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Elminage ORIGINAL - Priestess of Darkness and The Ring of the Gods

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aweigh

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ITT graphics whoring over wiz clones that have no animations :D
 
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aweigh

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ELMI-GOTHIC-CUT-CONTENT-LOCATIONS-PIC01.jpg


look at all those locations.

ELMI-GOTHIC-CUT-CONTENT-LOCATIONS-PIC03.jpg


looks like a visit to the Record Keeper had also been planned.
 
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aweigh

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There's a final pic I haven't posted yet with the concept villages/dungeon list, and it is wildly different from what made it into the game. They did get far enough to make the menu textures for the locations though, which may mean something? or not? those types of textures are extremely easy to whip up anyway... but it's curious that the files themselves actually made it inside the game data.

The E: Gothic master ITEMS file also has column dedicated to two (2) Villages that aren't in the game. I had always wondered what the names referred to, and finding the menu textures finally solved that mystery.

The columns were supposed to denote item availability in those village's shop(s), but in the E: Gothic ITEMS file they are blank.

Lastly, it is also very interesting the circumstances surrounding the Lead Project Director of Elminage Original (and 2 and 3) and his abrupt departure from Starfish studio. I was only able to find a brief interview in a japanese gaming blog and I had to read it using Google Translate, but basically he gave no answer as to why he left Starfish, and he did not comment on whether or not it had anything to do with the different direction E: Gothic went (important to note that E: Gothic is the only Elminage game where he wasn't the Lead Project Director)--

--he only talked about how it was simply time for him to go as he says (remember, Google Translate) that he no longer felt valued.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

aight, i was googling JP Amazin reviews of Original and Gothic to see If I could find japanese gamers commenting on DAISUKE KOMIYAMA (Lead on E: Original for the very first iteration of the game on PS2, all the way up till Elminage 3) and his departure from Starfish SD, but I couldn't find anything so I gave up.

Goolging the japanese kanji for Elminage + KOMIYAMA + quit/fired/Starfish yielded this quote from a JP gaming site's review of Gothic:

"Mr. Daisuke Komiyama served as the series director before the release of the third series work has left the company.The non- numbering work after that can not deny the feeling of being strayed."

I *think* what happened was the E: Gothic director, Tanaka Something (who, btw, had never previously done anything for Starfish or its contractors such as UFO and Ghostlight; E: Gothic was Tanaka's very first project for Starfish)--

--ahem, I find it fun to conjecture that Komiyama wanted to make Gothic another Elminage 4, something that can be inferred from the texture work done with the names of multiple Villages/Towns, and a menu texture completely done with a dungeon list similar to E: Original (and 2 and 3)... and that suddenly Tanaka said WHOA NELLY I WANT TO MAKE L33T HARD-CORE WIZARDRY GAME YOU ARE OLD NEWS KOMIYAMA IT IS TIME TO RECAPTURE DUNGEON FEEL OF MAYBE NEVER FIND EXIT!!!

Cue japanese-style drama (i.e. no one does anything overtly dramatic), and then Komiyama decided to leave UFO/Starfish SD because he felt pushed aside.

Pure conjecture but fun!
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Interesting find, aweigh.

I've always though that E:Gothic, while excelling as a pure dungeon crawler is missing a little bit of... polish, story. Some brackets that would help set the adventure up.
Perhaps that is what was cut.
The very first dungeon you visit is a "cave", a confusing maze with lots of corridors and a zillion doors (in cave corridors?), but without any clear theme. The next 2 dungeons are nothing amazing either. Fortunately it does get better later on, as most dungeons have distinct themes, elemental, diabolical, haunted, tomb or other. So they become pretty cool starting with the Degus Gila Ice cave, Hastrana Air cave (guess my favorite, 6 interconnected levels are really a huge navigational challenge, particularly before Diomente) and Afun Zar Light cave.

Also some small details that were present in E:Original are missing in Gothic, such as pretty much any armor for the Brawlers. Guess they are expected to fight naked in Gothic (with accessories). Or pretty much any Bishop equipment. Or most equipment for fairies. Those might be balancing changes... but they could have left/put SOMETHING.
And of course the most painful omission: item graphics. They really add a lot of flavor in E:Original.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
In Original I have mostly cleared the Kraidia caves... was trolled to the "no entry zone", struggled a bit to get to the center, spent a long time looking for some switch I might have missed. Finally passed, checked online and was dissapointed to learn that you need to trigger an event later (after 2 rings) to unlock the door. That was a waste of time.
Beat the Mirror Marsh, thought it was pretty cool, if not really difficult. Also explored most of the Maura Forest. The mobs in the Heart of the Forest kick my ass though. Maybe now that I got a few more levels, need to try again.

