Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[aweigh]

Courtier Dorarnae Siveon

i've always found one of the very few weak spots in elminage gothic is the way Starfish decided to arbitrarily double-down on eliminating almost all M-range weaponry for the non-martial classes in their efforts to make the game harder/purer (i assume...). Wiz 5 introduced M-range clubs and flails for priests and bishops and it introduced polearms and bows, and yes, there are THREE different unique bows in wiz 5 for mages only! so the "magician's bow" is as old as sin. anyway, for a while i've been wanting to re-classify some of the weaponry and inject some flavor into Gothic, especially since i'm currently abuzz with wiz empire 2's M-range butterfly knives that can be used by any race/class and do decent damage. Aside from making Staves M-ranged (with perhaps a few exceptions), what weapons do you guys think should be allowed to classes that can't use them in Gothic?

- one example is the extremely, and i mean EXTREMELY limited selection alchemists get. casting Pomadoon every single fight for 200 hours of game time... erm. i was thinking making most whips, staves, bows, knives/daggers, motherfucking SLINGS (can't believe they can't use them jesus) able to be used by alchemists, bishops and shamans, with bishops having a few more restrictions due to their priestly nature favoring blunt over edged weapons.

- making the throwable-weapons usable by all non-martial classes with obvious exceptions like shurikens and such which should be class specific.

- making all brawler weapons usable by all classes. and speaking of brawlers i had an idea to allow them use of the long ass list of clubs, maces, flails, etc, everything blunt. and obviously making them Low AC compatible. that won't change anything for clerics and lords because they don't have low ac so they don't care.

- letting hunters and bards have access to almost the same pool of weapons. most normal swords, most normal axes, one or two crappy spears, most if not all clubs and maces, ALL daggers and knives and also access to some choice L-range stop-gap weapons like the kunai and the poison sword.

also thinking of tweaking damage/attack #/accuracy values but that's more complicated. not in the editing, that's just editing an excel table, but in the actual tweaking.

there is a lot more that can be changed, btw. for example it would be simple enough to change the swallow-killer ex-skill to a passive skill like in the 3ds version. starfish changed that one to NOT consume SP in the 3ds version. also they added a low Spell Mastery Bonus % to samurais and clerics as well. that would also be incredibly simple to add.

ideas?

edit: also i REALLY REALLY want to go through the massive fuckton of Cursed shit gear, like tattered capes, worn shoes, etc, and make them useful at the very least for devilish. Or at least pick and choose a few choice pieces of cursed stop-gap armor and give them an extra point of AC so they can be viable for enchanting away the curse and equipping on the sequishies.

also might as well unlock devilish and giant races already. both are in the game and both work perfectly.

 

[aweigh]

Siveon Dorarnae Deuce Traveler Courtier Celerity H-K Viata Helly MrRichard999

Modded Weapons: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zi3p03bf3bwymtd/ITEM.csv?dl=0

Changes:

- Alchemist's now have access to all Cleric-usable Hammers, Maces, Flails, Clubs and all non-Exotic Bows.
- Alchemist's now have access to non-Exotic throwable weaponry such as: Blowguns, Slings, Stones.
- Hunters now have access to all Axes, all Hammers, all Maces, all Flails, all Clubs, the same hand-picked handful of throwable weapons as the Alchemist, all Whips, all Bows (can you believe there were a few Bows they couldn't use?), all Daggers, all Knives; in exchange they can no longer equip any Swords whatsoever.
- Staffs, Quarterstaffs, Rods and Staves are now accessible to almost all classes and are now M-range weapons.
- Books have been made Bishop-only and are now MOTHERFUCKING M-RANGE BABY.
- The "special" unique Axes have been made MMMM-RAAAANNGEEE baby. Now Axes are the Spear-equivalent for the classes that don't have access to Spears; but please remember that Axes are incredibly inaccurate and generally poor choices for a weapon in Elminage Gothic.

Please remember that the Class attributes such as attacks per level and the Class-specific formulas for calculating the interaction between stats and gear to produce damage and such are untouched so an Alchemist using a Bow will still be the same crappy Alchemist using a Bow; as such he will probably miss a lot and his damage will be nothing compared to that of a martial class using the same Bow.

At least now they can have the luxury of choices

Edit: As for the odd choice of making the Books M-range I answer simply: when was the last time you played Gothic and equipped a Book? Hmm? Right. Never. The character's already either: 1) attacking the enemy by bashing them with the book (Prepostrous); 2) Inflicting metaphysical damage by reading from the book (Preach baby, preach). Why not make 'em M-range and give Bishops something cool to use in battle, no? They're not that great anyway stat-wise.

 

[Anthedon]

It's 50% off on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/291960/

This looks pretty good actually, I can't detect a lot of anime in the promo material. Any chance the 3DS content makes its way to the PC version?

 

[Dorateen]

It is good, and the anime is quite minimal if not nonexistent. Stylistically this game is very western, early Wizardry, with influence from Dungeons & Dragons. (I think I encountered every classic variation of monster, and then some.) The Japanese elements that are there, such as classes or weapons, are tastefully done.

