History GameBreaker / EtrianOdyssey

* The Medic's Immunize is a powerful resistance buff that reduces all damage by up to 60% at max level. If a max-level Immunize is boosted this damage reduction jumps to '''85%''', letting your whole team survive otherwise lethal damage and take ScratchDamage from almost everything else. Sadly, ''Heroes of Lagaard'' [[{{Nerf}} cut it out altogether]] (along with the Troubadour's Healing and Relaxing skills), and when it finally returned in the remake it would be dramatically nerfed in potency and only apply to fire, ice, and volt damage. The ''HD'' remake rolls back these nerfs.
* A CombatMedic build was most effective in this game, mainly due to common passives not scaling the same way across most classes. For nearly any class with the ATK Up passive, at level 10 it offers a 1.3x damage multiplier. For the Medic? The 1.3x mark is at level 3, and full investment is a '''3x''' multiplier. This makes the Medic hit about as hard as your actual frontliners, especially with a maxed-out Caduceus skill. Later games standardized the way passives scale between all classes, and the Medic's physical damage output took a big {{nerf}} and never fully recovered.
* The ''Origins Collection'' version of the game brings back what made ''[=EO1=]'' Medic so good, and even buffs some of their abilities. Take Healing Touch, for example. In the original DS version, it requires so much investment for relatively so little gain, only healing up to each combatant's max HP times 40% at level 10. In the ''Origins'' version, it becomes a full heal at level 3 for a mere 3 TP, and at level 5 it does the same effect but at ''1 TP'', basically giving you a free heal after each fight.

* You'll notice that buff-based classes show up in this section a lot. That's because buffs are a straight-up force multiplier that become handy in speeding up boss fights or other difficult encounters. Stacking buffs is the bread-and-butter for many a burst party. Later entries have attempted to mitigate this by reducing the effectiveness of stacking buffs, but there's often a workaround.

* The infamous Warrior Might team, which uses a Gladiator/Shogun and two Shogun/Buccaneers. The Gladiator's class ability and self-buff skills give it some of the highest damage output in the game, and its Shogun subclass lets it use Warrior Might, a chaser skill that makes it follow up every party member's attack with one of its own. This would normally be balanced by the party limit of five (six with a Ninja's Bunshin), especially since some members will be too busy healing, guarding other members, or maintaining buffs to attack. However, the Shoguns' class ability, Second Sword, lets them dual wield weapons, and their Buccaneer subclass gives them Swashbuckling, which lets them attack 2-4 times ''per weapon'' when using normal attacks—and Warrior Might treats every single normal attack as a separate attack and ''has no upper limit on how many times it can chase attacks''. Throw in a bunch of offensive buffs and defensive debuffs from your other party members, and you can perform 8-16 chase attacks to inflict as much as 40,000 HP of damage on the final boss in one turn.
** When Warrior Might returned in ''Etrian Odyssey Nexus'', it got tagged with a huge nerf where every chase [[CastFromHitPoints causes the Shogun to lose HP]], and the HP loss capable of [[HoistByHisOwnPetard killing its user]]. Combined with the general PowerCreep on active skills that happened to that point, Warrior's Might is no longer the standout skill it used to be in ''3''.

* The Slice, Pierce, and Crush Amulets, unlocked from drops earned in the fifth stratum, each bestow their wielder with a 50% resistance to one of the three physical damage types. Stack two of them and the user takes negligible damage from that type. This lets the player effectively nullify any one problematic move should they know the damage types a boss specializes in. It comes at the cost of an armor slot, but the damage reduction far outweighs any armor. The potency of stacking accessories resulted in a {{nerf}} in subsequent games to the equipment system, only allowing a party member to equip one accessory at a time.

* Succeeding the Gladiators in the "staple subclass for damage" role is the Bushi, as their damage bonuses are very effective for minimal skill point investment. With a single point, their Blood Surge gives a long-lasting buff that doesn't consume a buff slot, drains miniscule amounts of HP and TP per turn, and gives a ''45%'' damage bonus. And that's before we factor in Charge, Defiance or their own Power Boost. Never mind the Bushi's own attack skills - imagine all these damage multipliers stacked on an [[spoiler:Imperial]]!

** Their Barrier skill becomes a defensive staple. It functions similarly to Yggdra Vaccine[[note]]1-turn immunity to ailments[[/note]], a PurposefullyOverpowered King Grimoire skill in ''The Millennium Girl'', only stronger, though counterbalanced with an activation limit and middling trigger chance at lower levels. But once you push it to max level and support it with max War Lore Mastery, your entire party effectively becomes immune to the first ailments, binds ''and'' debuffs for a turn, and its failure rate becomes almost negligible. It is not uncommon to see a single party member constantly throwing up Barrier when they don't need to use any support skills. Even better: if you double up on Barrier with a Grimoire and push it to Level 20, it becomes ''very'' reliable with a base 85% success rate, which is easily raised to 100 with a maxed War Lore Mastery. The skill was so strong that its parallels in ''Beyond the Myth'' have conditions that prevent them from being so easily spammable. When the War Magi return for ''Etrian Odyssey Nexus'', Barrier took a severe nerf to its activation limits, preventing it from ever being able to protect the whole party.

