RPG Challenge Runs (With Spoilers)

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
I mean, I'm reading your posts and all but I just don't know enough about the Etrian Odyssey games (on my distant backlog) to chime in and I don't stick to a single game long enough to do much challenge-type stuff myself anymore, I just 100% a game and move on to the next. I don't really have the time or inclination to stick to a single game forever in my old age.

I understand it feels bad to post and receive no feedback, but rest assured there are a handful of people like me that are paying attention nonetheless.
 
I mean, I'm reading your posts and all but I just don't know enough about the Etrian Odyssey games (on my distant backlog) to chime in and I don't stick to a single game long enough to do much challenge-type stuff myself anymore, I just 100% a game and move on to the next. I don't really have the time or inclination to stick to a single game forever in my old age.

I understand it feels bad to post and receive no feedback, but rest assured there are a handful of people like me that are paying attention nonetheless.

If you're going to play one of the Etrian Odyssey games, try 3, 4, or 5 instead of the Untold games with their stupid Grimoire Stone lotto.

Challenge runs are pretty much the only way I play that series. 4 was the first one I had, and I restarted the game several times because I got bored playing with standard teams. Then I thought using 5 Dancers was a funny idea, and I enjoyed the game much more. Then I beat the game with 5 Nightseekers, and that was even more fun. Paper-thin defenses don't matter if the enemy can't hit you, right? :)

I like monoclass teams in RPGs because they force you to use different tactics that you would never consider with generic optimized teams. It's pretty much the same reason I used to play stuff like Sky Battles and Inverse Battle a lot in Pokemon X/Y instead of Singles OU. In Etrian Odyssey Untold 2, Blinding Slash and Boomerang Axe are subpar attacks under normal circumstances, but they've saved me many times in my Landsknecht only challenge. There's also an option in the battle menu to switch your characters to different rows without using up a turn. Normally, you'd rarely do this because classes are designed to always be in either the front or the back. With 5 Landsknechts, I switch all the time. Hurricane disables my skills? Time to move one of my back row axe users to the front.


In the Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, combat is probably the worst part of the game due to enemies scaling to your level. So I thought "Why not skip it altogether?" I made a mostly pacifist character named "Gandhi" who only killed mandatory enemies, and the game became more interesting. Pacifist (or mostly nonviolent at least) playthroughs are fun to try in Fallout and Geneforge games too.
 
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More updates on Etrian Odyssey Untold 2's 4th stratum!

Harpuia seems to have low health for an Untold 2 boss, but she's immune to blind. So much for the "Blinding Slash and pray" tactic that carried me through much of the game. I killed the Luminous Bird FOEs on the 20th floor to prevent them from showing up at the boss fight with Picnic grinding. My team has already beaten the Luminous Bird, Charging Rhino, and Great Frog before on Expert, and had already explored the floors, so it didn't feel too corny to switch to Picnic that time. (Then again, you don't need to do difficulty switching in the better EO games. . .)

The best cafe food for this boss will probably be the one that blocks status ailments for the first 3 turns. That's because Harpuia will try to afflict your party with Fear status on the 1st turn, which can make you lose turns and TP.

Great Frogs can summon about 5 smaller frogs that afflict your party with Curse status. Curse makes you damage yourself every time you attack. Falcon Slash was how I beat this fight on Expert.

Charging Rhinos can hit multiple characters with a powerful physical attack, but are otherwise just enemies with too much HP like FOEs and bosses in general.

Luminous Birds hit your entire party with a Lightning elemental attack, but it takes a turn to charge up which leaves an opening for Blinding Slash.

I still have not beaten an Enraged Raptor, so I don't fight them in Picnic mode yet. They can hit your whole party with a physical attack that can blind.

The random encounters in the upper floors can be almost as dangerous. Cockatrices can petrify your characters, and this doesn't wear off after battle like in EO5.
 
Tonight's Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 update:

Harpuia went down after a long battle. 5 Landsknechts have no healing other than items, and their TEC stat is too low to take advantage of Medic or War Magus Grimoires anyway. EO games except for 5 only allow you to carry 60 items in your inventory.

The status ailment blocking food probably helped on the first turn, but the Scorpion Plume accessories that increase Fear resistance are what carried me through the fight. Having to give up an armor slot to equip accessories is annoying in every EO game.

