Update 0: Overture

Let's begin, then!

Ha. Hahaha. "Varied and exciting characters." Well, that's for the Story bits, I suppose.
The exciting part of Story is when you get to start Classic.

There's the good shit.

Lemme take a sec to explain what each difficulty does:We'll be playing on Expert here.

The title music stops here.

The Radha, governors of Etria, issued a proclamation throughout the continent... Any able-bodied adventurer was invited
to investigate the forest and explore its depths. But no matter how many came to investigate the dungeon, none gained the renown they sought. As more adventurers tried and failed to conquer it, it came to be known by a new name... The Yggdrasil Labyrinth. You are the latest adventurer to journey to Etria in response to the Radha's proclamation. You have but one goal: explore the forest to win fame and fortune. Etria is at hand...
I'unno about you, but I'm all riled up to start exploring solely for the fun of it.

Kinda impossible to do anything without a guild. Let's fix that.

Meet the Guildmaster. He has no name, and is generally kinda boring.
Since you're new here, I'd like to set you up with a veteran group...but not many guilds are recruiting. *sigh* Shortsighted treasure hunters care too much about petty trifles to do any real investigation. In any case, if you've got the guts, you could make a guild entirely made up of newcomers. There are loads of people just sitting around twiddling their thumbs, eager to join any guild that would take 'em.
No need, I've already got eight idiots with me.

Incidentally, if you refuse this offer, the Guildmaster says the following:
Hah! Your mouth says no, but your eyes... They say "Yes!"
Bit creepy if you ask me, but whatever.

This name may someday be known throughout the world, so think carefully before committing to it.

You'll... You'll see.

It's just temporary.
Now that you've got a guild, try getting some adventurers to fill your ranks. If you're bold enough to explore the Labyrinth yourself, you can register your own name as a member. Having more adventurers gives you more options, and less of a chance of dying down there. Give it some thought, and make sure you recruit a variety of classes into your guild. Let's see... I guess five members is a good number. That's not too many, and not too few.

Welcome to the character creation menu. Those of you familiar with EO1 but not with EOU might be a bit surprised to see Ronin and Hexer unlocked from the start. This is one of the first major changes from EO1 to EOU Classic.

Eh, I don't feel like expanding on the gameplay implications of that, myself.

Let's get to creating a character, shall we?
The class access change was a good move, I think. Ronin and Hexer weren't really broken unlocks in EO1 (Especially Hexer, my god), so having them from the start is really just more options to take to build your party with.

...Hang on, what's with that portrait on the top? That doesn't look like the one on the bottom at all.

Okay, no, I'm not gonna play dumb like that. Welcome to Etrian Odyssey Untold: Ragnar H. Homsar Edition, where, among other things, I've replaced the menu and battle portraits for characters with their EO2U versions, because the EO1 portraits are frankly kind of ass at the resolution they use in EOU. The fact that I can replace portraits will have extra implications that I'll discuss further, come character submission time.

Anyway, classes. I'm doing things differently from past LPs of mine: I already have all of the class writeups fully done! In light of that, I'm going to paste their intro paragraphs in these bits, and make those paragraphs link to the full class writeup. I highly recommend you give each writeup at least a look-over!
Landsknechts are a somewhat-generic damage class. Their primary job is to hit things. That's really about it. A lot of their methods of hitting things have extra effects attached, but at the end of the day, their thing is hitting things and being more durable than most other damage dealer classes. They have two primary skill trees: swords and axes. Swords are reasonably accurate and quick, while axes are somewhat innaccurate and slow, yet generally hit harder than sword skills. In addition to their attack skills, Landsknechts have access to a few pseudo-support skills, of varying usefulness.

Much like I have a placeholder guild name, I need some placeholder characters. The seven PCs plus two NPCs from a tabletop thing I participate in will do.

Survivalists, contrary to what you might expect if you're coming from EO1, are not a fast ranged damage class. In EOU, they're a support class that happens to have a tree with some damage skills on it. Do not let that deceive you, though, because they have access to a passive that completely obsoletes Medics, along with an assortment of other support skills.

