- Scientific magicians who manipulate the etheric energy of the stars. Highly valuable in battle.
- —In-Game Description, Etrian Odyssey III

The Zodiac is a class from Etrian Odyssey III that studies astrological magic of the ether and uses it to seal the fates of their enemies from a distance. To dedicate solely to their craft, which deals stellar amounts of damage when used correctly, they spare no thought for armor, relying on allies to shield them from harm. Zodiacs return for Etrian Odyssey Nexus as the sole representative of the elemental magic damage specialists of the series, bringing developments made by the others along with them.
Profile[]
Zodiacs are the resident offensive mage of this game, much like the Alchemist from the previous two games. With some of the lowest HP, STR, and VIT scores, they are best kept in the safety of the back line while they unleash strong elemental damage on the enemy formation. One of their unique niches that the other mages in the series don't possess is the ability to prevent and counterattack elemental attacks with their Prophecies, giving them a defensive function.
- Strengths: Very strong source of elemental damage. Incredibly potent when exploiting an enemy weakness. Large TP reserves.
- Weaknesses: Incredibly fragile, and struggles to do damage against enemies lacking an elemental weakness. Incompatible with most buffs, as most attack buffs augment physical damage.
Stat Progression[]
Does not include any stat bonuses from skills, equipment, Books, or Retirement.
- Main article: Zodiac/Stats#EO3
Level | HP | TP | STR | TEC | VIT | AGI | LUC |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 32 | 36 | 4 | 12 | 4 | 6 | 4 |
35 | 158 | 189 | 19 | 41 | 22 | 28 | 26 |
70 | 287 | 347 | 34 | 71 | 40 | 52 | 48 |
99 | 368 | 444 | 44 | 89 | 51 | 66 | 62 |
Skills[]
Skills are listed in the same order used in the game and do not necessarily unlock one after another. See the "Requires" column to see how to unlock a skill. If that cell has dashes in it, no other skill is needed to unlock it. Skills are normally maxed at level 10, but there are some exceptions where the level cap is 5 or even 1.
- Class Skills are passive benefits unique to the primary class.
- Mastery Skills are prerequisites for skills and equipment, along with a minor passive benefit.
- Passive Skills automatically grant bonuses or effects whenever conditions are met.
- Fire Skills, Ice Skills, and Volt Skills are elemental attacks/spells that depend on TEC for damage.
- Bash Skills deal bash damage.
- Special Skills encompass any ability not covered by another category.
- Search Skills are only used out-of-battle.
- Extra shows skill detail or any special bonuses that are gained at certain levels.
Skill | Description | Type | Requires | Extra |
---|---|---|---|---|
Ether Mastery | Zodiac skill that raises all elemental affinity attacks. | Class | ----- | |
Fire Mastery | Prerequisite for fire skills that increases fire attack damage. | Mastery | ----- | |
Ice Mastery | Prerequisite for ice skills that increases ice attack damage. | Mastery | ----- | |
Volt Mastery | Prerequisite for volt skills that increases volt attack damage. | Mastery | ----- | |
Singularity | Damage increases when attacking an enemy's elemental weakness. | Passive | Dark Ether Lv5 | Max Lv5 |
Etheric Return | Regain TP each time you defeat an enemy. | Passive | Etheric Charge Lv5 Singularity Lv5 |
Max Lv5 |
Fire Star | Astrological flame does fire damage to one enemy. | Fire | Fire Mastery Lv1 | |
Binary Fire | Astrology calls forth flames that do fire damage to all enemies. | Fire Mastery Lv5 | ||
Fire Prophecy | Prevent fire attacks from an enemy and counter with your own flame. | Fire Star Lv5 Binary Fire Lv5 |
Max Lv5 | |
Ice Star | Astrological glaciers do ice damage to one enemy. | Ice | Ice Mastery Lv1 | |
Binary Ice | Astrology calls forth an ice spear that damages all enemies with ice. | Ice Mastery Lv5 | ||
Ice Prophecy | Prevent ice attacks from an enemy and counter with your own ice. | Ice Star Lv5 Binary Ice Lv5 |
Max Lv5 | |
Volt Star | Astrological lightning does volt damage to one enemy. | Volt | Volt Mastery Lv1 | |
