Story Update 6: Grimoires are Stupid
Hi there. You may be wondering where Ragnar Homsar went. Well you see, she really didn't feel like doing the Story LP anymore due to it getting very tedious for her to work on. Also for that matter, Hivac bailed as well. Can't say I blame either of them for that.

Because I refuse to let this majesty of mediocrity and inconsistent writing be lost and forever hidden away from the world, I offered to take up the burden of doing this part of the LP for her. And that's what I'm doing here now. Though unlike Ragnar Homsar, I'll be doing everything on Expert since it'll be more fun for me that way.

Oh, and this isn't a solo gig I'm pulling off here. You see, alcharagia is still hanging around as a co-sufferer/co-mocker.
arthur compels me
Anyways, before I resume where Ragnar Homsar left off, there are a couple of things I want to cover first in this update, as there were a few things missed in the original Story LP.

For one thing, she pretty much skipped over doing every quest with the Story party, and there are some quests that the Story party gets involved in. Yes, I actually intend on showing all those off.

Staring off with the "To taste it once more..." quest, there's a conversation your party has once you reach the spot with the Holy Water.

'The far east side of B1F,' right? This seems to be the Holy Water the client wanted us to find.
You fill a leather drinking skin with water and seal it tightly.
...It looks like ordinary water to me. Do you think he'll be able to tell just by looking at it?
Who knows?
You have collected what you were sent to find. All that remains is to deliver it to the pub to complete the quest.
And that's it. They don't chime in at any other point. Exciting.

Anyways, next up on the list is "Gratitude for a beast", the one involving the bear. Oh and speaking of the bear, if you chose to stick around for that event, you would discover that it has a personal hoard. That you can choose to steal from. If you chose to do so, you would get some items at the cost of losing some HP (Not because you pissed off the bear, it actually doesn't care if you do that. But because your characters would accidentally hurt themselves shortly after doing so.) Now I didn't do that on this file because I didn't feel like being a jerk, but there's another reason I bring that up, which you'll see later.

Now let's get to the actual quest.

In order to avoid running into the bear unprepared, you slowly peek into the bear's den...


Frederica says, the bear is lying on its side, snoring away.
Okay, Dude. What are we going to do with this present?
Goddammit, alcharagia! I hope you're proud of what you created!
you know it, dude

It's actually in your best interest to just leave the gift outside the den. There's no difference in the end result if you choose to place it inside, but doing so places your character at risk of accidentally hurting themselves and losing HP if their AGI stat isn't high enough. (If you choose to do so, they mention that it would be best if a fast character were the one to do the job.)
You're right. We're not very far from the den right now. I'm sure the bear will find the gift when it wakes up.
You quietly place the gift on the ground. The bear is deep in slumber. There is no change in its snores.
That's that, then. Let's return to the pub and turn in a report about this mission.
You quietly sneak away, so as not to disturb the bear's slumber.
And that's it for the quest itself, but there's actually one more part to this that Ragnar missed. Valerie mentions the possibility of the bear giving you a gift after you turn in the quest, and that's not just flavor text! If you head back to the bear's den after turning in the quest...

Looks like the bear's not home. Think it's out looking for more nesting stuff somewhere?
You decide that you have no business here and make to leave when suddenly, the bear appears from the brush!


It turns out to be more nesting materials, fruits, and stones that would be useful as raw ore.
Wh-What...? Why's it leaving those things for us?
While you puzzle at the bear's motives in putting these things before you, it wanders once again into the forest.
Maybe that lady at the bar is right, and these are presents for us...?


Dude. What do you think the bear just did?
But you can't deny it left these things for us. It didn't seem like it needed them... Should we take them?
You gratefully take them and return to your investigation.








Wow, what a haul! And that's the end of that. By the way, if you chose to steal from the bear earlier, it would still give you a present, but the present itself would only be one rock.

And now there are some gameplay related things I want to go over.


AHAHAHAHAHAHA! Ahem, excuse me. Alright, I'm gonna dive into Grimoires a bit, and they're considerably more important in Story since you really don't have a way to branch out into other classes. Where in Classic, you can just craft a party with the stuff you want right off the bat. Though at no point are regular Grimoires ever required for the game unlike in EO2U.

