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Game Mechanics
This is an overview page of all game mechanics in the Etrian Odyssey series.
Guild Creation
Conducted at the Explorers Guild at the start of each game. Start with giving your Guild a name. This name cannot be changed once decided.
Adding Guild Members
Guild members are recruited through the Register function in the Explorers Guild. During creation, you decide the guild member's class, portrait, and name. In Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth and Etrian Odyssey Nexus you also can customize their color palettes and voice banks. After creation, the character is registered as part of the guild with their starter equipment on hand.
Your party typically consists of five guild members, split between a front and back row. Either row can accommodate up to three guild members. Members in back row take reduced damage but also deal reduced melee damage. Arrange your guild members into your party formation using the "Formation" option. You can save these formations and quickly call them up with the "Muster" option.
Stats
- Level - Overall strength of the guild member. Some formulas take the combatant's level into account for calculations. Level cap is 70 (99 in Etrian Odyssey Nexus) but can be raised through various methods.
- HP - Short for Hit Points. The party member is dead if it reaches 0. You get a Game Over if all members of your active party are dead.
- TP - Short for Talent Points. Used as cost for skills.
- STR - Strength: Affects strength of physical attacks.
- TEC - Technique: Affects strength of magic attacks and defense against elemental damage.
- VIT - Vitality: Affects defense against physical damage.
- AGI - Agility: Affects action speed, accuracy, evasion, and escape rate.
- LUC - Luck: Affects ailment/bind infliction rates, aliment/bind resistance, and critical hit chance.
- INT - Intelligence: Affects strength of magic attacks (Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth onwards)
- WIS - Wisdom: Affects strength of healing skills and defense against magic damage. (Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth onwards)
City
Inn
Rest at the inn to fully restore your party's HP and TP, while causing time to pass to either 7AM or 7PM. Resting incurs a fee of 5en multiplied by the level of the highest-levelled party member.
You can revive dead or petrified party members (a feature established from Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City), at the cost of 5en multiplied by that party member's level.
You can also store items (a feature established from Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard) if you don't need them now but don't want to sell them off to make inventory room.
Hospital
Available only in Etrian Odyssey and Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard, you can revive your fallen party members here, at the cost of 5en multiplied by that party member's level.
Shop
Purchase and sell items here. The materials you find in the labyrinth are used to expand and replenish the shop stock once sold. Depending on game, you can also upgrade your equipment through forging.
Quest Bar
Accept quests here. Completing side quests earns you rewards like money, items, and experience (from Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City onwards). You can also talk to bar patrons to get hints on monster behavior or conditional drops.
Explorers Guild
Manage your guild members, assign subclasses/mastery (where applicable), and switch members in and out of your active party.
Rest
Reset a party member's skill points/subclass/mastery so that you can re-assign them, at the cost of a level penalty. In Etrian Odyssey the resting party member loses 10 levels. In Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard, Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City, and all three HD remakes of the DS games, this level penalty is 5. In Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan and all 3DS games, this level penalty is 2.
Retire
Removes a party member and gets a new one to take their place, with the apprentice gaining a stat bonus and extra skill points based on the level of the previous retiree. The apprentice can still be the exact same class, portrait, and name as the retiree. In Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight, the Story Party cannot retire, but can undergo a "Train" option that bestows the stat bonuses of Retiring without replacing them.
Mission Center
Receive missions that are crucial to story progression.
City Escape
Commence your expeditions in the labyrinth from here.
Labyrinth
Each games' first mission is a mapping tutorial to demonstrate its mechanics. By default, the floor is painted on as you walk through the labyrinth, and you have to draw in walls and drag over icons by yourself. How much gets drawn by automap can be adjusted in the Options menu. The map for each floor is managed through the mapping screen (the touch screen for DS/3DS games, or a section on the side of the screen for the HD releases) and can be edited at nearly any time, even in the midst of battle. The map is drawn through a 35x30 grid, with each 5x5 section given its label on the side of the screen, going from row A to row F and column 1 to column 7. To aid in pinpointing locations, this wiki will refer to each 5x5 square as a "sector" and label each sector based on the row and column labels (A-2, B-6, etc)
Your party has an inventory that can hold up to 60 items. Each copy of an item will take up one slot; ensuring you have enough supplies and spare equipment while also leaving enough room for the spoils of battle such that you can turn in a profit is crucial for each expedition.
Exploration
Your current location is depicted as a green circle with a triangle showing where you face. The main exploration screen is a first-person view of the labyrinth, where you can see your immediate surroundings. Movement is done with the D-Pad, side-stepping (from Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard onwards) with the L and R buttons, and interaction with the A button.
The top-left corner of the main screen displays the current time, and the day gradually shifts from dawn to dusk and back again. Every 30 steps and/or turns spent in combat equates one in-game hour. The time of day plays an importance in the labyrinth ― all gather points reset at midnight, and certain enemies may behave differently depending on whether it is day or night.
Of note are FOEs, which are strong enemies that serve as obstacles during navigation. Different FOEs have different behaviors that determine the navigation puzzle for their territory. FOEs move with the player, and will still move around for every turn spent in battle. FOEs are best to be avoided on sight, and can barge into battle if they catch up to a player in the middle of combat.
