Class of Heroes (2): Solo Run, interrupted

You didn’t expect less from me, did you?

Let’s be honest: this time, I didn’t even pretend to consider a classic party run and went straight for the solo option. The idea of micromanaging a team of six was simply unbearable; and if I had to reduce the number of party members, I might as well do it with full force and scale down my team to a one-man unit right away. As a matter of fact, I was very eager to tackle a solo run and see for myself if Class of Heroes was playable at all with a single character: given the many reviewers’ comments about the supposed difficulty of the game, it seemed to be a thrilling challenge fit for my fearless gamer’s heart. 

A bumpy ride

And so, I dove into that challenge with gusto. I chose a Felpier as my one and only, mostly due to the fact that Felpiers are one of the best-rounded races in Class, which makes them perfectly fit for a solo endeavour; and their cat-like features, complemented with a fitting haughty air, certainly made them even more endearing to me. I then committed my first huge mistake, unbeknownst to me: I chose Warrior as my class, despite the fact that I had enough Bonus Points to select any of the available classes. My reasoning was that I would get the opportunity to change classes later in the games and that a basic class such as Warrior was better fit for my first steps into the game. Little did I know that changing classes would turn out to be so cumbersome, and that Warriors couldn’t learn that priceless Levitas spell that was so important in the late stages of the game. 

I already explained how bothersome the class change process was in my first post about Class, but it’s now time to use data lifted from my solo run to illustrate that point. One of the main issues with class change is how unfit the random encounter rate is for level-grinding, as my experience shows abundantly: in thirty hours of gameplay with a single character and without running away from any field battle, I reached Lv. 31 only. Now that’s food for thought, isn’t it? This reveals how excruciatingly hard it is to level up in that game, and by extension how impossibly tedious it can be to change classes during the course of your adventure. 

Of course, class change was not on my mind in the early stages; I had other things to think of, like staying alive and gleaning enough money to upgrade my pitifully weak equipment. I resorted to various tactics to reach that goal, from the most straightforward to the most unsavoury, on which I’ll expand later; and after a bit of sweating and trudging, I could purchase a brand-new Talwar that suddenly made all things fighting much smoother. That’s not to say that my run became a walk in the park: if the game was not as excruciatingly hard as I had expected and read about, it still tested my determination on a regular basis by throwing nasty hindrances at me. The most prominent one was undoubtedly the occasional presence of floors requiring the Levitation ability to be crossed; since I couldn’t perform the deed, I was forced to backtrack, exit the Labyrinth and enter it again in order to reset the floor layout and get a different one with no Levitation-only floors. Other minor hindrances included locked doors that would only open after a couple of attempts, trapped chests that would poison or hurt me and turn out to be empty, and enemies that were only sensitive to magic attacks that I couldn’t learn as a Warrior. All these hurdles were annoying and time-consuming, but they were manageable nonetheless with the right amount of patience; and as a whole, roaming the Labyrinths was a fun and engrossing experience that amply justified soldiering through a couple of obstructions. 

And thus I progressed through the game, slowly but surely, taking down bosses along the way and clearing one Labyrinth after the other, and it was all nice and fine; until I found myself facing the ultimate obstacle that would finally break my iron will. That obstacle, ladies and gentlemen, is a huge difficulty spike located at the end of the game, precisely as you reach the last three Labyrinths: Tohaus, Flake and Lark, the harbingers of doom. For one thing, Levitation-only floors are unescapable in these three: no matter how many times I exited and re-entered them, there were always a couple of floors that required Levitation to be crossed, if not all of them. This didn’t shatter my resolution, though: I was determined to clear that game for good and overcome any obstacle thrown at me.  Since I didn’t have the necessary materials to synthesize the equipment that would allow me to Levitate, the only option was a class change; however, that meant losing half of my heard-earned HP, which I loathed to do. I thus resorted to a milder option: recruitment. I created a Wizard Felpier and levelled him up until he learnt the much-needed Levitas spell, which I then used to explore and cross these frustrating Levitation-only floors at long last. Apart from his sorcery talents, this last-minute ally was mostly useless: he could hardly fight and needed to be protected from deadly blows that would have taken him down in two hits—we’re talking about the last three Labyrinths of the game, after all. 

Despite the fact that I could Levitate at long last and thus progress through the last Labyrinths, and despite the fact that I stood virtually at End Game’s threshold, I still gave up in Tohaus after trudging through a couple of floors. The reason was quite simple: Tohaus, as well as Flake that I tried exploring in parallel, feature floors that are an absolute chore to explore. These floors bristle with warps tiles, hidden doors, fake magic keys and other annoying obstacles that are so numerous that they steal away all the pleasure taken in exploring. This, for me, was a deal-breaker: I didn’t mind dodging obstructions by the truckload, as long as it was entertaining; if this was not the case, then I was out. And since I couldn’t derive any pleasure from these last Labyrinths no matter how hard I tried, let alone progress efficiently through them, I gave up and put an end to my solo run. 

That’s not to say that I gave up entirely on Class of Heroes. I will certainly play it again sooner or later, putting my hard-earned experience to good use in order to progress faster and more efficiently. And since I’m mentioning this, here are a couple of useful tricks for a smooth run, be it a solo one or a classic party one. Enjoy!

