Eternal Dreamers – Beginners Guide (+ Walkthrough)

Explaining how to deal with the early game (Pre-City) without any DLC.

Introduction

Eternal Dreamers is a pretty simple RPG at first glance, yet its unique mechanics and levelling system can make it somewhat obtuse (Haha, Marks) for newer players. This guide aims to help alleviate that, while also explaining how to get through the game till it opens up a bit more.

Pre-Forest

After starting a new game, and letting the exposition bot tell you about people being tired, you get to make your character, who will be one of 4 near-identical generic anime girls, or a fire emblem lord. After picking your favourite flavour, you name them something funny, and wake up in generic science room. Once more, you sit through more exposition, except from evil corporation this time. Once you can move, follow the tutorial, holding shift to run, to meet the squad you’ll be working with –

  • Marlon: The main tank – has enough health to tank hits, and decent damage output
  • Reiketsu: Typical assassin, just hits hard, and dies quick
  • Forest: The most powerful character, for reasons that will become apparent shortly
  • Monolith: Health based spellcaster – most skills also use his health.

Those of you who’ve played other RPGs may notice you dont start with a healer – you can only get the healer by paying, and if you dont, the best you get is occasional delayed healing from a later character. For this reason, prevention is the easiest way to survive when you dont use DLC. After letting Marlon beat up some robots, its time for the first mission!

Forest 1: Oh God the Bees

Due to his high speed, Forest will go first, and show why he’s so good. Both of his starting skills are incredibly potent, with charge strike being a strong and efficient attack that grants you access to cheap limit breaks and assassinates, while also giving charge, which will come in handy later, and Tactical Retreat, a free method of restoring teammates AP, without even costing an action. This early in though, enemies are weak enough that saving your team gauge is pretty easy, and mostly serve as fodder before the first boss – Hornet Captain

Unlike the rest of this stage, the Captain is more than a simple damage sponge, and can deal impressive damage if you make the mistake of setting his charge level to zero. All bosses in this game will use enrage if they hit zero, which gives them an attack buff, 2 levels of charge and all this without costing an action. For this reason, use assassinate on his bodyguards, get a soul drain with monolith, and don’t bother wasting items – all characters get EXP as long as you win.

Assuming you don’t get horrifically unlucky, you should beat the boss and get access to the hub, allowing you to pick up new skills.

Forest 2: Easy Spears

Now that you’ve killed the big bug, head east to get aggressively asked to buy DLC by Eucretia, before leaving and heading back to the infodesk, and speaking to the girl next to it to get some ability fragments. Check your inventory to see if you got any books from your first mission, use any applicable ones, and recycle any that aren’t for the 4 free characters, before heading to the shop and buying defensive maneuver if you weren’t lucky enough to get it already. (If you did, buy flameball) Continue by proceeding into the next level, which makes Forest even better – wolves are weak to Charge Strike, which includes the boss here. Make sure to keep defensive manuever up as long as possible, it’s a good habit to keep up for the levels that’ll start getting harder soon.

Forest 3: Say Hello to best girl

Do Not Waste Time On The Players Trial Yet.

While the reward of a new character is incredibly useful, you are nowhere near strong enough yet. As before, use any applicable books, recycle the rest, and if you have enough fragments, pick up Flameball. From this point, any skills for Marlon, Forest and Reiketsu are worth buying, just ensure you dont buy duplicates. Finally, check if any of the weapons or armor you got are worth equipping (Hovering over them, the game lets you compare it to people’s current equipment.)

This is where the game actually starts ramping up in difficulty – unlike the last 2 missions, enemies start throwing out incredibly high damage, and the boss – Minosta – has no easily exploitable weaknesses. I recommend going through the previous mission until you hit level 6 on the squad if you find this encounter unfairly difficult. Otherwise, the following strategy should allow you to beat him without any grinding:

Upon encountering Minosta, you should have a full player gauge of all 10 segments, which should be saved for soul drain and limit break. Open with defensive manuever and charge strike with Forest, Reiketsu using quick strike and smoke bomb (If you have it) and Marlon using justice strike under limit break. Pay close attention for monolith once you have drain set up – if Minosta isn’t at full charge, DO NOT use waste – Minosta under enrage will shred you through defensive manuever, so keep patient and use strikes or other unlocked attacks instead. If you can keep up defensive manuever every other turn, and avoid a poor run of luck, you should be able to get through him, albeit barely. Doing so unlocks best girl Mimi, and facility upgrades, which are detailed below.

