165. At this point, it’s basically a full heal on everyone.

Ah, even more of my powers return to me! Not as potent as my old curses, but it shall suffice.

I opted to drop Moonlit Song so I could invest in this skill instead. Dia’s Evil Voice songs are all about inflicting ailments, and I chose to go for this specific one. Discord Song has a speed factor of 75, and attempts to inflict Curse on all enemies. At this level it has a 45% infliction rate, and inflicts level 1 Curse.

Curse is not a great ailment in this game, so why am I grabbing it? Simply put, it’s like Paralysis in that it’s the least resisted ailment, as ailment multipliers for Curse never go below 50% on most dragons and bosses. This means that it’s the best skill to use to feed Masked Pain builds, for whenever Ark is in the party. By itself it’s very bad, but with a Dagger Rogue, it’s easily one of the best ways to support one.

Assume the rest of the build is fairly similar to what I had before.

I had Nila forget everything about Ice and Lightning, and maxed out Flame to mix things up. That’s about it really. Elements don’t actually matter all that much in the next dungeon, and I figure I might as well have her incinerate things instead of freezing or zapping them for a change of pace.

Hahahaha! Call me a flame demon!

Oh hell no! Even my fellow cohorts would do everything in their power to banish the likes of you from their circles of hell!

And I maxed out Volcano to let her still have an AOE attack in her toolkit.

Also maxed out Fire Mastery because why not? It has a mastery power of 300% and multiplies casting speed of Fire spells by 125%. The damage bonus isn’t really that great since it only adds on 10 more damage compared to level 1, but the casting speed bonus is the bigger boon here.

Also I had little else to really spend my SP on at this point.

Hmm...

Whatever you’re doing, I’d highly advise for you to cease.

Oh lighten up! I’m just harmlessly poking at the fabric of space. And possibly time.

In that case, definitely cease!

That doesn’t sound remotely harmless!

Would it be wrong to feel a sense of impending doom from this?

No, that’s a perfectly normal feeling whenever she’s involved with anything. In fact, I’m sure you’re already familiar with that feeling. After all, the way that battle with Invisible was handled sounded very unpleasant. I’m thankful I wasn’t involved for that one.

It was and point taken.

I dunno, sounded kind of thrilling! And there was no danger right? Those scholars were always going to catch you.

I’m not sure whether your trust in others for such a dangerous task is admirable or foolish.

I had Nila learn Space Mastery, because at this point, why not? The skill itself functions like all the other mastery skills, but it only matters for Nila’s yet to be unlocked EX skill, as Space Mastery namely unlocks field skills. Why am I getting those? Namely cause I have nothing else to spend Nila’s SP on and might as well

Forget advise. This is me commanding you to stop before you destroy all of Eden yourself! ...What are you trying to do anyways?

Consider it an on the spot experiment! It’s a little bothersome to carry around all those Shifters and Exporters, wouldn’t you say? So I figured with a little helping of magic, I could just do those functions myself!

Um. I suppose that would be convenient, though those... holes you made in the air seem rather concerning.

And rather unstable.

They look real neat though! I can see so many stars through there! Ooh, is that another planet? No wait, that’s the moon.

Oh they’re just minor tears in the dimensional fabric of space. Nothing to worry about, it’ll patch itself up after a while! See? Anyways, after I figure out how to connect this to the portal network, we just walk through one of those tears, and presto! It’s like we used a Shifter without them using up our precious backpack space!

...The effort is appreciated though I think we’ll still carry a few on hand just in case, if you don’t mind.

Portal Jump is basically a Shifter in skill form. All leveling it up does is reduce its MANA cost from 8 eventually down to 2. How much you level this up if you even learn this skill is up to you. I’m just taking it cause it makes things more convenient for me and there’s little else Nila can invest in now.

I take it that’s your attempt at recreating an Exporter?

Must you violate the very air in front of you to perform such a task? If you’re going to cast such teleportation magicks, at least do it properly!

Well if you know of how I can tear through the dimensions more efficiently, I’d love to hear any input you have on the matter.

Hm... If I could remember how to create escape points, that may help. Doing so is such an ancient art, but the principles are rather similar to what you’re trying to do. Let me see...

How ancient are we talking- several thousand years!? Yeesh, that’s ancient alright! ...How long have you been around anyways?

Even I no longer remember the answer to that question.