* Shamans are [[MagikarpPower really slow in gaining power]] having very limited options in the beginning of the game, and huge costs for their prayers. Once you gain enough points, they, especially their Divine Herald title, can easily prove to be the best support class in the game. Building powerful buffs, consistent party wide healing, and the ability to nearly nullify binds and ailments in later stages, the Shaman has the easiest time supporting the party.

* The infamous Warrior's Might team, which uses a Gladiator/Shogun and two Shogun/Buccaneers. The Gladiator's class ability and self-buff skills give it some of the highest damage output in the game, and its Shogun subclass lets it use Warrior's Might, a chaser skill that makes it follow up every party member's attack with one of its own. This would normally be balanced by the party limit of five (six with a Ninja's Bunshin), especially since some members will be too busy healing, guarding other members, or maintaining buffs to attack. However, the Shoguns' class ability, Second Sword, lets them dual wield weapons, and their Buccaneer subclass gives them Swashbuckling, which lets them attack 2-4 times ''per weapon'' when using normal attacks—and Warrior's Might treats every single normal attack as a separate attack and ''has no upper limit on how many times it can chase attacks''. Throw in a bunch of offensive buffs and defensive debuffs from your other party members, and you can perform 8-16 chase attacks to inflict as much as 40,000 HP of damage on the final boss in one turn.
** When Warrior's Might returned in ''Etrian Odyssey Nexus'', it got tagged with a huge nerf where every chase [[CastFromHitPoints causes the Shogun to lose HP]], and the HP loss capable of [[HoistByHisOwnPetard killing its user]]. Combined with the general PowerCreep on active skills that happened to that point, Warrior's Might is no longer the standout skill it used to be in ''3''.

* The titular Fafnir Knight, due to his transformations. It's saying something when a common complaint about him is that he's so powerful that the other party members are completely overshadowed in the offense department that they aren't even needed as attackers at all. And if that doesn't explain how powerful he is, he can kill the BonusBoss in ''one turn''.

* Hell Slash is essentially a stronger Warrior's Might. It has its drawbacks in that the initiator has to [[GlassCannon abandon all armour for maximum damage output]], the number of chases is capped, [[FriendlyFire and it can chase enemy attacks]], but a total of 2400% damage from the physically strongest race with the strongest weapon class is nothing to scoff at. And this is before factoring in effects like the Pugilist's buff and the damage you've done from your other attacks.

* Spirit Evokers gain Tombstone Vice, a skill that sacrifices all Wraiths to petrify a single target. What looks to be a clunky AwesomeButImpractical skill turns out to be an extreme GameBreaker on analysis: Tombstone Vice's affliction rate is tied to the amount of Wraith that is sacrificed at the time of casting, going up to a massive '''160%''' chance with 3 Wraith at level 10. With further support from skills such as Wilting Miasma, and the union skill Black Mist, Tombstone Vice can turn into a practically guaranteed petrification on even the toughest of bosses, and bear in mind that very few enemies are outright immune to the ailment. In the right team, Tombstone Vice is able to trivialize every single boss fight in the game right from the moment it become available for use.

** Great Warrior is a single target buff that offers 60% Physical Attack buff when maxed along with increased target focus. This is the single most powerful attack buff in the entire game, for a small cost of 6 SP, with the caveat of being incompatible with Sovereign's Force Break due to being classified as a draw rate buff. On the other hand, Great Warrior also will not be cancelled by enemy attack debuffs. While the downside might seem risky, it serves as a way to fuel Shogun's Command skills.

* Nectalls and Nectall IIs act as ''party-wide'' Nectars, with the latter reviving the whole party with full health all on their own. They are hard to get until very, very late in the game (Nectall IIs in particular need a drop from Colossus to be restocked in addition to a post-game gathering material), but keeping a healthy supply of them renders party wipes a non-issue unless everyone dies at once. Needless to say, Nectalls were one-shot items, with party-wide revives in the future being restricted to skills with high costs and chances of failure.

** When Warrior's Might returned in ''Etrian Odyssey Nexus'', it got tagged with a huge nerf where every chase [[CastFromHitPoints causes the Shogun to lose HP]], and the HP loss capable of [[HoistByHisOwnPetard killing its user]]. Combined with the general PowerCreep on active skills that happened to that point, Warrior's Might is no longer the standout skill it used to be in ''3''
* The Ninja/Zodiac TP battery. The Ninja's class ability, Keburi no Sue, cuts its skill TP requirements by up to 9 points. Subclass to Zodiac and you can use the Dark Ether skill to allow a row of characters to use skills at no TP cost—this would normally cost 10 TP, but with Keburi no Sue, this goes down to the minimum of 1 TP. Now you can spam your party's strongest skills constantly at a cost of just 1 TP per turn. Want to have a pair of Zodiacs nuke the enemy with 60 TP Meteors every turn? Want your Gladiator to use the above Warrior's Might combo every random battle? Now you can!

* The Slice, Pierce, and Crush Amulets each bestow their wielder with a 50% resistance to one of the three physical damage types. Stack two of them and the user takes negligible damage from that type. This lets the player effectively nullify any one problematic move should they know the damage types a boss specializes in. It comes at the cost of an armor slot, but the damage reduction far outweighs any armor. The potency of stacking accessories resulted in a {{nerf}} in subsequent games to the equipment system, only allowing a party member to equip one accessory at a time.