P.S. While your Reviver you start with is difficult to get more of, this is a good place to use it, as grinding for forest king may as well be mandatory.

Forest 3.5: We Need a Hero Player

Now that you have Mimi and her mining unlocked, get ready to have fun mining! She gives you 5 pickaxes for free, which you should try and make use of immediately, as facility upgrades can make shops useful for actual equipment, and strictly better versions of skills in the ability shop.

Once you’ve used all you pickaxes, head back to the building you began in and see if you have the resources to upgrade any facilities. All of them use different resources, so there’s no need to save up for any 1 in particular. As always, check your abilities and equipment, use as necessary, and get ready for the grind – the final Forest mission will need higher levels than what you currently have, and the best healing you have access to.

Go back through the first two forest missions, doing bonus quests whenever they pop up as an option, until you hit level 10, and have all the following skills:

  • Marlon: Flameball, Counter
  • Reiketsu: Smoke Bomb, Shadow Strike
  • Forest: Charge Call
  • Monolith: Fear. Discourage

You’re finally ready for the Player Quest, a single battle against yourself and 2 robots. Start the fight targetting the blue robot first, ensuring you discourage the Player and keep both smoke bomb and defensive maneuver up for the whole fight. Due to the player not being a boss, you can assassinate them without any risk of enrage, though Marlon should be the primary user of the gauge to set up limit break – flameball under limit break is a 1 cost instant that advances you, allowing you to put out huge damage against multiple targets when kept restored by Forest. Once the blue robot is dead, switch to targetting the red, before finishing the fight targetting yourself. Once you floor yourself, you get access to the second best party member, and the best healing option your likely to get.

Unlike everyone else, the player doesn’t gain skills from books, instead upgrading them at the memorial with precious memories, a currency you get very few of – due to it’s scarcity, focus upgrades on pain and heal mark, with an occasional upgrade into mind mark – cleanse mark and the passive are not worth the cost to upgrade. Spend some energy at the item shop for experience charms to bring yourself on par with the rest of the squad, before dumping monolith for the Player.

Forest 4: Minibosses and Fire spam

Now that you have a better squad, you’re in position to deal with the final forest mission – a test to make sure you’re in position for the dramatically harder missions coming up. Unlike the previous 3 levels, this features a miniboss fight against the hornet captain from earlier, but due to this levels length, don’t worry about spending your gauge to speed him up.

The forest king, when compared to Minosta, shouldn’t be a threat at this point – his weakness to fire means Marlon limit break and flameball spam deals high damage rapidly, and pain marks into charge calls and shadow strikes will eat through the remainder of his healthbar – just remember not to assassinate unless it will kill, and keep up smoke bomb and defensive maneuver as normal.

Pre-Mountain

Now that the bird is dead, the game once more exposits at you, before trying to entice you to gamble (More on that nonsense later) and giving the Player another skill upgrade, which should go into which of pain or health you didn’t upgrade.

The casino, for the most part, is as rigged as you’d expect. With one exception, the average rewards dont make up for the win/loss ratio. So, with that in mind, there are 2 ways to make use of it to get the good items it offers. The easiest, if most expensive method, is to just buy chips with energy, and spend that on whatever you need. It’s risk free, quick, and given how little is worth buying, probably the best use of your energy (Outside of buying EXP charms and Pickaxes). The second, is to use the casino as an actual casino, by doing the one game with fair returns – Treasure Hunt. The way it works is simple, a 33% chance of tripling your cash, and a 66% of losing it all, which is a far more even chance than ANY other game in the casino, and if to encourage it further, the amount you bid is even large enough to save your time.

While treasure hunt is entirely luck based still, and lacks any way for you to save scum, with decent luck you should be able to turn a slight profit, as long as you do cash out often. The best purchases in the casino are the kings new clothes, purchased from the front desk, that serve as both effective armor, and a way to earn more money, and the special pickaxes, which are required for max level facility upgrades, with the exception of bonus quest.

Mountain 1: Same as ever

Once you’ve done gambling away your entire account, its time for the frozen hellscape that awaits you. Thankfully, this game has less of a difficulty curve, and more a difficulty saw – the first 2 levels of each area are pretty tame, while the last 2 end up being far harder than you’d expect.

