Part 13: Watch out for that tree! (Guild Edda VS Cernunos)

Part 12: Watch out for that tree! (Guild Edda VS Cernunos)



Second boss time. Alright, I can do this. Yeah.

Second boss time. Alright, I can do this. Yeah.

Weird, but you should both relax, we'll be just fine.

He'll be an easy zap. Those horns are great conductors.

Pfft, what is a king to a master?

Wow I cannot wait to finish this stratum up, it's so fucking boring.

mood

There really wasn't much notable to it, other than the damage tiles.



No tricks this time, just a long walk up to the boss. Even with the various shortcuts it was still pretty tedious and it doesn't get much better.

EOU's much better in this regard, though still not perfect.

At least it isn't as rough as the route to Fenrir. I still have no idea what they were thinking with that one.




Might have gone a little overboard with Liana's exp, but hey, it'll be helpful.




Its gaze falls upon you, and you feel an overwhelming aura as it lopes forward. It can be none other than Cernunos, King of the Jungle! Stand and slay the demon!

Dyed in Blood VS Cernunos



Okay, he is quite big.

Well, the bigger they are... hehe.


Cernunos

Level: 28
HP: 2750
STR: 170
VIT: 69
AGI: 68
LUC: 34
TEC: 68

EXP: 8000

Skills
Summon: Doesn't use a body part. Summons two Curoller to the field if there are no Curoller currently in battle.
Hornrush: Uses the Head. A Stab attack that deals 120% damage to a single target. Has an 85% accuracy modifier and an 80% speed modifier.
Combo: Uses the Arms. A Bash attack that deals 90% damage to a single target and then to the left and right of the target. Has a 90% accuracy modifier and a 20% speed modifier.
Whirlhit: Uses the Arms. A Bash attack that deals 120% damage to the entire party. Has a 95% accuracy modifier and an 80% speed modifier.
Glare: Uses the Head. Attempts to inflict Instant Death on a single target. Has a 30% infliction chance, a 100% accuracy modifier and a 50% accuracy modifier.
Counter: Uses the Arms, but cannot be prevented by binds. Counters all melee hits for a turn, dealing 155% damage to the attacker. Has a 95% accuracy modifier.

Damage Vulnerabilities
100% 100% 100%
50% 100% 150%

Disable Vulnerabilities
5% 15% 0%
65% 65% 65%

Drops
Normal: Sharp Horn. 100% chance. Sells for 1200en.
1 required for Viking (Sword, ATK+57, STR+5, VIT+2)
1 required for Hindi (Bow, ATK+49, TEC+4)

Rare: Royal Mane. 10% chance. Sells for 2200en.
1 required for Arcana Rod (Staff, ATK+100, TEC+15, must be restocked)

Conditional: None

Alright, second boss time. Has a lot more to him compared to Fenrir, but the same strategy works as before, use your Protector and Medic to mitigate the damage and start chipping away that HP. So you can probably guess we're about to have a hell of a time. For the most part, Cernunos will use stronger attacks as he gets lower in health, or if you kill his summons after they've done their job. Once he's past half health, he can have a 50% chance of using Counter, so watch out for that. So, use defensive measures, or gain some levels.

Cernunnos is a pretty rough boss, and he can pound your party into the ground pretty easily.



Oh goody, these again.

They look bigger than before. No matter, they don't seem very intimidating.


Curoller

Level: 26
HP: 142
STR: 75
VIT: 54
AGI: 32
LUC: 32
TEC: 32

EXP: 0

Skills
Defend: Uses the Head. Increases DEF of the entire line by 150% and has an 80% speed modifier.
Cure: Uses the Arms. Heals Cernunos by 120HP. Has a 10% speed modifier.

Damage Vulnerabilities
100% 100% 100%
100% 125% 125%

Disable Vulnerabilities
100% 100% 100%
100% 100% 100%

Drops
Normal: None

Rare: None

Conditional: None

Some annoying summons, but they don't do too much. A DEF reduction is best to handle Defend, so they keep having to cast it instead of healing Cernunos. They'll keep getting summoned if you kill both of them, so if you want to avoid them, then just leave one alive and put it to sleep or something. They were supposed to attack you, but due to an AI bug (get used to those) they instead have a 50% chance of doing nothing each turn. Aw yeah!

