Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[Haplo]

Insect Lords or Queen Bees? So you've made it to the heart of the forest. This is an exception regarding the difficulty, you won't find mobs that difficult elsewhere till almost end game.
Ninjas work both in front row and back row. Of course front row is a bit stronger damage wise. Also I think his auto-hide ability makes him invulnerable to attacks, what can prevent enemies from reaching your back row after destroying the front row.

Level 13 class changing relates to the level when base caster classes (mage, cleric, alchemist) learn spells from all 7 spell circles. After class change they will keep the access to those spell circles, but the number of spell slots from each circle will be limited to 3 (or increased to 3, if they didn't have 3 slots from highest known spell circles before).

But if you don't care about spells known, you can class change anytime your characters meet the attribute requirements of the new class.

Summoner is one such case, he gains new slots much slower then the base casters, so just teach him 3-5 summoning circles and change, if your so inclined. Certainly wouldn't wait for him to know all 7 circles, since base game would be almost over by then. I think I multiclassed mine early, with 3 summoning circles known.

Alchemist->Hunter is unusual, because he will keep all known circles (like all multiclasses), but also all known spell slots on each circle (up to 9 slots per circle). Note he will not increase number of slots, like other multiclasses would (so no 1 circle 7 slot -> 3 circle 7 slots). But still, it's quite a large benefit.

Also note that classes which share the same spellcasting system, do not loose any slots either. So going Cleric->Lord/Valkyrie, Mage->Samurai/Bard (or the other way around), also Mage/Cleric->Bishop, you won't loose any spell slots (but also won't gain new ones until the new class would gain them naturally). I'd say this is particularly useful for Bishop training, as he learns new spells at a glacial pace. I think it takes him 2 times (or was it 4x?) as much xp to learn all spells, as it would take to learn all spells on Mage and Cleric classes combined.

Please realize that trough multiclassing you gain some versatility, but your combat prowess suffers. A "pure" character from higher level will have much better hit chances and a much larger number of attacks. I think also better defenses, because ability/status success is largely level based. Also you miss/delay the High Mastery abilities (level 26 for base classes, 32 for advanced, 34 for expert, or some such), very potent in some cases.
That's why I recommend not to muliclass when not needed and when you really want to, not to delay it much. Mainly muticlass casters/utility characters. Not your heavy-hitters.
I loved my Alchemist->Hunter, but he was constantly significantly worse in attack accuracy then my Samurai, Brawler or Valkyrie.

 

[Miner 2049er]

Your answer is very much appreciated. I think I'll wait for the 4th summoning slot before class changing the summoner.
What are your favorite contracted monsters ? I can't imagine much more usefulness of what a dryad or priestess can bring to the table. Oh, and does it matter from what summoning circle I'm contracting ? I mean, should I contract high level monsters to the highest summoning circle or doesn't it really matter.

I see Orignal as a test run for Gothic. Make mistakes and not optimal characters and live with them. That doesn't mean I want shitty characters, but not unlike D&D, when I know all tricks and encounters I tend to make characters that breeze through the game. The sweet spot between challenging and frustrating is what I'm looking for.

With my party being around lvl 11 I still feel like being in the early game. Around which level do your characters end up
and how much playtime does the game roughly take ? I can't imagaine this being a 30 hour game. At least not for the first time.

 

[Haplo]

For summoning purposes, the slot level DOESN'T make any difference.

In original I treated the summons mainly as useful support. I tended to prefer multi-action ones. I think there was some fox later on? Or phoenix, he dealt a lot of breath damage.
The end-game/post game monsters are very difficult to capture, so I didn't care to upgrade them often.

In Gothic they were much more important for me. Trough most post-game Gaia (a floor boss) was my No. 1 damage dealer. I tended to also like ninjas. Eventually most of my party consisted of monsters turned adventurers (it works differently in Gothic). Nue was a great multi-status elemental samurai (works well as a summon too). Whirlwind Efreet was an awesome brawler. Dragonfly a great decapitating and charming ninja. Don Mag was a great nuker mage (but I wouldn't use a pure mage if I were playing again). They were mostly immune/highly resistant to most status effects. Except Dragonfly, who had large status affliction chance instead.
Only my dwarf Valkyrie (innocent) and gnome Summoner (with knowledge of all spell schools) were original characters.

