Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

there are a number of enemy a.i. routines, but there aren't many of them. I noticed early on that each enemy in the monster.xls files has a number which is linked to something, and one of the fields i google-translated translated as "routine". doing simple trial and error of replacing the routine number with other numbers from different enemies produced the expected result of making one enemy do, or TRY to do, stuff that another enemy does.

for example i have successfully done dumb stuff like replacing the 3DS rom version's chief training officier with Skillving. at the time I wanted to test once and for all whether a party member's Poison Resistance came into play when Skillving used Group Attack to repeatedly melee you, or if it only applied when the poison came from non-standard attacks/spells.

(i wanted to see whether the game resolved the char's armor class first versus skillving's bloody dagger / fool's foil group attack and THEN rolled versus the status effects he could land).

anyway, i have compared the monster files for all 4 elminage games (technically there are 5, but the 5th one was 3ds only and does not play anything whatsoever like an elminage game, it plays more like a Light Novel); They added new A.I. routines for Elminage 3, which is when they introduced ex-skills, but from what I can tell they didn't add any new ones for elminage 4 (gothic).

EDIT: I've also done stuff like hex-editing summons to be player controllable. The hexadecimal info in the american wiki is INVALUABLE for anyone remotely interested in modding elminage games. in the case of summons/ninja-clones all it requires is changing 1 byte.

anyone with hours of free time can conceivably do a complete overhaul and outfit every single enemy with new routines, change every single one of their stats, change the items they use and carry, what abilities they use, etc. this would require manually editing each in-game enemy though, and there's like 300 of them.

i modded the pc version of e: gothic to allow enemy "natural weapons" (crab claws, bird's beaks, dragon's claws, etc) to be "steal-able" by player-controlled thief party members, for example.

however that didn't turn out that well because in order to get the most out of that you need to integrate the new "enemy weapons" introduced in the 3ds rom version, each one featuering unique stats, like in elminage games 1-3. (the enemy weapons in default E: Gothic, i.e. the PC version, don't actually feature unique stats and instead scale with enemy type and level).

i started process of hex-hacking in the 3ds item list over to the PC version (200+ new items, majority of which are the aforementioned "enemy weapons") but i ran out of energy to finish. Takes too damn long editing the enemy inventories one by one.

plus, i've been/am playing through 3ds version (i did manage to translate into english all spells, enemy names, quest items, dungeon names and enemy inventories and game items; did a lot of copy/pasting from the PC version's hexadecimal bytes basically); and to be honest aside from the brief thrill of stealing some ancient dragon's claws +4 for your brawler, which aren't even better than end-game brawler gear, there best weapons still remain the same ones from the default version of the game, i.e. the Humanoid-type weapons.

 

Yeah, Elminage Original and 2 share enemy designs, while 3 features different design for some enemies, such as the Phoenix (although I like their design from Original the most), Manhunter, Goblins, Arch Demons, etc.

 

Ahh....the infamous Don Mags....his spells are so powerful.....he gave a bad time at the Volcano, and Nue is a very good samurai. The Volcano has many good summons....

 

Can anyone please tell me where I can find the Diamond Colony? There is no info about that monster on the japanese wiki and the game's official artbook also shows Hanged Man and Klein......are they also found on the PC port? The japanese wiki says they are 3DS exclusive monsters.

Speaking of which, I have been looking for a 3DS port rom all over the internet to extract the new monster models for the game's wiki but I cant find any..

 

Yes, those really are the standouts in their respective classes. That said, they are a bit tricky to capture at a lower level due to their Restore ability and 80% Summon resist.
And at the volcano you're almost wrapping up the base game already. Good thing there's a meaty post-game as well.

 

Exbelion

Diamond Colony is a cloak. (A good one). If there is any enemy named that as well it's news to me. I'll P.M. you a link of a (Decrypted) E: Gothic ROM for 3DS (i.e. it works on CITRA emulator).

EDIT: It is possible they added an enemy named Diamond Colony for the 3DS port, as there are 30-35 new enemies; however the majority of those are re-skins. It's possible the new "Diamond Colony" enemy is a re-skin turtle enemy.