Protectors are a defensive support class that largely focus on damage reduction, but also have two options for tanking. They also have options for hitting things and healing party members, but those jobs are better taken care of by other party members, especially on Expert. You can get through the EOU main game on any difficulty without a Protector, no question, but it's going to be a far more difficult affair--again, especially on Expert.

Dark Hunters are a combination damage dealer/disabling support class. They're, obviously, not the best at either on their own, but their base disable infliction chances aren't bad, and their damage can seriously spike when they have access to the proper skills, and have ailments/binds to capitalize on. What that does mean, however, is that Dark Hunter damage is basically RNG-reliant; if you get unlucky with infliction rolls, or even recovery rolls, you're going to be left with a somewhat-fragile party member that doesn't deal fantastic damage. They're best paired with a Hexer, as you might infer, since Hexers are custom-built for inflicting ailments and binds.

Medics are The Healer Class, if you couldn't infer that from their name. They heal party members. They also have a skill that can save party members from death, which is useful, some status ailment skills, which are a bit weird and bleh, and some attack skills, which are--excuse me, I need to vomit.

Okay, now you understand the Medic attack skills. The problem with Medics is twofold: they have one skill that obsoletes their other healing skills, and then they're obsoleted by Efficiency on Survivalists once you have the skill points for that. It took Atlus until EO5 to make a Medic-like class that doesn't end up being obsoleted by another class or just pointless entirely. That being said, again, Medic does hae a few really good skills--it's just a question of "do you really want to cart a Medic around for them?"

Alchemists are a spellcaster class that relies on TEC-based attacks. TEC attacks work differently from normal, STR-based attacks--they use the TEC stat, as you might be able to infer, they do not take weapon ATK into account at all, and when a player is using a TEC-based attack against an enemy, the damage calculation factors both the target's TEC and VIT when determining defense. Generally speaking, Alchemists are very, very good damage dealers, mostly because most enemies in the game (including nearly every boss) have an elemental weakness, meaning that not only do they deal increased damage compared to a physical damage of roughly equal power, they also have a buff that provides a 50% damage increase when hitting a weakness. The downside to all this is that Alchemists have far higher TP costs for their skills relative to other classes, and are extremely fragile.

Much like how Medics are The Healer Class, Troubadours are The Buff Class. They provide buffs for party members, along with one skill that debuffs enemies. That's it, really. They provide buffs and then they sit around probably tossing out items until the buffs they casted run out. They're not nearly as broken as they are in EO2U, due to the lack of Crusade, but they're still pretty significant sources of amping up your damage dealers' output. They can do that same diminishing return system-bypassing that they could in EO2U, but it's not as big a deal as it was in that game, since EOU punishes you for that less.

Ronin are a physical damage dealer class. Unlike Landsknechts, though, that is all they do. They have the highest STR of any of the classes, katanas have high ATK value, you can probably infer how their job usually goes down based on those. The tradeoff for this is that they're the most fragile front-row class; their HP and VIT are low, especially compared to other front row classes. Compared to EO2U, though, Ronin are actually a very effective damage dealer class, because their skill damage numbers are either on par or higher than other classes' skills on average, and the difference between their STR and the next-highest STR stat (Highlander) is actually fairly appreciable, instead of just literally one point.

Hexers are the disabler class, with a few debuffs added into their skillset for good measure. Their job is to roll the dice and try to inflict disables on enemies. If they succeed, your life gets considerably easier in fights, since basically every disable they have access to is useful. However, conversely, if they fail, then you've basically wasted one of your turns on precisely nothing. They're a bit all-or-nothing like that.
But wait! That's not all! In addition to these basic nine classes, EOU has two other classes: Highlander and Gunner. Now, normally, these classes are exclusive to Story, unless you start a New Game+ from a completed Story save and then it lets you reclass other characters into Highlander and Gunner without actually making Highlanders or Gunners from scratch. This shit is very dumb and I'm not going to abide by it.

