Video Game / Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City

How deep is too deep, anyway?

Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City (世界樹の迷宮III 星海の来訪者, Labyrinth of Yggdrasil III: Visitors of the Starry Sea) is the third installment of the Etrian Odyssey series. It was released on the Nintendo DS in 2010, being also the final installment of the series in this system before jumping onto the Nintendo 3DS (which would be released the following year).

This time, the story takes place in the paradisial city of Armoroad, located in a large island where an Yggdrasil has grown. A long time ago, it was inhabited by a thriving, highly-advanced civilization; but 100 years ago the island suffered a severe earthquake that ended up sinking the central part of the city, and with it much of the ancient technology was lost. The part of the city that remained on the surface has since recovered, but what happened to the other part remains a mystery. A labyrinth next to the Yggdrasil appeared within the hollow, and many explorers and researchers have gotten interested in it. This greatly improved the popularity of the city as well as its economy, but doubts arose on whether what led to the calamitous earthquake was just a natural disaster or there's something more to it...

Being the last Etrian Odyssey game on the DS, it introduced numerous changes and novelties to the series in order to freshen its formula. It added an explorable overworld area in the form of the sea. How much can be explored at a given moment will depend on how many provisions are available, thus limiting the number of spaces that can be sailed across; the map of the sea works similarly to that of the dungeon maps, and there are whirlpools and islands to watch for. There are no Random Encounters in the sea; instead, pirate ships will sail around, and they must be avoided as they'll attempt to sink your ship. Many sidequests will take place on the sea, and this is how you can unlock boss battles (including, eventually, Superbosses) that don't appear in the Yggdrasil Labyrinth.

The game adds 12 brand-new classes, though some of them inherits primary characteristics of the previous two games' classes in order to help veterans familiarize with them. Relatedly, from a certain point of the story, it will be possible to unlock the subclassing feature, which allows a player to give a party character a secondary class that grants it the opportunity to unlock and upgrade the skills and benefits of that class (albeit with certain limiations not present with the character's primary class). The character's weapons can also go through forging in order to receive additional attributes, like the probability of inflicting a specific bind, elemental damage or ailment to enemies, or simply increasing the attack power or defense. To this end, it's necessary to farm materials from the monsters the weapon is made of, and find unique hammers that imbue the attributes in question to the weapons (some hammers can be found in chests within the labyrinth, while others are given as rewards for completiong sidequests).

Even the story progression has been revamped. The game not only has a more prominent narrative, but certain actions and decisions made by the player will determine how the story will conclude and thus what ending will be received.The game offers the player the opportunity to experience the story in its three possible developments (each with its own ending) by introducing a New Game Plus option, which wasn't present in the first two games. In fact, if the player wishes to confront all bosses available and unlock all classes, playing the game at least twice will be necessary, as some of those contents are mutually exclusive. The bigger focus on story would be retained for Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan and, to a lesser extent, Etrian Odyssey Nexus (though both have each only one ending), and expanded upon for the remakes of the first two games via the addition of a Story Mode with a pre-existing explorer guild.

Last, but not least, the game offers a much easier way to raise the level cap of 70. During the Playable Epilogue, defeating each Elemental Dragon will raise the cap by 10 (9 in the case of the third one defeated), to reach the increased cap of 99. Something unusual is that the game's Yggdrasil Labyrinth is slightly smaller, having only 25 floors (compared to the first two games' labyrinths having 30 each), likely because of the added sea overworld. But otherwise, the game is largely seen as a major improvement and evolution for the series.

This is notably the only Etrian Odyssey game for the DS that did not get an Untold remake for Nintendo 3DS. However, this game has some representation in Etrian Odyssey Nexus, a Megamix Game that takes elements from all games in the series, with the Prince(ss)/Sovereign, Ninja, Zodiac, Farmer, and Shogun classes being selectable as player character classes, remakes of the Waterfall Wood and Undersea Grotto strata, and live-instrumentation arranges of several tracks from this game.

In 2023, this game got an HD remaster for Windows PC via Steam and for Nintendo Switch, along with remasters of Etrian Odyssey and Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard; this release can be purchased by itself or as as part of the bulk-discount bundle Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection with the other two games. It has some of the quality-of-life touches from the 3DS games, such as skill flowcharts, multiple difficulty levels, the option to choose character portraits other than ones specific to their class, and the upgraded map interface, but is otherwise based on the DS original with no major additions (like Story Mode or classes backported from later games). This version of the game modifies the cartography interface to accommodate a single 16:9 screen, and mapping can be done with keyboard, game controller, or mouse controls on PC, the touchscreen on Switch when in Handheld or Tabletop Mode (with options to accommodate both stylus and finger touches), or a controller on Switch in any mode (including TV Mode, which does not allow use of the Switch's touchscreen).

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This game provide examples of the following tropes:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: Starting from this game, the standard cap is still 70 and the minimum level recommended for the Final Boss is 60 (65 in the case of the fifth game's), but defeating each of the Superboss dragons (or, in the absence thereof in the fifth game, other hidden superbosses) during the Playable Epilogue increases your level cap by 10 (or 9 for the third). However, the difficulty and experience curve doesn't quite account for the easily accessible levels; with proper strategizing and skill point allocation you can defeat all the postgame bosses around level 80, and grinding all the way to level 99 is more of a luxury.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Played with. Like in previous games, the price to spend a night at the inn goes up with every level that your party increases, as does the price to revive a fallen member at the hospital. However, healing items get a much needed price drop, such as Nectars now only costing a mere 50en. Ironically, the shopkeeper here is a major Money Fetishist; probably best if she doesn't find out she's selling this stuff at such a staggering discount.
• Adaptational Heroism: Yggdrasil itself becomes this in light of the Untold remakes. In Untold, the Yggdrasil trees were created to absorb the pollution threatening to kill humanity thousands of years ago, and in doing so became corrupted because they absorbed too much, with their cores causing destruction and threatening to do more if they were ever unleashed. The Drowned City sees Yggdrasil take on a benevolent role, as it is sealing away the malevolent Abyssal God and helped Seyfried develop his mechanical body and the Yggdroids to fulfill that duty.
