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I'm still alive!

Have you started in on Etrian Odyssey IV? What's your opinion of it if so.

Elminage!!! It's getting a US release for the PSP (and PSN)! Be still my little Wizardry heart!

Nothing happens that I'm aware of. I'm more or less starting to train my monsters on a rotation basis. I train them, freeze them, unfreeze a different one, train it, and when it gets frozen, I combine that first one with a neighbor's and start with it again, leaving the second one in the freezer. Doing so seems to give me a little variety, which is nice, and it also will eventually give my neighbors better monsters to combine with (especially if I add more monsters to the rotation, which I plan on doing).

You do have to keep a frozen monster, from what I can tell. I'm pretty sure I've seen my neighbor's monsters rotate in and out as they freeze and unfreeze them, and I definitely have plenty of neighbors who are highly enough ranked that they must have gone through numerous monsters, yet they have none available.

I haven't even bothered with FOE much in the second game, unless it was for a quest and/or inescapable. In the first one, I was always engaging them and testing my party. It's not really worth it now...

It'll be nice when I finally make it to the third. I look forward to FOE hunting again for experience points! Though a break may be needed after beating the second. It's been a while since I've played it now.

Ironically, the Mid-Summer Battles seem to have just ended, from what I can tell, so you may have missed your chance for Palm Fronds.

Yeah, the UI leaves quite a bit to be desired, since everything is hidden away in menus. You get used to it after a few days.

Basically, there are three types of battles: regular, duel, and tournament.

Regular ones are labeled as happening "Until XX:XX" for their time, meaning that you can join in whenever and they happen immediately (they are the ONLY battles like this). They're always against computer opponents. Lower ranks have more of these than higher ranks.

Duels are single battles against other players usually (sometimes it's an NPC). Like with adventures, you have to send your monster to these battles, meaning they are gone until the time of the battle, after which time you can review the results. Also, despite having a "recommended level", some players will hold their monsters back in rank so that they can win these and claim the rewards. You probably want to be 2-5 levels over the recommended level.

Tournaments are a set of four duels over the course of the day, with each tournament repeating on a weekly basis. As with duels, tournament battles come around regularly throughout the day. To win it, you need to join four battles in the tournament over the course of the day and win all four (or, if you lose and still have time left in the day, you can try to start the tournament over). You'll see overleveled monsters in tournaments, just like you will in Duels, so try to be 4-7 levels over.

There is currently a special event with these Mid-Summer Battles, so in addition to everything else, we also have battles that reward Palm Fronds (which can apparently be redeemed later for various Ripper-type monster discs). There are two Duel-type battles as part of this event. The lower-level one repeats every 3-4 hours and is against a level 5 NPC. The higher-level one repeats every 2 hours or so and is a Duel against players that tend to mostly be levels 12-15.

My general routine each day is:
1) Review results of any adventures/battles
2) Train
3) Do any regular battles that are available
4) Send monster to battle/adventure
5) Pet neighbors' monsters if I haven't already today

We had someone join us who never talked?

I have no recollection of this. The person I'm thinking of talked (too much, if you ask me, but don't tell her I said that ), but they were only in a one-off video since they don't join us for LPing typically, which is why they haven't shown up more. They'll probably show up again at some point, since she's a good friend of Smapy's.

I also saw your MMR note, so, regarding the game, I thought I'd point out that your monsters retire at the end, rather than dying, so you can still use them for breeding. Because their stat gains from training go pretty low when they're a Senior, that's when you should instead start sending them to Battle and go on Adventures, since they can succeed at those just fine (in fact, they're best equipped to handle them then, since they're fully training, meaning they'll fail/lose less often). Also, note that monsters don't start over at the lowest battle rank each time, but rather retain most of the rank from their parents, allowing you to mostly pick up where they left off. Later ranks take so many battles to advance that you might have to be battling more often than just when they're a Senior, however.

Also, make lots of neighbors, then combine your monsters with theirs. It saves you half the time to breed and train since you only have to bring one monster, and it also allows you to bring in some fresh monster types from their frozen ones. Not to mention that having more neighbors means having more training bonuses for your monsters each day. At the moment, my level 14-15 monsters, when bred, come back as level 11-12 monsters, usually. (I'm currently going for quantity of monsters, rather than quality, since I'm trying to breed something specific, at which point I'll switch to quality).

I haven't yet figured out what Fame does, but I assume it's good to have. Also, do the Mid-Summer Battles while they're here. They're easy battles for rewards that look to be pretty decent.

It's not W0lfganger. He's actually been in a few videos (one Horsez and one or two Azure Dreams), and I'm also not aware of him playing the game (though, since I only know him online, I don't really keep tabs on him). Plus, he's a "he", and I referred to a "she" who was in one of our videos, so that means it's someone else (in this case, someone we know in real life).

And that's fine. I'll accept it when I get home later tonight.