Part 7: State of the Netherworld 1

Overlord Feinne’s State of the Netherworld Address

Let’s start with the new additions to the party I made at the start of my grinding session.



Say hello first to Misty the Medic. Medics are an interesting healer, because they have skill with Rifles. This puts them in an interesting position, since they’re healers that actually are good with a ranged physical weapon. On paper they should be pretty similar to a Healer in support effectiveness but their lower aptitudes for SP and RES make this not entirely the case.



K.D. kind of just felt right as a name for my female infantry so that’s what I used. Infantry are really only good at shooting things and that’s what they should be doing. We’ll talk about how brutal a real rifle user is later. Oh, and let’s look at our male infantry real quick even though I’ve just been leveling him with splash experience from the bonus meter since I didn’t want to shell out for another rifle yet.



That is one area where the male and female versions of the classes can be very different, the off-specialization equip percentages. The female infantry has better SP and RES but worse HP and DEF by a small amount. It’s not that much of a difference. Now let’s move on to our returning friends.



Prawn is still using an axe, male fighters are really well suited to such a weapon but it does have some drawbacks I’ll talk about later in the update. Fighters are very tough but magic really cuts through them and that’s a real problem at a certain point. I’ll probably want to reincarnate Prawn at some point if I’m seriously going to continue using him through the end of the main game.



I think you can really see the big problem of Thieves now that we’ve looked at the stats other characters of a similar level are bringing to the table. Even with a pretty good UFO Tengames has mediocre stats even in the area he’s ostensibly good at, TEC. His biggest advantage is that he’s super fast and can carry a lot of shit, and we’ll always keep him around for mainly that purpose. He’s realistically not going to be able to fight much longer, especially since he generated with such odd elemental resistances.



Azure’s our Fire user and is doing pretty decently. He’s pretty squishy, of course, that’s just how it goes for casters. He’ll be a lot more powerful at level 10 but I’m not sure when I’ll reach that point given Dragonatrix got there first. Speaking of…



Level 10 gets casters Giga spells, which have a wider radius and do more damage. You can easily hit multiple enemies with them if they’re reasonably grouped up, and they can make it pretty easy to get experience with casters. She’s just as fragile as Azure and will die horribly to any decent physical attack.



Servant is still our main healer. We keep her in the pocket since we’re still in the phase of the game where we expect to see characters get injured but maybe not killed. Of course, once we leave that phase buffs start becoming even more valuable than healing ever could be, and healers will once again be useful.



Oh and here’s Erhard, my other Witch. She’s a backup glass cannon, and will actually be getting an exciting new weapon in a few maps, though she doesn’t have it as of when this snapshot was taken.



I’ve been leveling Fighter up with splash experience, I want a sword user because swords are pretty useful but I’m just not sure where I need another melee fighter.



So, here’s Azzur. You might notice that Azzur seems to have a somewhat different stat mix than she should have if she were still using nunchuks. That’s because now that we’re in Chapter 3, I can buy bazookas. Bazookas are probably the best choice for a Merchant, because they fit well with their aptitudes, as I’ll note later in the update.

Oh, and you might be noting someone’s missing. Well, we’ll see them in a minute. First, let’s talk about Wishes. When we talk to Zetta we can ask to Make a Wish. It’ll then ask us to select a person to Wish. Let’s take a look at an example screen:



The wishes that are available for Dragonatrix right now are to create a facility (which we talked about earlier), become our new leader, create a dungeon (we’ll talk about this some other time), and one we can’t afford that lets us create Prinnies. For now, we’re going to make her our leader so our current leader can create a facility. We need to unequip her gear before this, because something unfortunate is likely to happen.







Sure enough, Feinne died a horrible death to create our Warehouse. But death is only the beginning, and if we walk over to a piece of topiary and try to create a new character…



We see Feinne back again here. And if we choose her, we go to the character creation screen as normal to select her new class. I have one in mind in particular.



Having been reincarnated has many benefits, the biggest being that we get a lot more bonus points to apply to our base stats. Since base stats control how you level, having higher base stats makes you substantially more powerful over time. So say hello to our fearless new leader, Feinne mk2!



She’s gained new and improved speed and jumping ability, and aptitude in katanas, the premiere weapon for slicing and dicing single targets. Don’t worry, she’ll be all grown up and ready to fight by the first video of Chapter 3.

Now I promised I’d talk about weapons a bit so let’s do just that. For now I’ll just talk about the ‘normal’ weapons, ones that we can actually buy from the shop.

Daggers:
Daggers are an interesting weapon choice, because they improve both ATK and INT. They are light weapons, so they actually improve the movement and jumping ability of the character using them. Daggers could potentially be a good choice for casters to improve their mobility, but since their skills are ATK based you’re not going to have a useful free skill. Daggers don’t really give you enough +ATK to be effective for a melee character until you’ve got some serious skill in them to make use of their powerful high-tier attacks. Those skills do cause Poison sometimes, which is pretty effective in this game.