My Alchemist changed to Hunter. Level 11 now. With only one Alchemy level 7 slot, for now. Wonder if he'll maybe grow to 3 slots after Hunter level 15. Even worse, Protectorate has not came back yet. Again, wonder if it ever will past level 13. Using the Longbow for now.
My fairy Mage now also has 3 Summon slots and is a level 12 Alchemist. Will soon turn her to a Cleric, to finally settle for Bishop. I'm gathering a ton of junk and item slots are VERY limited so I'm really missing the Bishop. And I've found a sweet Flame Rod for her.

Found some Aozasa Katanas for my Samurai (+10 to-hit? nice!). And an Innocent Sword. 7 base attacks? Sweet! Guess I won't be using that 24% Paralysis boosted two-handed Helm Splitter.
Brawler is still using the starter bandages. Would be time for an upgrade, but I'm not finding much. Hopefully Thief can improve things... but Mastery is still far away.
Valkyrie was using the Flamberge, then the Scimitar - > Innocent Sword + Bewitching Dagger combo, after found a Longsword +1 gave the Innocent Sword to Samurai and started using the Longsword (Samurais can't use it). Haven't really found any worthwhile spears yet. In Gothic the spears were often my best weapons, unlike here... so far.
Thief... still using the boomerang. But mostly setting things on fire with the Flamberge.
 

Dorarnae

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In Original I have mostly cleared the Kraidia caves... was trolled to the "no entry zone", struggled a bit to get to the center, spent a long time looking for some switch I might have missed. Finally passed, checked online and was dissapointed to learn that you need to trigger an event later (after 2 rings) to unlock the door. That was a waste of time.
Beat the Mirror Marsh, thought it was pretty cool, if not really difficult. Also explored most of the Maura Forest. The mobs in the Heart of the Forest kick my ass though. Maybe now that I got a few more levels, need to try again.

My Alchemist changed to Hunter. Level 11 now. With only one Alchemy level 7 slot, for now. Wonder if he'll maybe grow to 3 slots after Hunter level 15. Even worse, Protectorate has not came back yet. Again, wonder if it ever will past level 13. Using the Longbow for now.
My fairy Mage now also has 3 Summon slots and is a level 12 Alchemist. Will soon turn her to a Cleric, to finally settle for Bishop. I'm gathering a ton of junk and item slots are VERY limited so I'm really missing the Bishop. And I've found a sweet Flame Rod for her.

Found some Aozasa Katanas for my Samurai (+10 to-hit? nice!). And an Innocent Sword. 7 base attacks? Sweet! Guess I won't be using that 24% Paralysis boosted two-handed Helm Splitter.
Brawler is still using the starter bandages. Would be time for an upgrade, but I'm not finding much. Hopefully Thief can improve things... but Mastery is still far away.
Valkyrie was using the Flamberge, then the Scimitar - > Innocent Sword + Bewitching Dagger combo, after found a Longsword +1 gave the Innocent Sword to Samurai and started using the Longsword (Samurais can't use it). Haven't really found any worthwhile spears yet. In Gothic the spears were often my best weapons, unlike here... so far.
Thief... still using the boomerang. But mostly setting things on fire with the Flamberge.

don't worry, valkyrie have the best weapon against god type ennemies. you can steal a spear from a boss that has x10 to god type. it's insane hehe.
their other spear at the end are pretty good too.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Neat, thanks.
Found the Red Slippers and perhaps... slipped. Got the idea that it will be a nice shortcut for my multiclassing fairy caster (mage/summoner/alchemist), got the last xp needed for her to level to 13 as Alchemist and used the slippers. Sure enough, after ressurection, a new level 13 Cleric. BUT only a single level 1 spell known (with 9 slots). Next level 14, no new spells learned, still only level 1 spell, 9 slots. Plus attributes did reset to racial minimums, like with regular multiclassing, so it will be a long and bumpy road to reach 15 Int & Piety needed for the planned final Bishop multiclass (or was it 14?).
If I boost Int & Piety at every level-up from now, reaching 15 at level 19 and then switch to Bishop, I wonder if Bishop could "open" the Cleric spell slots, which are locked by having 0 spells known of that level. Maybe, but I probably wouldn't have any easy/reliable way to learn those spells. And Bishop is an extremely slooow learner.