Binary Thunder | Astrology calls forth lightning for volt damage to all enemies. | Volt Mastery Lv5 | ||
Volt Prophecy | Prevent volt attacks from an enemy and counter with your own. | Volt Star Lv5 Binary Thunder Lv5 |
Max Lv5 | |
Meteor | Call down meteors to deal strike damage to random enemies. | Bash | Horoscope Lv5 Etheric Return Lv3 |
Lv3, 5, 7 and 9 increase number of hits. |
Etheric Charge | Concentrate to increase damage with elemental attacks. | Special | Dark Ether Lv5 | Max Lv5. Does not affect Meteor. |
Dark Ether | One row of allies will be able to use skills at no TP cost. | Special | ----- | Max Lv5 |
Horoscope | Reveals the location of nearby FOEs for a limited time. | Search | ----- | Max Lv5 |
Skill Breakdown[]
Zodiacs generally do one thing but they're very good at it - rain elemental damage on their enemies. However, getting a good mastery over all three elements can prove to be skill point intensive, especially when you have to divide your points between individual elemental Mastery skills. Attaining single points in each of Fire Star, Ice Star and Volt Star is imperative for the early game, and by the midgame, expect to have at least one point in each of Binary Fire, Binary Ice, and Binary Volt. Further investment past this first point is a questionable decision unless you're aiming for the Prophecy skills, because the TP cost can easily outscale the damage bonus increments.
A lot of skill points will end up going into ways to increase the Zodiac's overall damage. Ether Mastery is a given as it augments all three types of elemental damage, capping at a +25% unconditional damage boost. Singularity is a staple as it further increases the amount of damage you deal when striking an enemy weakness. Etheric Charge can triple the strength of an elemental skill, and can even work on elemental Limit Skills. Etheric Return gets you some TP back to aid in sustainability if you get the last hit, but it merely caps out at 5TP per kill which can be rather inefficient given the high costs of the Zodiac's stars.
Meteor is the Zodiac's ultimate skill, capable of dealing a massive amount of damage, but because it inflicts pure Bash damage, it doesn't benefit off any of Zodiac's passives (or even Etheric Charge) unless it's striking an enemy who happens to be weak to Bash. However, it does benefit off physical attack buffs like Attack Order.
You may notice the Zodiac's usefulness drop off when there are enemies with no weakness to exploit. This is where their support skill can help the rest of the party keep up. Dark Ether lets a line of party members use their skills at no cost for the turn, and when it lets your lower-TP beaters stay in the game you can get more mileage out of them.
The Prophecy skills work very similar to the Anti-element skills from the Hoplite, except it only prevents attacks from a single target and threatens to counterattack if successful. Prophecy skills can be vital to saving the party from a deadly elemental attack you know is coming, but when faced against multiple enemies, a Hoplite's Anti-element skills are better.
Subclassing[]
Subclasses for Zodiac[]
- Gladiator: For Meteor-based builds. Charge and Berserker Vow can crank the Meteor damage to insane levels, provided you protect your vulnerable Zodiac from harm.
- Arbalist: For elemental Zodiacs; they will be able to equip Crossbows to do reasonable Pierce damage from the back row as their normal attack, but while they can use the elemental Barrage skills as area-hitters, their pitiful Strength makes a Barrage less effective than a Binary Star. Double Action also gives the ability to milk extra damage off your single-target Stars.
- Buccaneer: The Limit Boost skill lets you fill up the Limit Gauge a lot faster, allowing a Zodiac to pump out Ether-Charged elemental Limits more often, decimating random encounters and even crushing FOEs and bosses when done well. For other situations, Eagle Eye applies a defense debuff when you're against a strong enemy. Great for the mid-game since you don't need too many skill points for them to reach fruition.