And here’s the Exporter in skill form. Like with Portal Jump, leveling up Exit just reduces the MANA cost down from 8 to 2 at max level.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that, and presto!

Do I want to know what sort of hazardous weapon that is?

It’s not a weapon, it’s medicine!

For... what, exactly?

Just mix this in with our supplies when it’s time to use them, and they’ll be about as twice as potent! Don’t worry, it’s safe. I’ve been working on this for a while.

Just what is this for? Seems not exactly productive for you to create something that doesn’t exterminate dragons.

Ahahah! Oh please, what’s the point of that if we aren’t in tip top shape to do so? Being dead or running on fumes all the time certainly isn’t a way to live! That pretty much goes for anything.

...Never thought I’d hear that coming from you.

Not sure why you’re so surprised considering she’s the one that cooks our food for us every day.

For those of you that have played the remake of EO1, Etrian Odyssey Untold, say hello to the Survivalist’s Efficiency skill! Only on an actually good class this time. This should speak volumes about how powerful it is.

For those not familiar with what I just said, Medicine is a passive skill that increases the effects of restorative items during battle. It starts out at a 150% multiplier at level 1, going up to 200% at level 5. So at max level, all items that restore LIFE and MANA will be twice as effective! Heal Aerosols heal for 100 HP instead of 50, and Mana Waters will restore a whopping 30 MANA instead of 15! This also stacks with EX so you get quadruple the base effect! Not an excellent way to use it, but handy to keep in mind. As you could restore 200 LIFE to the entire party with a Heal Aerosol or 60 MANA with a single Mana Water!

Unfortunately it does not work on Dragon Eggs, so don’t think you can get extra EX out of them. And it only works during battle and only for the Mage, not in the field. Still, even though Mages should more often than not be attacking, this skill turns them into one of the best item users in the game, which can be handy if you need a fallback plan of some kind if something goes wrong.

The rest of Nila’s build is about the same as it was before. And the same goes for Haru and Buront’s skill builds. Let’s get going to the main attraction.

One last mission to take on before we progress to late-game.

This should be the last of the Imperials. Dealing with the rest of the dragons after this point should be child’s play.

Wait, what about that rainbow you uh, “fought”, earlier?

...I don’t know. Maybe let Nila deal with that mess now that she can casually tear apart the fabric of dimensions. Or maybe don’t try to kill rainbows in the first place. I’m not sure how much more reality can take if such a feat were to be accomplished.

It’s just a rainbow. I’m pretty sure the world won’t notice if one of them dies. There’s like plenty more of those to go around.

L-Let’s just head to Marlleaire.

Yes. Ooh, it’ll be nice to visit again so soon.

Oh yeah, did you use to live there or something? You knew a bit about their language.

Aha, no. I just worked there once when I was younger. Bit of an odd place but I did have a few fun times there. Didn’t last for too long since I picked up another job a little while after that.

The Tower of the Gods, northeast of here, is where you must go.

And that’s pretty much all the new stuff that’s said here. You don’t even need to head here once accepting the mission.

If you remember, we got the map to the Tower of the Gods once we unlocked the mission here, so we don’t have to go hunt that down, thankfully.

A lawnmowing session around the Tower of the Gods netted me a few Bloom Seed kills.

Discord Song’s infliction rate is now 50%, and inflicts level 2 Curse.

Now, don’t worry too much about clearing all the Bloom around the Marlleaire Islands and the Tower of the Gods. Just trust me on that. But if you want to fight the dragons at their weakest, this is how much Bloom around the Tower of the Gods you have to clear out.

I remember to equip this and ohoho, those secondary stats are a huge boon to Dia, especially since she’s going with a Punishment build.

Now let’s start clearing out the local dragon population!

Dreadnought is hovering around this tower. It's got a gun that can fling minions straight at you...

S-Sounds quite dangerous...

If you can get to the roof, you'll see it for yourself.

Ah. So how exactly do we get there?

But you'll need to use the central Ronam to open up the path.

An interesting choice of lock and key.

The Ronam are Marlleaire's traditional instruments, used to amplify sound. The state of the tower is out of our control now... Please, help us.

Don’t you worry! We’ll have these towers dragon free in no time!

The entrance area has no encounters, and there’s a healing spring right at the beginning. Which is nice because there are 54 dragons to kill here!

