Etrian Odyssey classes have always been a mixed bag. Some are clearly designed for a specific purpose, be it damage reduction, ailment infliction, healing or even good old heavy damage dealing, and they all perform at varying levels of effectiveness depending on your team build. Probably the most unusual addition to this is the Farmer, a class which originated in Etrian Odyssey 3 and makes a return in what could possibly be the last game in the series, Etrian Odyssey Nexus. It’s a class filled with unusual skills and traits, most of which tilt more in the favour of exploration and item collection than battle, and as such it’s place in a team is almost always considered a detriment. Far be it from us to tell you how to play your game, but then again why would you be here reading about the Farmer were you not considering it’s usage? Join us below as we take some time to dissect this most unusual of additions to the Etrian roster.
Class Overview
We’ve already noted that the Farmer class in an anomaly, so to expand on that we must first note that it is primarily designed for that very reason: Extracting the maximum amount of resources from any given situation, primarily the dungeons themselves. Their skills primarily revolve around increasing your yield of loot from all possible sources in an Etrian dungeon, from enemy drops to gathering points. They aren’t without their combat abilities, after all they would be ultimately useless without having actions available to them in battle, but their primary use is to ensure that your bags get fuller, quicker.
It should be noted however, that your choices can still make a difference in this regard. Sure, it’s possible to make a relatively well balanced Farmer build, one that secures plenty of dungeon loot whilst also contributing in battle, but as is almost always the case in Etrian games, you’ll find the most benefit in committing to one direction or the other. Will you pick out one or two loot based skills and push the rest into battle? Or perhaps you’re all about the loot and just want it to contribute a little to defeating opponents? Maybe you’re a little crazy like us and prefer to make an entirely separate farming party that revolves around gathering loot in a dungeon your main battle team has cleared. Either way, the advice that follows should present you with a few options that allow you to take this most underappreciated of classes along with you.
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Battle Farmer
Should you decide to take your Farmer into battle and intend to have it seriously contribute, we’d first like to recommend that you place it in the back row. The class can equip a variety of weapons but by far our favourite option is to have it wield a gun, allowing it to push out a little damage from the relative safety of the back row. It’s also worth noting that it’s Force Boost skill, Item Echo, may allow an item to be used twice for free, opening up some interesting possibilities when using damaging elemental items.
Key Class Skills
- Strange Seeds
- Harvest Festival
- Flee
- Slap Awake
- Fruitful Song
There are a variety of skills provided by the Farmer that are technically useful for a battle party, though perhaps not in the way you might imagine. Flee is a skill that uses party HP to allow you to escape from a battle, and whilst this may not sound like much it’s likely that most Etrian veterans have found themselves in a situation where this would be useful. Slap Awake is another unusual addition, mainly because it’s a resurrect that only works outside of battle, but you’d be surprised how few classes have a reliable resurrection option, so it’s nice to have here. Fruitful song too is essentially free TP for every 12 steps taken in a dungeon, which is fantastic for a TP heavy party build in the late game.
We know what you’re thinking at this point: none of these seem to actually be based on battle performance? Well that’s where the combat party piece of the Farmer comes into play. Once the Master tier of skills is unlocked, the ability to attack all enemies is available through Harvest Festival, an ability that will deal more damage or perhaps even instantly kill the enemies if they’re bound. If only there were a skill that inflicts a bind on all targets… Like perhaps the Strange Seeds skill? Yes, if you’re patient with your Farmer class, it will eventually reward you with the ability to instantly kill all enemies. Just don’t expect it to work on bosses any time soon..
Recommended Sub Classes
- Harbinger
- Sovereign
We should probably talk about the latter choice first: Sovereign. Let’s face it, your Farmer is never going to be a powerhouse of damage or healing, but they’re actually quite good at supporting the team, so why not double down on this by sub classing the ultimate in supportive classes? Whilst this doesn’t support the instant death combo like our first choice, it’s certainly a nice way to increase the party contributions of the class. The former and by far our favourite choice for a sub class however, has to be the Harbinger. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the main event has to be it’s Binding Miasma, which combines with the Strange Seeds and Harvest Festival combo by reducing your opponents resistance to binds. Additionally, the Eroding and Stifling Miasma skills can make the difference in some long wars of attrition.
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Dungeon Farmer
Undoubtedly the ‘canon’ reason for bringing a Farmer with your team is to secure as much loot as possible, and to do this you’re going to be putting plenty of points into skills that secure this. It’s not impossible to bring one along in battle, if anything it’s actually quite an interesting challenge to basically take on the whole game with 4 battle units, but on the whole we have to recommend taking a full farming team instead. This will make the most of a variety of classes to maximise yields on every trip into a dungeon.
Key Class Skills
- Earth’s Bounty
- Harvestry
- Survival Wisdom
- Excavation / Godsend
- Nature’s Blessing / Double Crop
- Waste Not
As you might imagine, the Farmer’s skill list is replete with cash generating opportunities, so whilst we’ve listed our favourite five it’s best to simply experiment and see what you prefer. Harvestry, Excavation, Nature’s Blessing & Double Crop effectively speak for themselves, maximising what you receive from gathering spots and even generating gather items from exploration alone. Enough levels in Waste Not will ensure that every battle has a good chance of dropping additional loot, and Earth’s Bounty and Survival Wisdom will increase your EXP and restore HP/TP when gathering respectively.
Recommended Sub Classes
- Survivalist
- Medic
Possibly the most natural compliment to the Farmer is the Survivalist class. It has a variety of skills that compliment the base skill set, even stacking in the case of Nature’s Blessing. It’s main benefit tends to be Sorting Skill, which increases your inventory size and further increases your yield per trip, but don’t sleep on skills like Cautious Steps and Efficiency. Second to this choice is the Medic sub class, which can contribute by restoring HP after battle with Patch Up, and further increase enemy drop rates with Scavenge. Fair warning however: Farmer’s have a terrible Wisdom statistic, so you’re unlikely to put out much healing with the Medic’s arsenal of restoration spells.
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Categories: Etrian Odyssey Nexus