The Classic portion of the LP will feature a Highlander and a Gunner, both "created" in their innate classes. By this I mean I'm going to edit the byte that controls what class a character is in the save data for those two and set it to 0x9 for Highlander, and 0xA for Gunner. They will not be in this update, but they will be in the LP proper. With that in mind, go peruse their writeups. Both classes are a bit odd, so it's in your best interest to understand them.
Highlanders are a support-y damage class, not terribly unlike Landsknechts, but with a more unique and more generically useful skillset, and also a focus on draining HP to use skills. The class is normally exclusive to the Story mode protagonist as far as pure Highlanders go, and you can only change class into Highlander when using New Game+ on a finished Story save--which is ludicrously stupid if you ask me. Such is Etrian Odyssey Untold, though. As far as effectiveness goes, Highlanders have the second-best STR stat of any of the classes, and their skills generally deal high damage anyway, meaning they're very, very effective damage dealers. Their support skills vary in usefulness, but I can imagine uses for most of them.
Gunner is primarily a ranged damage class that has access to physical and elemental damage, with an extra assortment of weird, janky skills, and the most broken skill in the entire game. There's an absolute ton of weird things you can do with them, but I typically end up just building for their elemental attacks plus Action Boost, the aforementioned broken skill. In theory, you could use a Gunner as a semi-support with their bind-inflicting Snipes and Medic Bullet, but on the other hand, you could also just, I dunno, use a Hexer for that. On the other hand, basically everyone that uses a Gunner is going to be using it because that's Frederica's class in Story mode, so talking about party composition with them is a bit weird and not applicable to 99% of players.

Yes, this will work. Landsknecht/Protector/Ronin, Medic/Alchemist. A fairly standard party, I think.

Before we leave, though, allow me a moment to talk about stats and the formulas that use them!

So here's all the stats that exist in EOU:In addition, characters and enemies have these things called vulnerabilities--both damage vulnerabilities and disable vulnerabilities. These are basically multipliers that are applied to damage of a certain element or a given disable type to determine how effective that attack should be/how likely that disable should be to land.

Player characters also have weapon ATK and armor DEF, provided by their equipment. Their functions should be fairly self-evident, but it should be noted that weapon ATK only applies to the base damage of an attack, and is not used when determining an enemy's defense against an attack, and armor DEF barely affects damage at all. Four points of DEF is roughly equivalent to one point of VIT, and it's worth even less when defending against TEC-based attacks.

With all the mechanics stuff out of the way, let's go visit Radha Hall, since we need bureaucratic authorization to actually go into that Labyrinth thing.

I'm sure you're a new adventurer here to explore the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, like all the others. Unfortunately, we do not permit people who have only recently created their guilds to enter the Yggdrasil Labyrinth. If you wish to officially become adventurers, you'll have to complete the mission we will give you.

Radha Hall is where we go to take on missions. These are basically story quests, and we have no option but to do these to move forward in the story.

Those who cannot accomplish this elementary task are better off staying out of the forest. Explore the 1st floor and map everything you see there. This method will be useful later. Here is a small map to start you off; fill in the rest of the details as best you can.

Bing. There's our map. A bit of B1F is even filled in for us, how convenient.
And thus far too many strange arguments regarding minutiae are born.

Going into the Labyrinth with just our bare equipment is suicidal, so let's go get this placeholder party outfitted.

Shilleka's outfit and the annoying way her way of talking is written out both annoy me. A lot.
Well, if y'need items, weapons, equipment, I'm y'girl! You can sell all t'items you find in t'forest to me, and I'll make 'em into new equipment for you. My store can't go on wit'out all y'explorers, so I'm countin' on you.
Shilleka's is where we go to both sell off crap we find in the Labyrinth, and to buy stuff made from said crap.

I should note, for anyone coming from EO4 or EO5, that EOU uses the same shop style as EO2U--ie. only "gold" items, ones made from conditional drops/rare gather materials, require restocking. To compensate for that, however, the unlock requirements for normal items are often ludicrously high. Combined with EOU's atrocious drop rates, unlocking equipment is often a bit of a pain.

