Overview
A guide to building teams (with team suggestions) with an eye towards using and abusing emotion based strategies.
Introduction
Greetinks and Velcome my fellow explorers, I, Longreach Jones (Magnificent Explorer), am your guide to the use and – ahem – abuse of the emotion system within Renowned Explorers: International Society.
For each of the emotional states you are able to apply within the game, I will be providing a sample party as well as tips for providing them with appropriate equipment to make full use of their abilities.
Do please try and use these tips responsibly, as I will not be held accountable for any rampaging gorillas, zombies or yeti that you may mistakenly set loose.
Key to many playthoughs when making use of emotion based teams is Emotion Studies, one of the first three papers in the Psychology field.
The bonuses for the uninformed are the choice of one of the following:
- Excited: -25 Speech Defense
- Confident: -25 Armor
- Impressed: -25% Attack
- Terrified: -25 Armor
- Enraged: 15% Miss Chance
- Saddened: -25 Speech Defense
{A/N} For the moment, I am putting up what I have with the three Devious abilities, the three Friendly ones will be going up a little later, once I have refined the groups a little more.
Enrage
Team – Harry, Charles, Kiwi
Enrage plays on taunts and insults to direct enemy attacks to one member of your party or another while the others beat the everliving daylights out of your target thanks to his/her lowered armor.
Charles’ Group Insult is especially dangerous once he hits 3rd level with Group Insecurity
Gearing them up.
A mixture of Attack and Speech will come in handy here. I recommend that you gear Harry for Attack, Charles and Kiwi both for Speech. Charles in particular will also need some defensive gear as Kiwi’s grit will save her from a lot of pain.
The Coach’s Whistle (250 gold from the final tier of the Red Square Market) is particularly useful as it will HALVE all speech damage frome enemies you have enraged before your defenses are counted.
Terrify
As far as the Emotion based attacks go, this one has probably the least going for it. However, if you insist on running a team, here is my suggestion.
Anna, Ivan and Bia
As Terrify’s debuff effect is -25% attack, it makes sense that it is mostly used in a defensive manner when dealing with Agressive bosses.
Make heavy use of choke points whenever you can, having Ivan be your tank of choice if the opponent is Aggressive, while Anna is better off for facing off against Friendly and Devious foes.
Make use of Bia early and as often as you dare to get her to level 4 and her amazing triple slash ability, hand her some War Drums, and watch her paint the field red when she gets behind the enemy.
Sadden
Finally! An emotion based team that is not playing second fiddle to their fists.
The lovely lady team of Agatha, Hatice, and Maria (Go on, tell me Agatha isn’t an amazing looking grand dame at 67! I dares ya!), have a great combination of area effects and focused firepower to take down almost any challenge.
Agatha does not start with Sadden in her default abilities, but rather gains the Lecture ability at 2nd level and strong power ups to Lecture at 3rd and 5th (Feedback and Teacher’s Gossip). When she is not making the opposition bow before her, her Impress ability can be used to set up combos with both of her team mates.
Hatice is very useful when you need firepower for taking down minions, though her 3rd level Focus ability means she make make someone have a VERY bad day every 4th turn.
Maria’s already powerful speech power becomes downright terrifying when taken in combination with Heart Breaker (3rd level) and Relentless Humiliation (5th Level). Give the lady a Book of Sadness of any type (New Orleans shops) and a Lucky Charm (Red Square Shops) and her Sadden ability will do a whopping ~270% spirit damage on an Impressed target every turn!
Excite
Before I begin, I would just like to say that this is potentially the single most dangerous of the specializations. No other emotion so desperately needs the bonus from Emotion Studies as this one does.
Pedrinho, Kwame and Emilia
The sheer volume of healing this group is capable of is awesome, played and geared defensively, there is almost nothing that will be able to whittle the team down before they can do the same to them.
Pedrinho is capable of simply massive area damage thanks to his Party Time allowing him to all but teleport 2 spaces away and into the middle of the enemy team.
For sticky situations where Pedrinho is not able to clear out a pack of enemies, Kwame can come to the rescue and switch places with him from up to 5 spaces away and even (especially) though blocking terrain, giving both a defense boost.
Emilia rounds out the team with the defense lowering Amnesia Shot, an area effect heal and (when she is captain), extra study and a free tool for the team for each expedition.
Encourage
Team Encouragement – Phillipe, Victor and Harry – also known as the fellowship of the beard.
There are arguments for having Jan-Piet in the team over Harry, but with several playthroughs with both, Harry is simply better balanced to be the support to the only two characters to have Encourge among their base abilities.
Another team that runs double duty with Aggressive, this team is a little unusual in that if you make use of Emotional Studies, you will want to choose the enhancement for Excitement over Encouragement. This is because it will allow Victor to apply a penalty to Speech Defense to a group of enemies, allowing you to encourage them out of the battle ASAP.
Most of the time, there is very little crossover with Friendly and Aggressive, due to a single point of Agressive switching the mood immediately, though you may be able to get away with it on occasion, by blasting someone or a few someones with Harry, then using Victor’s Peace Treaty to drag the mood kicking and screaming back to Friendly.
In this manner, Amnesia shot is also useful, as it allows you to get in a physical attack, drop your Aggression score and lower defenses on a boss for Victor and Harry to finish off.
As to gear, it really comes up to personal preference for this crew, though I prefer to load Victor up with as much Speech as possible, while Phillipe and Harry get either Attack or Speech depending on which way you want to focus.
Impress
Yvonne, Hildegarde and Harry Victor
For a time, I really honestly tried this team with Harry, who has swiftly become one of my favourite 3rd members only to find the team getting beaten down time and again.
Bringing in Victor seemed to do the trick though as his Tactician allows for an occasional fight (by my estimate one in three) to be begun with a decent boost to Speech and Attack skills. Add to that he has decent defenses so he can play the devilishly handsome brick wall and he has Encourage which is the strongest hitting of the three Friendly skills.
Yvonne and Hildegarde should be boosted for Speech as much as possible, while Victor should first be geared for Defense and Speech Defense.