Tips and tricks for an easy roam

—I think I have made that point abundantly clear by now, but it cannot hurt to repeat it one more time: your whole party must be able to Levitate, regardless of how many members it comprises. If a single one of your party members cannot perform the deed for whatever reason, you will be stuck all the same, so be careful. The three races that possess the inner ability to Levitate, i.e. Sprites, Erdgeits and Celestians, are not the best-fitted ones for a solo endeavour, nor are they fit to constitute a full party; and since the equipment that allows characters to Levitate is hard to synthesize, the easiest way is to choose a class that can learn Levitas for at least one of your party members. This precious spell only needs to be cast once, and voilà! Your whole party will start Levitating and will keep doing so as long as you’re on the same floor. (I cannot remember if the effect endures when you warp to the next floor—sorry about that.) The classes that can learn Levitas for sure are Wizard and Cleric; since this is a Black Magic spell, it may well be also performed by advanced classes that can learn Black Magic such as Alchemist or Samurai, but I cannot assert this with absolute certainty. 

—Money can be a serious issue, especially in the early stages of the game. The classic, honest way to fill your purse is to glean some money by defeating foes and selling the loot you bring back from the Labyrinths; however, there is a quicker and dirtier way to get your hands on much-needed hard cash. The game offers you a dozen of ready-made students available for recruitment, and each of them holds 100 golds; 100 precious golds that you can easily collect from them by letting them join your party temporarily, going to the campus store, selecting “Sell” and using the “Combine Money” command to secure all the cash into your own character’s purse. (Make sure that said own character is conveniently selected as the money reaper: a golden halo must be visible around their portrait.) Once you’ve conveniently robbed these built-in students, you can also strip them of their gear and sell it for more cash before getting rid of them. After you’ve depleted these sources of riches, you can create as many students as you want and sell their gear before erasing them, reaping 50 golds for every student’s full equipment. The process can be a bit lengthy and cumbersome, but it provides you with a virtually unlimited source of precious cash. Sure, it’s a bit sleazy; but there’s really no reason to play fair with a game that forces you to spit out 100 golds per party member every time you want to sleep in your own dormitory. 

—And talking about the early stages of Class, I cannot recommend enough to use and abuse the instant save system when taking your first steps into the Labyrinths. Rescuing dead party members is an absolute chore, all the more so if your whole party was decimated; to avoid such annoyances and keep the benefits of your early grinding, the best trick is to save literally after every single encounter. It may be a bit tedious, but it’s still ten times better than having to recover the fast-rotting bodies of your party members from the depths of the Labyrinths. 

—Check out dutifully all the shops you encounter—including the ones that can be found at stopovers between Labyrinths—in order to look for Maps. All the maps of all the Labyrinths can be found in the many shops scattered across the game world, but many of them are exclusive to one or two shops only and cannot be found anywhere else. You don’t want to miss a much-needed map and need to backtrack in order to get it, oh no precious.

—Once again, this may be a no-brainer, but it’s still worth mentioning: all the floors have symmetrical layouts. The type of symmetry used is not axial symmetry, but rather point symmetry (also known as central symmetry) using the centre of the map as a reference point, which creates an inversion of sorts of the floor’s layout. At any rate, this means that once you’ve explored a portion of a floor, you can expect to find a similar reverse design on the other half of the said floor, which makes exploration a trifle easier. 

—The Inner Sanctums of the Labyrinths contain a couple of interesting features. First are the so-called “Magic Capsules” that can regenerate your whole party’s HP and MP and be used as many times as you want. Such capsules are the only opportunities to heal your party at will while inside the Labyrinths, and they must be located first and foremost; some of them are hidden in secret rooms, but they are always present. The Inner Sanctums also systematically contain an Evoke Ring—which, as the name abundantly implies, is the turf of Evokers only. Since my lone ranger was a Warrior, I couldn’t discover the purpose and effects of these rings and they were virtually useless to me, which was a trifle frustrating. (Why create a feature solely for the use of a single class? This is pure unfairness, that’s what it is. Oh, well.) And of course, Inner Sanctums also contain the entrance of the true “Labyrinths”: a single cut-throat floor which is home to all the bosses of the game. The distinction between these true Labyrinths and the ordinary ones can be a trifle confusing, given that they are all lumped under the generic “Labyrinth” term in the game’s dialogues and texts. However, the ordinary Labyrinths contain the world “Path” or “Road” in their names and are really nothing more than travelling ways—albeit particularly nasty ones, granted—while the genuine ones contain the world “Labyrinth” in their names: for instance, Kausa Path and Kausa Labyrinth. Genuine Labyrinths are also more often than not the place where various quests and major boss battles take place; if a mission requires you to reach the “X Labyrinth” in order to do something, it is undoubtedly referring to the true Labyrinth whose entrance is hidden in the Inner Sanctum of the corresponding Path. 

After this tip galore, it is now time for me to say goodbye to Class of Heroes. My solo run of that game was a pleasant experience that could have been even more pleasant if I had chosen a better class: next time I play Class, I will make sure that I select a major that can learn spells. I will also play the second instalment, which I own and which is deemed much better than its predecessor; and of course, I’m already licking my chops at the thought of playing the handful of other first-person dungeon crawlers that I own—the full Etrian Odyssey series, The Dark Spire, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, you name them. Hopefully they will prove to be even more delightful that Class of Heroes—which shouldn’t be too hard, as a matter of fact. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!