So a popular defensive setup in Story mode involves getting a Delayed Heal Grimoire from Simon. If you're lucky enough to get him to cough it up. The reason for this being is that Delayed Heal is the best healing skill in the game, with the drawback that it has a 1 turn cooldown. Having 2 party members that can cast Delayed Heal gets around that particular problem entirely, since you can just have them alternate casting it. This pretty much means that enemies have to be able to kill my party members in 1 turn, or they can't stop me from doing whatever I want. I've already basically broken a lot of fights over my knee over the mere act of getting this powerful rock.

Anyways, allow me to showcase an exploit you can do with Grimoire Synthesis, because the Grimoire system in this game is really awful. Also because I intend on breaking this game over my knee at every opportunity I can.

Okay, so the first Grimoire Stone you choose will determine the number of slots that the created stone will have, simple enough. But Grimoire Stones with plenty of slots are fairly rare to come by, and at this point, 3 slots is pretty much the best we have. But what if we had a way to save our Grimoire Stones with more slots, and actually create more Grimoire Stones with multiple slots in the process?

Allow me to bring your attention to the top right corner. Since we're using this Grimoire as our base and it only has 1 slot, the game itself says that's how many slots the final stone will have.

But! If I choose the stone with 3 slots shown earlier, and then quickly cancel out of it and select this stone quickly enough...

It now says that the final stone will have 3 slots, but this 1 slot stone will be the one that we actually use up! And our original 3 slot stone will still be in our possession. That's because the slot counter in the top right corner, for some baffling reason, doesn't update immediately when switching to another stone in the menu. It takes quite a few frames for it to do so, like around half a second? It's actually fairly generous if you can get the timing down, so you don't need to be frame perfect to pull off this exploit. And this glitch works in all versions of the game.

...Just make sure the stones you're synthesizing together actually has enough skills to fill up the skill counter, as the game won't let you fuse them together prematurely.

And let me tell you, this is your best bet of getting Grimoires with a lot of slots in them. Because the chances of getting one with 7 slots from a Grimoire Chance is really fucking miniscule! Not only that, the more skill points a character has invested, the more skills they know (remember that learning Mastery skills also has you automatically learn skills), and the more skills that a character has on a Grimoire Stone that they have equipped, the less likely that any stones they generate will have a large number of slots! So getting Grimoires with a lot of slots is really unlikely and the chances of getting one goes down as the game goes on.

Basically the EOU Grimoire creation system is a fucking trashfire whose only "saving grace" is that you don't ever actually have to use regular Grimoires in the game to get past anything.

After faffing about with Grimoire Synthesis for a bit, I create this nice little support Grimoire Stone that should serve us well in the early game. Arthur is a popular candidate to put Delayed Heal on, since his TEC stat is better than Simon's. And I made sure to make it so that Arthur can equip shields once he equips this Grimoire, just in case I want some more defense for him.

Oh and I would like to point out that good monster skills to get for the Story party are ones that can apply buffs or debuffs, as that's one of the biggest areas that the Story party is lacking in. I'll be sure to point out any other monsters that have good Grimoire skills for them as well when we come across them.

Such as Forest Wolves! They come with the skill Evil Cry, which is a party wide physical damage buff! Really handy to snag early on, but don't fret if you can't grab it.

Monster skills are considerably more valuable compared to EO2U, because in EO2U... you can just get another class' skills on a Grimoire Stone if you really need them, and most monster skills are just worse versions of a class' skills. In EOU, you don't really have that privilege, so monster skills are your best bet for branching out in Story.

And here's another thing that Ragnar missed. This Formaldehyde that was being guarded by a Boulder Boar on B2F. And oh boy, this thing makes the game much less frustrating! How so? Well when you use it, any enemies that die during that turn are forced to drop all their items, low drop rates or conditional drops be damned. Granted, it won't be a while until we'll be able to farm for these... under normal circumstances anyway.