Perhaps I should simply reset her to Cleric level 1, 12 Piety should be easier to get. And the distance between level 1 and 13 should be significantly easier to cross then levels 16 -> ? (20? 24?, don't know when I could learn all spells, it's supposedly also Luck based).

Eh, I really want the Bishop, I'm getting flooded with junk and I really miss the Mysterious Bag EX Skill.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Yeah, so obviously you can't class change your Cleric... into Cleric *facepalm*

So I had to get some extra Int and revert to Mage to get a few level ups and stats, to become Cleric again, reach level 13 and then my fairiy's journey was finally complete, when she became a bishop. Good thing she had the Chimera summon with 3 actions per round. That along with her Flaming Rod made soloing some easy mobs from Kraidia monster generator fast and simple.

Good thing, as Identifying items on-the-fly is really important in Original. At Garden of Light 3rd floor found some more nice gear: Chimera Dagger, Lightning Swords, Beastbone Blade, Fanged Whip (not that great, I guess... but expensive), platinium slippers. Really need to upgrade my Hunter and Brawler weapons though. They are still using starter gear. The Thief also could use something better then the Boomerang now. Although he's still trying to fry enemies with the Flamberge most of the time.
Hope they don't have to wait till I'm able to steal enemy gear. Although that's only 5 levels away now.

So more about differences between Original and Gothic. The mix of enemies seems much higher in Original. Gothic dungeons had more distinct themes. Like already the 3rd had most enemies spamming poison/poison breath. I also feel that in Gothic enemies had more deadly abilities earlier. In the 3rd dungeon you already had hordes of RedCaps with 23% behead chance. They had poor accuracy, so good AC could save you, but were just deadly otherwise. Here few enemies have it, Ninjas only have 5-10% and even "Elite Ninjas" only have like... 15%? Not to mention there's much fewer of them so far. Werewolf Archers have none. It seems mostly the same with other status effects.
In Original on the other hand, enemies seem to have better/deadlier weapons. And often lower AC/better chances to hit. "Elite" mobs tend to ramp up resistances to hard CC (Paralysis, Petrify, also Charm) really fast, to the point of near-immunity. I'm often seeing 80% resistances already, and I'm still early in the game. In Gothic they tended to have some opening you could exploit. Well, I guess there's still temporary CC.

At least the Summons seem to have much better AI. My Chimera often immediately immediately dispels status effects, although it's much less reliable in regard to healing.
 
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aweigh

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Would disagree there man. E: Gothic has 3x times (literally three times the amount) of enemies E: Original has. It's more than twice as big of a game in breadth of content, enemies, dungeons, items, spells. If anything E: Orginal is the one that suffers the player the most with palette swaps and shit like you still battling the same enemies on the final few dungeons before Dragon's Fang that you were fighting the last few dungeons as well.

Enemy variety and their expanded rosters of spells, abilities and ex-skills give E: Gothic the win in terms of giving the most tactical and varied battles. Also there are ninjas who have a highger behead chance in E: Original in the "Underside" portion of the Marsh, btw, maybe not as prominent as Red Caps in the Tree Dungeon but they are there.

Tree Dungeon in E: Gothic is the first dungeon were the they decided to see if you were paying attention to the game mechanics: the big giveaway is that it is the first dungeon where you encounter:

- Lizard enemies who use Medium-ranged spears and thus able to 1-hit kill (basically) your party's back-row for the first time since you started playing

- Introduction of enemies who can absolutely behead you (Red Cap), although in 2nd dungeon, the Water Grotto, the Crabs have like a 5% chance to behead w/ attacks

- And lastly it is also the dungeon where you will first find yourself relying more and more on your E: Gothic's party's first big "power up"; Tree Dungeon is there abouts when a party's casters will start learning Target All or Target Row spells like Mabalad and so on; it's when you first realize magic is very, very, very powerful.

Tree Dungeon also is the first dungeon to let losse with the Secret Doors... anyway, like I said, it is the first "real dungeon" in E: Gothic. Tsun-Kurn Cavern and Water Grotto cave are just a long tutorial.