* The Medic's Immunize is a powerful resistance buff that reduces all damage by up to 60% at max level. If a max-level Immunize is boosted this damage reduction jumps to '''85%''', letting your whole team survive otherwise lethal damage and take ScratchDamage from almost everything else. Sadly, ''Heroes of Lagaard'' [[{{Nerf}} cut it out altogether]] (along with the Troubadour's Healing and Relaxing skills), and when it finally returned in the remake it would be dramatically nerfed in potency and only apply to fire, ice, and volt damage.

* Survivalists are not just handy for navigation and gathering -- they make for great DPS classes due to how strong Apollyon and Multihit are. Multihit even gets a third hit at max level with no strings attached, greatly improving the DPS at that point. As with most of the powerful classes in 1, the Survivalist would suffer a heavy nerf coming into ''Heroes of Lagaard'', neutering its damage output while also removing the third hit of Multihit. Survivalist would then suffer from an identity crisis in terms of its roles until its return to form in ''The Fafnir Knight''.

** Warrior's Might is so strong that when the Shoguns return in ''Etrian Odyssey Nexus'', it got tagged with a huge nerf where every chase [[CastFromHitPoints causes the Shogun to lose HP]], and the HP loss capable of [[HoistByHisOwnPetard killing its user]].

* Troubadours in general in this game are pretty overwhelming. The game imposes a much more punishing form of DiminishingReturnsForBalance to prevent the player from exploiting buff-stacking for ludicrous amounts of damage. However, it classes the Troubadours' Fantasia skills as an elemental resistance modifier, different from attack or defense buffs. This means they don't get gimped when combined with other buffs, allowing elemental damage to reach new heights.

* While the Landsknecht's Force Boost, Trinity, is strong but still fairly balanced for it's damage, accuracy and speed boosts, it's the Force Break, Full Charge, that is on an entirely different level. Sure, this requires the Landsknecht to break their Force gauge and be unable to use Trinity for the rest of the battle (or a labyrinth trip if not returning to home), but the fact that Full Charge boosts the damage they deal by '''more than triple''' the damage while also gaining a huge speed boost that virtually guarantees the Landsknecht to go first (and not to mention the force break stacks with conventional attack buffs), which allows bursting down FOEs and bosses - sometimes in just as short as 2 turns, or from full HP to 0. Subclasses can further tune up the deadly effectiveness of Full Charge:

* Gladiators have Berserker Vow and Charge. The former sacrifices a huge portion of HP for up to 90% damage boost, and the later allows them to do 260% extra damage next turn. Between these two skills, the Gladiator straight-up becomes the best class in the game for physical DPS, and is a staple subclass for anyone needing physical offense. No wonder any Charge skills in subsequent games don't reach similar damage multipliers.

* Chain Duelist Fencers have Chain Killer, a Chain skill that chases the affliction of Status ailments and binds. Since it is not always easy to apply mass binds/ailments (on top of Chain Killer triggering just once if you bind multiple parts in a single move e.g. Clinch), Chain Killer hits about 4 times as hard compared to Elemental Chains. With application of a Harbinger's Wilting Miasma and the Black Mist Union, as well as setting up the Chain Duelist with Chain Plus/Chain All and maybe some extra buffs, you can then unload status/bind jars on enemy formations to exploit Chain Killer to its fullest. Coupled with passives that let Chain activations hit twice, as well as follow-up on enemies ''and'' get stronger with every successive hit/activation, it is entirely possible to kill even superbosses with a Chain Duelist quickly.

* Pugilists are one of the strongest classes in the game. Their access to binding skills can save the party's life from time to time, but their other skills can do incredible damage. When they returned in ''Nexus'', they ate a huge {{nerf}} that tuned down a lot of their damage numbers.

* Once a Farmer hits Level 40 to learn their Master rank skills, getting money becomes all but trivial thanks to the combination of Nature's Blessing and Double Crop. The former gives you extra chances to gather rare materials from gather points. The latter gives a chance of you getting two gather triggers in succession, which also means Nature's Blessing can trigger again. Its entirely possible to completely fill an empty inventory from 2 gathering spots. Simply make 4 level 40 Farmers, and support with a single Survivalist for the ability to negate enemy ambushes (including gathering ambushes) and the ability to expand inventory capacity (up to 80, or a 33% boost). This in turns made getting the strongest weapons rather easy, considering that at later labyrinths, its entirely possible to make 100k off a single gathering trips. Don't have the time to level a bunch of characters? No problem! [[SocializationBonus Just grab some Guild Cards with level 40 gathering-optimized Farmers and borrow them]] (easy enough since many online ''Etrian'' communities have a QR code sharing thread or two).

** Want to crank the fun UpToEleven? Give them the Nightseeker subclass and make them DualWield. The multiple attacking can trigger both weapons '''individually'''. If you have Sword Dance maxed, your Dancer can potentially attack eight times per turn. By the way, did we mention that the Dancer is both a buffer and healer?