Time to show off another exploit, and this is a big one! In order to pull off this exploit, you need a party member with a full Boost meter, and they cannot be the last party member. (Just move them around if that's the case.) Also do note that the European versions actually fixed this glitch, so it doesn't work there. But this glitch still exists in all other versions of the game.

As you can see, I only have one Formaldehyde right now. Now let's use it right now.

And then go back to Dude's turn after using it.

Then, make use of Boost!

Cancel out the Boost, and presto! We now have two Formaldehydes!

From here, you can just keep Boost cancelling to duplicate your item of choice until you have as many as you need, or if you reach the inventory cap.

Now as you can tell from Ragnar's playthrough, EOU has a ton of boring and tedious fetch quests because they decided to keep those in from the original game for some stupid reason. Which is not helped by materials having absurdly low drop rates! Having infinite Formaldehydes allows you to completely circumvent that particular issue. In short, eat shit you archaic relics of poor design that really should have been left behind in Etrian Odyssey 1!

I don't plan on abusing this glitch heavily outside of that situation. Not that it would really help that much in battles anyway. There is one other thing this can be abused for, but I'll go over it when we get the specific item I want. And then the fun can truly begin.


Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski! Condolences! The bums lost! My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir! The bums will always lose! Do you hear me, Lebowski!? THE BUMS WILL ALWAYS LOSE!


How was your meeting, Mr. Lebowski?

Okay. The old man told me to take any Formaldehyde in the house.

Also here's another thing Ragnar missed. There's a secret passage here.

That leads to some trea- oh ew! Ew! Get that away from me!

The sound you just heard was the entire Grimoire system shattering over my knees.

Okay so I'm gonna talk about the Grimoire system a bit. I'm sure you saw that monstrous pile of algorithms Ragnar posted that most likely made your eyes glaze over. Let me sum up some important parts. Grimoire Chances are determined by a bunch of random and stupid shit that you don't really have much control over. But one thing that does control them? How much SP a character has invested. The more SP a character has actually spent, the less often Grimoire Chances will pop up. On top of being unlikely to generate a stone with a large number of slots. However, to make up for this, the skills that actually manage to get on a Grimoire Stone will be likely to be at a higher level. So early on, you'll get Grimoire Chances more frequently, but you'll also be getting a lot of crappy Grimoires... not that it really matters all that much, since your skill builds are going to be crappy too. So you're just getting less Grimoire Stones overall as you get through the game.

And when a Grimoire Chance happens, you have a 39% to 51% chance of actually getting a Grimoire Stone from it, depending on various factors. (Though most of the time, it'll be around 42%.) When a character with a Grimoire Chance uses a skill, and/or a monster makes use of a Grimoire skill, there's a 30% chance of that skill being added to the resulting stone.

As for how this relates to the item we just got? Hunting Horns essentially force a character to experience a Grimoire Chance if they haven't experienced one on the current turn. (They don't stack with actual chances, so don't bother doing that.) And since we can generate infinite consumables with the duplication glitch, that means I can get Grimoire Chances whenever I want! Granted, that still means we still have a random chance of actually getting a Grimoire Stone from a chance. But wait!

Now sometimes a guildkeeper can have their preparation options have a good or a bad effect. Obviously, we want the good ones here.

And this baby can be one of those good effects! Hunting Horns are actually coded as a Grimoire Chance, so using one with this in effect will force a Grimoire Stone to be generated! Making use of the duplication glitch makes the Grimoire System much less random and significantly more controllable.

Oh and if you don't see a good effect, but want to exploit the system that way, just get into battles. Once you win a battle, the chances of preparation options having good or bad effects are rerolled for. Likewise if you don't get the good effect you want, just enter and exit the Labyrinth without winning a battle to force it to wear off without shuffling the effects.

Granted just having endless Grimoire Chances doesn't exactly make it easy to get the skills you want. When it comes to classes, anyway. You're at the mercy of the RNG there. But monster skills get so much easier to grab with this method. In fact, if you want to know about the best time to grab a certain skill from a monster, just read Ragnar's AI writeups! Also if you want the best chance at snagging a high level skill at any time? Have a character equip a 1 slot Grimoire. That will give you the best chance of getting a skill at a good level.