• A.I. Breaker:
  • The Manticore is programmed to use its sleep-inducing attack by default, only advancing to its poisoning attack when anyone's asleep, its blinding/cursing attack while anyone's poisoned, and finally its petrifying attack while anyone's blinded or cursed. It only mixes things up at half health. This also means that if you establish Regroup Tactic, which cures all ailments at the end of turn, it will be locked into its first attack. The same happens to Shin, who refuses to attack your party until someone's been tagged with an ailment, only attacking proactively below half health.
  • The ultimate superboss input-reads — it raises the appropriate Counter-Attack to whatever attacks you've queued, without fail. However, it can't account for Action Initiative skills like Knighthood or Fore Honor, so you can push your attacker to go first, tricking the boss into trying to counter an attack that's already happened.
• Alice Allusion: An Alice-lookalike appears as one of the optional Farmer designs. As with all Farmers, she's a nature-loving explorer who is ill-suited for battle but excels at field- and exploration-based skills, thus securing the survival of the player's party as they dive deeper through the aquatic Yggdrasil that grew close to Armoroad. Not coincidentially, the game has a bigger allegory to Alice in Wonderland during the latter half of the story: A kingly, yet antagonistic civilization that inhabits the eponymous Deep City is met after the third dungeon, and features not only a regal shrine but also an illusory forest where it's easy to get lost.
• Ambushing Enemy: Vampire Trees are FOEs found in the Bonus Dungeon, and they're hidden even during regular exploration. But get into a battle in its vicinity, and it will appear and start advancing on your position. Finish the battle and it goes back into hiding — the only way to know of a Vampire Tree's presence is by checking your map mid-battle. Oh, some floors also hide Vampire Trees in regions that disable your automap, too, so you'll never see them coming until it's too late.
• Antepiece: A unique case regarding how gameplay influences the story progression. During the first two dungeons, the game's idea of changing the course of the story due to the player's actions and decisions is showcased with the misadventures of a guild whose two characters will see their lives affected depending on how the player's party attempts to help them (namely who survives after a certain tragic outcome, though it's possible to Take a Third Option and try to ignore them altogether to avoid employing any sort of influence^note in this case, due to the lack of interaction with those characters, it's up to the player to interpret if this means both of them survive, either character still dies for a different reason, or if neither survives). This idea is revisited after the completion of the third stratum, where a series of events occur and a player can choose to remain loyal to the Senatus of Armoroad and confront the faction of the Deep City, or side with the latter faction and betray Armoroad; and once again there's an obscure method to Take a Third Option and look for a neutral path. In any case, the decisions taken will affect how the rest of the game will continue, and the stakes will be raised accordingly. For those interested in seeing all possible outcomes (both for the antepiece and for the real deal), the game offers a New Game Plus option available once the story is cleared.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • There's a bar NPC named Scavenger Toma who tells you how to obtain the conditional drops of some enemies if you buy him a drink. He won't tell you anything about enemies in the Bonus Dungeon, though. Future games will start including an NPC with a similar role.
  • This game introduces the Formaldehyde, an item that guarantees that all enemies killed in the same turn as it's used will yield all possible drops from them. This includes conditionals and any really rare drops. It's very rare, and only restockable by hunting a postgame FOE. The Formaldehyde will make appearances in subsequent games to come.
  • If you beat the Leviathan for the first time, you unlock the "Lucky Hammer" Limit. It does a small amount of damage at the end of the turn, but if it scores the killing blow, the enemy it killed will drop all possible items. It's like a reusable Formaldehyde, but needs careful timing.
  • Kirin and Shin are mutually exclusive Route Bosses of the fourth stratum. On a file that has fought both of them via New Game Plus, they'll both appear the same room on revisits to the Abyssal Shrine following typical boss respawn rules, meaning players don't have to fret about grabbing their conditional drops before starting a new lap of the game that takes the opposing route.
• Anti-Villain: Perhaps it was unintentional, but none of the labyrinth guardians fought can be called outright evil, nor do they actively prey on explorers (aside from the Abyssal God, who is hellbent on destroying the planet). Narmer doesn't want to fight the party in the first place, only doing so when cornered. Ketos is just doing his job as the guardian of the Deep City, keeping intruders off. Same with the Gatekeeper, who is preventing the Deep Ones from invading the Abyssal Shrine (and you are forced to destroy it in the Deep City route because of Kujura's fault). And Kirin and Shin are merely following Olympia and Kujura's orders, respectively.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: The game keeps the usual limit of five active characters at a time, even though there's enough space for a theoretical sixth active character. This time, however, that slot can be taken advantage of: Three classes in this game, the Ninja, the Wildling, and the unlockable Yggroid can cast temporary units during battle; specifically, the Ninja can summon a duplicate of themselves, the Wildling can call upon an animal helper, and the Yggdroid can cast a mechanical dummy that performs elemental follow-up attacks. Since these require a slot to perform those skills, a player that has more than one of a Ninja, Wildling, and/or a Yggroid has to think strategically of how to manage them. However, if the player has fewer than five characters, then it'll be possible to use the extra slots for more than one duplicate/animal/dummy.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Sungrazer and Quintessence Limit Skills look amazing, as they inflict almighty damage to one or all enemies respectively, and nothing can resist them. However, they require 4 or 5 party members respectively to execute, and because it's almighty damage, it's exempt from most buffs. There are a few corner cases that would make them shine, but outside of them, there's little reason to use them.
• Battle Ballgown: The Hoplite class, pictured above, wears dresses that are loaded with armor plating. Comparably, the Princess class has a lighter armor dress, with tiaras, frills, and fur trim paired with metal boots, gauntlets, and one dress with a breastplate.
• Beergasm: One of the regulars at the Butterfly Bistro is Toma, a scavenger who knows all sorts of tricks to make monsters give up rare goods. To get him to share his secrets, you have to buy him drinks and snacks, and he reacts this way to everything he ingests... including free glasses of water.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Porcelain Wish and Abyssal Desire endings see Seyfried and Gutrune die respectively due to conflicting beliefs on how to deal with the Deep Ones and Seyfried learning Gutrune is a Deep One herself, albeit unaware of the circumstances that led her to become one or that she is his sister. Killing Seyfried means Gutrune never reunites with her brother, making her efforts All for Nothing and Olympia, who faithfully served Seyfried, has her memories wiped after being rebuilt so as to serve as liaison for the player guild in the post-game. Killing Gutrune leaves nearly all of Armoroad disheartened and Flowdia's health taking a nosedive. While Seyfried is happy that a potential threat is gone, he's otherwise unsettled by the feelings and fleeting memories he gets when he sees Gutrune's body, implying he's slowly remembering his life before becoming the Abyssal King. Regardless of which ending you choose, the player guild is left feeling uncertain as to whether they did the right thing.
• Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Female Deep Ones are far more humanoid (basically resembling mermaids with claws and inhuman skin colors) than the males (Fish People).
• Bonus Dungeon: The Cyclopean Haunt is an eerie, seemingly-organic stratum whose walls appear to be made of flesh and tentacles, and features all sorts of vicious monsters and hazards (such as slippery slime that makes navigation difficult due to acting like Frictionless Ice, floor tiles that break upon being stepped on and take characters to a lower floor, and parts of the map that cannot be drawn or marked in any way). It is watched over by the almighty Abyssal God.
• Bookends: Your very first sea quest involves assisting Kirikaze in taking down Meregho Saeno. Your final sea quest has former companions come to your aid, and who else would be the first to show up other than Kirikaze herself!
• Boss Room: The final floor of the Bonus Dungeon can be considered one. You have direct access to the ultimate superboss, but doing so is ill-advised. Instead, you are to explore the rest of the floor, navigating its hazards to chase down and kill the tentacles to weaken it. Only then will you even stand a chance at fighting it.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Exaggerated due to the quirks of the forging system. The ultimate weapon has 8 empty forge slots for maximum customizability, but for each slot you need to use an item you sold to the shop - which happens to be the unique drop of the True Final Boss. Hence, you'll need to kill that boss 9 times in order to fully empower that weapon. While the Dragonbane (one of the strongest swords in the game) has similar properties and would theoretically require more effort (as it needs one of each of the elemental dragons' drops), the bosses that yield its materials are easier to beat than the True Final Boss and are often hunted for postgame Level Grinding anyway.
• But Now I Must Go: After Seyfried and Gutrune have their humanity restored by the Porcelain Offering, they announce their departure in the credits, entrusting your guild to take down the ultimate evil imprisoned beneath the Yggdrasil.
• Cain and Abel: Seyfried and Gutrune, though exactly who's Cain and who's Abel is dependent on the route you're on on account of Gray-and-Gray Morality.
• The Cameo: During the quest to fight Wyrm, you get to encounter a female Ronin and Hexer (called Hiiragi and Furube) wandering on the Molten Caves for a treasure. Unlike their counterparts from the first two games however, they are helpless and unable to fight.
• Cap: Damage from a single strike caps at 59,630. It's a Goroawase Number that reads "gokuro san", roughly meaning "good work on your efforts (in Min-Maxing)."^note It also means you can't one-shot the ultimate superboss in one hit, because it's got 60,000 HP.
• Choice of Two Weapons: Most of the combat-oriented classes have two different weapons they can equip, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. This game adds the ability to Subclass, making it possible to master more weapons (if that class has a 'Mastery' skill they can train in). It's up to the player whether any given guild member focuses on one weapon proficiency over the other or learns how to wield both effectively.
• Clarke's Third Law: In reference to the trope, the Steam achievement for unlocking the Yggdroid class in the HD remake is "Indistinguishable from Magic."
• Combat Exclusive Healing: Inverted with the Bandage and Slap Awake skills, which can only be used outside of combat to patch up wounds and revive characters. Notably, Bandage is a Common skill that can be learned by any class, while most recovery spells can only be learned by Monks and Sovereigns.
• Convection, Schmonvection: The third stratum, Molten Caves, where only the puddles of lava in some floor tiles inflict damage, leaving the very hot atmosphere and the lava rivers harmless.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: There are Optional Bosses that can be fought single-player, but can also be fought with up to four other players. Each player contributes one member of their guild to the party, and controls only that member. Like in single-player, each boss fight has variations where one to three NPCs accompany the party, but in multiplayer in particular these variations exist so that if there are less than five players, there won't be empty party slots.
• Deadly Doctor: Both of the healing classes, the Prince(ss) and the Monk, have fairly potent combat ability, especially the Monk, and especially once you unlock subclassing.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: The Ikkitousen/Warrior Might skill causes the character to follow up on any attack the rest of your party makes, and has no upper limit. At its best, it can decimate the final superboss!
• Desperation Attack: The Yggdroid has the "HP Cannon" attack, which deals the difference between its maximum and current HP. And it helpfully has a passive ability which damages it each turn in exchange for a boost in attack power, which never kills it and instead leaves it with at least 1 HP.
• Disc-One Nuke: More prominent in this game than in others, due to the sea exploration and bosses allowing some powerful tools to be obtained fairly early:
  • Pollux's Records is a book unlocked as the equipment award from one of Meregho Saeno's quests, and has unimpressive attack like most books but comes with four forges, two TP and two Technique, at a point where a weapon with even one forge is rare. For Zodiacs and support classes, it's a valuable Stat Stick, and you won't find a better weapon for a long time.
  • Defeating Hammerhead, scaled to be the third Oceanic Quest boss (and beatable early into the second stratum at latest), unlocks the Hellfire Limit skill. With just two party members needed to activate it, Hellfire strikes the enemy side with with multiple hits of random-target fire damage. It's decently useful normally, but becomes monstrous when used by a Zodiac, as it benefits from their skills Singularity (boosts damage when hitting a weakness) and Etheric Charge (boosts the damage of the next elemental attack); in fact, since it's a Limit with negative priority, it's possible to use Hellfire on the same turn as setting up Etheric Charge. The result is amazing at melting small and big enemies alike. This and the other elemental Limits unlocked later become your mainstays for your Zodiac, and only become obsolete in the late-game when enemies that have exploitable elemental weaknesses are much less common.
  • Buccaneers have iffy performance as attackers initially due to the point-sinking needed for their later skills, but this can be alleviated with the Jolly Roger rapier. Its item components are a standard drop from an enemy at the start of the third stratum and the Rare Random Drop of the Ghost Ship, the fourth Oceanic Quest boss. The Ghost Ship is harder than Hammerhead, but manageable for a good party around that point of the game, and nothing tricky needs to be done for its drop aside from getting lucky. The reward for this is a rapier with 136 attack at a point where one with half that would be considered top-of-the-line, alongside pairs of TP and Luck forges plus two empty slots, and can serve the Buccaneer well for a big chunk of the game if bought at a high but not insurmountable cost (it's also a solid weapon and stat stick for Sovereigns, the other class that can equip rapiers without subclassing).