Once you reach the Ice Cave and the Royal Tomb and Hastrana Blowhole you have literally already played roughly the same amount of dungeons as you had by that point in E: Original, give or take one or two, and almost definitely by the Tomb you've put in way more hours: and there is still half the remaining story-dungeons + the 3 massive post-game dungeons: Corpse Of The Giant Soldier, Cave of the Ancients, and Ibags Tower.

Every four or five dungeons E: Gothic enemies will also begin using new "tactics", such as when you first enter the Inner Sanctum and find yourself getting stun-locked by Gargoyles using the ex-skill Fear and getting petri-fucked by the Medusas, etc.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
That may very well be the case, I keep seeing the same enemies from the start in Original. However I meant that within a given dungeon, there are many more enemy types that can appear and enemy groups are more varied in composition as well. While in Gothic they mostly follow a specific dungeon/floor theme.
Which is probably the better way to do it, especially combined with more status effects following the theme that can easily screw you :D

On the plus side, I like the game flow, events, heck, even NPCs way more in Original. It kinda develops naturally, like an rpg should, IMO. Things happen, world state (or just NPC fates) change. Gothic is a series of puzzles you need to beat. Original has actual story and NPCs that feel like they are somewhat more then cardboard placeholders. And events are fairly well advertised and often interconnected, flow together. In Gothic you often had to go out of your way to even find an event, not to mention solve it with very few clues.


Also the basement of the Great Tree includes a lot of deadly enemies with Poison breath :) ...truly the game begins there.
 

Dorarnae

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the Great tree is a dangerous place in the beginning. I always get what I need on the first floor which is ok, but I wait for other floor to be higher lvl.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Well, I've conquered Sheba and Wayne Ruins, so I'm perhaps somewhere around midgame. Also have more Fame then I should ever need. Hmm, Compass shows yellow directions in Wayne for the Time Ring... but it doesn't become blue in any of the 3 areas. Weird. Maybe when I find the remaining 2 crown jewels the NPC inside wanted. Only got the Ring of Change from the elven king so far, I think.

Getting Thief mastery was quite a game changer. My Brawler went from doing 30-40 damage to 120-130 per hit main hand + 80-90 offhand (Sharp Tooths +3 and Beast Fangs +1). Also has a ranged option with Tentacles +2. Huge damage boost for my Hunter as well. From Longbow plinking for 30-40 damage to Raging Bow for 130 damage.
Samurai is now rocking dual Innocent Swords, while Valkyrie uses Innocent Sword + Chimera Dagger.
Also stole some nice armors for my Samurai (-6 AC, Samurai only... not cursed!) and Hunter (Shell Bra +1: only -3 AC, but base 70% Magic Resist). Could use an upgrade from the basic Boomerang for my Thief. Although she's mostly using the Flame Rod for now.
Could also farm +2 ores from Trash Collectors now if I felt like it, I suppose.
Obviously many enemies, who are primarily melee, are pretty much helpless after taking their toys away.

For now I feel the difficulty in the further dungeon entry areas could ramp up a bit faster. Typically in the initial areas I'm in no risk... and deeper in the threats are very few as well.
But I really like the dungeon design so far. Think its the best out of the crawlers I have played (which admittedly isn't a large number).
A pity that item and monster descriptions weren't translated (that was also the case in Gothic).
 
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Dorarnae

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Well, I've conquered Sheba and Wayne Ruins, so I'm perhaps somewhere around midgame. Also have more Fame then I should ever need. Hmm, Compass shows yellow directions in Wayne for the Time Ring... but it doesn't become blue in any of the 3 areas. Weird. Maybe when I find the remaining 2 crown jewels the NPC inside wanted. Only got the Ring of Change from the elven king so far, I think.

Getting Thief mastery was quite a game changer. My Brawler went from doing 30-40 damage to 120-130 per hit main hand + 80-90 offhand (Sharp Tooths +3 and Beast Fangs +1). Also has a ranged option with Tentacles +2. Huge damage boost for my Hunter as well. From Longbow plinking for 30-40 damage to Raging Bow for 130 damage.
Samurai is now rocking dual Innocent Swords, while Valkyrie uses Innocent Sword + Chimera Dagger.
Also stole some nice armors for my Samurai (-6 AC, Samurai only... not cursed!) and Hunter (Shell Bra +1: only -3 AC, but base 70% Magic Resist). Could use an upgrade from the basic Boomerang for my Thief. Although she's mostly using the Flame Rod for now.
Could also farm +2 ores from Trash Collectors now if I felt like it, I suppose.
Obviously many enemies, who are primarily melee, are pretty much helpless after taking their toys away.