And even more Grimoire stuff! But this one is pretty much doesn't involve RNG at all if you do things right. And this involves Fenrir. When you get to Fenrir (And just need to run into him to engage the battle), make sure your Guild Card looks something like this. All those statistics on the Guild Card I just circled should all end in the same number. Preferably 7.


You'll also want to make sure that the number of Grimoires in your possession (this includes ones in your inventory) have the ones digit end with the same number as those guild card statistics. Which should preferably be 7 as well.

Same goes for the ones digit in how many guild cards you own. If you did this right...

You'll get a special Grimoire Stone right after the battle! Known as a King Grimoire! These can only be obtained from certain bosses, and each one has a very special skill on them. Why does this work? Well...

Okay, so there are 6 seperate factors the game keeps track of:


So if the ones digit of those numbers match, you get a number of points depending on how many matches you have. 1 point for 2 matches, 2 points for 3 matches, and so on. However, if at any point, any matching numbers happen to end in a 7, you get one extra point on top of all that. So at most, you can get 6 points. Those points are then run through this formula:

(25-X*3)^X/100000

Which in turn results in these chances of snagging a King Grimoire after a battle.


So if you have 5 or 6 points before you fight a certain boss, you'll get a King Grimoire. Now you may be wondering, HOW THE EVER-LOVING FUCK WERE YOU SUPPOSED TO FIGURE THIS OUT IN THE FIRST PLACE!? You weren't! At no point in the game are these King Grimoires ever mentioned or even had their existence even hinted at in game! The only reason players even knew about these things? The Japanese dev blog talked about them and hinted on how to get them. No one basically knew that these things even existed before that was posted. Oh and the best part? The only part they hinted at was the numbers on the guild card lining up. But they didn't mention the 7 factor or the fact that not all the guild card stats were relevant (leading to people trying to line up the Grimoire Chances stat!) or that the number of Grimoires and guild cards you had also factored into this!

Now all of this is really fucking stupid on its own, but it ultimately just means that this is just an obscure secret that happens to make your life easier if you stumble upon it, right? AHAHAHA, if only that was the case! First of all, I did say regular Grimoires weren't required for the game at all. King Grimoires on the other hand, are pretty much required for a certain boss in the game unless you plan on cheesing that fight horribly. Also, obtaining every single King Grimoire is required for 100% completion! Yes, they actually expected players to somehow figure out the extremely convoluted method to grab them, and do that for every single one! What the hell, Atlus!?
Believe it or not, I actually got one of these naturally when I played through this game. I think it was the one from Dryad? It was something worthless.

Anyways, the King Grimoire we just got. Wolf Pack, it has priority and will increase our party's physical and elemental damage by a whopping 40% for 1 turn! 50% if boosted! Not only that, because it's a 1 turn effect, it bypasses diminishing returns entirely! What's not to like? This is pretty much the best King Grimoire skill in the entire game, and probably the one that will see the most use for obvious reasons. You'll probably want to put this on Simon or Raquna since they're support party members.

Shortly after that, I got Rosa's relationship EXP high enough to see her second scene.


Hey, Rosa.
I see another pile of packages here... Did Father send something else?
Yes, these packages are all from your father. Let me find something you would like...
Dang... Your dad's still crazy.
...No joke. So, what did he send this time?
He has sent some wine to ask your opinion on the quality of this year's vintage. Apparently, this time they used a new method involving frozen grapes.
Really now!
We also have smoked venison, duck, chocolate, sausage, cheese, nuts... and other things.
Was someone on the writing team like really hungry all the time when they worked on this script or something?
...Oh, Father dotes on me far too much. But it'd be a waste if we didn't enjoy this. Why don't we take a break for a while?


Interesting thing to note, there's actually a 3rd dialogue option that shows up if you wait until after a certain point in the plot to see this scene. However, said point is really late in the game, and you would have basically had to ignore Rosa entirely until then to get it to show up. The option in question is "True justice for all!" And no, it doesn't really lead to any interesting dialogue. I would say it's a nice touch if you know the context behind that line, but this being EOU Story mode, it's really not. But that's a ways off.
Let's enjoy ourselves, then!
Now that's what I'm talking about!