Intermittently, you can find Geomagnetic Poles. These serve as checkpoints from where you can begin your expeditions, easily return to town, or save your game.
Battle Mechanics
Every party member starts with three Skill Points, and gains one for every level they gain. Skill points are assigned through the Custom option in the main menu, and can be done either in town or in the labyrinth. Skills must need at least one skill point invested in them for them to become available and take effect.
Layout
Your party has two rows, front and back. Each row can only accommodate a maximum of three combatants, and you can deploy up to five guild members in your party. There must always be at least one member in the front row. Characters in the back take halved physical damage, but deal halved physical damage (with exception to ranged weapons like bows and guns, and associated skills). If the entire front row is knocked out, the back row is dragged to the front.
Your party's formation can only be rearranged mid-battle from Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard onward, and on its first implementation, swapping a party member's position took up their action for the turn, unless this was part of their combat skills. In Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan onwards, you can freely change the party formation in the middle of battle, though you must have at least one live party member in the front row.
From Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan onwards, enemy formations have lines too, and follow the same rules as your party. Attack skills also distinguish themselves as melee and ranged. Melee attacks conducted from the back row cannot reach targets in the opposing back row. Melee attacks will only do full damage from a front row character attacking a front row target, and do half damage anywhere else. Ranged attacks can hit anyone from anywhere without any damage penalty.
If an attack does "splash damage", it will deal full damage to its primary target, and any targets to its immediate left and right will take half damage. The exception is for weapons with the splash forge in Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, where splash damage from normal attacks will do less than half damage depending on the number of splash forge icons.
If a skill pierces enemy rows, it can hit up to two targets, one in the front row and another in the back (unless it's a melee attack being execute from the back row, so it can only hit an enemy in the front). If a melee attack is capable of piercing rows, the back row will take half damage. Ranged row-piercing attacks will do full damage to both targets; the exception is for weapons with the pierce forge in Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, where the back row will take less than full damage depending on the number of pierce forge icons.
Attacks that hit "random targets" will randomly distribute their hits among all available enemies, though some will have restrictions on how many hits a single enemy can take. Certain multi-hit attacks deal a randomized number of hits and can strike the same enemy multiple times. For these skills, this wiki will not only display the damage per hit, but also display a damage range for expected damage (min hits to max hits) if all those hits converged on a single enemy and none of those attacks miss.
Combat
Before combat begins, the game checks for if the party gets a preemptive round or they get blindsided. If the party has the preemptive, they get one turn where enemies cannot act and escape is guaranteed. If the party is blindsided, the enemies get one turn to act before the party can respond.
Each party member has a selection of options to choose from in between each round of combat:
- Attack - Conduct a normal attack with the equipped weapon, doing 100% damage.
- Skill - Use any of their available skills, usually taking up TP in the process.
- Defend - Reduce damage taken and susceptibility to ailments/binds for the turn.
- Item - Use an item from the party's communal inventory.
- Switch - (EO2 onward) Rearrange the party formation.
- Escape - Attempt to flee the battle.
After all party members have chosen their action, the game executes all actions from both sides of battle, queuing actions with higher Action Speed first. Typically, combatants with higher Agility get more Action Speed to their actions, but some skills and equipment offer Action Speed modifiers that can influence the turn order.
Combatants can receive up to three buffs and debuffs apiece, and if a fourth will be applied, the oldest (topmost) will be removed for the new effect. Buffs and debuffs can cancel each other out ― for instance, a defense debuff will negate a defense buff, regardless of the strength of either skill. If a buff/debuff is already in effect and is applied again, its duration will be refreshed (EO1 and EO2) or extended (EO3 onward), applying the level of the most recent casting even if it's weaker overall. (The exception is in Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl, where the stronger of the two versions will still apply; this is how a Boosted buff can be extended.)
Each combatant can receive up to one ailment. Ailments form a "hierarchy", depicted on the enemy analysis info (where applicable): ailments on the left of the row will override those on the right; e.g. an enemy that has been cursed will never be poisoned, and inflicting paralysis to a blinded enemy will override the blind effect with paralysis. Stun is an exception, as it can be applied on top of any other ailment. Petrified enemies (up till Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth) instantly die and are removed from battle.
The game series also features binds, one for head, arm, and leg. Most skills require specific unbound body parts to be used; landing the correct bind can disable a problematic attack from an enemy. Each combatant can receive up to three binds, one for each body part, and can be bound in addition to suffering from an ailment. Head binds typically prevent spells or biting attacks from being used, arm binds typically seal off most physical attacks and weaken the combatant's physical strength, and leg binds prevent kicking or tail-based attacks and keep the combatant from dodging or fleeing.
At the end of battle, the experience from each defeated enemy is tallied up and then distributed evenly across every surviving party member. All ailments and binds (except for petrifaction or death) wear off at the end of battle. You can also earn a maximum of eight items from a single battle. If you would exceed your inventory capacity, you must discard from your current inventory if you want to make room for the item drops.