 

[Dorarnae]

It's 50% off on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/291960/

This looks pretty good actually, I can't detect a lot of anime in the promo material. Any chance the 3DS content makes its way to the PC version?

3ds has a lot of little thing different and it was decided that they release the psp version. I tried to push for couple things like face/style load and music and some other thing during beta but they didn't do it.
at this point if they release some day the game with the 3ds change on pc, I think it'll be only in japan like the first game.

while the pc version isn't perfect(probably some bugs that I reported aren't fixed yet), it's not too bad.(most will probably not notice them if they haven't played the japanese version).

 

[aweigh]

It is good, and the anime is quite minimal if not nonexistent. Stylistically this game is very western, early Wizardry, with influence from Dungeons & Dragons. (I think I encountered every classic variation of monster, and then some.) The Japanese elements that are there, such as classes or weapons, are tastefully done.

Dorateen

Yeah, because Starfish made the Wizardry Empire trilogy (the official japanese continuation of Wizardry, i.e. not spin-offs) before moving to the Elminage series.

Wiz-empire 1 (being translated), wiz-empire 2 (translated), and wiz-empire 3 (will begin working on translating it once we're done with wiz-empire 1) are Wizardry canon.

besides that starfish also re-use 2d art assets all the way back from wiz-empire 1 (released in japan for windows pc and ps1 in the year 2000~2001) to elminage gothic (released in japan for psp/3ds/windows pc in 2012~2013). Obviously they've upscaled the art and probably redone it a bunch of times but they're still the same. They obviously want want to keep a tradition (as well as save money).

 

[aweigh]

(this is from wizardry empire 1)

Dorateen
recognize this guy?

motherfucker's been getting wooped on since 2000 baby!

 

[Zeriel]

Can someone explain multiclassing to me?

I heard it's something like... you keep HP and up to 3 spells per level, but nothing else? And that you should use the basic classes for more HP early on?

I can't find actual statistical analysis of this game anywhere so it's hard to figure out what the fuck you are supposed to do. The manual doesn't tell you what each class yields per level in HP gain, and even the english wiki has barely any info.

If you have the stats to take an advanced class at chargen, should you instead pick something like fighter or brawler for better early on HP gain? What are the proper early classes to take? Someone hammer me with some fucking enlightenment, I'm drowning in google searches.

 

[TigerKnee]

When you multi-class, you

1) Keep HP and up to 3 slots per level (so if you had like 5/4/2, you would turn into 3/3/2 after changing). The former mostly only just makes retraining them up less painful rather than offers any advantage due to how HP gains work.
2) You don't keep any of your old class "passives" and now use the new class's passives so something like Thieves would lose their trap disarm etc.
3) RESET YOUR STATS TO THE MINIMUM NECESSARY FOR THE NEW CLASS + racial modifiers (i.e don't class-change into a basic unless you want a gimp)

If you have the stats to take an advanced class at chargen, should you instead pick something like fighter or brawler for better early on HP gain?

I would say no.

The most useful multi-classes usually involve giving Magic to a class that doesn't have any or giving your spellcasters more magic types. Going from Fighter -> Advanced is mostly because Fighters level up faster which means more chances of stat gains to qualify if you would rather not fall asleep rolling characters for 6 hours.

 

[aweigh]

Zeriel

In classic Wizardry (1-5) multi-classing is the best option and there is no reason to keep pure mages or clerics around. A samurai or a lord will always be 1000% better than a mage or a cleric because they get access to the same spells but can also fight on the front lines. however those titles are almost 30 years old.

in modern wizardry-clones, i.e. turn-based dungeon crawlers that utilize vancian casting, they tend to implement special class skills that (on paper) are meant to keep each class viable combat-wise from beginning to end. In the Elminage series they did this by making magicians and cleric types receive a spell-casting bonus once they reach level 26 thereby making them better spellcasters than the hybrid-classes. it's a good idea and it somewhat works in Elminage as a pure mage, for example, will _always_ have a better chance of landing crucial disables on enemies than a samurai casting the same spell. in the end though the same situation from wiz 1-5 presents itself because of the martial classes (and martial hybrids) receiving extra melee attacks per swing as they level up.

so by levels 30 and onwards you can have a samurai that can't deal 1000 points of damage with 1 thunder spell BUT they can eliminate 2 enemies per round: the dual-wielding Elminage samurai can kill off 1 enemy with each weapon. so the player has a character that can cast a 500 damage thunder spell, instead of the 1000 damage the spell would deal from a pure mage, but instead of wasting a spell they can opt to do a regular melee attack which costs them nothing and kill off 2 enemies in 1 round instead of just 1.

then we have the problem of stacking buffs and stacking debuffs: this is something that Elminage carries over from wizardry as well. One of the best strategies for tougher enemies is to stack Armor Class debuffs on the enemi and/or stack THACO enhancing physical attack buffs on the player party. This means that mechanically one of the most powerful Elminage (and Wizardry) strategies is to have MULTIPLE characters who can cast the same buff/debuff so you can stack 2, 3 or even 4 of the spell in _one single round_ and get that out of the way so you can commence enemy annihilation on the 2nd round.

obviously the game throws enemies at you which are not suceptible to ordinary melee attacks later but for the majority of the game what i described holds true. in the end regardless of the class systems in play i believe it all comes down to encounter and enemy design.