For now I feel the difficulty in the further dungeon entry areas could ramp up a bit faster. Typically in the initial areas I'm in no risk... and deeper in the threats are very few as well.
But I really like the dungeon design so far. Think its the best out of the crawlers I have played (which admittedly isn't a large number).
A pity that item and monster descriptions weren't translated (that was also the case in Gothic).

the volcano is probably a bit dangerous on deeper level because of monster with breath attack, but if you steal stuff from those phoenix :)

as for ring, if it's blue it's because it's on another floor. if it's yellow, follow the light. if it's red it's in another map.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Well, finally got all the rings. Guess not much reason to map the remaining 5 dungeons, if I don't care too much about finishing all quests or unlocking ogres & goblins?

Entered Dragon Fang 1st floor and at least I'm getting some mild challenge for a change (party is around level 27, Thief a bit higher, Bishop lower). Also some better drops.
Although I'm yet to find any decent spear, any decent weapon for my Thief (uses Flame Rod so far). Also could use some more gear with Dark resistance. Although it seems to be less of a concern then in Gothic so far. Casters tend to hide in the back back row, sure, but are usually very frail, which wasn't always the case in Gothic. Although a Salome with 2 Succubi and some meatshield knights can screw your party pretty nicely.

The game is fantastic, but would really benefit from a steeper difficulty curve in midgame.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Well, got lucky with Dark resist (& Attack!) items yesterday. Got 2 Crescent Cloaks... and 2 Phantom Masks! Awesome! Guess I'll be nasty and play a bit with Zefeifus....

Also started using spears (Cursed Spear/Holy Trident) more with my Valk. Sure, the damage is less then sword+dagger (wasn't really the case in Gothic) and much worse AC then sword & board, but the ability to hit the back row is often more valuable. Particularly considering my Samurai and Brawler do respectable damage to front row already.

Level 30 now, 2 levels away from masteries for most characters (except Thief, who's like 42 and Bishop, who's like 24).

I also have the Imperial Wraths from dragons. And I'm wondering if anybody knows what determines the breath affliction rate. Is it main hand chance? Sub weapon? Both? None?
If main and/or sub affliction chances, then I have that nice Evil Excalibur from Labor Lords with 60% base Confusion. Guess it can be smithed to around 90% (plus uncurse). Also have that Emperor Sword from Dragon Lords that does the breath attack. Wonder if it's possible to change breath type and use Confusion breath trough an item even without becoming a dragonnewt. That would be nice on my Werebeast Samurai who actually currently uses the E.Excalibur/Emperor Sword combo. Otherwise I hear there's some helmet that can change the race to dragonnewt, so if breath with 90% Confusion is possible, maybe it's worth looking for it. I think he'd be fine as a 'newt, I don't use damage spells much anyway. Much better Strength. Worse Agility, but I could live with that.
Sure Confusion isn't the best status effect.... but it still helps and typically the enemy resistance to it is low.... and it could nicely combo with my Hunter's future mastery Machine Gun Pursuit perk.

Actually status resistances are one of my main gripes with Original, apart from the overly flat difficulty curve (after playing Gothic). I understand that the number of enemies is much less in Original. I can even live with the same enemies appearing basically throughout all dungeons (rather then enemy themes/types/alignments in Gothic dungeons). There is a little dungeon theme focus, but its very weak. It was an earlier game with smaller overall scope. That's clear.
But what makes me sad is that practically all enemies have similar status resistances. I mean basic mobs may have something like 20% "soft" (sleep, confusion, poison) & behead (!) cc resists and like 40% "hard" (paralysis, petrify, charm) cc resists. While more advanced/higher level enemies will have something like 40% "soft" cc resists and 80-90% "hard" cc resists.
And it's generally like that across the board. Without specific racial/type/theme strengths/weaknesses. In Gothic most enemies had specific strengths, but also specific weaknesses, openings you could exploit.
 