- Monk: With the highest TEC stat among playable classes, Zodiacs are sufficiently strong off-healers even though they lack the Monk's Class skill.
- Shogun: The Endure passive helps offset the Zodiac's frailty, and Bloody Lance synergizes with the Zodiac's Binary Stars to give them a lasting elemental damage boost in boss fights that summon reinforcements. Fore Honor is one of the few buffs that actually increases the Zodiac's elemental (even almighty!) damage and gives them the speed to outpace most enemies, but comes at the cost of making the Zodiac even more frail.
Zodiac as Subclass[]
Although you lose out on Ether Mastery which would otherwise be a universal elemental damage boost, the individual Element Mastery passives and Singularity can augment the amount of damage your elemental attacks do when striking weaknesses.
- Arbalist: Singularity is sought after to make the most of Elemental Barrages, and Etheric Return gives TP back whenever you score kills. Great for clearing trash mobs, but for boss fights a Gladiator subclass provides a greater physical damage boost.
- Ninja: Their class skill Keburi no Sue can reduce the cost of their skills, which works wonders with Dark Ether. At max level that skill costs 10TP, and with the Ninja class skill discount it drops to 1, letting your team deploy their most expensive skills for almost no net cost. A powerful tool up to the late- to postgame.
- Monk: With points in Fire Up, Singularity, and Etheric Charge, the Monk's Breakfire Fist will do considerable damage, and they can still use their good Tec stat to hit with other elemental Stars for ice and volt damage.
External Links[]
- Skill Simulator Guide, leading to the Simulator itself.
- Game data reference
Profile[]
Of all the offensive mage classes in the series, the Zodiacs are the only ones to answer the call to Maginia. Their elemental spellcasting has been melded with the techniques of their Runemaster and Warlock cousins; now their basic Star skills can hit more than just a single enemy, they can use two different Charge skills that adapt their spells to a wide range of situations, the Prophecies are changed into charge skills, and they have improved manipulation of their monstrous TP reserves.
- Strengths: The most powerful source of elemental damage in the game, fed by the highest max TP.
- Weaknesses: Incredibly fragile. Best damage output tends to need setup and prediction.
- Force Boost - Divination: For 3 turns, the Zodiac's Astrology skills are stronger, and return half their TP costs on use.
- Force Break - Astrosign: Hybrid fire/ice/volt attack to all enemies, and makes the entire party's skills cost nothing for the turn.
Stat Progression[]
- Main article: Zodiac/Stats#EON
Level | HP | TP | STR | INT | VIT | WIS | AGI | LUC |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 43 | 58 | 7 | 20 | 8 | 14 | 13 | 14 |
30 | 83 | 116 | 16 | 44 | 18 | 31 | 28 | 31 |
70 | 168 | 239 | 34 | 93 | 39 | 66 | 61 | 66 |
99 | 250 | 358 | 51 | 142 | 60 | 100 | 92 | 100 |
130 | 361 | 520 | 75 | 207 | 88 | 146 | 134 | 147 |
Skills[]
Skill Breakdown[]
A fair discussion of Zodiac in Nexus can't really be done without mentioning its direct counterparts from the other games. Why Zodiac? Warlock had the most developed and nuanced gameplay yet. Perhaps it was a popularity contest, or whichever has the most interesting theme. There's a good case that Zodiac's gameplay matches its theme better than all the others. Regardless, Zodiac was chosen, and gets developments from Runemaster and Warlock funneled into it, but nothing about Alchemists from the Untolds makes any difference for Zodiac. Runemaster started the fire spell that splashes, the ice spell that pierces the lines, and the electricity spell that hits a whole line, each seen ever since. Runemaster's more advanced spells are all some flavor of single-target, random-target multi-hit, or full multi-target. Free Energy comes from them, and Anti-Ether comes from Runic Shield. From Warlock, Etheric Gleam and Ether Shot are almost 1-to-1 copies. More importantly, Warlock standardized the use of charge skills to alter the way spells behave.