Somas heal your entire party for about 80 HP. My back row party members were using them often. By the end of the fight, only the two axe users survived. Good thing I maxed out Boomerang Axe and Charge Smash! The Landsknechts were about level 56-57, which is stupidly overleveled for the 4th stratum by the standards of this series.

For the sake of comparison:

My 5 Nightseeker party in EO4 was about Level 49 by the end.

The Masurao and Rover all-Therian squad in EO5 beat the final boss at around 58-59.

Even the solo Hoplite cleared EO3 at about 60.

The level cap before the postgame is 70.

I complain about the Grimoire Stones all the time, but they wouldn't be as annoying if they weren't required to max out your main skills. You can only level up a skill to 10 with skill points, but they go up to 20 if you have a matching Grimoire. Then the game decides to only give you level 1s for frequently used skills. Trading for level 10s at the cafe requires either another level 10 Grimoire, or a bunch of level 9s. And THAT requires getting guests of the right class to show up at the cafe. . .


Oh, if it counts as a challenge run, I've been playing some Oblivion with the maximum difficulty slider as a mage. All it does is make you take 6X damage and deal 1/6, I think. Monsters summoned through Conjuration and companions act as they normally do. Imagine a weenie running around Cyrodiil, getting all of his non-invincible companions killed due to his incompetence and/or AI glitches.

You will lose to the first battle against two rats in the tutorial if you try this challenge. I had to use the Breton race's "50% shield ability" to get through most of the fights there. I started off with the Mage birthsign (+50 MP) and switched to Atronach before leaving the sewers.

The Atronach sign gives a different experience. You don't regenerate MP, so you brew a lot of potions, use altars at town, and hunt for Welkynd Stones to compensate. Welkynd Stones are a nonrenewable resource in this game.
 
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EO Untold 2's 5th stratum is frustrating. Most of the puzzles involve dodging flying bombs that can change direction, and you need to take advantage of it to weaken the next boss. Hitting Juggernaut with 4 bombs reduces its health by about 2/5, and you get a preemptive attack. When I saw the puzzle solution for that room on GameFAQS, I knew I would never have figured it out on my own.

You learn horrifying things about the game design when you find out that Juggernaut still has too much HP even when reduced by 40%. It buffs everyone's attack like the Eternal Tyrant and has a special attack that only hits party members with active buffs. Not much tactics here. The only solution for me is more grinding, and I'm only about 8 levels away from the cap.

I found out that the Yggdrasil Clover food gives the highest experience bonus, but it only works until you go back to town, unlike regular cafe bonuses. When does it appear after the first time? It's random. Just like most other innovations in EO Untold 2. . .

One reason I keep playing EO is because it's portable. You learn the value of that when you have a weird schedule. Don't let my complaints about EO Untold 2 drive you away from the series. EO 3, 4, and 5 are all great RPGs.

Oblivion is going smoothly. The non-Guild quests in Chorrol and Skingrad are complete, and I'm currently working on the Anvil "buy a haunted house" mission. Conjuration makes the highest difficulty setting little more than an HP penalty. The store-bought Invisibility spell Shadow Shape makes Oblivion gates trivial. Good thing I took the Atronach sign so there is at least some resource management tension. Maybe I might branch out into Destruction magic.

It seems if you really want Oblivion to be hard, you should play as a melee character.
 
I have proof that the Grimoire RNG in EO Untold 2 is worse than hunting for good IV Pokemon.

During a session of Picnic mode grinding to prepare for Juggernaut, a menu popped up telling me I had too many Grimoires and had to throw one away. This limit is 400, not counting ones your characters equipped. None of them in my bag are level 10. Two are level 9, and neither of those are Landsknecht skills. (One of my Landsknechts has a level 9 Hurricane equipped. 1 out of 400 ain't bad!)

Why is level 10 important? In EO games, skills often become much stronger every 5 levels, and Untold 2 is the only game where they can go up to 20. It's not a diminishing returns sort of game. You can only get the first 10 levels from skill points, meaning your skills are at half their potential without Grimoire bonuses.

In Oblivion, I decided the quests were too boring and am training my Illusion magic so I can cast custom Fury spells to. . .reduce the file size. Those NPCs take up too much space, you see.
 