* Party builds that specialize in burst damage are a consistent GameBreaker across the main series games. By carefully managing buffs, maxing the right skills, and timing your charge and damage boosting skills properly, it's possible to blow up bosses in a few turns after setting up, bypassing a good chunk of the fight. These kinds of teams would often use StatusAilment based classes to disable its victim, or the right amount of DamageReduction from classes such as the Protector to keep the party safe while setting up and executing the strategy. Since specifics of these kinds of teams would cover a wide range of skills in the series, a lot of entries on this page involve some of the best skills or classes used in such parties.

* Imperials are back, and in particular their new choices of subclasses can help cover their weaknesses:
** Imperial + Hero. Give them Afterimage and you can get a second Drive in at no additional cost.
** Imperial + Gunner. Act Quick at max subclass level gives them a 40% discount and a faster turn speed, removing the key problem of Drive skills in that they are slow and the user's defense drops severely until activation and that they use obnoxious amounts of TP. Multi-Shot lets their attacks go again (similar to Afterimage, but right away) at no extra cost, even if it's a Drive skill, and if it triggers on Sharp Edge or Cool Edge you can take another turn off on the Overheat.
** Imperial + Zodiac, if you are willing to pour the skill points in to their elemental Drive skills (''24'' total if you wanna max out all three of them, not counting prerequisite skills), lets you do even more damage when hitting an enemy's weakness through Singularity and learn TP Up, as Imperials naturally demand a lot of TP but don't have nearly enough of it for a sustained fight. Etheric Boon also offers fantastic synergy with their expensive Charge Edge, mixing multipliers together to deliver extremely powerful Drives. Throw in a max-level Natural Edge, a cheap non-Drive attack skill (only 7 TP at max level) they have access to from the get-go that can be imbued with elemental attack buffs or innate elements on some weapons, and an Imperial-Zodiac can still do lots of damage to enemies with elemental weaknesses when they're not firing off Drives.

* The Medic's Immunize is a powerful resistance buff that reduces all damage by up to 60% at max level. If a max-level Immunize is boosted this damage reduction jumps to '''85%''', letting your whole team survive otherwise lethal damage and take ScratchDamage from almost everything else. Sadly, ''Heroes of Lagaard'' [[{{Nerf}} cut it out altogether]] (along with the Troubadour's Healing and Relaxing skills), and when it finally returned in the remake it would be nerfed to only apply to elemental attacks.

* The Medic's Immunize was supposed to reduce damage from only elemental attacks, but a bug in the programming recognized the physical attack types as "elements", so it turned into an all-around defense buff. It scales very linearly compared to the other defense buffs, starting at a 15% damage reduction at level 1 and going all the way up to '''60%''' at level 10. If a max-level Immunize is boosted this damage reduction jumps to '''85%''', letting your whole team survive otherwise lethal damage and take ScratchDamage from almost everything else. Sadly, ''Heroes of Lagaard'' [[{{Nerf}} cut it out altogether]] (along with the Troubadour's Healing and Relaxing skills), and when it finally returned in the remake it would work exactly as intended and with a much weaker defense bonus.

** Imperial + Zodiac, if you are willing to pour the skill points in to their elemental Drive skills (''24'' total if you wanna max out all three of them, not counting prerequisite skills), lets you do even more damage when hitting an enemy's weakness through Singularity and learn TP Up, as Imperials naturally demand a lot of TP but don't have nearly enough of it for a sustained fight. Etheric Boon also offers fantastic synergy with their expensive Charge Edge, mixing multipliers together to deliver extremely powerful Drives. Throw in a max-level Natural Edge, a cheap non-Drive attack skill (only 7 TP at max level) they have access to from the get-go that can be imbued with elemental attack buffs, and an Imperial-Zodiac can still do lots of damage to enemies with elemental weaknesses when they're not firing off Drives.

!Series-wide

!''Etrian Odyssey''

!''Heroes of Lagaard''

!''The Drowned City''

!''Legends of the Titan''

!''The Millennium Girl''

!''The Fafnir Knight''

!''Beyond the Myth''

!''Etrian Mystery Dungeon''

!''Etrian Odyssey Nexus''

** Imperial + Zodiac, if you are willing to pour the skill points in to their elemental Drive skills (''24'' total if you wanna max out all three of them, not counting prerequisite skills), lets you do even more damage when hitting an enemy's weakness through Singularity and learn TP Up, as Imperials naturally demand a lot of TP but don't have nearly enough of it for a sustained fight. Etheric Boon also offers fantastic synergy with their expensive Charge Edge, mixing multipliers together to deliver extremely powerful Drives. Throw in a max-level Natural Edge, a cheap non-Drive attack skill (only 7 TP at max level) they have access to from the get-go that can be imbued with elemental attack buffs, and an Imperial-Zodiac can still do lots of damage to enemies with elemental weaknesses when they're not firing off Drives.

* Party builds that specialize in burst damage are a consistent GameBreaker across the main series games. By carefully managing buffs, maxing the right skills, and timing your charge and damage boosting skills properly, it's possible to blow up bosses in a few turns after setting up, bypassing a good chunk of the fight. These kinds of teams would often use StatusAilment based classes to disable its victim, or the right amount of DamageReduction from classes such as the Protector to keep the party safe while setting up and executing the strategy. Since specifics of these kinds of teams would cover a wide range of skills in the series, a lot of entries in this page are some of the best skills that can be used in these kind of parties.

