Etrian Odyssey is really hard

[A Black Falcon]

Also, don't be afraid to run away from battles and to use your Warp Pipes.

Running away is pretty effective, but warp pipes... unless I go the "make a whole party of survivalists with all their points in Chop to take advantage of the resource point near the enterance of the first floor" method, which seems to me would be kind of cheating (RPGs are about making one party, not several...), there's no way I'd come up with the money to afford a 100 gold (or whatever the money is called) item for every time I go in... and then you still need to fight your way back DOWN, because the continue points are very few and far between (what is it, every five floors in a 30 floor dungeon?), and the random monsters are not exactly easy to say the least... just surviving the normal baddies is tough enough, forgetting the FOEs (Ragelopes = HARD!; random monster versions of that enemy (forget their name) = "can almost kill you in one hit".). And this is just on floor 2.

Oh yes, my party is DL MAB (I want a Hexer, but that's not happening anytime soon to say the least...). Why a bard... uh, I don't know... it seems alright. Four of the names are from my Guild Wars or Icewind Dale II characters... only one of those five actually is new. :) I made a few other characters too, to have one from each class, but I haven't used the others yet.

...Warp Pipes? What is this, Paper Mario?

An item which transports you back to town. It's not like a Diablo town portal scroll, though; it brings you to town, but not back to where you came from after you're done...