  • The Poleyn, a set of boots unlocked by selling the regular drop from a 2nd stratum FOE, offers a 10% resistance from all physical damage types. Its DEF stat is pretty small, befitting a piece of 2nd stratum equipment, but its value starts to shine in the end- to post-game where the effectiveness of your DEF increments taper away and damage resistances start to outweigh your raw DEF values.
• Discount Card: Coupons slash one item's price in half - it's up to you whether you use it to purchase the Infinity +1 Sword or a basic Medica. Also, you will only find eight of them. Ever. New Game Plus does not restock them (in the original DS release), so choose wisely.
• The Dragon: Kujura serves as this to Armoroad's Princess Gutrune, while Olympia fills this role for the Deep City's King Seyfried.
• Dual Boss: The Deep One and the Deep Lady serve as a dual midboss in Molten Caves. Should you take Armoroad's side in the route split, you face Automaton King and Olympia, serving as the dual Final Boss.
• Dual Wielding: The Shogun can wield and strike with two weapons at once to inflict bigger damage per turn to enemies. The drawback is that, as a result of using both hands to attack, they have lower defense.
• Dungeon Bypass:
  • Much of the lengthy journey to reach Olympia across B7F and B8F of the Undersea Grotto can be bypassed by killing a Scaled Dragon FOE found early into the former floor, opening up access to a set of stairs normally reached by going the long way around.
  • B14F of the Abyssal Shrine is a floor-wide puzzle involving luring and imprisoning Deep Coistrel and Deep Prelate FOE using gates and switches, culminating in trapping all of them within a central room and then walking down the hallway leading to the B15F stairs unopposed. Alternatively, the Deep Coistrel guarding that hallway can be killed by a strong party just a few steps into the floor, skipping all of it.
• Emotion Eater: As Seyfried explains, the "great evil" sealed beneath the tree draws power from human emotion, including fear. He worries that if knowledge of the Deep City and the Deep Ones was made available to the public, widespread panic may lead to the "great evil" becoming too strong to keep contained.
• Encounter Repellant: In addition to featuring series-classic Ward Chimes, the game's Farmers learn Safe Stroll, which prevents non-fixed encounters altogether for a period of time.
• Ermine Cape Effect: The Princess/Prince class naturally fall into this; like all classes, they are represented in-game by their portraits. Unlike the other classes, their outfits are pure examples of Requisite Royal Regalia — both princesses wear Pimped Out Dresses adorned with gems, tiaras, earrings, and ornately detailed armor, while the older prince wears even more ornate armor (and earrings) and a sweeping cape, while the younger prince has a tiny crown and fur-trimmed cape with a huge gem brooch. And they apparently explore the Yggdrasil Labyrinth in all of this...
• Famed In-Story: Like the previous games, in a New Game Plus playthrough your player guild is well-known to Armoroad and established to be one of the veteran guilds in the city. Story-wise, this changes some dialogue when you first meet the shopkeepers and NPCs in the city and you're introduced as being a new member of the guild. Gameplay-wise, this has little effect barring negating the need to replay the tutorials, such as mapping a portion of the first floor.
• Farm Boy: The Farmer class, which is supposed to be the weakest physically, but with plenty of skills useful for explorers to have handy.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning:
  • In the absence of Alchemists from the first two games, there's the Zodiac class. These combatants use the power of astrology to cast powerful elemental attacks, and there are specific skills for fire, ice, and volt; they can also learn skills that veto upcoming elemental attacks from enemies and bosses (namely the Fire/Ice/Volt Prophecies) to power up the Zodiac's upcoming elemental attack.
  • The Arbalists can learn skills to shoot arrows imbued with fire, ice or volt; this is analogous to Gunners (from the second game) shooting element-imbued bullets.
  • The Hoplites can learn skills that help reduce fire, ice and volt damage onto allies; this is analogous to the elemental Wall skills learned by the previous games' Protectors.
  • The Yggroids can learn skills to perform follow-up attacks with elemental attributes (fire, ice or volt) like the Landsknechts; but instead of attacking during their turn to initiate the elemental follow-ups, they instead summon color-coded bots (Red for fire, Blue for ice, Yellow for volt) that do the job for them.
• Flying Seafood Special: In addition to bringing back Corotrangul from the first game, now an Optional Boss that can be fought in the sea, the game also introduces Narmer (renamed Wicked Silurus in Etrian Odyssey Nexus); it's a large, aggressive silurus that usually hangs around muddy areas, but can also hover in the air (and actually does so during battle).
• Genius Loci: There's the Bonus Dungeon Cyclopean Haunt, located in the deepest levels of Armoroad's Yggdrasil. With eyes and tentacles everywhere, the very forest feels like part of a greater being, especially when you deal with eyes that alert nearby FOEs to your presence. If you defeat the superboss at the end, all these eyes stay closed until it respawns.
• Ghost Ship: A sidequest has the player's party characters look for a Ghost Ship sailing around Tortuga Island (one of the locations found in the explorable sea), and defeat it in a battle.
• Glass Cannon: Arbalists possess an immense Strength stat but in the process sacrifice Vitality and Agility. Their Front Mortar skill can do even more damage from the front row but exposes them to more harm. The Shogun have similarly impressive Strength, but their ability to Dual Wield reduces their capability of equipping armor and their attack buffs either reduce their defense or draw more attacks towards them.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: The game has the "Joukahainen Bow" (from The Kalevala) and the "Ukonvasara" (literally "Ukko's hammer", Ukko being the god of the sky, weather, harvest, and thunder in Finnish mythology), which is an archaic term for a thunderbolt and/or the sound of thundering. The Ninjas and Shogun have skills that are still in Japanese, though the HD remaster gives them the Nexus translations.
• Gray-and-Gray Morality: The resulting conflict between Armoroad and the Deep City boils down to this. Both sides agree the Deep Ones are too dangerous, but their methods of dealing with them are too different. Seyfried kills any adventurers who wander too deep into Yggdrasil to keep their existence hidden, and in turn deprive them of negative emotions, which only serve to strengthen them. Gutrune believes the Deep Ones must be killed and wants to make their existence public so humanity can take the fight to them, even though doing so would give the Deep Ones plenty of negative emotions to feed on. It also doesn't help that Seyfried really hates the Deep Ones and Gutrune herself has become one after eating Deep One flesh for so long. This is what ultimately leads to one side asking the player guild to wipe out the other's opposition so their goals succeed.