 

[Dorarnae]

I recommend using the medal of power for changing class in original, that way you don't lose your exp and can still equip innocent gear, it's only available in the post game though.

 

[Miner 2049er]

I brought Harmony to the tournament and she lost. My party won the fight then, but returning to Harmony she doesn't want to rejoin my party or continue the quest. She just says something like: "Guess who will be the next champion..."

What do I do with all the money ? Buy XP at the church to keep my benched Bishop up to snuff ?

When is it advised to start crafting ? Does this eat away the money ?

 

[aweigh]

Craft whenever you want. I recommend always having a Sheep's hair brush in someone's inventory so you can spot fixed-encounters.

 

[Dorarnae]

I brought Harmony to the tournament and she lost. My party won the fight then, but returning to Harmony she doesn't want to rejoin my party or continue the quest. She just says something like: "Guess who will be the next champion..."

What do I do with all the money ? Buy XP at the church to keep my benched Bishop up to snuff ?

When is it advised to start crafting ? Does this eat away the money ?

I use money to re-buy level lost by monster with drain attack.
and I use it too in case my party is wiped, so I can buy the corpse back to town.

about harmony, you probably completed the quest, it was just for getting the ticket to participate. You can try to beat your record multiple time, eventually they can give you a special wand if I remember right.

crafting doesn't require money, except for entering the lab til you complete the quest to make it free. all you need is material with high AP.

 

[aweigh]

yep, you get the rabbit wand. it's p. good for the early game.

 

[Miner 2049er]

Thank you guys and yes, the Harmony quest is resolved. Rabbit wand, here I come.

 

[Miner 2049er]

Does, by chance, anybody know, how to use custom portraits for the PSP emulator (PPSSPP ?) version. How big and what format the portraits need to be and in which folder they have to be placed ?

 

[Dorarnae]

for faceload it should be 48x48 bmp or png
for styleload its 272x272(256 colors) bmp or png

on the psp it had to be in the Picture folder(if you dont have one, create it).
The place to make the PICTURE folder is the same place as PSP etc. place. Not in the PSP folder . this is from the wiki and its true....
https://translate.google.ca/transla...//spoiler2.sakura.ne.jp/srv2/elg/&prev=search

as for how to do it on emulator, I have no idea.

 

[Miner 2049er]

I have tried pasting the PICTURE folder in every folder and sub folders without success. Thank you anyway.

 

[aweigh]

you can also use the PPSSPP emulator's built-in texture replacement function to replace game textures. it's easy to use and it works, i remember playing through elminage 2 (jap) using the english battle and main menu textures from the elminage: original PSP release.

 

[Miner 2049er]

Good to know. You never know when it comes in handy.

 

[Miner 2049er]

Keeping my thief was definitely a good recommandation. Stealing a raging bow, lifting the curse and equipping it to the hunter felt very rewarding. Muwhahaha...

 

[Dorarnae]

Keeping my thief was definitely a good recommandation. Stealing a raging bow, lifting the curse and equipping it to the hunter felt very rewarding. Muwhahaha...

yeah stealing items in Original is very useful, quite a few items that are good, in particular if you run with a brawler.

 

[Haplo]

Yes, as I mentioned, particularly in the Heart of the Forest almost every mob seems to carry something useful. Brawler benefits the most, but there should be some nice weapons usable by the Thief too.

 

[BrotherFrank]

Never played either Elminage game and I'd like to give it a spin... Which one should I start with?
I like the sound of Elminage original having more natural maps (mazes 24/7 is just annoying) but Gothic has less random encounters (nothing kills my will to live faster then repeating battles every few steps against the same identical group of enemies over and over).
I don't know what the differences between them are otherwise.

