Etrian Odyssey X: Diary 1

Just putting down my thoughts on what I did in the game, after each major dungeon.

In Etrian Odyssey X, you have a world map, with all kinds of masses. For instance, ones that you go to for events... but are not actual dungeons, ones that are small one-floor dungeons, and then the major dungeons with the actual bosses.

So I thought that each major dungeon was a good checkpoint to put down my thoughts.

Also keep in mind that I am playing Heroic Difficulty. So if you are playing on lower, you can do what I did with lower levels.

Also, I'm playing blindly, without looking at walkthroughs.

So as of now, it seems that the major dungeons are references to the previous games. As in, they use the same gimmicks and resemble those dungeons. There is a reason given in-game, but we know this is all fanservice, since this is like a collection of all the previous games.

Oh, BTW, you get that "Gives part of the EXP your party gets to all of your characters in your Guild" item before the first major dungeon, so you should go ahead and at least my two characters of each Class before you start exploring.

Anyways, the first dungeon uses the "Bait bear to destroy trees and open up passages" gimmick. Simple enough. 

And as far as the FOE goes, it is that bear, who charges up and attacks a line. What's nasty is that you don't know if he is going to attack the front line or back line, so your entire party probably has to use Defense to be safe, if they cannot survive a direct hit. I didn't take an image this time, but you know what I am talking about.

And then for the boss. Man, this is what got me.

So first, you will fight this guy... But he is at half-health. Once you defeat him, it turns out there is another one. So then you have to go through the last floor of the dungeon to fight him again, this time at full health. Thankfully, he actually drops his item the first time you fight him, so you can make his weapon to use against him the second time

As for the battle, aside from the first turn and I think a set number of turns where he uses a really quick roar that does small damage and stun, he is pretty brute force. Sometimes charges and then uses an attack that hits multiple characters in your party, which is that "Please guard or die" type of thing.

However, after you defeat him, yet ANOTHER boss appears. You get fully healed and are allowed to save before fighting him, but you cannot leave the dungeon in-between boss fights. And you get a strict warning to not save in your main save slot because of this.
Yep, that's right. The first boss battle this game actually contains two bosses.

As for the second one, the main things you have to worry are:
1. Every 5th turn, he uses a Counter move
2. Whenever he summons the Healer Balls behind him, kill them or incapacitate them with Sleep on the first turn. Else, he will get healed or buffed and the battle will drag longer than you want.

So when I cleared the dungeon, this was my team, below. They are at Level 15.

The key in this boss battle(s) is that you cannot, I believe, buy the TP-healing item and thus cannot risk dragging on the boss battles. So there are two things your party needs:

1. Enough defense to not die instantly from the boss. Both bosses have physical attack skills that do not have a Charge turn, and if any of your characters just die from those attacks, you are not going to be able to keep up with the healing and resurrections.

2. Each offense to defeat the boss before your TP fully drains out.

When I first fought them, I was at Level 13 and, lacking the knowledge, attacked the 2nd boss on his Counter turn. I eventually ran out of TP and gave up.

So I went back and bought some of the newer armor. I thought about hunting the adult Deer FOE in the mini-dungeon before this dungeon to get his fairly good armor for my front line, but it turned out to be too troublesome, so I stuck with just what I could make. And this was enough to survive their attacks.

Finally, I made sure my party had good weapons. One thing is that at this point of the game, you do not really have the money to spare constantly changing equipment. But in this game, you can forge weapons, powering them up, by using material. ONLY material. So it is a good way to get strong weapons without using too much money. As you can see below, I was able to make +4 or +5 weapons for the weapons that used really simply common material.

And as you can also see, I kinda forgot to use Skill Points before the battle, but it turned out fine. I'm the type that likes to save the Skill Points until you unlock something you really need and then get everything all at once.
Psh, Heroic isn't too bad.

Oh, and the balance of my party goes

Bushido - Physical Attacker

Hero - Defender (not as good as Paladin, obviously, but I wanted to use the new class)

Night Seeker - Debuffer

Zodiac - Elemental Attacker

Medic - Healer

Pretty normal.