• Guest-Star Party Member: There are computer-controlled guest characters who you can fight alongside during sea quests. Amusingly, you're THEIR guest star, since they're the quest givers and you're helping them solve their problem.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • About a couple chapters into the game, you are presented with two apparently unimportant, But Thou Must! kind of choices: whether or not to promise not to reveal the location of the hidden city, and whether or not to reveal it anyway. To get the Golden Ending you have to both make the promise and break it, and then much later, you have to backtrack an entire area to talk to a character you've only seen once before who, while essential to the story, has never been indicated to be able to actually (sort of) improve the current crisis. You also have a very tight window to do so (after you complete the penultimate story mission, but before you accept the final one) otherwise your efforts are for naught. Only then will you get the key item that puts you on the path to the true ending, and you won't notice any changes until you reach the end of the 20th floor.
  • Weapon Mastery passives enable your character to equip the appropriate weapon and investment in them is required to learn weapon skills. They also provide a small bonus to damage with that weapon. What's not mentioned is that they only boost the normal attack, unlike the previous two games where they boosted skill damage too.
  • Fore Honor and Rear Dignity raise ATK at the cost of DEF, or raise DEF at the cost of ATK. Not mentioned on either is their turn speed modifiers — Fore Honor gives a massive Action Initiative bonus, while Rear Dignity imposes a big penalty, so these buffs offer more utility than their descriptions indicate.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry: Starting from this game, bosses start having jacked up HP, with your party's damage potential following suit: It's no longer uncommon for your party to deal thousands or maybe tens of thousands of damage quite easily to bosses who have easily tens of thousands of HP. This becomes a problem when the Curse Status Effect is also introduced at the same time; since the status punishes its bearer with retaliatory damage every time they damage an enemy, the hardest bosses can wipe out your team while taking relatively mild counterattack, while your party members can kill themselves by using their stronger attacks.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Cyclopean Haunt. It's a nearly impassable labyrinth full of scary monsters, walls made of alien-like flesh and tentacles, and it houses a hell of a final boss in the end.
• Impossible Task: The ninja Kirikaze is sent to complete these so that her master might earn the right to marry Princess Kaguya.
• Interface Screw: Several floors in Porcelain Forest and Cyclopean Haunt include some areas where your radar is turned off. This means that the map screen does not show you where your party is going. Good luck memorizing the map. And to make matters worse, the map does not show where the F.O.E.s are either, although at least you get to see the F.O.E. in your exploration screen. The postgame stratum combines this with identical-looking passages and tiles that spin your party around randomly as well for even more fun.
• In-Universe Game Clock: Played with. Sailing around quickly eats up hours, and reaching different destinations can easily take a day or two. However, Sea Quests don't take any in-game time at all — the guild is simply deposited right at their destination for the Boss Fight, then returns to Armoroad for their rewards without any time elapsing. In fact, the clock even reverts to whatever time it was when you started the quest even if the battle took a few in-game hours.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: The Prince class has a princess option◊, and they tend to be strong fighters as well as opulently dressed.
• Last Chance Hit Point:
  • The Shoguns can learn Endure, which gives them a chance of surviving a lethal attack with 1 HP left, though It Only Works Once per battle. Given their fragility, it contributes to their longevity.
  • The Indomitable Limit Skill is a one-man Limit that applies this effect to the user, dispelling only on use or when the battle has ended. Unlike Endure, it can be re-used in a prolonged battle.
• Last Lousy Point:
  • The secret area in the Abyssal Shrine only unlocks if you've met all the conditions for the Eldest Path ending. Within it are two exclusive enemies, a Route Boss, and one chest. Not unlocking this at any point denies you full completion of the Monstrous Codex, the Item Compendium, and even one last chest for the "Opened all chests" badge on the Guild Card.
  • Insectortoises are postgame enemies designed to become that last lousy missing spot in your Monstrous Codex and Item Compendium. If you kill them normally, they replace themselves with a Pandora Egg, but the game won't register it as you killing them, and won't give you their Codex entry or their item drops. You have to disable them with an ailment or instakill them one way or another to register a proper kill, and then you discover that both of their item drops have an abysmal drop rate.
  • If you aim to complete the whole sea cargo log, the Overlord Squid will be your bane. This can only be fished from certain specific points in the South Sea, and only has a 1% chance of appearing. And your fishing equipment cannot improve those odds.
• Leaked Experience: Characters can learn the "Combat Study" Common Skill, which gives benched characters EXP from the main party's battles (to the tune of 1% per skill level, up to 10% at Lv10). You can also use your backup party to turn in completed Quests and Missions, netting them the reward without actually contributing to the effort.
• Lethal Lava Land: Molten Caves, the game's third stratum, is located within an active undersea volcano but still part of the Yggdrasil Labyrinth. Due to the extreme heat, some of the floors are harmful for the explorers, though there are skills that help them mitigate the damage. In the later floors, you'll find rocky platforms that allow you to travel across lava rivers, though they won't stop along the way.
• Limit Break: The game has the Limits. These skills perform powerful actions which involve the input of a specific number of party members, ranging from 1 to 5 (depending on the skill used), and each skill is unlocked by collecting Scripts found in specific locations or given by a supporting character.
• The Lost Woods: Waterfall Wood and Porcelain Forest. The former is a lush, lively forest brim with beautiful floral life and waterfalls. There are muddy tiles that halve the explorers' movement, which becomes troublesome when dodging F.O.E. that can walk over them just fine (thus having twice as much movement as you do). The Porcelain Forest, meanwhile, is an enchanted ecosystem with gates that teleport explorers from one spot to another, as well as spaces that cannot be drawn in the map nor do they allow any sort of annotation.
• Magic Knight: Invoked, yet somewhat downplayed, with the subclass system. Subclassing allows for access to skills from a different class, yet it's restrictive as to what is available and how much a skill could level up. Mixing a physical-oriented class with a magic-oriented one sets this trope in effect.
• Magic Meteor: Since the Zodiacs gain their magical abilities through studying the stars, it's hardly surprising they can learn a Meteor spell. Simply learning it takes a lot of investment, however, and the spell itself is the most expensive one they can learn.