This hint is entirely redundant with what the soldier said, but that’s due to a translation gaffe. There’s a portion at the beginning missing, which was along the lines of “Follow the letters written somewhere.” Which basically spells out the main gimmick of the dungeon.

Any ideas on which tower we should go to first?

We’ll obviously have to enter the central tower at some point from what that soldier told us. But maybe it couldn’t hurt to check out one of the others first?

How about right? I vote right.

Mmph. Not like we have much to go off of.

The tower you go to doesn’t matter all that much, since you’ll have to visit all 3 at some point.

Just a few dragons moving around at high speed.

Let’s see what awaits us.

Wyrm
Level: 43
LIFE: 2000
ATK: 135
DEF: 89
INT: 68
SPD: 70
Attack Type: Blunt
Attributes: Large, Dragon, Death Resistant
Exp: 8064
Gold: 130
Item Drops:
-Normal: Massive Wing - 30% Drop Rate.
--Wing of a Wyrm.
-Rare: Dragon Kabob - 5% Drop Rate.
--A predator's meat. For carnivores. Increases POW for the day.
Damage Multipliers:
Slash: 100% Blunt: 100% Thrust: 100%
Fire: 100% Ice: 100% Lightning: 100%
Ailment Susceptibility:
Death: 10% Masked Pain: 100% Skill Seal: 25%
Fear: 25% Curse: 50% Bleed: 25%
Poison: 50% Sleep: 25% Confuse: 25%
Paralysis: 50% Blind: 25% Stun: 100%

Skills:

Silent Wind: 30% chance of inflicting Skill Seal on the entire party. Has a speed factor of 90.
Sonic Boom: Deals 85% ranged ATK-based Slash damage to the entire party. Has a speed factor of 80.
Volt Claw: Deals 130% melee ATK-based Lightning damage to one party member. Has a speed factor of 90.

Wyrms are basically significantly more annoying versions of Wyverns. They swapped out their physical attack for a slightly stronger Lightning based one, but the biggest upgrade they got was replacing Sandstorm with Silent Wind. AOE Skill Seal has a chance of basically completely shutting down your party, of which only certain restorative items can dispel. And they love to cast that skill as their opener. In fact I recommend packing up on Somanels before you tackle this dungeon mainly because of these things!

Fortunately Silent Wind only has a high chance of being cast first, and after that they pretty much never use it again. Heck if they don’t open up the battle with it, you’re basically home free. Otherwise, they’re basically stronger Wyverns once you get past that wrench.

Because Silent Wind will most likely be cast first, I have no idea which parts of my setup will take and which won’t.

Been a while since I’ve thrown these out!

Oh boy, here it comes. Nila got her Concentrate off, but it’ll be completely meaningless if she gets tagged with Skill Seal now.

My apologies, but it seems you may have to take this creature down without me!

Well that’s quite annoying.

I’m sure we’ll manage.

Nrgh! Shut me down before I could even move! A cowardly blow!

Haru being tagged with Skill Seal, especially before he got his stance up is a much bigger setback, and will slow down this kill.

Might as well try to work with what we have at any rate.

And have these two attack since they can’t use skills.

Fear me.

Eh, okay damage I suppose.

Ah, I’ve missed my old flame.

Goddamn Nila. Okay this fight should be over pretty quickly then.

...I take back what I said. Behold my valiant aid!

For regular attack damage, that’s pretty good.

Just because my form is poor, doesn’t mean I’m down for the count!

And that’s even better damage! If that Skill Seal didn’t land this would have been an easy 2 turn battle.

...Especially since it can’t do all that much to us. Hence why I said these things were more annoying than deadly.

This is fine.

Overall Wyrms are just annoying little roadblocks. If they used Silent Wind more often... they’d just be slightly more annoying. Their lack of killing power pretty much sets them back. How fast you take them down depends on how many party members Silent Wind tags and whether or not you can dispel Skill Seal ASAP.

What a world of difference!

And that’s how much damage Haru can deal if his setup is unimpeded.

I noticed that Dia lost a good chunk of LIFE, so I decided to try out Punishment for kicks to see how much damage it dealt.

Hmm. Seems as if more pain is needed.

Whatever you’re planning on doing, try to leave my body usable. I’d like to be able to still move around and stuff when you return my body to me. Eventually.

For only missing a bit of LIFE, that’s some nice damage. If Dia was at really low health, she’d deal way more. Though I didn’t think of abusing that fact at the time.

