So I finished the main story of EO4 last night, and did some dragon slaying + dark-whats-it-called dungeon exploring today. Had my 2nd party wipe recently to inspecting statues in the dungeon. I knew it would be an ambush, killed the muskoids despite having low burst meter, got 4 afterwards, and tried again because 1: maybe the 2nd inspect would be safe...obvious ambushes tend to have better responses if it lets you inspect a 2nd time after all, and 2: with 4 burst I could try to insta-death them with that burst skill for conditional drops (I cheat and look at wiki for conditional drops after I kill something at least once, since there is 5 in one encounter, I just had to know right away, especially since I never saw one during the last HOUR of exploring, what are the chances). Needless to say it was still an ambush (you would think you at least don't get ambushed the 2nd time since your group knows what happened the first time), and all 5 used all stone, and despite using a meteor pumpkin or whatever it's called, my entire party got stoned before Ic ould move... lame.
My first party wipe was from a rare-spawn suicide-shallot thing in the misty rivine. It expanded on its first turn, and I couldn't kill it right away despite me using a burst skill on it at the time (my dps was really low at the start of the game, I just have a late bloomer party I guess), and since it was rare, it got to move first on turn 2, where it oneshot my entire party. blarg. I may have had more but those are the only 2 I've had where I actually lost a lot of time exploring and @%##@%.
Anyway, EO4 was great....but I think I'll like EO1U more, and almost sure I'll like EO2U more. I like the music in the older titles more, especially in the U versions where you can swap between fm and modern audio styles. (though eo4 still has great music, I particularly like the quest-boss music... quest not mission, ones like baboon king, hallow overseer, cursed prince who had the quest boss music instead of mission boss music for some reason, etc). The airship stuff in EO4 was WAY better than the ship thing in EO3, but in retrospect it still is kinda tedius IMO...Because it kinda promotes you running around wasting time hunting for the food you want before you do the dungeon you want. Then you might bump into a gold outdoor FOE you want or something, where you decide to kill that instead, then you go back to town and rest since you blew thru tp killing the gold foe, then a pooka appears or something, so you kill that, but then you don't get the food you want cuz you wore airship gear for pooka hunting instead of rare food gathering, so you rest again...You get the drift...I know you don't NEED to do this, but as an efficientist (yes I just made that up), I'm compelled to, or else I'll EXPLODE! I'm sure I'm not the only one either.
I think the whole air thing would be way better for me if the food thing would last a day or two in game rather than magically vanish as soon as you visit town or something.
My 2nd gripe is that money is even more trivial in this game than previous EO games...EO is kinda liked by many of its fans because it's supposed to be relatively difficult and unforgiving...being stingy with cash and making you make hard choices about how to spend your cash is part of challenge in any game...Unfortunately this one NEVER made me feel tight on cash, and even if I WANTED to go on a shopping spree buying all the expensive stuff, I couldn't cuz virtually everything expensive needs a conditional drop that you can only get a handful of before making more money obtaining more than you spend buying what you needed them for. I always thought EO made money trivial like virtually every other rpg game after the first stratum or two, but in EO4 I never even felt tight on the very first stratum.
Last, it's not a gripe but just something I think can be improved...I like how EO4 has multiple dungeons. I just think they would be even more exciting if they all didn't have the format of a small 1 floor dungeon, or a 'large' 3 floor dungeon. I think it would be more rewarding to finish a dungeon if you didn't know how large it would be or whatever until you reached the end.
Anyway, more random questions if you guys don't mind!
1: I have gloves that cause death...I also have a zord that causes death, do they stack?
2: I forget if it was tec or luck.. but I read one of these stats affect how often your ailment-inducing attacks land. Is this a significant influence or not so much as the ability/weapon/whatever? I ask because I am pondering on how viable it would be to make a secondary party of nightseeker/dancers for blade flurry+sword dance wielding petrify swords to try and petrify (or whatever other status, but petrify is one that my 'main' party has absolutely no hope of doing at all on their own) foes and such like 30 levels higher than them. If luck/tec didn't really matter THAT much, than it would obviously work great compared to virtually everything else, but if it is a significant factor, I would rather not bother.
3: I can prob find out for myself but work and lazy to level up... prob will if someone can't answer cuz they didn't find out themselves already...Does anyone know if wufan, kigami (or whatever his name is), and...uhh... whatever whirlwind's name is has the exact same stats as an ordinary character would of equal level + no retire +same classes?
4: I read somewhere from someone else's post that my party (which I had from the very start) isn't good for post game for some reason (actually other person had the same mainclasses, they didn't have subclasses yet, nor did I)...But so far it has been serving me just fine, and as a matter of fact, I'm doing better and better now than I did in stratum 1 and 2. I have:
Nightseeker/bushi + Fortress/arcanist + Dancer/Land
Healer/dancer + Rune/Imp
I'm more than willing to stick with my party even if it isn't the optimal one, as long as it is capable of everything...But I don't want to hit 99 and then retire and then find out I need a new class or something at the last minute, any comments? Frankly I don't see how something can kill my party that couldn't kill any party. Regen dance is so amazing, even for my healer because heal mastery makes her subclass regen dance as effective as a mainclass one... the land subclass for my main dancer isn't really stuck to me though, I just chose it to provide chaser element to my NS...and if you think my party lacks long-term sustainable dps... yes it does (since my NS is half my dps and they run out of tp faster than hell...unless I get an ailment to land, at which point my NS simply pulverizes virtually anything in 1-2 attacks as I'm sure everyone would know)
5: Do certain ailments have a greater chance of being resisted than others by certain enemies? If so, is there one that "lands" the most often? I maxed venom throw on my NS first because I felt if there was any ailment that would land the most often on most enemies, poison would be it since it is the least debilitating to major enemies. Something tells me that in this game they all have an equal chance to land on every enemy except death/petrify since it would be silly to 1shot a boss with those. Though maybe sleep lands more often because you need to sleep the cradle guardian for its conditional drop and it took me forever to kill that thing, and I never landed a single status ailment on it ONCE between poison, 3 blind gasses, OR perma max (sub) rank nerve circle (which lands generally within the first circle or two to any other boss/foe...cradle guardian managed to not be affected by like 5... and 2 poison circles for full duration)