 

Sounds like it. Emerald Colony is a turtle enemy.
But yeah, I only know the Diamond Colony cloak.

 

Here is Diamond Colony:

At least it was called like that on the PC port

 

Ah, thanks. Completely forgot about that guy.

...but the thing is your're using a screenshot I took from my modded PC version where I replaced the item and enemy information with the files from the 3DS version.

That's why it says he uses a "TURTLE BEAK" as a weapon, in all caps. In the default PC version it would merely say "Strike" or something similar.

 

Those this game has any incompatibility problems with Win10?

It's been crashing all the time.

 

If you mean Gothic, I didn't have any issues under Win10.

 

Exbelion

I have bad news regarding extracting enemy sprites from the 3DS E: Gothic ROM... but it's not permantly bad news.

Currently there are simply no legitimate tools available for casual-users, like you and me, to do shit with the CITRA emulator.

Obviously, you're going to want to ask how I then modded shit from 3DS E: Gothic over to PC version, and how I modded over majority of English-lang files and stuck them inside the 3DS ROM: it's very simple, I used a hex editor.

Hex editors are amazing tools, but they're not gonna help you much with extracting shit. At best, you might be able to use a hex editor to ascertain the memory addresses and shit like the "cluts" for the graphical textures inside the hex editor, but then what? There are no tools currently (and probably will take a good while too) to extract graphics, or sounds from CITRA emulator.

Yes, obviously someone very knowledgable in Assembly, in debugging, in working with scripting languages for custom extraction, etc, yes, a person like that can definitely get whatever they want out of current CITRA roms.

I don't know any of that shit, hehe. I recommend making a thread in ROMHACKING website and also a thread (with same content) in the GBA Temp website.

Peeps in those sites are quite helpful and friendly, worst case scenario your thread will simply go in silence. Just ask exactly what you're talking about wanting to do here in the Codex over in those two website forums; i'm optimistic that someone will eventually pop out of the shadows to give you some help. (Because CITRA is hot, hot, hot right now and EVERYBODY is trying to figure out its guts).

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

The reason you see the 3ds remix version's new enemy, Diamond Colony, in a screenshot from PC ver of E: Gothic is simple:

- I did a half-ass copy/paste file replacement using hex editors (no, it's not really "copy/paste"), and basically I experimented and managed to replace the PC version's enemy lists with the lists from the 3DS rom.

- That is why you see that turtle enemy in that screenshot. The entire reason that method even worked is not due to me being smart; it's due to Starfish being lazy. All of the 25-30 enemies added on 3ds ROM are simple palette swaps.

- What that means is that good ole Diamond Colony worked without any glitches on the PC version after the hex editing because that turtle is simply the same exact enemy file as the other turtles in the game, except he has different numbers:

i.e. instead of his appearance being red like the volcano turtles (of which he is a reskin), Starfish simply changed his color to green, changed the enemy's attributes, changed his inventory (the biggest addition and only real reason to play 3ds version is the addition of many new weapons that can be stolen from enemies, such as that "Turtle Beak").

There was no new actual ART WORK, or SPRITE WORK done for the 3ds version. There was however a brand new beautiful choral piece that replaces the Town music. It is beautiful, and it's the only part where Starfish actually probably had to spend some cash.

P.S. And no, unofrtunately, once I got into the post-game in the PC version (using 3ds rom's enemy and item data), shit started to get glitchy. Not game-stopping, but enemies doing wrong attacks/spells, stuff like that.

Majority of the 3ds enemy/item data is in the post-game, hence that happening late.

TL;DR: go ask for help extracting textures from citra roms over at romhacking/gba temp.

 

Yeah I tried to extract that new theme for the town using Noesis, that is what I used to extract soundtrack from Elminage games on my PSP, unfortunately it crashes on the 3DS rom. That sucks honestly
By the way I extracted the battle themes from Elminage Ibun and uploaded them into my youtube channel. It may not be the best Elminage, but it's worth a try

Regarding Diamond Colony, that monster, along Hanged Man and Klein were added on the PC port's pre-orded bestiary. Maybe it was a mistake, since there are also some wrong translations, such as the Cyclops translated as Nine Eyes lol

 

Has anyone mentioned features that would improve EG? Not sure if I said this already, but I think if the game had a Limited Saving option, i.e. either Mania Mode or something similar, it would improve the game a lot. Of course, the RNG would have to be balanced with this in mind, etc..