FINALLY!!!!! JUGGERNAUT IS DEAD!

It may have required grinding to level 70 by killing 1 googol FOE frogs on Picnic. It took abuse of "gamey" tactics and Luck to do it after losing many, many times. But Expert difficulty Juggernaut went down.

Juggernaut, like most bosses in EO Untold 2, follows a strict pattern. If you do the puzzle correctly, you'll start the fight with a free turn. I think I used Hurricane and Boomerang Axe on turn 1, and then had my sword Landsknechts use a regular attack on turn 2. On the second turn, Juggernaut will give an attack buff to everyone on the field. One of my Axe Landsknechts had an Ad Nihilo Grimoire that could dispel the boss's buff while keeping the boost for my party.

There's always a catch. Juggernaut uses an attack called King's Rush on certain turns. The turn before it does that, Juggernaut dispels all buffs on your party. If you had buffs at that time, King's Rush will hit your entire party for enough physical damage to cause a Game Over by itself. What I did eventually was to get the "increase the effect of Blind" food bonus from the cafe. My mistake on previous attempts was opening the fight with Blinding Slash, rather than waiting until shortly before the King's Rush turn. With the cafe bonus, Blinding Slash reduced the boss's accuracy to almost nothing.

After blinding Juggernaut, I activated Force Boost, which gives a 50% boost to attacks, and an extra percentage from the Fencer skill that I dumped 10 skill points into. When using 5 Landsknechts, be sure to wait one turn before Force Boosting the back row characters, so you don't waste your Force Break. Blinding Slash is a good choice for the first turn of a Force Boost, since it doesn't disable your next turn's skills like Hurricane does. Next comes Triple Charge, which powers up your next attack. After that, Force Break.

All those Force Breaks weren't enough to kill the boss, and the back row Landsknechts died shortly after switching to the front. Three Hurricanes from the sword users were just enough to finish the fight.

I'm probably making this sound like a good boss fight, aren't I? That would give this game too much credit.

And for a final kick in the shins, guess what cafe recipes I found in a treasure chest that could only be unlocked after defeating Juggernaut? The ones that improve the quality of random Grimoire drops.
 
It's over. The 5 Landsknechts of the Lollipop Guild have cleared EO Untold 2.

The Overlord has two forms, which is not as common in this series as in other Japanese RPGs. The first form barely counts because it has only 6000 HP, but I died to it once because of poor preparation at the time. It follows a strict pattern, and always uses a move that can cause random status ailments like Fear and Panic on turn 1. For this reason, I tried using the "block status ailments for 3 turns" food. Then I always died on the second form.

The Overlord's second form can hit with powerful area of effect attacks and can summon satellites that can hit for minor damage. The first turn is a breather because it charges up one of its attacks, leaving you free to heal and set up any buffs.

Cafe bonuses were the answer, like with so many other bosses. The blind enhancing food was preferable, but then I died to the first form when I got unlucky with its status ailments. What to do? I happened to have a level 1 Prevent Order grimoire in my inventory. Prevent Order is a Sovereign buff that blocks status ailments for one row of your team. More than one level only decreases the TP cost if my memory is correct, and TP isn't much of an issue at this point even with low TP classes like Landsknechts.

It took 8 turns to beat Overlord form 2 on my successful Expert clear. Hurricane is good to use on turn 1 because you'll be defending anyway on turn 2. Blinding Slash saved the team as it usually did. Triple Charge powered up the Force Breaks, and I ended the fight with Hurricanes and Boomerang Axes. Good thing I grinded for money to buy the endgame swords and axes!

(Overlord form 2's music reminds me a lot of the music from Turtles in Time. Do they have the same composer?)

The credits feature all of the characters from town, and of course Guild Esbat gets the last word.

Now I'll finish by saying a few positive things about this game. (What?!) I'll miss the cafe system when playing other EO games. Will you pick the food that makes your status ailments more powerful, or blocks enemies' attempts to inflict them? Choices like this added extra depth to the combat. Untold 2 has the largest variety of classes in the series, unless you count EO5's branching promotions. They're mostly balanced too, and Ronin seems to be the only class that's weak relative to the others. Alchemists in this game are the most interesting mage class in the series thanks to their Palm skills that give them the option of being a front-row fighter. Force Boosts and Force Breaks make "limit breaks" more powerful and varied than in most of the other EO games.