Rather than only boosting the Zodiac's next elemental attack, Etheric Charge as well as Multi-Strike Ether make new spells out of what the Zodiac already has. Rather than Runemaster's plethora of separate specialty spells, these charge skills enable more combinations of element types and targeting schemes with fewer skills. Fire, Ice , and Volt Star do the standard fire/splash, ice/pierce, and volt/line, but 5 more skills cover single-target, random-target multi-hit, and full multi-target in all 3 element types. The Charges are best used against solitary FOEs and bosses, but Etheric Charge can also be used to specifically target one enemy's weakness when Singularity would otherwise be wasted hitting others without that weakness or are even resistant to the spell. Slightly more damage can be dealt for a hefty TP tax by charging the Binaries. That's not all; the charge skills are even better when used on Ether Shot and Meteor. You can double down on one very TP-efficient single-target strike, double down on absurdly many random hits, or mix them up for other purposes. Let's not forget that Ether Shot can deal cut and pierce damage. Daggers are best for cut, and either a bow or rapier is best for pierce.
On the topic of charge skills, the Prophecies have been reworked to also be charge skills. After a successful prediction, the Zodiac can choose with what they would like to counterattack, but doing so will occupy the whole next turn, whereas previously the whole process finished within a single turn. This means if continuous protection is needed, no counterattack can be done, but it deals extra damage so it can destroy weaker monsters outright.
For mages, TP is everything. They are useless without it. In The Drowned City Zodiac just simply had a lot of it, and wanted to take down enemies with as few spells as possible to cut costs, such as charging the Limit Skills. In Nexus, the way TP recovery skills scale with max TP makes TP Up way more valuable. Etheric Return is actually worth bothering with now. By level 99, a Zodiac can have around 465 TP, regaining 12 TP from every kill, incentivizing a mini-game of sustaining the Zodiac's TP by dealing the fatal blows. Etheric Boon rewards the Zodiac for not minimizing costs, putting their deep TP pool to use. The Force Boost Divination makes everything easier, whether just skating by or putting on the pressure. Its TP refund synergizes with Free Energy and Etheric Boon, refunding free TP in the case of Free Energy, and getting the full bonus damage in the case of Etheric Boon, each as if the full amount was spent. Unfortunately, Etheric Boon and Free Energy conflict with one another. All these measures support Dark Ether, but the spell itself is massively nerfed.
Making the most of Etheric Return takes prediction, calculation, and precision, but it gets easier the more damage the Zodiac funnels into individual attack spells. Use Etheric Gleam and/or a charge skill while others of the party whittle down targets, then unleash a giant spell that exploits Singularity with Divination thrown in sometimes. Obliterating one or multiple enemies makes any amount of TP spent on that spell worth it. If you are not combining together various aspects of Zodiac's skillset, you may be surprised to find their damage output falling behind the other two classes that can do INT-based damage, Sovereign and Arcanist. Zodiac's specialty is leveraging their expansive TP pool to selectively target individual monsters' weaknesses at the proper time.
Subclassing[]
Subclass for Zodiac[]
Zodiac is one of those classes with a tightly wound skillset, so not all that many subclasses help them with their main job. Having the most TP in the game makes Zodiacs good at support skills, but despite incredible TP reserves Zodiac's own Wisdom stat is pretty average, holding back healing skills.
- Protector has several skills the Zodiac can use outside of harm's way, and others that help keep the squishy Zodiac alive. Guard skills work fine at half rank, while Recovery Guard also lets them remove their own head binds, and the elemental Wall skills cost much less TP than the Zodiac's Prophecies for when you want to save TP.
- War Magus helps a Zodiac support the party until something gets in range to kill. War Edge Master is the main draw since it boosts Zodiac's spells when wielding a staff, and also boosts TP when off-hand wielding a sword. Way more accessible than Medic's Staff Mastery.