* Once you get to the 5th Stratum, money is no longer a problem, as just close by the Warp pole is a mining point that can be mined without fear of being attacked and making thousands of En per run with a team of Survivalists with maxed out mining. Like with Immunize, future games nerfed the gathering skills to prevent this from happening again, on top of introducing the risk of an ambush during the gathering process to punish gathering-specialized parties, and ''The Millennium Girl'' moved the mining spot out of the room on top of only allowing each spot to be used once per day.

* Speaking of Survivalist, they can be considered a GameBreaker in this game, while Survivalist already have the JackOfAllTrades aspect it had in later installments, [=EO1=] Survivalist is also notable for being the most powerful damage dealer in the game, thanks to how powerful Apollon and Multihit are, the latter getting a third hit at max level with no strings attached. As with most of the powerful classes in 1, the Survivalist would suffer a heavy nerf coming into ''Heroes of Lagaard'', neutering its damage output while also removing the third hit of Multihit. Survivalist would then suffer from an identity crisis in terms of its roles until its return to form in ''The Fafnir Knight''.

* Force skills in general could be fairly severe Game Breakers. The Gunner's guarantees that you'll stun an enemy for that turn and the Protector's negates all damage and status effects for one turn, for example. The Dark Hunter's is guaranteed to go last in the turn, but will bind any enemy, including bosses, preventing them from using their skills (though some exceptions exist). That enemy can waste a turn trying to use a skill that requires the bound limb. At the end of the game, it's possible to use them every turn by dedicating two characters to feeding the Force skill users Axcelas. However, not only do they cost a lot, but also require plenty of materials in order to buy them.

** Ecstasy, the SignatureMove of the Whip skillset is obscenely effective. At level 10, an Ecstasy with no bound parts is just as powerful as 1 bound parts, and it just become much stronger with 2 or 3 bound parts. Used alone, Ecstasy is already one of the most powerful physical offensive skill in the game. At its maximum potential, its far and away the strongest offensive skill in the game with the possible exception of [[PurposelyOverpowered Land Slash]].

** A number of the King Grimoire skills (Grimoires dropped from certain bosses, with unique skills). The most obvious is Phoenix Wings from Iwaoropenelep, which allows the entire party to move before all enemies; combined with stuns or other status effects, it can lock down enemies before they can even attack. Wolf Pack from Fenrir is also great, giving a massive damage boost on the turn it's used, and Yggdra Vaccine protects the party from ailments -- great for throwing ThatOneAttack when it's being telegraphed. The only counterbalancing factor is the sheer luck or effort needed to attain these skills due to the process being a GuideDangIt, but when you get one, its power can trivialize most of the game.

** Careful usage of Limit Break, Force Reset, and Extend can allow a Fafnir to cheerfully get Accelerate off, hit thrice, then Extend his Force boost for more attacks, before Force Resetting to cancel his transformation and saving his Force Boost gauge. With proper Force management and the (ab)use of Fafnir Grimoires, it is possible, with extremely-minmaxed Limit Break and Force Reset, to get off three consecutive Transforms off a 200% force gauge during a long fight, although in most cases the enemy will be annihilated before you even need to Force Reset even once. Want to take this even further? Your Fafnir can use elemental attacks that will happily set off Element Chaser Landschnekts and Link Order Sovereigns, so Accelerating at the right moment can mean extra Chasing hits from your Landschnekt.

* The titular hero of Story himself, due to his transformations. It's saying something when a common complaint about him is that he's so powerful that the other party members are completely overshadowed in the offense department that they aren't even needed as attackers at all. And if that doesn't explain how powerful he is, he can kill the BonusBoss in ''one turn''.

* The War Magus's Ailing Slash deals an obscene amount of damage at high levels, it ignores resistances, so it's a viable skill in nearly every situation. If your party lacks the ailments to enable its damage bonus, War Edge Power is happy to fill in for that for 3 turns.

* Venom Throw returns as the Nightseeker's final Throw skill and the best source of poison damage. Although it no longer deals a static 700-or-so damage like it did in its source game, at max skill level and around level 40 the poison ticks for a whopping 350 each turn, which can almost immediately kill most random encounters at that stage. Poison damage also scales with the level of its caster, meaning its damage will remain relevant through most of the game, and even surpass the 700 mark towards the end. On top of that, Spread Throw now also raises the Nightseeker's infliction rate, and an Auto-Spread triggering lets the Nightseeker spread this powerful poison across the enemy ranks with a very good success rate. This means you can end most random encounters in just 1 to 2 turns for a very low TP cost.

** Hell Slash is a little [[DifficultButAwesome tricky to exploit]] until you understand its rules to maximize the number of hits it delivers. One of the most convenient ways to maximize it is to combine Grave with Wraith Dance off two Necromancers get the Wraiths to TakeTheBullet, counterattack three times for each hit, and get the Masurao to pile on for each counter. The drawback here is that you're dedicating a significant portion of the party to this strategy.
* Necromancers under the Spirit Broker title can learn Zombie Powder, that instantly kills an enemy and summons a Wraith with health equal to that enemy's HP, capped at 9999. Normally this wouldn't break anything, since wraith-using skills are the same strength regardless of their health, except the Spirit Broker also has Fair Trade, that deals damage equals to a wraith's remaining HP. And it just so happens that the 4th stratum has an FOE with over 10,000 HP that is also weak to instant death, making it very easy to summon Wraiths at the health cap. This makes it possible for a Necromancer to do just shy of 30,000 damage to any one enemy over three turns, which dramatically shortens boss fights and can even allow parties to defeat bosses way earlier than they are expected to. In normal dungeon crawl sessions, the high-health Wraith makes for a nigh-impenetrable wall when used with Fierce Shield. The drawback, though, [[DifficultButAwesome is actually walking all the way to the boss in question]], since there is no Floor Jump to shorten the journey and returning to town causes Wraiths to disappear.