I think it might be cool to get a "Can Only Save Twice Per Level" type mechanic. And perhaps some limit to the teleportation, even, since once you get that spell the game gets pretty easy, IMO. If you have 2 casts of it you can teleport in and then back out at will, negating a lot of the resource management and planning elements. I actually like how the levels re-spawn because early on you have to make your way IN to the dungeon and also back OUT, which adds tension, planning, etc..

What are your guys' thoughts on this?

 

I really oppose that, honestly I found the game extremely challenging the way it is, but if you guys are craving for even more insane difficulty, you might want to try out Wizardry IV-Return of Werdna (regarded as the hardest RPG and dungeon crawler ever) and Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls. I haven't played them, but I heard they are very hard, even for hardcore gamers.

 

I would not want them to waste limited resources on this, if you want to play the game without the teleport spell or with limited saves, you can already do that.

Improvements is a good question though. Apart from just having MORE (items, classes, skills, bosses, etc), what NEW mechanics could we see to this formula to improve on it?

Off the top of my head:

- ore synergies to further customize equipment
- store only items that are expensive but comparable to found items
- class mod items to tweak classes, for example allowing Lord to use better weapons while sacrificing some spell utility
- different types of chests, perhaps some that can only be opened with keys that contain a better chance for better loot
- events that can change/add monsters within a dungeon (ex-I killed a goblin king, goblins stop appearing)
- the ability to 'wipe out' certain kinds of enemies if you kill enough of them
- some C&C (ex-choose this dungeon or that dungeon, the one you don't pick gets sealed off for that playthrough)
- crafting unique weapons and armor

 

Thanks for the responses. Please keep in mind, I am suggesting adding additional Hardcore features as OPTIONS, not mandatory features. So those who want them could use them, and those who don't don't have to use them.

I know you can technically play the game by limiting yourself, but I think it would be cool if they added an additional Challenge Mode or something. Something like Lords of Xulima did, both with Ironman Mode (save only in town), and then Hardcore difficulty itself being very challenging. So, instead of having to limit yourself and "pretend" these options exist, they actually do, and you even get a points bonus on your overall score for taking these options at the start of the game. The game could award you some sort of little bonus for taking up the crazy challenge and venturing forth.

I think that would be cool and add a different flavor to the game for those like myself who want it. I also think the game would be balanced around such options, so hitting some insanely hard RNG party-wipe would be less likely overall if you were playing Limited Saves mode. Nahmean?

Class mod items sound cool, Gunnar! I dig that. Different types of chests, lovely! Unique weapons and armor crafting? Yep! Good stuff. Thanks!

 

I would like Class Kits. I say that for every party-based RPG, though. Maybe instead of class mod items you can create some unique class kit that has an interesting quirk or two.

I would like to see a way to mark the map in-game for when you've checked the walls for secret doors/switches/etc.. That would be a nice convenience feature.

More items, classes, skills, bosses, etc.., for sure. I'm happy with the game and more of that gooey stuff is always welcomed.

 

fluent

i've modded pc ver. of E: Gothic extensively. However, lemme first start by clarifying that i don't have the assembly / debugging skills that would be required to modify the game's save system. all of the following mods for e: gothic I've made by either editing the game's files with excel in cases of files that are simply "lists", such as ITEMS.csv which is the huge entire item file the game uses, and it is extension .csv.

and nope, absolutely nobody other than me has ever playtested them, heh. e: Gothic is, quite honestly, already almost perfectly balanced. I simply cannot think of any real, legitimate changes that would "improve" the cornucopia of systems that dovetail into each other in Elminage: Gothic.

that said, i can PM you download links to modded files that you put into the game's root dir and so far i've done the following shit:

- Classic, predictably autistic DIFFICULTY mod. All enemies boosted by 2 extra points of armor class (i.e. 2 points lower for them); across-the-board, no exceptions!