- Gunner has the only other copy of TP Up, the best TP-boosting passive. Act Quick acts like Warlock's Abating Chant to diversify Zodiac's TP economy. They get several back line support skills, and for spell damage Multi-Shot works on everything to help secure last hits and anything charged by Etheric Charge except Meteor can trigger Penetrator.
- Sovereign is worthwhile if there is another Sovereign in the party that does the buffing. Element Bomb I is actually stronger than the Binaries before boosts like Divination, not to mention far more TP-efficient and also benefits from Singularity. Royal Dignity along with a shield is good padding in case the Zodiac gets hit.
- Shogun helps Zodiac get more out of last hits on top of Etheric Return with Bloody Lance, and Execution gives a chance to smooth over miscalculations. Most of Zodiac's spells can hit multiple times per turn, but Meteor charged by Multi-Strike Ether is guaranteed to hit Peerless Demon's max bonus cap every time.
- Landsknecht gives some surprisingly good skills for Zodiac despite a general physical focus. Single Devotion improves almost all their attack spells, and Vanguard gives a nice speed boost to snipe weaknesses quickly. A separate Landsknecht is a strong support for a Zodiac, holding the front line and acting fast to set up targets, as well as boosting the Zodiac's damage with Proficiency and Guard Break.
- Imperials are the sole possessors of Element Boost. Absorber returns a nice 4 TP when striking weaknesses, which should be happening often.
Zodiac as Subclass[]
As the sole attack spell specialist, it's understandable to expect Zodiac to be the go-to for INT-based damage. It can be, but simply spamming the same attack spell continuously is a bad plan even for a main Zodiac. Multipliers like Etheric Gleam and Etheric Charge should also be used, otherwise Sovereigns and Arcanists are better served by their own magic attacks. With that said, Singularity is good for anyone with a variety of damage types, and who would say no to Free Energy? The Prophecy skills provide immunity from an elemental attack, which Protector's Walls do not, but care must be taken to ensure that the Prophecy takes place before the target gets to move.
- Medic has only debuffs and head binds to contribute when stuck in the back line without any healing to do, but with Ether Shot and the Stars they can do proper damage. Etheric Boon boosts repeated use of Heavy Strike through its ridiculous TP cost.
- Ronin have access to all 6 element types with just their Katana, and can easily get last hits.
- Sovereign boasts the second highest TP in the game for Etheric Boon to burn. Although Element Bombs are more efficient and also benefit from Singularity, the Stars and Binaries allow a Sovereign to continue attacking when the Arms would be better left on allies.
- Ninja has unusually high INT for a class with no INT-based attacks, and daggers supply more magic attack than physical attack. Their TP economy is nearly the opposite from a main Zodiac, but low-level Zodiac skills don't cost all that much TP.
- Imperials can spend an unbelievable amount of TP on Charge Edge and Drive attacks, benefiting greatly from Etheric Boon. However, with max TP very nearly half that of Zodiac for the lowest in the game, TP Up doesn't do much good, though getting lucky with Free Energy sidesteps the issue. Boosting damage is the only reliable choice, so don't forget Singularity.
External Links[]
Gallery[]
v · t · eEtrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City |
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Info Monsters • Weapons • Armor • Accessories • Consumables • Items • Quests • Missions • Subclass • Seafaring • Limit Skill
Waterfall Wood • Undersea Grotto • Molten Caves • Abyssal Shrine • Porcelain Forest • Cyclopean Haunt
Sovereign • Gladiator • Hoplite • Buccaneer • Ninja • Monk • Zodiac • Wildling • Arbalist • Farmer • Shogun • Yggdroid |
v · t · eEtrian Odyssey Nexus |
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Info Missions • Quests • Weapons • Armor • Accessories • Items • Materials • Monsters • Locations • Force • Subclass
Protector • Medic • Survivalist • Ronin • Gunner • War Magus • Highlander • Sovereign • Ninja • ZodiacFarmer • Shogun • Landsknecht • Nightseeker • Arcanist • Imperial • Harbinger • Pugilist • Hero |