• Medical Monarch: The Princes and Princesses have skills that can heal as well as increase stats. You can also subclass a Monk (and vice-versa) for them to have more direct healing skills.
• Metal Slime:
  • The Pasarans rarely appear when you're traversing a well-explored floor. Their spawn mechanics are such that they'll always spawn a fair distance from you, and even though they move slowly about the labyrinth they'll try to flee from your party if you get close. If you catch a Pasaran, it's surprisingly resilient and has different ways to deny you the rewards, either by fleeing, exploding or deliberately downgrading itself. But if you do kill one with your own hands, you get a colossal amount of experience. The Blue Pasarans are worth a lot less experience on their own, but hitting them with elemental attacks can call in red and yellow Pasarans which yield an enormous amount of experience or a highly valuable drop respectively.
  • On the ocean, you can find tanniyn, massive whale-like fish. They take several strikes to take down, can potentially damage your ship (forcing you to return to Armoroad and spend money on repairs), and drop items worth a mint.
• Mini-Boss: The Deep One and the Deep Lady, a dual miniboss fought in the second floor of Molten Caves. In terms of gameplay and design, they're reskinned versions of FOE located in the next stratum (Abyssal Shrine), and the efficiency of their attacks make them pretty dangerous. However, the actual boss of the stratum is still another one, namely the Gatekeeper in the fourth floor. The game also features many minibosses fought in the sea as part of sidequests, such as King Penguin or the Ghost Ship.
• Misbegotten Multiplayer Mode: The game allows up to five players to fight some Optional Bosses. However, you can only dispatch and control one character from your guild, and if you don't have a full five-person party you'll have to use variants of the boss fights that add NPCs to your party, who can be liable to cripple your party with Artificial Stupidity, or make do with an incomplete party if you don't want CPU teammates. Also, on the DS release, you're restricted to local DS Wi-Fi meaning multiplayer is strictly local; while the HD remaster uses the internet to allow players from across the world to co-op, but it's region-locked and has no cross-platform compatibility.
• Multiple Endings: In contrast to the previous two games, The Drowned City is the first (and currently the only title) game in Etrian Odyssey to have multiple endings, which are dependent on who you side with: Armoroad or the Deep City.
  • Abyssal Desire Ending: You side with the Deep City, believing that it's in humanity's best interest to keep them from coming into contact with the Deep Ones. You end up communing with the Yggdrasil to learn of its mission against the Deep Ones. It also tips you off to the fact that the Princess is a Deep One herself, and Seyfried urges you to find and assassinate Gutrune for Armoroad's sake. Kujura, on the other hand, is often one step ahead of you and opposes your party at every turn, and you have to fight through him to kill the Deep Princess.
  • Porcelain Wish Ending: You side with Armoroad, believing that humanity's strength is enough to defeat the Deep Ones and their source. Seyfried decides to take matters into his own hands and moves to exterminate the Deep Ones himself. This leads him to threatening Gutrune, as he's clearly not recognizing his own sister. Your party is forced to defeat him to ensure the Princess's safety.
  • Eldest Path Ending: To trigger the conditions necessary to unlock the ending, you must first promise to keep the Deep City a secret, then reveal its location to the Senatus anyway. Both Kujura and Olympia present you with the key items Sky Bowl and Starry Shard respectively that serve little purpose on any other route. Bringing them both to the Eldest One reforms the Porcelain Wish. You present it to Seyfried and Gutrune in the depths of the Porcelain Forest, and both will drink from it, regaining their humanity and sharing a grand reunion. The Eldest One then beckons you to a now-unlocked section of the Abyssal Shrine where you face him as the Progenitor. After you defeat him, he tells the tale of the "evil" that is imprisoned beneath the Yggdrasil Tree and urges the party to vanquish it.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Roughly halfway through the game, you're forced to choose one of the two endgame paths, influencing (among other things) which of the game's two unlockable classes you earn after defeating the next boss. If you sided with Armoroad, you unlock the Shogun, while if you sided with the Deep City, you unlock the Yggdroid. Fortunately, they stay unlocked on a New Game Plus, which means you can ultimately have both classes in the same party.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: When you're eventually going against bosses like the Progenitor or the Abyssal God, you know you're in for a tough fight.
• New Game Plus: The game allows you to start the plot over with your experienced guild, enabling you to pursue the Multiple Endings and their rewards however you choose, as well as unlock both the Shogun and Yggdroid (which are normally mutually exclusive). However, quest progress is preserved, and chests that you've already opened stay emptied. The HD remaster lets you customize which parts of the guild you want to carry over, and it also lets you redo completed quests and reclaim treasure chests you've already opened.
• Next Tier Power-Up: Upon completing the second stratum, you unlock subclassing. This feature allows a character to learn the skills of another class, opening up some skill synergies that make a party member truly shine. The drawback is that each class has an exclusive skill that cannot be picked up for a subclass, meaning that some permutations of class combinations are better in different ways.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Thanks to the subclass system, it's possible to eventually have a literal pirate-ninja or ninja-pirate. Furthermore, roughly halfway through the game, you can unlock the Yggdroid (Android in the Japanese version) class, allowing you to make robot-pirates or robot-ninja.
• Not the Intended Use: Lucky Hammer is a Luck Manipulation Mechanic Limit skill, as it has poor damage output but guarantees full drops from anything it kills. While it's indeed helpful for this, it also gets used in offense setups; because it only uses one character's Limit slot and goes at the end of the turn no matter what (most attack Limits go before anyone acts), it's perfect for fueling an extra hit of chaser skills like Warrior Might.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Mermaids appear in the form of the Deep Ones, which are the spawn of an alien Eldritch Abomination.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling:
  • If you've unlocked the Tower of Victory, you can get into a repeatable boss fight with the King Penguin. It's a very docile Damage-Sponge Boss that doesn't actively attack the party so you are free to set up buffs for a big burst attack... or you can take a single member to the first quest, pass your turns by defending, and watch Kirikaze set up her clones for a Tagen Battou until it dies, earning a good amount of experience points.