- ALL enemies (EXCEPT FLOOR MASTERS/BOSSES/etc) also received: 1.25x increase to their Hit Point dice (i.e. when the game generates an enemy for an encounter the game rolls that enemy's hit point dice, which is why sometimes 1 enemy will die "surprisingly fast" and then later be much more HP bloated).

- Also, ALL enemies also receive 1.10x increase to their Turn Recovery, and that means enemies with zero Turn Recovery now have a tiny bit, r00fles!

- Direct-damage spells all recieved 1.25x damage-dice roll increase.

- Ability to char-gen characters as Devilish race, magic puppet race, GOBLIN (leftover from elminages 1-3, all the data was simply unused), and also Ogre. Yes, both goblin and Ogre are the "two new classes" on the 3ds port, fuck i mean RACES; however they are the same races as in E: Original, i.e. Ogre is strong and slow (max 15 str!), and goblin is basically same Attribute spread as an Elf but with even BETTER agility and vitality (!).

- Yes, that obviously means those two races are complete OP cheese. In my 3ds port playthrough I have an Ogre ninja with 25 str (LOL) and he literally 1-hits every enemy starting as soon as from the tree dungeon, haha. Completely cheese-cake race, put there cos ppl complained the game was "hard".

- Goblin race is also OP, but not as much. I mean, they're elves stat spread, but better. I mean, come on.

---------- below are tweaks/mods/changes that don't fall under any specific category, per se but me merely spicing up the classes and races and weapons -----------

- Made ALL whips SUB-type weapons, and lowered whip's DMG spread by 1 point (taken from the maximum end of it, of course)..

- All whips (now sub-types), ALL STAVES/STAFFs, and non-magical / non-unique bows (i.e. any bow that doesn't bear a cool name, basically): i changed them to be able to be equipped by ALL classes. Removed the A.C. penalty from staves, as well, and instead gave them, depending on the specific staff, armor class BONUSES instead.

- Reduced chance % of item breaking. I simply cut each item's % break chance in half, as each item as different number. Some items were ridiculously high chance to break, especially the musical instruments.

- Reduced summon capture resistance % down from 100% and 95% (the enemies which have that), down to 90 % as maximum cap for any enemy. Why? Because otherwise the player is obligated to have a Brawler, and ther'y re great, sure, but if you don't want to have a Brawler then that also means you have no chance in hell of getting post-game summons. I think max of 90% is fair; still plenty of grinding needed.

------------- this change works perfectly in-game, but i couldn't figure out how to make the game display the correct text message when successful... i explain this now ------------

so, 3ds version's biggest and most worthwhile addition is they took a page from Elminage Original (and 2 and 3) and decided to do the work and replaced every single non-humanoid enemy (any enemy that does not utilize "loot" type gear) and gave them back the "natural weapons" enemies had in Original (and 2 and 3).

birds attack w/ their beaks, talons, claws, and so do dragons, obviously, turtles with their beaks (lewl), and they also bite, and enemies with arms for punching attack with things like paralyzing talons, so on and so forth.

Don't make the assumption this made the game harder though: every single change in 3ds version was made to make Gothic much, much easier.

However, now a Slime doesn't "Strike" at you, instead a Slime attacks with "Mucus", heh. And that Mucus is a player-stealable, player-usable weapon with its own stats. (To prove my point about this not making the enemies harder/more versatile: perfect example are the Slime itself, their Mucus weapon is much weaker than the generic, non-unsable by the player, "Strike" ability from E: Gothic on PC; i.e. the Mucus has worse stats, and this is the general throughline for all of the new enemy weapons).

Of course, this means you need a Thief to stela them, and the one class that most benefits, if only due to having more variety of gear, are brawlers. Brawlers (as in E :Original) can equip dragon talons, for example, and punch away. Of course, once again hammering home the point that this isn't all good: I carefully analyzed the weapon balancing by studying the 3ds port's ITEM file exhaustively and none of the enemy weapons are better, in any situation, than the weapons already available in the PC/PSP version of E: Gothic.