I will say that one of my favorite things about Raquna is that she has an entire set of portraits dedicated to showing her off with a beer mug in her hand.
Allow me to prepare a meal for you as well. This delivery included a good number of potatoes. How about some poutine?
Poo-what? Hey, Simon, what's that?
It's a famous dish from her homeland, consisting of fried potatoes with sauce and cheese on top. The sauce is usually a gravy or other savory taste, but some varieties use a sweeter type of sauce.
...Wow, Simon, you know everything, don't you?
Ha, you don't know the half of it! Simon only needs to read a book once before he's memorized it!
While that's amazing and all... why are you the one being so proud about it?
Hey, Rosa! Another round!
I didn't skip any dialogue. Raquna just basically interrupts the conversation.
Right away. I'll only be a moment...
Oh! Hey, Rosa! If you've got some new stuff, can you make a new cordial, too?
Let me see... A number of different fruits have been sent, so yes.
Then could you make something new for us? I want to try some of that, too!
Arthur, don't bother her. She has enough to do as it is.
Oh, no, I would be happy to do it. What kind of blend would you like?


Might as well take the marginally more useful one. Like before, your choice affects nothing with regards to the dialogue.
...Ooh, that smells nice. You make the best cordials, Rosa.


Seconds, please!
Do you like it? Let me get another for you then...
Hey, Rosa! Me too, me too!
*sigh* I apologize for causing so much trouble for Rosa.
Wha? Aren't you apologizing to Rosa?
What trouble? In truth... I feel a bit relieved.
Relieved?
Oh... That is, I've never had the experience of serving explorers, and know nothing of the Labyrinth's dangers. I was always worried whether I was doing a suitable job...
Well, I guess a lot of explorers can be scary-looking.
I guess we were a bit intimidating.
No, that is not...


You're doing a great job.
Thank you very much. I shall continue to do my best for you.
Hey, Rosa, could you open another bottle for me?
......
...I feel that maid's a lot more reliable than her master.
That's not... Ahem! Is there anything else you need today?
And as for what she says after this event.

...I enjoy this as well.
And after this, I set out to deal with Coeurl. Oh right, that thing. If you want to know my take on it (since Ragnar Homsar didn't really show off the fight and did it on Standard), it's a dumb and stupid fight that's placed way too early in the game compared to what the Story party can do at this point. The biggest threat to worry about? Honestly, just running out of TP. Coeurl's actual attacks aren't too threatening by themselves, but it's most likely going to just outlast you because it's so ridiculously durable. And yes, I am factoring in Wolf Pack when I say that. I'm also assuming that you sniped the two Carmine Beaks in the room beforehand, because having someone dedicated to spamming Flash Bombs and being forced to essentially 4-man Coeurl is not something you want to be doing!

Dark Cradle is the biggest skill to worry about. Having all your party members put to sleep doesn't make for a good time. Just make sure to stock up on Theriaca Bs- oh wait. You can't buy them at this point because the materials to make them are in the 2nd Stratum, and you can't explore the 2nd Stratum until you deal with Gladsheim! And you don't even get a single one through other sources until then!

Disables would make the fight more bearable, except oh wait, your only disabler at this point is Frederica. Who admittedly isn't exactly terrible at the job if you kit her out for it, except her skill build at this point likely hasn't really been built yet.

Your best bet for dealing with this thing on Expert? Get Rosa's maximum TP pool boosting cordial, and hope that Frederica's Snipe skills go through. And be prepared to use up every single one of your Amritas.

Even though Classic misses out on Gladsheim, they aren't exactly missing out on much. Though them not being able to go through the dungeon has other gameplay reprecussions down the line. Namely that they will end up underleveled later on because oops! They missed out on some floors' worth of experience!

And oh crud, I actually have to cover Story Mode now. Yeah I'm gonna put that off until next update. See you then.
Story Mode actually bad?!

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