  • If you've mapped out most of B24F, there are a couple of spots in the anti-mapping one-way maze where Blue Pasarans spawn. Unlike every other Pasaran in the rest of the Labyrinth, these ones don't move and are easier to catch. You can then make use of its multiplying abilities to hit the EXP-per-battle cap with lots of Red Pasarans, or grab eight Happiness Fluffs off a load of Gold Pasarans to sell for a fortune.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • There are two very powerful accessories obtained from turning in the final main quest of the game (a staple of the series), one for each of the main story paths. With the addition of New Game Plus, it's possible to overlook these and start another run of the game without loading back in and turning in the quest, locking out these accessories until another playthrough of that route is done (this doesn't prevent 100% Completion since the Gear Registry from the previous game no longer exists). Since it deliberately doesn't have an associated main quest, the Golden Ending path doesn't have an accessory tied to it.
  • As usual, discarding materials gained from final bosses, who are never able to be refought, prevents their equipment from being unlocked on that file until New Game Plus. More insidiously, it's possible to miss one of these drops (which are required for full completion) entirely: the final boss of the Armoroad route is a Dual Boss, and killing the main boss first causes its assistant to self-destruct and not drop anything. The HD remaster makes an exception specifically for this boss, as it now drops its material no matter what.
• Pre-Final Boss: The game features, in the route where you side with the Abyssal King, a battle against Kujura in the final stratum that directly precedes the final boss (Deep Princess). The trope is averted in the route where you side with the Senatus, as the two final bosses (Automaton King and Olympia) are fought together in Dual Boss form.
• Prestige Class: You unlock the ability to subclass about halfway into the game. This lets you diversify or specialize your party members by giving them a secondary class, combining their skills to improve performance. This feature returns in Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan and Etrian Odyssey Nexus, and the latter even lets you name your party member's new class combination to make it look like a custom prestige class.
• Pretty Princess Powerhouse: The game introduces the Prince/Princess/Sovereign class, royal heirs decked out in fancy outfits who fight with swords and can apply and remove status buffs as a Royalty Superpower. Victoria, a supporting character, is of this class as well.
• Princesses Rule: Princess Gutrune. In her case, it's stated by locals that the Senatus is seen as holding all the real power, particularly Senator Flowdia, while Gutrune is seen as a pretty figurehead.
• Public Domain Artifact: You'll regularly find Kirikaze in search of the relics related to the Five Impossible Tasks for her Sea Quests.
• Rare Candy: Stat books are incredibly rare items that are obtained from chests, quests, merchant barters, or very rarely from specific FOEs. Using a book on a party member permanently increases the corresponding stat by 1, and this bonus carries over to a successor if that character retires. There is no limit to how far you can increase a stat through the use of books, so creating a Magic Knight by maxing out a Gladiator's TEC stat or a Zodiac's STR stat is possible (but very tedious).
• Rare Random Drop: You'll notice that the later stratum enemies tend to have abysmal drop rates for their parts. You'll also need multiples to unlock some valuable equipment. Have fun!
• Roaring Rapids: The Undersea Grotto is an aquatic stratum that features underwater currents that have to be dealt with as the player's character party makes their way to the lower parts of the Yggdrasil. Not all these currents are detrimental, however: Some are helpful to succesfully avoid certain FOE monsters. At one point, a mystical sphere is collected and, when placed to its pedestal, it will shut down all currents across the labyrinth. These currents are also present in Etrian Odyssey Nexus, thanks to the return of Undersea Grotto itself.
• Robot Girl: The female version of the unlockable Yggdroid class is somewhat unusual in that, while cuter than the male counterpart, is far more visibly robotic than how the trope is usually presented. While the face is visibly human apart from the color and eyes, the rest including the hair would have no chance of being able to pass as human. Olympia meanwhile has a more proper face and hair and is able to convincingly pass as human for a good chunk of the game. That is until she removes her cloak and reveals her body to fall into more SkeleBot 9000 territory.
• Royal Rapier: The Prince(ss) class initially uses Rapiers. So do Buccaneers, which combine traits of Musketeers and Pirates.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • Some time after completing the fourth stratum, you must choose whether to preserve the Deep City, or to expose its existence to the rest of the world. Either choice determines which hidden class you unlock, as well as how the rest of the story plays out. You can Take a Third Option, but doing so is a Guide Dang It! as you have to turn in one mission but not accept the one that becomes available as you do so in order to get another mission from a specific source with no indication at all.
  • By trying to help the Murotsumi Guild, you indirectly decide which member dies. No way to save both. It's also possible, through non-obvious means, to ignore them altogether by not interacting with either of them, but it's never shown if this leads to both of them surviving; and due to the circumstances of their situation, it's unlikely anyway. This almost wouldn't qualify if it weren't for the fact that it repeats every playthrough, meaning after the first time through you know what is going to happen the moment the choice pops up.
• Same Content, Different Rating: Like Heroes of Lagaard, this game was rated E10+ by the ESRB, even though no change in content (whether made stronger or softer) has been done in relation to the previous Etrian Odyssey games (and the otherwise common T rating is given to all subsequent games released since, including the remake of the aforementioned second game). This comes off as a surprise because the game still deals with plot points themed around death and corruption.
• Scenery Dissonance: One sidequest has you going out to investigate a campsite in the Waterfall Wood, one of the aforementioned forests and which has many lovely waterways. Upon arriving at the campsite, you witness the bloody aftermath of some sort of battle that look place here, implying that the occupants were killed horribly. Somewhat downplayed when you return to the pub to report on your findings, as the group is alive and well there and the reality is that they caused the carnage in self-defense when some hostile monsters interrupted them in the middle of their sleep.
• Schizo Tech: The Deep City's technology is noticeably more advanced than that of the surface city of Armoroad. Even the thing that guards their home (Abyssal Shrine) is a powerful automaton and serves as the boss of the preceding stratum (Molten Caves). This is justified because this is the civilization that had developed the ancient technology of Armoroad before an earthquake sank them into the depths of the island.
• Sea Monster: With a setting that involves seafaring, you'll end up fighting some sea monsters as bosses. Side bosses here include a huge Hammerhead shark, Corotrangul the giant ray, the Kraken and Leviathan, Scylla, and a giant Anemone.
• Shout-Out:
  • The entirety of the Cyclopean Haunt in The Drowned City is full of references to H. P. Lovecraft. Some are obvious (e.g. the Deep Ones); others are less so (powder of Ibn Ghazi, anyone?).
  • Also in The Drowned City, hit Y to bring up the "alternate colors" for the Buccaneers. One of them looks rather like he has the surname Threepwood, and another looks suspiciously like a certain Ms. Fleur.^note Sadly a lot of fans will miss out on the second one since the PS3 version won't be coming to America.