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aweigh

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In E: Original's defense it was the first Elminage and predates Gothic by 8 years. Gothic itemization and encounter design is vastly better and features years of iteration. E: Gothic basically took all the effort they normally would have spent on creating NPCs and dialogue and devoted it all to polishing the dungeons, items and enemy design.

(Original entire game dialog script file is almost 2 MB, while Gothic's entire game dialog script file is 0.7 MB).

EDIT: Though it's not like E: Original was Starfish's first go-around so I mildly retract my defense; I recommend playing Starfish's Wizardry Empire 2 on PC to get a sense of where Elminage was born (also because it's tied with E: Gothic as the best Wiz-scenario and is a joy to play through, IMO).
 

Hrymr

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After playing Elminage: Gothic Elminage: Original feels a bit too easy. There is permanent automap, items don't break on use, your characters don't age after resurection, it's so much easier to get low AC, and majority of battles are won by just spaming attack.

It's wierd that they ported them in that order. Even without knowing its chronology it feels obvious that Original should be played first.
 
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aweigh

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the port order does bode well for us, though. E: Gothic was ported to PC first because it was finally a time when they could port an Elminage to PC plus it was the latest and greatest of their games at that time frame, and (presumably) the "success" of doing this then allowed them to port another game, so they went with the obvious choice (Original already had a translation).

If they were about to go under (my biggest fear) they would not have been able to port Original.
 

Hrymr

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This is very interesting. I thougth that Elminage: Gothic haven't sold that well on Steam (although I have no idea what is considered "successful" in case of the Wizardy clones). It still has "mixed" reviews (61% at the moment) and I imagine that Original would do much better, because it's more accessible.

Anyway, I wish them them the best and hope that they will port other Elminage games.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
And I've finished the main mission. Most party members at level 33, Thief 44, Bishop 28. Neither Samurai nor Bishop reached their mastery skill.
After basically breezing trough the Dragon's Fang dungeon, the last fight was kinda fun. Even difficult, if you didn't focus fire the right enemy fast. And I got some cool souvenirs from it. Although thief's inventory space proved to be a bit of an issue, being one of the reasons I redid the fight a few times... Finally settled on not getting the nice ninja/brawler accessory.

In general Thief's mastery was crucial to decently equip my party. Samurai dualed stolen swords (Evil Excalibur with 79% Confusion+Dragon Emperor with 100 Dark&Holy resist and Breath weapon activation on use); Brawler dualed stolen Claws (Sharp Tooths +3 and Devil Claws +2, also has Mysterious Waves with 67% Paralysis); Valkyrie initially used looted swords+daggers but for end game switched to stolen spears (Cursed, then Holy Trident, now also has the Royal Scythe and Death Spear stolen during the last fight); Hunter used stolen Raging Bow most of the time (only very near the end he switched to looted Holly Poly Bow, which was a very minor upgrade); Thief used the looted Flame Rod most of the game, had the most trouble getting a decent weapon for her (never saw an Iron or Obsidian Boomerang), in the end uncursed and gave unlimited range to the Hunter's Knife stolen in the last fight; Bishop initially used the Flaming Rod, later switched to Tree Branch (+Lighting Attack)+Flamberge ability spam.

My go to weapons for Brawler and Ranger were available immediately after Thief reaching mastery, while Valk's and Samurai's became available pretty soon (in fact the Cursed Spear was also easily available and it supports death spells with its Dark Attack boost).

So yeah, I strongly recommend everyone to include a Thief in your parties and get his mastery ASAP. Way more important then Alchemist IMO (well, unless you consider the long run, post game and levels 100+ onwards... but still there is a weapon that would greatly help in these challenges).

Also like the Hunter class a lot. Keeps the Alchemist spell utility if you do that multiclass and his Pursuit ability is very potent. Regardless of the affliction, it rolls against an AC of +10, meaning it basically never misses, even if the enemy is affected only with a rather weak affliction like Poison or Confuse. Very often I had to unequip his bow or he'd slay the enemies I wanted to steal from or capture as summons.