I may complain about this game, but it does some things right. If you want to try it, I recommend playing with a "normal" party on Standard first with a Protector in your party to get all the Grimoires and cafe recipes you might need (i.e. the ones for better Grimoires), then saving Expert for New Game Plus with a different team.
 
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My current Oblivion character Murder Hobo has a quest to kill as many named NPCs as he can on the maximum difficulty slider. Unlike Skyrim, where it seems every other character is immortal, most Oblivion non-player characters can die if either they're not relevant to a quest, or any quests involving them are completed. Think of this as the opposite of a pacifist playthrough.

A custom Frenzy spell usually does the trick. Set the level as high as possible, give it a 30 second duration, and enough area so you can cast it on a group of people. Then watch the carnage! Conjuring a monster works too, especially if it's a Daedroth.

Some highlights:

-One of the people at Meridia's shrine summoned a zombie. Yes, a worshiper of the goddess who spends all her time sending adventurers to kill necromancers did it right in front of her statue.

-Thorley Aethelred: He sent me on a quest to kill 6 bears and bring back their pelts, then decided he should do it himself. With only his fists. No Frenzy involved, just crazy AI.

-Maenlorn and Varulae: Atronach birthsign mages tend to spend a lot of time hunting for Welkynd Stones in Ayleid ruins to restore their MP. I forgot that Miscarcand was part of the main quest, so the boss followed me all the way to Anvil. I had a surprise visit right after I paid off a bounty. The corpses of Maenlorn and Varulae were in the castle courtyard.

-Penniless Olvus: Beggars run away instead of attacking other characters when you hit them with Frenzy. I don't know why. Maybe their AI is different from other types of NPCs? Murder Hobo poisoned his dagger and slashed him. If you kill a Frenzied target, the game doesn't count it as a murder. Joining the Dark Brotherhood with my current character will be harder than I thought.
 
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Porkchop is the true champion of the Imperial City Arena in Oblivion. In the Champion match, that boar took out two of the combatants and survived the match. And Owyn said it would be a good "distraction".

My character is level 21 right now, so his preferred tactic is "activate the 50% defense buff Breton racial skill, summon a Storm Atronach, then cast an invisibility spell and hide". Poisons are equally as effective on the hardest difficulty as they are at any other setting, because it's really more that the player character is weaker rather than the enemies being stronger. You can die in a few hits, and there's an 85% damage reduction cap on your armor rating, I think.

The Gray Prince and his vampire father Lord Lovidicus may be dead, but pretty much everyone else in the Arena must be immortal even after you become the Grand Champion.

The next questline for me is probably the Mages' Guild. Be sure to buy the Summon Dremora Lord spell from the Bruma Mage's Guild if you want it, because it's missable after a certain point in that plot. (Storm Atronach is better anyway.)

You get a choice of which spell to enchant your Mage's Spell with. I went with 40 second Soul Trap to make enchanting a little easier. The Necromancers in the staff cave are really annoying to fight with only Conjuration because your summons will often attack your opponent's summons instead. So I made a custom Command Humanoid spell, which worked out fine for that quest.
 
Long before I posted this topic, I got to the 4th stratum in Etrian Odyssey 3 with a solo Wildling. This afternoon, I decided to try to finish it at last.

The most viable classes for solo runs in this EO are Hoplite, Wildling, and Yggdroid.

Hoplites are my favorite defensive character in this series because they have a passive skill that heals them when they defend for 60 HP. The closest equivalent to that move is a Dragoon skill in EO5, but it's an active skill that uses TP and only works when the user takes damage. Hoplites use spears like the name would suggest, unlike the inaccurate blunt weapons of EO4 Fortresses. Spears let them hit from the back row without penalty too. Why is that important for a solo character?

Once you get to the Deep City after the end of the 2nd stratum, your characters can get a subclass, which does not have any restrictions except for being unable to use the subclass's "class passive skill". For solo characters, this means being able to summon clones in battle at the cost of splitting HP and TP between them with the Ninja's Bunshin skill. Add in Tagen Battou, which sacrifices the clones to unleash the strongest attack in the game. Some of the later bosses in both the Armoroad and Deep City stories heal themselves, so you need Tagen Battou if you're not using a Wildling or an Yggdroid.