So anytway what I did is I changed all of the PC version's non-humanoid enemies' "weapons" into their counterparts from the 3ds port, i.e. i gave that Slime its beloved Mucus. Obviously I also changed everything necessary to make all of the enemy weapons "player-usable", and my better achievement: found a sneaky way to make them also be steal-able by Thieves!!!

However since that was never in PC ver (i.e. the Thief may be stealing that Slime's Mucus now, but that Mucus is simply a re-skinned "Slime Strike 1" enemy 'ability', and not an actual item. I forced the enemy weapons into acting like items, and succeeded, but couldn't figure out any way to make the game display text message of whether or not your Thief stole something or not.

Here's a video of pc ver. E: Gothic with my enemy weapons changes, and the footage is of my thief attempting to steal the Shell Combiner's enemy weapons, which are called "Claws". Sadly, not... crab klaws

(in the video you'll notice the shell combine's enemy weapon still says "Strike", because I had made all the changes but still had the re-naming left to do).

 

--- lastly ----

for my last/recent e: gothic PC ver. playthrough I played it w/ my "difficulty mod", and I completely rebalanced almost the entire ITEM file (700+ objects), I also changed all of the races' attribute spreads so as to each one be more specialized, and I also completely changed the ex-skills. I made ex-skills learnable, and gated by the character's class. for example:

- fighters learn Brace at level 13 (half way to their mastery level). Also, I restricted BRACE to only martial classes! Fighter sge it free at lvl 13, but a mage can NEVER get Brace, and a Lord can pick it if he wants to, so on and so forth. This way Fighters get a lil something something that fits Fighter personality archetype perfectly.

- brawlers learn CHI WAVE at lvl 13 (and ONLY bralwers can use CHI WAVE. I removed it from universal skill selection in char-gen. ONLY brawlers get chi wave!). I wanted to make Brawlers feel special, because in reality their only game relevance is for your summoner to get his pokemons.

- bards, being rowdy tavern-types, start the game now with the ex-skill which makes them deal more DAMAGE if they get POISONED. hehe. oh, and I gave ITEM IDENTIFICATION ability to BARDS, SUMMONERS, and SHAMANS. The only thing I legitimately dislike about traditional Wiz-design is the wrongheaded insistence of Bishops being the only ones with ability to ID items. Fucking bad design.

- Gave Shamans access to Mage Spells, starting at level 28, so they get their mastery skill plus they start learning mage spells. HOWEVER, I made sure to use the Bishop spell-progression table for them, so yes, they get mage spells, but they get them at level 28, AND by the time they learn DIOMANTE they'll prolly be like level fucking 50 !

- Gave Servants access to Alchemy spells, with the exact same "restrictions" as the mage spells on shamans. The servants get alchemy spells on level 28, and their progression is same as Bishops. And, obviously, they don't get crafting. That would be silly.

- Gave Hunters the dual-wielding class ability (same as samurais), and they learn it upon reaching their level mastery (think it's 28). Why? Because why not? Bow selection isn't great, plus Starfish restricted the gear Hunters, Bards, and Thieves can use for E: Gothic (in order to make the game more hard-core / closer to Wizardry classic). I see no reason why a lvl 30 Hunter can't dual-wield, i dunno, some dragon killers? Their non-Bow weapon selections is bad anyway.

- Gave thiefs the same abilitty of ninjas; i.e. gave Thief class ability to begin battle already hidden-in-shadow. They get it on class mastery level.

- Finally, gave Summoners Physical Attack PWR Up class ability, they learn it on their class mastery level. Why? Cos why not, man? their gear selection is pitiful, they get no spells, why not let them crack that Whip, that Staff, a bit harder? It's not like they'll make that much difference.

I'm digging up my list of weapons and armor stat/class-allowability/range-modification re-balancing, it's buried somewhere in this damn thread. But basically:

- I made all Hammers and all Maces and All clubs equippable by ANY CLASS.

(most of them suck balls, with their bad accuracy and low rate of hits per swing, that means that even giving an Alchemist a Mjollnir will mean nothing because Alchemists don't get extra attacks, and they don't get to-hit Bonuses as they level which menas they won't hit broad side of a barn, and they don't get class ability that increases STRENGTH; but fuck that shit, it's a FUCKING CLUB. ANYONE CAN SWING A CLUB!)