Also not a bad idea to have a few Summoner levels on one character. in the main game getting decent summons is pretty easy (much easier then in Gothic), as enemy levels stay relatively low (even if ACs and other stats do get a bit inflated near the end). Also the Summon resist for non-boss enemies is relatively low. And getting a Chimera, Octopus Lady, Elite Ninja, Phoenix or Arch Fox can go a long way - either to support your party with alchemy spells cast a few times per round (Octopus Lady, Arch Fox), do damage with breath and or/spells (Chimera, Octopus Lady, Phoenix), damage (Chimera, Ninja, Arch Fox) or heal (Chimera).
Plus there are a few nice item transformations possible with the help of the summons. Of course it's also feasible to keep your character a Summoner, mainly for the post game and the Blood Oath buffs though.

As for my earlier Breath experiment, turns out it's possible to change the breath type even for non-dragonnewt characters. Unfortunately it's not displayed anywhere, so you need to check this by trial and error. And yes, the element of the breath caused by the Alchemist spell or the Dragon Emperor Sword will change. Regarding status activation chance it appears to be the average of your hands. My Samurai's Main hand had 79% Confusion, so fighting Avi he displayed 39% activation chance.
Unfortunately did not have a chance to test with dual E.Excaliburs. He is a Werebeast, so he needed the Dragon Emperor Sword to breath.
Now that I think of that, it should be possible to breath activating the item from the (sadly limited) inventory. Anyway the chance seems to vary a bit (depending on number of enemies? split between the enemies maybe?). In actual trek trough Dragon's Fang it almost never worked.

Further testing would be necessary. Maybe with the second E.Excalibur and slower Battle Speed to more closely control the dice logs.
 
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aweigh

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Haplo

I recommend unlocking the post-game dungeon although it is annoying to do so... it's the only real difficulty spike in the game with most Old World enemies capable of wiping out an unprepared party in 1 round with beheadings/enterook mistas/etc.

Seriously, the difficulty spike is no joke and all the more jarring because of how easy the game is overall, and the bosses of the Old World (i.e. the gods) have ridiculous stats.

Plus don't you want to curbstomp the demon party's ass definitively? They jump like 20 fucking levels inside the Old World :D

EDIT: Alternatively instead of doing Old World now instead go and download Wizardry Empire 2 (iso zone website) and use the English translation patch (rom hacking dot net) and experience not only the best Wizardry scenario ever, but the clear beginnings of Elminage.

The NPC dialog inside E: Gothic's "Cave of the Ancients" is all cryptic references of the Wizardry Empire games.
 
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Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Hmm, tempting. Although I really don't feel like returning to the pre-fang/volcano dungeons, which were already easy like 15 levels before. But maybe I should... to try the Death Spear out and rob the god bosses of their powers.

Maybe need to finish Elex first though.

Speaking of which, I should man up and finish climbing that tower in Gothic...


As for Empire II, I do remember your recommendation. Think I've even downloaded it a while ago. Am a bit of a graphics whore however and keep pushing it back...
 
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aweigh

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just google the solution for where the altars are, i would never have bothered doing this otherwise. i don't have a link handy to the solution i used but it had specific coordinates, although i think the jap wiki also had them though it can be a bit of a pain finding info like that on the jap wiki using google translate.

i think Courtier posted specifics about this in one of the elminage threads, probably in the elminage gothic thread but it's been a while.

EDIT: btw fun fact the game's best weapon the Fame Wand can only be gotten if you never use fame to get the rings/altars which means it's basically impossible to get by a player on a normal first playthrough, heh. I've never gotten it but I always found this interesting, since everything else is locked behind quests/stealing.

the game has a "second lap" (you can know which lap you're on in the save screen if i remember correctly) which you initiate by talking with the Record Keeper in the Doorway to the Old World; you can then begin the game anew with a higher drop rate for rare items.

E: Gothic offers the same thing but in the form of an item called the Book of Secrets which raises the drop rate of items.
 
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aweigh

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oh, also I forgot to mention that 1st floor of the Old World has Silver Rapiers as a rare drop which transform the wielder into a ninja, if you still want one in the party.

And yeah, climbing Ibag's Tower fully in E: Gothic is indeed the manliest thing I've ever done. I think I ended up putting in more hours on those 20 floors than I did in two playthroughs of Original. It's bar none my prouded "gaming achievement" for sure.

Wiz Empire 2's post-game and its corresponding bosses are harder than anything in either of the localized Elminage games though. Very last floor of Empire 2's Temple of the Gods is a 20x20 dark zone with every random encounter a boss encounter and the Dragon God moving around the map; some hard-core shit.
 

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