Part 161: Grimoire Stones

Game Mechanics: Grimoire Stones

Grimoires were introduced in Etrian Odyssey Untold as a (weird, unwieldy) replacement for subclassing. On paper, Grimoires are basically an extended form of subclassing, allowing the player to mix and match skills on whatever classes and characters they want.

In practice, however, the Grimoire system is an RNG-reliant mess that leads to a considerable amount of frustration and time wasted on waiting for the game's RNG to feel in the mood to give you something usable. The core idea behind Grimoires, both in EOU and EO2U, is the player randomly getting Grimoire Chances, which give Grimoires with random skills on them, if the player rolls for the random chance successfully. Yes, there's a lot of randomness in the Grimoire system--in fact, the entire system is basically just several RNG rolls strung together, and that's why a considerable amount of EO players detest it. There's things you can do to influence the Grimoire system to make it potentially take less time to get what you want, but you're still at the whim of the RNG in the end.

EO2U made several changes to the system from EOU, some of which were good, some of which were...less good. In EOU, each character could only equip one Grimoire at a time, which could have anywhere from 1 to 7 slots of skills, and could also posess equipment bonuses, which let the user equip weapons and armor they normally couldn't. Unlike EO2U, Grimoires of overlapping levels did nothing in EOU, bugs with regards to passives aside. In battle, characters could generate new Grimoires, which could have any combination of one to seven of the generator's skills and Grimoire-enabled skills from enemies at varying levels. Bear in mind, however, the game would only tell you something like "Tyler found a Dark Grimoire SD!" after the end of a battle. The only things you could infer from this were that:

• Tyler generated the Grimoire, so it could have any skills he has on it
  
• It's a Dark Grimoire, so it has at least one enemy skill in it
  
• The Grimoire is Slightly Damaged, meaning at least one skill is between levels 6 and 9

You'd have to go back to the guild house to find out what was actually in the Grimoire, and until then, the damn things took up space in your inventory. Once you actually found out what was in the damn thing, you could then Synthesize multiple Grimoires into a new one, a process that I won't go into detail about here because we're not playing EOU. Suffice to say, though, Grimoires in EOU were a massive pain in the ass, and trying to utilize the system to optimize your characters would mean spending a LOT of time grinding for the things.

As for EO2U, the primary change is that characters no longer equip one Grimoire with multiple slots, but instead can equip multiple individual Grimoires, each containing one skill, with potentially an added effect. A character starts with one Grimoire slot, and gains a new one at levels 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50, giving each character a maximum of 6 slots. In addition to this, Grimoires of skills that characters already have now increase the level of the skill on that character--for example, a character that has a level 5 skill and equips a level 10 Grimoire of that same skill will have access to the level 15 version of that skill. On paper, this sounds like a neat way to encourage some class rigidity--make sure some classes can't just eclipse another in effectiveness with the same skills. In practice, however, what this means it that you're going to spend a lot of time grinding for level 10 versions of each character's best skills, because skipping out on the level 20 versions of skills is asking for trouble even on Standard, and will make your life an absolute hell in the late and postgames on Expert.

Before we discuss added effects, it's also important to go over Grimoire Chances, since they're, y'know, how you get Grimoires. During a battle, characters have a random chance (what the chance is, exactly, I don't know) to get a Grimoire Chance. During a Grimoire Chance, when that character takes their action, they have a chance to get a Grimoire, which could be any random skill they know, or any random Grimoire-enabled skill from an enemy. This is unchanged from EOU--however, this time, Grimoires do not take up any space in your inventory, and you're told exactly what skill you got during the battle, and what level it is at the Result screen. New to EO2U are special Grimoire Chances, of which there are:

• Grimoire Chance Active: The Grimoire generated by that character will be picked from that character's known active skills.
  
• Grimoire Chance Passive: The Grimoire generated by that character will be picked from that character's known passive skills.
  
• Grimoire Chance Enemy: The Grimoire generated by that character will be picked from the Grimoire-enabled skills on enemies. Cannot generate anything if no enemies know Grimoire-enabled skills.
  
• Grimoire Chance Premium: If the character uses a skill on that turn, the Grimoire will, guaranteed, be the skill that the character used. Premiums also seem to increase the level of generated Grimoires.

In addition to this, EO2U also introduces Grimoire Fevers, which force all characters to get Grimoire Chances of varying types for that turn. These can happen multiple times in a row--in fact, on the third Grimoire Fever in a row, all the chances will be forced to Grimoire Chance Premiums.

Moving on, let's discuss added effects. The way these are generated is slightly complicated. For every Stratum, and for the DLC floor, there are multiple "blocks," let's call them, which each have three added effects defined. The game has an unknown chance of starting a check for added effects--and I do mean "unknown." It could vary by stratum, or it could be consistent, we don't know. If that chance is rolled for, then the game starts looking at the blocks for the floor. Each block has a base chance to be rolled for--if that roll fails, the game moves onto the next block for that floor, or stops if that was the last one. If a block is rolled for successfully, its first effect is rolled for, then the second one, and if the second one fails, the default effect is applied. As for what each block contains:


All of that is well and good, but what do these effects actually do? Glad you asked!