** Thunder Fist from the base Pugilist tree is a DiscOneNuke to the extreme. It's a composite Bash and Volt making it harder to resist than most of the Pugilist's pure bash skills, not to mention easier to hit weakness with, notably hitting the weakness of the first and second stratum boss and a couple of FOE at that part of the game. It has 130% speed modifier making it fairly likely to hit before the enemy moves, and to top it off it has 450% damage modifier, which is completely absurd for basic class skills. The only downside associated with Thunder Fist is the backlash damage dealt to the user if the move failed to kill, which is barely relevant against random encounters due to the sheer power behind the move, and workable against FOE and Boss fights if you have the right defensive measures. Thunder Fist stays relevant all the way until the end of the game, since its damage modifier actually stacks up fairly well compared to skills available at Master class level, and when primed with Dance Oracle, it surpasses Titan Killer as the Impact Pugilist's second strongest move after Death Edge in the right condition. As a skill available that early, Thunder Fist is such a ridiculous skill that when the class re-appeared in ''Nexus'', not only does Thunder Fist got shuffled into the Master rank, the damage modifier is also reduced to 400%.
** Heavenly Aid is a charge skill with a rather complex mechanic - at the turn where it is used, Heavenly Aid would keep track of the percentage of HP the user had, and after healing is applied to the user, apply a damage multiplier based on the percentage difference between the two, applied every time the user is healed for the turn. When used at 1 HP, Heavenly Aid with full HP healing multiplies damage by around '''4 times'''. This can be taken further when used with Overheal, since the increased HP cap of overheal is treated as an extra percentage towards the calculation, treating it as if the target can reach 133% HP allowing as much as '''5 times''' damage modifier with Heavenly Aid. In theory, Heavenly Aid have near infinite potential to apply several instances of damage multipliers, only capped by the amount of healing applied to the user of the skill, and the damage taken prior to the healing being done. The user can then unleash a heavily boosted Titan Killer, Thunder Fist, or better yet, a well prepared Death Edge to deal extreme damage to the target, sometimes able to even OneHitKill outright. The power behind Heavenly Aid is such that a well optimized Pugilist is able to one shot everything in the game, even the BonusBoss.

** Double Attack require 2 party members to perform a stronger weapon based attack each. Double Attack have a fairly good damage modifier, and can be modified to carry elemental traits when buffed with Shaman's Elemental Prayer skills. This Union skill is available to every race at the very start of the game. One very BoringButPractical way to take full advantage of this Union Skill is by using 1 extensively buffed Therian as a secondary initiator, allowing more mileage out of your best physical damage dealer over 4 turns.

* Some of the later entries in the series include the means to conveniently increase the experience gain. Admittedly, some of them take on the form of DLC quests, manifesting as BribingYourWayToVictory, but if you access and exploit them early enough, you'll be well above the level range the game expects you to be at. Some players simply choose not to use them to outgrind the opposition, instead using the easy EXP as a way to offset the level cost of Resting and trying new builds.

* Combining several of the above is the Triple-Necro Party. It consists of a Blade Dancer Masurao with Hell Slash, a Dragoon to keep your wraiths from taking too much damage, a Spirit Broker Necromancer who can create strong wraiths and use Fierce Shield, and two Spirit Evoker Necromancers who can use Grave and Wraith Dance. The general idea is that you use Fierce Shield on one of your quadruple-digit HP wraiths to draw all attacks to it (and Dragoon's shield skills to make up for wraiths' low defense), then use a combination of Grave and Wraith Dance, which will make all three summoned wraiths triple-counterattack whatever enemy attacks the first wraith. You then have the Blade Dancer use Hell Slash, which will chase each of those numerous attacks for even more massive damage.

* Union skills are powerful skills that can be initiated by any one party member with a full gauge, requiring the cooperation of any number of other allies. Only the party member initiating the Union skill requires the full gauge, but everyone involved with the Union skill will have their gauge emptied. Stronger skills require more members to execute, and incapacitated party members cannot participate, putting a limit on how often they can be used. On top of that, you can use a Union skill on top of your party's normal actions, and it will always take effect at the start of the turn. While the basic Union skills have BoringButPractical effects like an EnemyScan or a guaranteed escape, some of them can become very potent:

** Another skill that warrants specific mention is Spark Blade, a single-target cut attack followed by a hit-all volt attack with the special property of being stronger the more resistant the initial target is to cut attacks. Overall, it's a respectable but not broken skill and rather situational, but often there are some enemy formations that simply got destroyed by a single use of Spark Blade due to having Cut resistance and Elemental Weakness, and if you bring along a party member who can inflict [[TakenForGranite petrification]], you can turn nearly any target of your choosing into a punching bag to fry the enemy. But the most significant aspect of the skill is due to its very unique property as a Physical Attack with Elemental Attack follow-up. This broke the pattern of many counter based enemy skills, which is very noticable when fighting against Golem.