For record, blobbers played so far:
-Wizardry 8: only actually completed it for the first time after multiple attempts a few months ago, is probably still my favorite blobber as i like the class/stats and overall progression system and love that you can see enemies coming instead of them being rng encounters, only negative for me is monsters level scaling which makes traveling along arnika road a real pain in the late game.
-Fall of dungeon guardians: Second favorite blobber after wizardry 8 so far, even though the diablo look itemization got annoying after a while (felt like i was constantly drowning in loot i would usually replace 10 mins later with only the secret treasures being worth a damn) i loved that there was options like reduced enemy spawns which made the pace of the game feel perfect for me. Oh and again, you can see enemies so no rng bs.
-Star crawlers: Love the sci fi setting of this and found the combat system fun on a first run (the games systems just ain't designed for a new game +), 3rd favorite blobber so far.
-Mary Skelter: Found combat stale so far (had no compulsion about putting it on easy and autoskipping the repetitive samey fights once my party is strong enough) and i want to murder the protag. But am charmed enough by the esthetics that i'll try and finish the game. Eventually.
-Grimrock 1/2: Tried these games and hated them. Found character progression and levelling unsatisfying. As i'm not big into mazes or traps which seemed to be what this blobber does best this wasn't the blobber for me.

 

[Matador]

I prefer Elminage Gothic, but you will have to endure the bad first dungeon. It's short, only 3 floors though,so it's not that bad.

After that, the game improves each new dungeon you clear.

Aweigh is the most knowledgeable about the franchise, but I agree with him that Gothic is the best blobber ever.

If you like wizardry 1-3,5 style you are lucky, it doesn't get better than this. If your taste is more akin to Wiz 6-8, there are better games for you.

If you haven't played Wiz 1 I would suggest you to play the SNES version on emulator to see if you like the gameplay. The game is simpler than Elminage, but it's short and holds up very well despite its age, due to great level design and solid mechanics.

For me it's a classic game that every RPG fan should play.

 

[BrotherFrank]

Best blobber ever? I really am intrigued. Can put up with a rough start if game picks up after.
Officially leaning towards gothic then.

I haven't tried wiz 1-5, only read about them through lps.
But wiz 8 was definitely my groove, feel free to hit me up with some recommendations.

Will give wiz 1 a try at some point if only to see what the game that started the whole genre is like.

 

[Jason Liang]

What is the argument that Elminage Gothic is superior to either Wiz 4 or Wiz 5?

 

[newtmonkey]

BrotherFrank
Elminage Original is a fine game to start with. The love here for Gothic is basically due to its difficulty and party composition/class changing/powergaming—in other words, it's mostly people who have played a ton of traditional Wiz games already and are looking for advanced stuff to play. (That's not to say it's a bad game, it's great.)

EO doesn't really have very many random encounters. The vast majority of encounters are on fixed spaces (in fact, you can craft an item early on that reveals encounter squares on your map).

It's also nonlinear, as you have access to several multilevel dungeons from the start and so you always have several options open to you if you get stuck at any point.

 

[aweigh]

E: Gothic is just Wizardry but with more everything, and executed to perfection. More races, more classes, more spells, more enemies, more stats, more attributes, more individual skills, more item crafting, more item enchantment, more summoning, etc, etc.

It's the Wizardry blueprint with a bunch of organic additions, and everything thoughtfully executed to near perfection and polished to a high sheen; the value you place on this achievement depends on how much you like Wizardry blueprint.

To Frank: do note that Wiz 8 is nothing like the rest of the games in the franchise. Well, very different anyway, although core elements remain in Wiz 8, like it being a blobber and having similar degrees of party compositing and building, so on and so forth.

 

[aweigh]

Oh, and I also recommend just playing Wiz 1-5 on either SNES or PSX. The first 3 in particular are very short games that can be done in 1 day once you've got everything mapped out.

...though it's not like I'm saying you should, just wanted to emphasize that it's not a huge endeavor. Wiz 4 and 5 are much, much longer however.

TLDR on version differences:

- SNES versions have beautiful 2D sprite art but are less accurate ports, specifically in the text script and puzzle departments.

- PSX versions have ugly polygonal graphics (albeit with a beautiful orchestral score) but are as close to a perfect port of the original releases as one will find, with accurate text scripts and all that.

 

[Jason Liang]

aweigh have you found a good way to play the FM Towns version of the Wizardry games Wizardry V? Those graphics are beautiful enough to tempt me to play IV and V again.

Note that SNES Wizardry V was released 7 years before the Legacy of Llyagem I-II-III collection, not after. It would be disappointing if that's the best Wizardry V available.