What happened?

[Ikarius]

So, I'm working my way through the beginning. I got the "Serial Murder Probe" mission, and went and started exploring the maps. Long story short, I ended up down on floor 25, and suddenly the monster encounters which had previously been trivial started blowing me up. I lost 3 party members to death in a single encounter. I managed to get back to the exit with 3 characters still alive, but I get to the medical center to recover the dead characters (only 20 gold each), and found that all of my 700+ gold was gone. Now I can't even rest to recover my HP.

What.... actually happened? Because I really don't know. Did the monsters steal my gold, or was it taken away, or what?

[Ikarius]

And why did the encounters suddenly start blowing me up when they'd been friggin trivial up to that point?

[The Weak]

It's been a while since I last played. I think Serial Murder Probe is the Mission before the Encounter Gauge is introduced? If I am incorrect and it is active during that Mission, you can lower it by running from battles. Another thing to check is if you have equipped Hachi's Workout Pack, which makes enemies harder or not. If you have, unequip it. If neither of those things apply, could you give a little more background information on what was killing you and how they were doing it? Were they outright one shotting your party members? Have you equipped any new armor since the game started? What classes are you working with and what rows do you have them in?

I do not know of any enemy that steals money in this game, so if you didn't buy anything or rest with your characters I am not sure how the money could be gone. I never ran into any bug that deleted money while I was playing.

[Ikarius]

Well, I suddenly started getting hit for ~25 HP a shot, when before, I'd been hit, it would be single digit damage if they hit me.

I figured out where all my GP went- it all got transferred into to development lab GP storage when I came back... I just hadn't realized it did that.

Now I've run into something new; I crafted a "Spy Blade +1", which is type "katana". But... I cannot seem to equip it on any of my characters. It's level 2, and my characters are all level two. I've got a couple of samurais, so I presume they should be able to equip it... but it simply does not show up when I go to "equip" for any of the characters; If I go to "development->strip->sub-disk", I see the "katana/lance" category lit, and I can move to it and see the weapon. But go to "status->items->equip" on any character, and the "katana/lance" category is grayed out, and I don't see the spy blade under "all" either. Any idea what I'm missing? I looked through the Squad Manual, but it doesnt really seem to talk about equipping items.

[The Weak]

Without knowing more details about your situation when it comes to damage intake, I suggest getting your characters better armor (Boosting can go a long way) and perhaps leveling them up on easier floors. You should have access to Identify Variant Levels at this point. Even if you completed the Mission once you can still use it again to see the average enemy levels for the floor you are currently on.

I'm pretty sure Spy Blade is an Assassin weapon. You can see what Blood Codes can equip it by finding the weapon in your items (not through the equipping option, since that will filter out equipment the character's Blood Code cannot equip) and looking at the abbreviations for the Blood Codes that can use it. The information is in one of the middle rows. The only way to equip weapons and armor that do not belong to a character's Blood Code is to equip a Blood Passcode, but you cannot get one until much later in the game.

EDIT: One thing to note, if you didn't know it already, is that your Max Unity Gauge will increase with use. Unity abilities can help you protect your party (Magic Shell) or kill enemies before they have a chance to move (Fast Code). The more Unity abilities you use, the more Max Unity Gauge you will have, which means you can use even more Unity abilities. The Max cap is 60.