• Simple, yet Awesome: One of the very first Limit skills you get is Charge Tactics, which gives your party a boost to physical and elemental damage for 5 turns. As a Limit it triggers at the start of your turn before your attacks fire off, it doesn't consume an action, and this Limit only requires 2 party members to execute. You'll find this to be an effective Limit for most of the early- and mid-game, only becoming obsolete when you access stronger Limits and buffs.
• Skippable Boss: The mutually-exclusive bosses (with their availability dependent on which faction you start supporting after a major event in the story), thus doubling as Route Bosses.
• Status-Buff Dispel:
  • The game plays with this through the Princess class. "Negotiation" gets rid of an ally's buffs, trading them for healing, while their "Inspire" skill gets rid of any debuffs and restores their TP as well. "Ad Niliho", meanwhile, weaponizes this — not only does it strip away the enemy's buffs, it deals considerable damage in the process.
  • More generally, applying status buffs and debuff of generally opposite effect will cancel out and remove both. This happens even if one (de)buff was considerably stronger or longer-lasting than the other or if it had other affects—for instance, Vulcan Stance makes normal attacks do more damage and hit all opponents, but an attack debuff spell will remove both.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Your party can traverse the Undersea Grotto just fine without drowning in the sea water. While Yggdroids can be possibly explained in that they're robots, no explanation is given for why land-dwelling, oxygen-needing humans can stay underwater for hours or even days without any sort of explicit breathing aid, much less while exerting themselves in combat.
• Superboss: There are a few superbosses of exceptional strength and difficulty that can be found and challenged in sidequests from the postgame (or, in one case, a sidequest available during the standard endgame at earliest): Alraune (a veteran from the original game), Kraken and Anemone. There's also the Elder Dragon, a winged quadrupedal deity who challenges the player's party to defeat the three Elemental Dragons and then itself in the sea; only short of the Abyssal God, it's the second strongest boss in the game.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Since the game replaces all classes from the first two games, some of the new ones inherit taks and skill trees that are very reminiscent of those from past classes: Hoplites (standing in for Protectors), Arbalists (standing in for Gunners), Farmers (standing in for Survivalists), etc.
• Telescoping Robot: When you face off against Seyfried and Olympia in battle, they're fully prepped for combat. Seyfried's right arm has transformed into a blade that's almost as large as he is, and Olympia's left arm has unfolded to reveal a blade-like extension that is about as long as she is tall.
• Temple of Doom: The fourth stratum, Abyssal Shrine. It's a dark, mysterious labyrinth that was originally part of the city of Armoroad, but has since been sunken in the ocean. As the player's characters venture through it, they'll find doors that will be open for access; but if they're crossed through in the direction they're facing, they will close and it won't be possible to turn back. The stratum is home of a sapient, yet hostile species known as the Deep Ones.
• There Are No Tents: The game introduced the concept of camping in the Labyrinth to the series; all you need is a campground and a Tent. Farmers can also learn Camp Mastery to buff up the benefits from sleeping, and an early Side Quest involves looking for clues about what happened to a cautious Guild at the campsites.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In addition to a few "kill on the first turn" conditionals, the Manticore's conditional drop is obtained when the killing blow is done in a single blow doing over 5000 damage. Prepare those Front Mortars!
• This Way to Certain Death: The game uses this while the Player Party is helping track an adversary through an area filled with FOEs. At one point, they discover the body of a guard whose armor has been completely shredded, hinting that they're on the right path to reach the next floor. Examining the body after this reveals an item which can be used to convince his commander you're not lying about his death.
• Throw the Book at Them: Books are a weapon type in the game. Interestingly, while the character art presents them as the Zodiac's weapon, any character can equip and use books... probably because it doesn't take much training to smack people around with one.
• Too Awesome to Use: Coupons, on use, will halve the cost of any one given item - whether you choose to use it on the Infinity +1 Sword or a cheap-ass Medica is your business. However, there are only eight in the game. In the original DS release, New Game Plus doesn't restock them; mitigated in the HD remaster where you can get more on repeat playthroughs.
• Underground Level: Molten Caves combines this trope with Lethal Lava Land, being a volcanically active cavern beneath the ocean with large amounts of lava, some of which can be traversed at the cost of some HP and others which are so hot that can only be traversed with mobile platforms.
• Under the Sea: The Undersea Grotto serves as the game's second dungeon. The player's characters can breathe normally, so oxygen is not an issue. However, they do have to deal with one-way currents, both when navigating through passageways and when avoiding the local FOE; at one point, they can place a special orb in a certain spot to turn off the currents.
• Underwater Boss Battle: Since the entirety of Undersea Grotto (the second stratum) takes place beneath the ocean of Armoroad, the resident main boss (Ketos, a sacred whale) is accordingly challenged this way. The player's characters have Super Not-Drowning Skills, so the difficulty of the battle is based on the variety of attacks Ketos can use (including a party-wide attack that can cause strong damage but has low accuracy). There's also Anemone, a Superboss who resides in Undersea Grotto as well, albeit in a hidden area only accessible after accepting a postgame sidequest. Ketos returns in Etrian Odyssey Nexus, fought once again on the same stratum.
• Unfulfilled Purpose Misery: Elval's quest line seems to be the product of a rich man indulging in frivolous entertainment, but the final quest reveals that he's been hosting all these contests to find guilds strong enough to kill the Kraken which he couldn't before. He passes away before he can watch the Kraken be slain, but he passes satisfied knowing that he's gotten someone who can finish what he started.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Porcelain Forest, a disorienting maze that serves as the grounds for the final outcome of the conflict between the Deep City and Armoroad.
• Waltz on Water: Water Woods of the Submarine Ridge for the second stratum of the game, Undersea Grotto, an underwater level loaded with aquatic animal enemies.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The player's guild winds up caught between two Well Intentioned Factions: one has spent the last hundred years killing anyone who came too close to the Eldritch Abomination they've been keeping at bay, while the other wants to try and destroy said abomination, even though it feeds on negative emotion and might end up strengthened by the fear of everyone aware of its existence to the point where it can't be killed.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly: The game uses food to dictate the maximum number of turns that your party can spend on a sea voyage since one turn represents several hours of in-game time. Once your turn counter hits 0 (presumably the halfway point of your provision consumption), you will automatically head back to port.

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