This dungeon has the Thorn and Iceman enemies from Mt. Jomaron, though the rest of its encounters aren’t in the Tower of the Gods. Any other monsters we’ll encounter here will be entirely new ones.

There are quite a few staircases scattered about, though not all of them progress forwards.

The dragons here patrol in a loop at a slower pace. While all the dragons on the first floors are Wyrms, these dragons are of a different species.

Little Dragon
Level: 42
LIFE: 800
ATK: 124
DEF: 80
INT: 65
SPD: 62
Attack Type: Blunt
Attributes: Small, Dragon, Death Resistant
Exp: 6408
Gold: 148
Item Drops:
-Normal: Baby Nail - 30% Drop Rate.
--Heart of a Microdragon.
-Rare: Dragon Kabob - 10% Drop Rate.
--A predator's meat. For carnivores. Increases POW for the day.
Damage Multipliers:
Slash: 100% Blunt: 100% Thrust: 100%
Fire: 100% Ice: 100% Lightning: 100%
Ailment Susceptibility:
Death: 20% Masked Pain: 100% Skill Seal: 25%
Fear: 25% Curse: 50% Bleed: 25%
Poison: 50% Sleep: 25% Confuse: 25%
Paralysis: 50% Blind: 25% Stun: 100%

Skills:

Suckle: Deals 120% melee ATK-based Blunt damage to one party member. Party members that are hit have an 80% multiplier applied to their DEF for 5 turns. Has a speed factor of 90.
Sleep Bite: Deals 130% melee ATK-based Blunt damage to one party member, and has a 40% chance to inflict Sleep. Has a speed factor of 90.

Microdragons were the stronger versions of these things, though Little Dragons operate somewhat differently. For one, they only have single target attacks. Like Microdragons, the point of these dragons is that you get swarmed by a bunch of weaker dragons, though in practice if your damage output is good, you can kill them pretty quickly without much issue. Like they only have 800 LIFE! The damage can add up if you take too long, and Sleep Bite can be a pretty big setback depending on the party, but if you finish these dragons off fast, they shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

I don’t need to be at my best to deal with you!

Doing this seems rather heartless...

It’s absolutely not worth setting up on turn 1 when I can just immediately kill these dragons right off the bat.

I suppose it makes sense their attacks would be rather ineffectual.

Even accounting for Shield Front, they don’t tend to do much if your defenses are good enough. Let me put it this way. Their attack power is around the same amount as the random encounters in this dungeon. Yeah.

Haru, no matter how young these creatures look, remember that these are still dragons. They will not grow up into adorable lizards, and will try to gnaw your face off given the opportunity. Like what you just saw with Buront. As pathetic as the attack was.

With how weak these Little Dragons are, you can just consider them free sacks of EXP. Which is probably the point of this mission, to pump a lot of EXP into the party for late-game.

You can also get preemptives on them which is pretty much overkill and ensures you can basically kill these things without taking any damage.

What an unusual looking instrument.

Whoa, it’s all, shiny and crystally!

This must be the Ronam that soldier mentioned.

Let’s have a listen!

The sound of a flute playing 2 musical notes is heard.

I’ve heard better.

Ha! Sorry I’m not much of a musician! Maybe you should give it a try instead!

Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not much of one either.

Shortly afterwards, the central door opens up.

I hope this isn’t meant to be a security system, because this is laughably easy to get past if so.

I think it’s more akin to a unique mechanism to open rather than something meant to keep people out. Unless they wished to keep out the musically challenged.

...Actually I’m not sure who that was meant to keep out given Nila did the bare minimum with the Ronam.

Perhaps creatures without opposable thumbs, like the dragons! Yes, it’s all clear to me now!

Or maybe, just wild animals. I don’t think the people building these towers knew that the dragons even existed back then.

The existence of dragons on this floor would shoot that theory down. Whether it’s a security system or not, this mechanism was completely ineffective at keeping them out.

Just 4 dragons on this floor, moving between 2 points rather slowly. However they are aggressive and will chase you down if they see you.

Said dragons are the Tyrannosaurus boss from the Melluride Mines. You can actually get preemptives on them if you’re careful not to be seen.

They’re easily the strongest dragon in this dungeon due to their massive 156 ATK.

Join me in torment!

They go down pretty fast with this team despite that.

I use that skill point in the screenshot to level up Discord Song to 5. Its infliction rate is now 60% and inflicts level 3 Curse.