- Gave Bards and Thieves the same access to armor pieces taken from the Hunter's list. No, hunters can't wear Plate Mail, chill out.

- Gave Bishops the same "access-list" to weapons/armor as Clerics, because why not? it was like that in wizardry to boot!

- Made all "Misc. throwing weapons", such as blowguns, slings, darts, (not special ones like ninja stars, though) able to be used by Thieves, Bards, and Summoners and Servants. That means a Servant (or thief, bard or summoner) can equip ANY non-l33t L-ranged "throwing-type weapon". Example: Summoner rocking in main-hand power blowgun, and in off-hand the newly sub-type whip. which whip? who cares.

 

Yeah, the 3DS port is much easier, and they included item images like in Original. Enemy formations were changed and made easier, for example, Belial appears alone more often (his AC was changed , its no longer -92) , drath gloria also appears alone.

 

Oh, enemy formations can be made to be like in the 3ds version. it's a simple matter of editing a .CSV excel sheet.

the problem is you need to go through the entire enemy bestiary to get their "formation number", so to speak, and then edit/tweak the formation file itself with the enemy numbers. It's unbelievably tedious and the second I realized how much work it would take I stopped.

BTW, may seem I like giving a lot of classes access to more gear, but remember: all enemies extra defense (-2 AC bonus to all enemies), and 25% hit point total increase, and 10% turn recovery increase.

So, obviously i didn't just type all this shit just for the sake of typing: i have these files if anyone wants them.

Everything is modular, as they are simple text files. Problem is though, what I mentioned above:

E: Gothic is already a 100% perfect RPG. tweaking/modding/rebalacing it? that is only because i already played it to death. Vanilla E: Gothic on PC is inarguably perfectly balanced and requires no tweaking of items or enemies.

Hell, i'm gonna make a difficulty edit for Elminage: Original now when I begin my new game +. Right now am finishing up E: Original's post-game, the OLD WORLD.

Am dying to finish the OW so I can finally begin my "2nd lap". Am planning on donig the 2nd lap with all weapons nerfed (across-the-board 50% decrease in weapon accuaracy and # of atks-per-swing for entirety of E: Original's weapons)!

also, the obligatory hp/turn recovery buffs.

Also want to decrease amount of armor class points in E: ORiginal armor pieces. Game is simply way too easy.

trying to think what else I can do to spice up the 2nd lap... perfect thing would be to hack in some sort of ex-skills,probably best bet would be using the ex-skill files from PSP game Elminage 3.

Well, won't know til I try. (probably would go about it making chars learn the ex-skills on level ups, as there no system in-place for that during char-gen; also would probably have to do it dirty, i.e. would have to outright replace an existing class ability in exchange for the new one).

bye bye dispel, heh.

 

aweigh

(I forget, how do I tag someone?)

Interesting stuff, thanks. Not sure I necessarily want a difficulty mod, but rather another mode. Ironman Mania type deal. If the game would limit saves somehow and perhaps added limited re-loads (when resurrecting characters, for example) as well it would be very interesting. Those features would obvs need to be balanced, though, but IMO a chunk of the game gets lost when you get 2 casts of Diomente. You can teleport in and out, resting becomes more trivial (maybe some limited in-dungeon resting with supplies could help. Then perhaps remove a portion of Diomente that allows you to just essentially warp out. Need to think more on that.) and resource management is lessened. Heck, even a common enemy skill that could zap a cast of your Diomente spell could work.

I'm fine with the difficulty itself, just would like more management aspects. Item/inventory/spell managing.

 

I started a new game and my human warrior always loses strength when levelling up. He's currently completely incompetent at his job. Should I ditch him and make a new one, preferably non human?

He's 20 years old by the way, so I don't think that's the problem.

 

Or, you know, save scum when resting.

When you have access to 7th level Alchemy spells (level 13), Protectorate can help. Though 1 character with that spell can only boost 1 attribute by 1 per level.