Cut Up


Stab Up


Bash Up


Fire Up


Ice Up


Volt Up

Effects:

• Level 1: +2% damage
  
• Level 2: +4% damage
  
• Level 3: +6% damage

Aside from Legendary effects, the most desirable added effects. Stack 6 of the level 3 versions of one elmeent on someone, and they'll get a 36% boost to that damage type, which is pretty damn good. Unfortunately, the damage effects, especially Cut and Fire Up, are the hardest to farm for, do to how the block system works--they're rolled for first, in terms of all the blocks and inside their own block, making them have kind of low chances.



Ailment Up


Bind Up

Effects:

• Level 1: +2% of the skill's base chance
  
• Level 2: +4% of the skill's base chance
  
• Level 3: +6% of the skill's base chance

On Dark Hunters, I'd rather stack Cut Up effects, and on Hexers, by the time you can farm up a ton of these effects, they'll already be able to consistently land the disables you want.



Grimoire Chance Up

Effects:

• Level 1: +5% chance for Grimoire Chance
  
• Level 2: +10% chance for Grimoire Chance
  
• Level 3: +15% chance for Grimoire Chance

Decently useful for Grimoire grinding. Is there really anything else to say about it?



Rare Enemy Up

Effects:

• Level 1: +1%
  
• Level 2: +2%
  
• Level 3: +3%

Look at those tiny, tiny bonuses. Even for grinding, Rare Enemy Up isn't that useful.



Ail Rec Up


Bind Rec Up

Effects:

• Level 1: -2% recovery time
  
• Level 2: -4% recovery time
  
• Level 3: -6% recovery time

Stack these on a Medic or Beast, I guess, but they still won't amount to a ton.



Drop Amount Up

Effects:

• Level 1: 2% chance to get extra drop
  
• Level 2: 4% chance to get extra drop
  
• Level 3: 6% chance to get extra drop

This effect's wholly outclassed by the Yggdrasil Bud Tea. Oh well.



Victory HP


Victory TP

Effects:

• Level 1: 3% HP/1% TP restored at the end of battle
  
• Level 2: 7% HP/2% TP restored at the end of battle
  
• Level 3: 15% HP/3% TP restored at the end of battle

The level 3 versions of both of these are actually fairly decent for free after-battle healing, but the problem is you'll first be able to get them towards the end of the game, when they're not as useful.


You might've seen me mention Legendary Grimoires up above, and you might now be wondering "what the hell are Legendary Grimoire effects?" Again, very glad you asked. Legendary Grimoires are neat effects on pre-made Grimoire Trade Grimoires that you have to do incredibly tedious bullshit for.

Okay, in all seriousness, here's how Legendary Grimoires spawn: you have to run an ad campaign that will bring in at least 300 customers from 3 districts, and the ones digits of your step count and monsters hunted stats on your Grimoire Card must match up when the advertising campaign ends. After that, Legendary Explorers will show up in Grimoire Trade from the places you advertised to (for the purposes of Legendary Grimoires, Highlanders come from the South Ward, Beasts come from Uptown, and Fafnir comes from the slums). If none of them have skills you want, congratulations, you get to do that all over again.

Anyway, the Legendary effects:



Auto-Heal
Available from: Protector, Sovereign, Beast

Effect: 20% chance to restore 50% max HP when the user loses HP

A really fantastic effect for Beasts, meh on other classes.



Self-Heal Amp
Available from: Survivalist, Medic

Effect: Amplifies all non-fixed healing to the user by 50%

Yet again, another effect that's amazingly good on Beasts and meh on everyone else.



Force Up
Available from: Dark Hunter, Hexer, Fafnir

Effect: Restores 30 Force to the user at the start of battle

Complete and utter trash. You're going to be starting every fight that matters (boss fights) with full Force (or at least you should), so why bother with this junk?



Skill Level Up
Available from: Troubadour, Ronin

Effect: User's Grimoires have their levels increased by 3, up to the max of 10

You could just grind for max-level Grimoires instead, which will probably take less time than grinding for one of these on a skill you want. Could help with grinding for other added effects, I guess, since it means any level 7+ Grimoire will be level 10 instead.



Turn TP
Available from: Alchemist, War Magus

Effect: Restores 2% of the user's TP at the end of every turn

A paltry end of turn restore. Just stick with Amritas.



TP Cost Recovery
Available from: Landsknecht, Gunner, Highlander

Effect: When the user consumes TP, they have a 25% chance to refund the consumed TP

Now THIS is what I'm talking about. Remember Recharge from EOU? This is basically a version of it that's slightly nerfed in numbers (Recharge was a 30% chance at level 10), and massively nerfed in how much of a pain in the ass it is to get.