** Final Decree requires the Sovereign to dispel three buffs from themselves, but in exchange it provides a sizeable damage boost that isn't limited by the game's own buff counterbalancing system. This lets you create some very big burst damage turns. With Renew in play, the Sovereign stands a chance of retaining their buffs so that they can use Final Decree ''again'' without spending time to set it up.
** Negotiation may seem counter-intuitive, until you realize that the healing scales with level. Remove a debuff and buff from level 99? Say hello to a full heal and 48TP! This is particularly helpful against bosses and [=FOEs=] who punish too many buffs.
** Clearance may be hard to set up, but it's draw is not how it heals, but how it gets rid of everything. Boss buffs itself while de-buffing your party to heck? Thanks for the party wide heal and TP recovery!
* Shogun have an infamous build that revolves around 3 skills, all of them [[DiscOneNuke available on their basic skill tree]]: Great Warrior, Taunt Assassins, and Front Command.

* Want to generate vast amounts of experience? The Strong Clover Tea, brewed from one of the Yggdra Bud rare drops, not only triples your experience gain, but allows for experience gain for your ''other Guild members not in the active formation''. And yes, this multiplier is also applied to experience gained from completing story missions and sidequests.

* Once you get the Master Key (which becomes available halfway through the 4th stratum), you can access a secret area in the 1st stratum which contains an item called the Training Orb. Said item, once equipped, grants you free experience points each time you take a step in the labyrinth. Oh, and by the way, this game has a feature that lets you draw a path and have your party automatically follow it. And the areas that contain bosses don't have any random encounters, so you can just go there, draw a looping path, turn on auto-walk, set your 3DS down, and come back 20 minutes later to a party that's just 1 experience point away from levelling up. The fact that you cannot gain that last experience point just from walking puts a small limit to the item's strength, but it still essentially eliminates all level grinding for the sufficiently patient.
* The combination of New Challenger of Masurao and Soul Gather of Harbinger. New Challenger allows you to immediately get into a consecutive random encounters with improved chance of meeting [[MetalSlime Rare Breeds]], and this skill can be maxed with 5 skill points. While the premise of fighting rare breeds consecutively can be rather scary, and escaping didn't stop the chain, the Union Skill Full Retreat can be used to stop the chain of encounters. Soul Gather significantly increases encounter rate and increases battle exp gain, up to double the exp at the final level. This can be further boosted with Larva Scythe, a scythe that improves the chance of encountering rare breed, available as a normal drop from the Toxipede. These skills are very useful to reduce the time required to gather materials, but with the right set up, it can be abused to go far past the experience scaling of the game. As a result, New Challenger ended up getting a small nerf when it returned in Nexus, turning it into a Veteran level skill.
** One way to optimize the reliability of such method is to compose a team with priority attacks, to bypass the increased action speed of Rare Breeds. One good example is the Rover's Wing Thrash, available pre-Mastery with 3 points of Hawk Whistle as prerequisites. The skill shoots an enemy, and then causes the Hawk to strike the enemy's row. Hawk stats are generally independent of the Rover's own (barring their level and the rank of the skill used to summon them), so you can focus on TP to allow this skill to be used as much as possible while letting the Hawk do the heavy lifting.

** Taunt Assassins is essentially Soul Gather of EOV, it increases encounter rate, with doubled EXP gain at max rank. In comparison to Soul Gather, it's even better, the skill requires only 6 SP to be maxed with Level 2 Great Warrior as a prerequisite, making it extremely easy to fit into a build. On top of this, due to the way Nexus is structured, there are simply way more opportunities to use Taunt Assassin to rake up a lot of EXP. Simply using Taunt Assassin before engaging a boss fight would put the party ahead in the experience curve.

** Imperial + Zodiac, if you are willing to pour the skill points in to their elemental Drive skills (''24'' total if you wanna max out all three of them, not counting prerequisite skills), lets you do even more damage when hitting an enemy's weakness through Singularity and learn TP Up, as Imperials naturally demand a lot of TP but don't have nearly enough of it for a sustained fight. Etheric Boon also offers fantastic synergy with their expensive Charge Edge, mixing multipliers together to deliver extremely powerful Drives. Throw in a max-level Natural Edge, a cheap non-Drive attack skill (only 7 TP at max level) they have access to from the get-go that can be imbued with elemental attack buffs, and an Imperial-Zodiac can still do lots of damage to enemies with elemental weaknesses when they're not firing off Drives.
* One of the [=DLC=] requests, "Wizard's Experience" has you taking on a request to use an item called a Growth Badge, fighting an enemy once, and gaining extra experience from it. But here's the thing: You can do this request over, and over, and over, constantly receiving Growth Badges and Heavenly Gifts. But completing the request in and of itself will net you a crap ton of experience, especially in the early game, and there's no limit to how many times you take on the request. If you complete the request enough times, by the time you finish the third dungeon, your party will be in the high sixties! Oh, [=DLC=] has never been so sweet...