Gotta love EO1 AI. Due to the format of the AI files, they were far more prone to typos which caused so many instances of unintended behavior. The actual scripts they switched to later suffered far less from those kinds of mistakes.

Anyways these things are so very annoying. They drag out the fight due to their defense buffs and the fact that they heal Cernunnos. If both of them are alive, they'll pretty much restore 240 HP to Cernunnos as long as that defense buff is on someone. Which is a whopping 8.7~% of Cernunnos's HP, so they're very deadly supports.

Defend got changed to an elemental resistance buff in EOU, making Alchemist cheese a bit more annoying.

Before you think that this sounds like a nerf, it isn't. Resistance modifiers are much stronger than just defense stat modifiers. Sure your physical attacks are unaffected, but if you had an Alchemist or some other form of elemental damage in the party, now they can do even less than what they could in EO1.



You wouldn't hurt an innocent little child, would you?



Hiyahahahaha, it's good to be doing this again!

Ah screw it, we don't need Poison this fight. Probably.

We don't have time to keep trying an 11% chance. Doing pretty good damage since we're only -2 level from him, resulting in 108% damage against us and 92% damage towards him.

Another reason Poison loses usefulness as the game goes on. The damage from it isn't worth risking those low chances, and you're just better off dealing direct damage instead.



Guh, you're too late, I've already fired it!

Even with our level and the best armour we can use, by itself, Cernunos can oneshot our front row. Sapping is the only reason I can make this fight work, making hits a high 2HKO. Some things never change, eh?

This is still basically the case in EOU.

But you have far more reliable tools to deal with that sort of thing in that game. Sapping is real good in this game. Too bad in a normal playthrough, you won't ever have access to it this early!



Alright, that's an ATK and accuracy debuff. We'll need to use Frailty soon, but Cheese has more pressing matters. They're gonna be super busy this battle.



What do you mean his arms are too big? There's enough of you, put some effort into it!

He almost looks cute covered in squirrels.



Dammit, he's learning defensive positions a little too well.



Stone cold!

Okay, that sword is definitely talking. Anyone else hearing that?

Little busy, Ryu. C'mon, little bit more to the right aaaaaaand...



Hah, how do you like that bitch?

My, my, so aggressive.

Very impressive damage from Apollon. That was a whopping 10.95~% of Cernunnos' HP right there!



Oof! Can I get me one of those?

Get it yourself, my masters are spread a little thin right now.



Oh, now that's the stuff baby.



Humph, first one down. Let's land the next one alright?

Sure thing luv.

...huh, that sword is talking.



Interesting, birds do something similar to feed their-

YES YES, you don't need to describe it again. Ew.

With two Curollers, that's of course 240HP healed per turn, which is pretty hard to break through. We're even struggling keeping above 120.



Ah, jesus, alright we're getting nowhere fast!



We'll be fighting much larger enemies than this later on, so get back out there!

Nice, that was the perfect thing to Petrify. See, Petrification works differently in this game in that it acts like Petrification on the party, so instead of the enemy being instantly killed, it'll instead hang around, unable to do anything. It'll take 50% more damage from all attacks and can be targetted by attacks, which can be annoying. Now we don't have to worry about Curollers anymore, since it's still technically alive and Cernunos can't summon any more since there's not enough space.

For the record, Petrifying an enemy does count as killing them despite them sticking around, since enemies cannot cure it. So you still get experience and such for Petrfication kills.

...I've never seen petrification in EO1, and thought that it'd worked like instant death when used on enemies from the very beginning. I thought it being actual petrification was an invention of EO5. My mind is fucking blown.

It's also like that in EO2! EO3 is the game that changed Petrification to what the series used until EO5. (Instantly kills enemies, and causes party members to take half damage from attacks instead of more.) And considering how this can mess with the enemy AI, I can see why they changed it. It opens up way too many doors for unintentional behavior.



Alright, much better. Now get rid of the buff!

Been a LITTLE BUSY.

This rough battle is putting everyone on edge. Honestly.



Now this seems familiar.