...Nothing happened.

It seems like we’ll have to put more effort into unlocking this door.

Perhaps those engraved tiles have something to do with it?

We should probably come back here later. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think pressing those in randomly will help. Why don’t we head back to the bottom of the tower? Shall we get going?

...Well that’s a better attempt at replicating an Exporter, I’ll grant you that.

I hop out using Exit since there’s a healing spring right at the entrance.

Um...

Trust me when this will benefit us down the line.

I’m having Dia frolic in the Bloom here to set up max damage Punishments from Dia. The Bloom just makes it super easy to set up. Though this can be a bit annoying to do on the USA patch, as the reduced Bloom damage means you have to trample around 125 Bloom tiles instead of around 50 to get your Princess down to 1 LIFE.

This will do nicely.

Let’s see how much damage this does!

Oh. Oh that’s beautiful. That’s almost as much damage as a Haru Downstroke! Best part is that this damage is completely unresistable, so the only way enemies can stop Dia from punishing them is to kill her. If you know how to get the most out your classes, even the supports in this game can be pretty big shitkickers! And Punishment’s damage is only going to get higher from here.

Don’t expect this damage to be game shattering though. Dia’s max LIFE doesn’t get particularly high in this game, so there is a much harsher limit to the damage compared to the Hexer’s Revenge from EO2. A strong skill, but not one that’ll reach Triple Kiss levels of broken.

Handy. With Nila’s Medicine online, even weaker consumables can see significantly more value.

Nila’s Medicine passive doesn’t do anything special to full heals for the record.

Another staircase leading up.

Uh, maybe it wasn’t a great idea to frolic in the Bloom.

I did not frolic, I trampled it! Besides...

Not on my watch!

We’re in no danger as long as he’s here. Much appreciated by the way.

It would be better if you didn’t risk yourself as such, but I suppose it helps us deal with these dragons faster.

Ha ha, it is your job to protect others, is it not?

That much is true. Still, seeing anyone in a condition like that puts me a bit on edge.

Punishment is also normally a fairly risky skill to use if you’re maximizing its damage. Except I have Buront on the team, who knows Guardian, which completely redirects damage from low LIFE party members to Buront, so this strategy is completely safe to pull off with my current party setup! Unless an enemy comes with Instant Death, but no such enemy exists in this dungeon.

This glove comes with a very nice MANA boost, but only Mages, Healers, or Princesses can equip this.

Really. They actually have the password written on the wall right here. Written out in the equivalent of plaintext! This tower’s idea of security is beyond laughable!

Maybe it’s not meant to be for security, and just a notice for public use?

Then why go through the trouble of making it harder for the end user to utilize the mechanism in the first place!?

Uhhh... I don’t know...?

The only answer I can think of to that is that the tower constructors possibly had bad ideas. Or were simply inefficient.

On the bright side, we know how to activate the mechanism on the top floor now. Still, this doesn’t seem to be worth getting worked up over. Even if this tower operates in such a strange way, is that so bad?

...My apologies. I suppose not. I’m not even sure why I went off like that myself.

Eh, no big deal. Did you work as a security guard or something in hell? Maybe its instincts from an old job you had coming back to the surface.

Sorry to ruin your colorful imagination, but I had no such employment.

Spike Beetle
Level: 46
LIFE: 210
ATK: 130
DEF: 70
INT: 45
SPD: 58
Attack Type: Blunt
Attributes: Small
Exp: 521
Gold: 46
Item Drops:
-Normal: Beetle Horn - 30% Drop Rate. 8 needed to unlock the Durandal (Sword. +100 ATK, +10 POW.)
--Horn of a Spike Beetle.
-Rare: N/A
Damage Multipliers:
Slash: 100% Blunt: 100% Thrust: 100%
Fire: 100% Ice: 100% Lightning: 100%

Skills: N/A

quote:
Ooh! I gotta catch one of those someday! Can’t wait to see the reaction the others’ll have once this beetle knocks theirs off the logs!
Oh, you go to beetle battles?
Huh. I’ll be honest, I never really got what was so fun about watching beetles knock each other off a log.
Hey, I had to pass the time somehow while living in the streets. _{The only bit of harmless fun I really got to have back then.}

Here are the first of the new enemies we can encounter randomly.

I dunno what else to say about them other than they’re blatantly trash mobs. You need a lot of their drops to unlock a weapon and that’s about it.