Wildlings are a lot different. They're the status ailment class in the one EO game where they're less effective. However, they're not like EO Untold 2 Hexers where trying to inflict status ailments is the only thing they can do. Wildlings summon animals to fight for them, and they can get passives to make their animals take hits for them. Since this class requires so many skill points, you'll want to focus on two animals. One for random encounters, and one for bosses and FOEs.

It took some experimenting to get it right. Some players love the Tiger, but after its initial instant kill roar, it can only counterattack. This is unreliable without specific setups. I use the Elephant instead. It hit all enemies on the turn when they're summoned, and on later turns they hit single targets. All the Elephant's attacks can cause Panic, which prevents enemies from using any abilities other than their basic attacks, and has a chance of making them hit themselves. For boss fights later in the main game, go with the Lion. It hits much harder than the Elephant, and can stun enemies, which works exactly like Flinching in Pokemon. The problem is that the Lion falls asleep after every attack. This is why my Wildling has a Monk subclass. The Monk's Refresh skill can wake up the Lion every turn for a low TP cost. No having to fill up your limited item slots with Theriaca B required. (No, I'm not the first solo Wildling player, because there's a PKLooove on YouTube who did it better. He likes the Tiger a lot more than I do.)

I don't have much experience with Yggdroids, but they have a move called Shoot that is similar to Tagen Battou, and they're immune to binds that aren't self-inflicted with their gimmick skills. Since you get that class so late on the Deep City route, you'll have to use a New Game Plus file if you want to play the entire game with one.
 
My solo Wildling has cleared Etrian Odyssey 3's Deep City route!

Here's my character sheet if you want to see the skill point distribution:

Wildling/Monk, Level 68, 358 HP, 249 TP

Beast Soul 10/10
Wild Mastery 10/10
Nature Pact 4/10
Sacrifice 1 10/10
Sacrifice 2 10/10
Dismiss Beast 1/5
Call Insect 4/10
Call Elephant 10/10
Call Lion 10/10
Healing 2/10
Refresh 3/10

Equipment

Baselard (Dagger)
Aurora Veil (Clothing)
Morbarabakets (Boots)
Boldrons (Gloves)

If you're playing the Deep City route, you fight two bosses in a row during the final showdown. The dagger and boots were intended to give my character a higher chance to go first, but both Kujura and the Deep Princess are faster. Indomitable saved me several times here. The fact that you can only carry 60 items made me tense when I was running out of Medica 2s to heal!

The Deep Princess fight lasted 63 rounds. She has area of effect Ice and Lightning elemental attacks. Sacrifice 2 absorbed some of the blows that would have hit the Wildling. The Lion did most of the damage, but the Elephant got in a lucky Panic for a turn or two. One of the Deep Princess's skills can Panic you, which almost defeated me once. All those multitarget attacks make me wonder if the Tiger and its counterattacks would have been a better idea for the final fight. Oh well, the Lion worked out anyway.
 
try playing black mage or samurai in ffxiv
Are Black Mage and Samurai weak classes in Final Fantasy XIV? I don't know. I never played MMOs all that much. Besides, my desktop would probably die in agony if it attempted to play anything made in the past 10 years or so that isn't a roguelike.

Yes, I've still been doing challenge runs in RPGs, though I post that stuff mostly on the Realms Beyond forum as "Herman Gigglethorpe" now. I recently completed a solo Edea Exorcist in Bravely Second, and am currently working on a solo multiclass Ringabel in Bravely Default. Bravely Default is much more difficult even with multiclassing and buying overpowered Norende equipment early.

(Exorcist is really the only job you can use to complete Bravely Second without using abilities from other classes. Undo Action is needed to block some attacks like Kaiser Oblivion's Blinding Flash, and you'll need to be able to Undo HP or Auto Undo to get past Anne's Undermine skill that reduces your max HP to 1.)

I may post in the Orange Islands subforum about my attempt at building a Grass deck in the Pokemon Trading Card Game for Game Boy Color.
 

Mr.E

unban me from Discord
is a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
MMORPGs tend to be pretty lenient on PC specs because they have to service such a wide range of players and support so much going on at once, though there's only so much you can do alone in them.
 

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