Most enemies here (Except the chickens) are weak to flameball, though given its low base damage, this is unlikely to matter until the boss, Frostblade, who is a pretty simple fight – as always, limit break spam flameballs, and don’t let her use enrage. If you have shield bash, using it when she has full charge can keep her from freezing your team, but it’s by no means necessary.

Once you’ve killed the ice queen, check for facility upgrades, and bonus quest – you’re going to need 25 infection fragments for the end of this section, and the more bonus quests you have, the more time you’ll save.

Mountain 2: False Advertising

Despite the name of this level, there are no giants here, only a singular annoyed furry. However, unfortunately for him, he’s not particularly strong – if you beat frostblade, you shouldn’t have any trouble with this big furball. You may notice I’m not really discussing the actual contents of levels for the most part, and that’s because in the mountain, they rarely matter. Outside of the bosses, most enemies don’t deal or take enough damage to be any more than annoyances if you play sensibly, so keep abusing Tactical Retreat to make as much AP as you need, and charge call to hit as hard as you need.

Mountain 3: Audit the Cult

Now that you’ve got through the trivial sections of the mountain, its time for a boss that takes more effort than mashing abilities. While the run of the mill goons on the way are unchanged, and still an absolute cakewalk, the boss does have some decent upsides, from access to silence, a surprisingly high health pool and 2 summons alongside it. Sadly however, the summons are both slow, and pretty weak, while the boss lacks the same damage output that made Minosta capable of wiping you out given the chance.

However, from this point the game stops taking things easy on you, and gets ready to teach you the meaning of pain with a frankly obscene difficulty spike. To make things doable, you’ll need 25 infection fragments, level 15’s to 16’s across the board, and Level 2 Flameball, Charge Strike, Poison Jab and Shadow Strike.

Mountain 4: Jesus Christ why is this Boss such a Spike

Before attempting this boss, head back towards the bridge where you were told to buy DLC, but turn right before the room, interacting with the laser wall, to enter the black market

There, you should be able to buy Hero’s Tears, itself absolutely vital for your success – as it’s finally time to start amplifying weapons. Using exclusively dream weapon amplifiers, upgrade it as much as possible, before equipping it to Marlon. Using your lower grade amplifiers, upgrade any other weapons you have equipped, before heading to the casino and purchasing both a SPD and ATK meal from the back, and using the both of them.

Your goal in the early waves is to ensure you have a full gauge by the time frostblade appears, and bursting through her as quickly as possible. You don’t have time to avoid her from enraging if you want to keep the buffs for the actual boss, so try and line up a pain mark assassinate to drop her.

The actual bosses are where the difficulty comes from – both of them are tanky and deal incredible amount of damage, with the actual boss (Zanasu, the guy with the broom) being capable of healing the both of them, and both of them also having access to enrage. Try and target Zanasu as quickly as possible, any heals he uses can spell disaster for the attempt. AoE skills like multislash and demon dance are typically worth it early on, but once you get Zanasu below 50%, focus all attacks on him to avoid having him heal the both of them. Don’t be surprised if they happen to drop a couple of party members, just keep on slugging, and you should be capable of dropping the both of them in order, before finally being able to break the game.

Important Note: Due to the amount of enemies here that apply Unhealable, keep in mind that the AP restoration given by Forest will be prevented on allies with Unhealable.

Final Advice (Abuse Spirits)

Well done, you’ve beaten the hard part of the game! From here, you get access to spirits, a mechanic that, on paper, is pretty fair. In practice, it’s a free way to apply shock to bosses. Did you know that enrage is an instant action, and that shock makes instant actions end you turn? Lightning spirits, in addition to their stat buffs, can shock all enemies for two turns, once per expedition. By combining this with assassinate, you can hit a boss for ridiculous amounts of damage, while skipping two of their turns, all for effectively 0 opportunity cost. Effectively, this means that unless an expedition has more than 4 seperate boss waves, it can be trivialised by merely equipping a lightning spirit on everyone in the group. Even against enemies that are immune to shock, you can buy SE enablers from the black market, that remove enemy immunities.

In short, after beating up Zanasu, you win the video game, congratulations!

Created by stephen-berwick

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