Here's the funny thing, Cernunos has checks for being binded, but since it's quite low down on the AI list, if something else pops up, then he'll do that instead, which is pretty likely. Such as this, on every turn divisible by 5, Cernunos will use Combo. Remember the game internally counts turn 1 as turn 0, so it's technically turn 5.

Basically the counter the enemy AI uses to indicate turn count is a bit desynchronized from the actual turn counter. Starting from EO3, said counter would actually be lined up with the actual turn counter (though a few enemies can manipulate their own counter in that game for their AI.)



Cheese has no time for Frailty, to remove that Defend buff, since Sapping just ran out. And we really need that if Cernunos uses Hornrush. Sure, the 30% STR reduction is nice, but it won't last forever.



Those squirrels are hanging on pretty tight.

Pretty lucky, that looked like one hell of a posture it was taking.

50% chance of doing that under half health. I'm surprised it didn't show up that often, since it's impossible to predict.

Gotta love random "gotcha!" fuck yous.



Ho hum. This is kinda fun.

Don't get sloppy. Keep it up!

I should put some points into Volt, it's not being all that crazy right now.



Gah, man you're gonna regret that!

Alright, enough DEF buffs for this battle.



Imagine if Apollon was level 10 instead of 5? That would be crazy. Lavin keeps getting lucky since most of Cernunos's attacks are just FRow Preference.

That would very likely work out to a whopping 16% chunk of Cernunnos' HP gone.



See, was that so hard?

Ah geez they're clawing at his eyes and mouth. Some nasty masters you've got there.

I'm not too confident with another arm bind, so we'll go for Head Bind.



Wow we got lucky in this fight.

Gotta love boss fights where you end up stopping the boss from doing a whole lot with disables.




And that's a wrap! Good job team, I was fully confident the entire time.

I can smell fear, you know.

Aww, I didn't get to fire off my big hit.

I'm sure it would've been really cool! And scary! But mostly cool!

Ah, w-well, I mean, uh, thanks...

Not exactly the smoothest fight, but what can I say, I'm just that good.



Farewell jungle. You were boring, but you were nice and warm.

The Thousand Year Old Blue Woodlands




Oh, w-wow.

Gah, it's too bright!

Humph, I preferred the warm and dark jungle.

I'm going to get some fabulous accessories for my hair down here.

To think a place like this existed...

Ah, the third stratum. This place is so nice compared to Primitive Jungle. Unfortunately what's here ain't that great, but that's for another time.

At least it's a nice change in scenery.



I wonder how many 5 floor climbs we'll have to do.

Festival of Worship



Heh, nothing to it.

Quiet you. I did all the work.

We're all very grateful. That monster's been a constant thorn in the Radha's side. It seems only yesterday that you arrived in Etria, but you've become quite strong. Thanks to you, we can finally investigate further, and again glimpse the third Stratum. To show our gratitude for your excellent work, we have a small reward for you.



Alright, now we're talking.

Where did you come from?

Can she smell fat stacks of cash?



Still... we know very little of the area. We'll have to draw up maps first. We've placed a number of our soldiers on the task, but to tell the truth... we're a bit unsure of their reliability. What say you? Since you were able to defeat the Jungle King, would you be willing to assist them?



You've gone really white.

W-What? Me? Oh, it's fine, just soldiers drawing maps. Nothing to worry about there. Hahahahahaha.



Even we in the Radha don't know much about the 11th and 12th floors of the Labyrinth. In the past, supposedly there were those who ventured often into that Stratum, but... there are no surviving records of who they were, or what they found there. So we're tasked a number of soldiers with mapping the unknown floors. But it appears the burden of investigating a new area is too heavy for them alone. Please, support them in their attempts to complete the maps of those two floors.

Pfft, amateurs.

Now, now, I would be very surprised if they had a squirrel reconnaissance army.



New stratum means new dialogue. Well, for the most part.

You did sign up a good crew, right?

The Lounge Where We Speak of Tomorrow



Good work everyone, I knew you could do it!

This shall be a tale to remember! Oh, let us celebrate with a song! Oh there was a huge prick called the King of the Jungle~

Hold that thought. Peferably forever. You were saying, sweetie?