** Imperial + Zodiac, if you are willing to pour the skill points in to their elemental Drive skills (''24'' total if you wanna max out all three of them, not counting prerequisite skills), lets you do even more damage when hitting an enemy's weakness through Singularity and learn TP Up, as Imperials naturally demand a lot of TP but don't have nearly enough of it for a sustained fight. Etheric Boon also offers fantastic synergy with their expensive Charge Edge, mixing multipliers together to deliver extremely powerful Drives. Throw in a max-level Natural Edge, a cheap non-Drive attack skill (only 7 TP at max level) they have access to from the get-go that can be imbued with elemental attack buffs, and an Imperial-Zodiac can still do lots of damage to enemies with elemental weaknesses when they're not firing off Drives.

* A CombatMedic build was most effective in this game, mainly due to common passives not scaling the same way across most classes. For nearly any class with the ATK Up passive, at level 10 it offers a 1.3x damage multiplier. For the Medic? The 1.3x mark is at level 3, and full investment is a '''3xx''' multiplier. This makes the Medic hit about as hard as your actual frontliners, especially with a maxed-out Caduceus skill. Later games standardized the way passives scale between all classes, and the Medic's physical damage output took a big {{nerf}} and never fully recovered.

** Speaking of Evil Eye, it got buffed from its previous incarnations. Instead of just targeting one enemy at a time, it targets a row of them. Curses increasing ailment chance make it more reliable as well, so Hexers become even more powerful than they were before.

** Wrath Might increases your offensive power by 40% whenever the Dark Hunter is low on HP and this can be stacked further with the Grimoire mechanic. All of this combined result in Dark Hunter being by far the strongest damage dealer in early, mid, and late game.

** Thunder Fist from the base Pugilist tree is a DiscOneNuke to the extreme. It's a composite Bash and Volt making it harder to resist than most of the Pugilist's pure bash skills, not to mention easier to hit weakness with, notably hitting the weakness of the first and second stratum boss and a couple of FOE at that timespan. It has 130% speed modifier making it fairly likely to hit before the enemy move, and to top it off it has 450% damage modifier, which is completely absurd for basic class skills. The only downside associated with Thunder Fist is the backlash damage dealt to the user if the move failed to kill, which is barely relevant against random encounters due to the sheer power behind the move, and workable against FOE and Boss fights with the right skills, and proper Union skills usage. Thunder Fist stays relevant all the way until the end of the game, since its damage modifier actually stacks up fairly well compared to skills available at Master class level, and when primed with Dance Oracle, it surpasses Titan Killer as the Impact Pugilist second strongest move after Death Edge in the right condition. As a skill available that early, Thunder Fist is such a ridiculous skill that when the class re-appeared in ''Nexus'', not only does Thunder Fist got shuffled into the Master rank, the damage modifier is also reduced to 400%.
** Heavenly Aid is a charge skill with a rather complex mechanic - at the turn where it is casted, Heavenly Aid would keep track of the percentage of HP the user had, and after healing is applied to the user, apply a damage multiplier based on the percentage difference between the two, applied every time the user is healed for the turn. When used at 1 HP, Heavenly Aid with full HP healing multiplies damage by around '''4 times'''. This can be taken further when used with Overheal, since the increased HP cap of overheal is treated as an extra percentage towards the calculation, treating it as if the target can reach 133% HP allowing as much as '''5 times''' damage modifier with Heavenly Aid. In theory, Heavenly Aid have near infinite potential to apply several instances of damage multipliers, only capped by the amount of healing applied to the user of the skill, and the damage taken prior to the healing being done. The user can then unleash a heavily boosted Titan Killer, Thunder Fist, or better yet, a well prepared Death Edge to deal extreme damage to the target, sometimes able to even OneHitKill outright. The power behind Heavenly Aid is such that a well optimized Pugilist is able to one shot everything in the game, even the BonusBoss.

* The combination of New Challenger of Masurao and Soul Gather of Harbinger. New Challenge allows you to immediately get into a consecutive random encounters with improved chance of meeting [[MetalSlime Rare Breeds]], and this skill can be maxed with 5 skill points. While the premise of fighting rare breeds consecutively can be rather scary, and escaping didn't stop the chain, the Union Skill Full Retreat can be used to stop the chain of encounters. Soul Gather significantly increases encounter rate and increases battle exp gain, up to double the exp at the final level. This can be further boosted with Larva Scythe, a scythe that improves the chance of encountering rare breed, available as a normal drop from the Toxipede. These skills are very useful to reduce the time required to gather materials, but with the right set up, it can be abused to go far past the experience scaling of the game. As a result, New Challenger ended up getting a small nerf when it returned in Nexus, turning it into a Veteran level skill.

** Imperial + Zodiac, if you are willing to pour the skill points in to their elemental Drive skills (''24'' total if you wanna max out all three of them, not counting prerequisite skills), lets you do even more damage when hitting an enemy's weakness through Singularity and learn TP Up, as Imperials naturally demand a lot of TP but don't have nearly enough of it for a sustained fight. Etheric Boon also offers fantastic synergy with their expensive Charge Edge, mixing multipliers together to deliver extremely powerful Drives. Throw in a max-level Natural Edge, a cheap non-Drive attack skill (only 8 TP at max level) they have access to from the get-go that can be imbued with elemental attack buffs, and an Imperial-Zodiac can still do lots of damage to enemies with elemental weaknesses when they're not firing off Drives.