Swords:
Swords are one of our standard go-to weapons for a melee character. Swords are sort of the basis on which all other weapons should be judged. They provide only ATK and don’t have any downsides. As we saw in the tutorial with Zetta they also have an array of skills with a wide area of effect. The downside is that their big skills are SP hogs and a sword user is sort of toothless compared to melee with a more powerful weapon skill once that SP is gone.

Katanas:
Katanas are expensive higher tier weapons that unlock as the Merchant levels up. They provide more ATK than a comparable Sword, but reduce the user’s DEF. Katanas are all about dishing out brutally powerful single target attacks, that’s what they do and they do it well.

Axes:
Axes are one of the basic varieties of melee weapon. They have superior attack compared to Swords, but slow the wielder’s movement speed down. You’ll want to come up with some tricks to help deal with the mobility issue, because if you can’t get up close you’ll never get to use the crazy attack power Axes bring. Axe skills can lower the DEF of targets, so they’re great early in Combos on a target that you’re going to hit with other physicals.

Morningstars:
A very strange little weapon, Morningstars are sort of mid-melee range. They improve a character’s HP and ATK but slow them down substantially. However, they have a lot more reach than a normal melee weapon and can knock enemies that are hit around. You need to be careful around enemies that are using them, because you can easily be OB’d by them if you’re near the edge of the map. I don’t like the slowdown they cause, because you’re basically committing the character to be in that position for the whole battle unless you throw them around.

Nunchaku:
Another odd bird of a weapon. It provides the user with SP and ATK, and increases their overall mobility. Its attacks can cause Amnesia, preventing enemies from using skills. It can be hard to find classes really well suited to using Nunchaku, though, most classes that have skill in them don’t have the stats to really be an effective melee character. Still, a very valid choice if you can just get a character who can use them into solid shape.

Spears:
Spears are a much more solid choice than normal here. They are slightly less powerful than Axes but also don’t slow the user as much, and their skills bring enough reach to make the threat range of a Spear user much more significant than an Axe user. Spears are an entirely valid weapon choice if you end up with a good one, so don’t discount them. My best character in my full clear run was using a starred Longinus.

Rapiers:
Rapiers are an interesting weapon type in a lot of ways. They improve your ATK and RES while also giving you increased mobility. They suffer from somewhat low firepower, which they make up for with very flexible attacks. Unlike most melee skills, you can actually target any enemy within range instead of having to be at a fixed distance. Some attacks have a large enough sphere to hit more than one enemy as well, and the attacks can sometimes Sleep enemies. Rapiers are always a solid choice.

Rifles:
Rifles are the default TEC based weapon. They have a decent range, between that of magic and close range. Their skills can be absolutely devastating against enemies with poor physical defenses, but just keep in mind that they won’t be as effective against physical enemies as a caster would be.

Flamethrowers:
Flamethrowers are one of the heavy TEC weapons. They provide substantially more TEC as well as SP at the cost of RES and movement range. Flamethrower attacks do elemental damage (sometimes Fire and sometimes Ice) and hit areas. They’re definitely anti-personnel but you’re running the risk of not being able to injure an enemy based on its elemental defenses.

Gatling Guns:
Gatlings are another heavy TEC weapon. They provide TEC and HP but slow the character down quite a lot. Their attacks hit wide areas but don’t have a lot of stopping power on their own, they’re really best used in chaining Combos around from enemy to enemy. The ranges of their attacks also tend to be very inflexible.

Bazookas:
Bazookas are yet another heavy TEC weapon. They provide a tremendous amount of TEC at the cost of some DEF and movement range. They don’t quite have the range of a rifle but hit larger areas of effect to make up for it. Bazooka attacks do significantly increased damage to vehicles (which we haven’t seen yet) which makes them very useful.

Wrenches:
Wrenches are a melee range TEC weapon. They improve TEC and DEF while also improving the mobility of the user. Wrench skills can be very effective and cause status effects but are never going to have the sort of power that a rifle can bring to the table. The improved DEF can help protect the character but most really damaging things are magical, which the melee range of the Wrenches ensures will be your bane anyway.

Spades:
Spades are another melee range TEC weapon. They improve TEC and HP while slowing the character down a bit. Spades are a special case because they do increased damage against Facilities, making them useful no matter how relatively weak they might be against normal, mobile enemies. The extra health can help make up for the slight slowdown in approaching targets.

Drills:
Drills are another melee range TEC weapon. They improve TEC and DEF while reducing INT and greatly reducing speed. They are also designed to crack buildings, though you certainly don’t want to discount their ability to injure normal characters as well if you can catch someone moving that slow.

Books:
Books are the only real pure caster weapon we can purchase. They improve INT and have INT based attacks, most of which are elemental and can hit areas. For best results give your casters these, and use them whenever you can to get the weapon skills and improve flexibility.

UFOs:
Special weapons only Thieves are good with. They have a set skill list of stealing skills and use TEC as their attack stat. They also speed the user up quite a bit. UFOs aren’t terrible early on but they’re just never going to compete with the best weapons in power in much the same way as a Thief is never going to compete with a real character ever.

Later on I’ll talk about some of the weird weapons we can only get from stealing or the bonus meter, we’ll see at least one of them pretty soon.