I think this calls for a toast! You kids seemed a little shaky when I first met you all... but look at you now. You're some of Etria's most talented adventurers. Getting stronger, tackling difficult missions... I'm proud of you, kiddos.



All these requests... how long we were gone?

About an hour.

Most honourable people are realising how dependable we are!



Our client this time says his comrades rest on the 11th floor. He doesn't know exactly where. Find their resting places for him... but be careful not to join their ranks.



HMMMMM???

Oh here we go...

This one is an ordeal that comes directly from the head of the Explorers Guild. It's very dangerous, but if you can do it, it'll be a real feather in your cap. The monster the Guildmaster calls a Cutter lives on the 6th floor of the forest. It's a ferocious bear that got its name from its sharp claws that rip explorers to shreds. Honestly... I don't know if I'm comfortable asking anyone to challenge the Labyrinth alone. Good luck, though, and I'll be praying for your safe return.

That should be easy, those claws will do nothing to my shield!

True, but what are you going to do in return? It's not like you can use your shield as a weapon.

With enough buffs, I wonder if I could take something like that down...

We'll be tackling this quest later since Gerson doesn't have a way to really deal damage yet. And it can't hurt to pick up a stronger sword to make it a bit easier. Still, with Defender, Fortify and Stonards, Gerson will have no problem taking attacks. Ryu could also be an option if his spells were stronger, since if you can nuke something before they can do anything, then that also works.

Yeah, they actually have quests where they demand you solo kill an FOE. Later games cut those types of quests out entirely for obvious reasons. (And the remake was forced to cut them out since you can't eject people from your party in Story mode.)



Oh great, like I'd want to go back to that place.

We cannot ignore a single request. Get prepared!

The client wants you to gather the pests on the 10th floor and exterminate them all at once. He said the best way to draw the insects to you is to use an Amber Lump. Apparently, its sweet smell attracts the bugs. Good luck... and don't bring that Amber Lump in here. I don't want any bugs in my pub.



You can do this crap.

How generous.

Hey, remember, passion!

The merchant Ian wants you to bring back samples of everything you can mine on the 10th floor. You've been there before, right? If you've been careful about your map, it should be easy. Good luck, kiddos.

Sounds like a hassle, we'll go to B6F instead.



Well, there's conflicting evidence whether he even existed. And furthermore...

He's so cute when he's nerdy.

Oh the tales I've woven of this man. To think his treasure was here in Etria!~

They say he was incredibly strong, and his gang destroyed entire towns. This old man says he was in Edue's gang, and has a treasure map from Edue himself. According to him, the treasure is past the crystal door on the Labyrinth's 5th floor. Sound suspicious to me, but work is work. Good luck down there, kids.

Oh great, more wolves.

We'll bat them aside no problem, gahahaha!

Okay now we'll explore that area. In a little bit. We do have a new stratum to explore, so we should do a bit of that before tackling these quests. This is one we'll also save for a little later.



But I'm happy t'see t'at my own customers were t'ones who beat it. Keep doin' me proud!



1 Sharp Horn and 1 Tiger Fang are required for Viking (Sword, ATK+57, STR+5, VIT+2), sells for 2100en.

1 Sharp Horn and 4 Gum Vines are required for Hindi (Bow, ATK+49, TEC+4), sells for 1870en.



I challenged the Labyrinth myself back in the day, so I know the terrors of its depths. I've long since stopped my explorations, but I'm more than glad to help you young turks.

Little bit of this, gonna need one of these. Ooh, this will be interesting, ehehehe.

She's not even listening to... ah, crap, what's his name?

It's Hoffman. Honestly, to learn everyone's names is an honourable thing to do!



He was a pretty big guy to fight.

Hah, for you.

I see... you're on your journey to conquer the depths of the Yggdrasil Labyrinth. Well, whenever you feel tired, feel free to rest at our inn.

What's this guy's name?

It's... uh, well, he hasn't opted to divulge that info yet.

Ah, the mystery innkeeper, what a tale that could be~



Next time, it's the 3rd stratum! The real Etrian Odyssey starts here.

You say that as if it wasn't like that from the beginning.

iirc the 3rd Stratum in EO1 isn't nearly as big a difficulty spike as it is in EOU. you're getting lucky, cross, ya punk