Unlike EO2U and EO5, characters in EOU only start with a Dagger (a really shitty "sword") and a Tweed, instead of equipment that fits their class. It's kind of important for characters that need specific equipment to use their skills that you get them at least the most basic version of whatever they need as soon as possible.

I'm not gonna bore you with the particulars of my purchasing decisions here. The gist of what I did was outfit our front row with some defensive equipment, grab our casters Staves, and grab our Ronin a katana.

Please, make yourself at home.
And here's the last facility we'll be visiting for now: the inn.

The inn is where we go to recover from Labyrinth trips, revive dead/petrified party members (this isn't done automatically upon resting, unlike EO5), and save our game.

The cost of staying at the inn is always the highest level of any character in your party, multiplied by 5.
This is why I always have a handy innbot sitting around in my roster for respawning things.

A new quality-of-life feature added in EOU is auto-saving upon staying at the inn. Because EOU only has one save slot, though, we're not prompted to do this, unlike EO2U and EO5.

No music.
Well, here goes nothing.
So begins a peaceful walk through the forest.

Welcome to the Labyrinth, which we'll be spending about 98% of the game in.

As you have some skill at adventuring, some 3 Skill Points should be available to you. To spend them on skills useful in the Labyrinth, open the Main Menu with the Y Button. Select Custom to allocate skill points, but think carefully before doing so. You may already be aware of this, in which case this advice is happily unnecessary. If so, then hesitate no longer to begin your adventure in this lush, green forest!

Going back to this old vertical menu is a bit disorienting, coming from EO5.
I honestly prefer it. EO5's threw me off after six games of this type of menu and I tend to lean towards left column lists.

EOU uses the old system of requiring that you learn Masteries to learn skills, but it also introduces a feature that was also in EO2U: when you unlock a skill through leveling up a Mastery, the skill that's unlocked automatically has one point put into it. This does not apply to skills learned from non-Mastery skills.
This is probably the best change to skill trees in the series. Lv.1 skills are quite valuable early on in the game, and the mastery system can save you a handful of SP for allocation elsewhere.

Anyway here's my starting build. It doesn't matter much.

Let's skip to a battle.

Clawed Mole

HP: 93
STR: 8
TEC: 7
VIT: 7
AGI: 6
LUC: 7

EXP Given: 50

Drops:Damage Vulnerabilities:
100% 100% 100%
100% 150% 100%

Disable Vulnerabilities:
50% 100% 150% 100% 100% 100% 100%
100% 100% 100%
100% 100% 100%
Clawed Moles don't know any skills, but that 8 STR means they can still screw up most characters plenty fine, especially at level 1.

Also, evaluate the drops section for a bit. It's only gonna get worse from here, folks.
The most dangerous nonscripted enemy on the first floor. On Expert you're looking at critical HP after a single hit or just outright death depending on the target and mitigation.

Here's what each command in the menu does:

To save a bit of time, just assume every character, except for the Medic, are using the skills they just learned.

Auspicious start.

The "Damage has been reduced!" message pops up when a shield skill reduces damage to a character.
That Shield Mastery rank is already showing some value on top of Front Guard reduction and Protector's VIT. They're really durable when getting hit.

I told you these moles are dangerous.
And Ronin is not so durable.

I wonder if the tomatoes can eat mole meat.

...It makes sense in context, I swear.

Yeeeeeeep. That's liable to happen at level 1.
Gambling with low HP is a pretty dangerous prospect at any point in this game, honestly. It's just more apparent here.


Well, hey, I still got a chance.

There we go.
That... could have gone better. Fights don't typically get that nasty this early on.

The EXP total at the top of the Result screen is split between any alive party members.

Also, looks like I still need to replace the Result images, haha.

Anyway, that's it for now. Next time in Classic: presumably, we actually begin.
And hopefully less death. Or more! Who knows.