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah, I mostly got it down, it's just that you can't find specific statistical or mechanical explanations for Elminage Gothic anywhere. The manual says nothing, and I guess only the Japanese bothered to post stuff about this game in detail. I also noticed (like everyone suggested in this thread) you can't really make what you want to make right off the bat, that it's better to just use a bunch of short-term melee for the first dungeon, and then make your real party later. 3+ mages who are going to cross-class into alchemist and then a further class aren't very good at fighting the first enemies and all that.

I dig the game, but man the interface/maze-like quality is pretty hard to get used to. I'm playing this and Demise (again) at the same time, and I almost feel like Elminage would be better if it didn't have an in-game map at all. It's so confusing to read: the edges of unmapped squares look almost identical to actual walls, and they thought doorspam was funny. I genuinely think I would be less confused if I was writing out the maps by hand on a piece of paper, as opposed to using the magic m aps. And something about the level design (DOORS DOORS DOORS! WE LOVE DOORS!) and the background graphics they use makes literally every room look like every other room. You're in a room with 4 doors. Behind you is another room with 4 doors. Which direction are you facing? Good luck figuring it out! I'm used to that with old blobbers, but Elminage's mazes are extremely... indiscernible.

I keep hopping between the two games when I get bored of the quirks of the other. In Elminage, I can teleport wherever I want from a pretty low level, but constantly wonder where the fuck I am even though I knew a second ago. In Demise I always know where I am because it's automapping is perfect, but you don't get a proper teleport to square spell until the game is almost over, leading to Backtracking: The Game.

 

[Dorateen]

I genuinely think I would be less confused if I was writing out the maps by hand on a piece of paper,

Well, you could map by hand and only use the auto map for reference.

Regarding teleport in Demise, did they have "greenies", the gems that return to player set locations, or was that introduced in Ascension?

 

[Zeriel]

I genuinely think I would be less confused if I was writing out the maps by hand on a piece of paper,

Well, you could map by hand and only use the auto map for reference.

Regarding teleport in Demise, did they have "greenies", the gems that return to player set locations, or was that introduced in Ascension?

Greenies are like a town portal in the way you tend to use them. So let's say you set your greenie to teleport to the dungeon entrance, you still have to go down to level 5, or 10, or 19 when you want to level. Then you can greenie out when you're pinned. But that walk is LONG once you're past level 5. There's a few fixed teleporters, but they are almost no use past the first few levels.

At level 22 you can get find a treatise that will teach explorers and warlock guilds how to cast Teleport, an unrestricted teleport (x, y, z), but that's the "endgame" I was talking about.

(Talking about dungeon levels here, obviously, not player levels.)

If you could set multiple greenie binds I wouldn't complain at all, and would just farm crystals all day. I guess that's why they put Teleport in, I just wish it was a middling spell instead of a late-game one.

 

[Dorateen]

Running with a party, I had each character set different portal anchors. There was one of course by the dungeon exit, but I also used them in deeper levels when working through the areas. In conjunction with the fixed teleporters, or known spots where you can drop levels at a time, it made the reoccurring descent a somewhat more manageable experience.

 

[Zeriel]

Ah, didn't know it works like that in parties. I suppose that's a solution if I farm enough greenies.

 

[aweigh]

Zeriel

google-translated elminage gothic japanese fan-wiki:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://spoiler2.sakura.ne.jp/srv2/elg/&sandbox=1

that is what i used to learn the mechanics originally and you will find absolutely everything in there. the enemy drop tables are of particular interest...

and yes elminage: gothic is a long game and the difficulty curve is EXPERTLY done; the game has like 4 specific difficulty spikes: when you reach royal tomb; when you beat Cyclonus; the epilogue dungeons (which by themselves are half the game and where i consider the game to actually "begin"; everything before Cyclonus is just practice...); and the 20 floor hidden final mega dungeon Ibag's Tower which by itself will probably take someone at least 20-30 hours to clear and that's assuming they have all of the meta-knowledge handy.

my party is currently parked in ibag's tower 10th floor and everyone is level 120-140 and i have 250 hours on the clock. everyone in my party has classed out of a class and into another one like, 5 times minimum. all hybrids. but the thing is that this happened in the post-game dungeons; such party optimzation is NOT required to beat the regular dungeons. this is why i say the game only truly begins once you beat Cyclonus: absolutely everything changes as the post-Cylonus dungeons are extremely long and way trickier and the enemies are 10x smarter and 20x more prepared for whatever kindergarten strategies you were abusing before reaching the post-game. magical barriers, multi-turn beheadings, etc. :D

EDIT: the dungeon design improves by a metric tonne after the 4th dungeon. gothic has some of the best crawler dungeons i've had the pleasure to play through but the game's first 3 or 4 dungeons are extremely by-the-numbers. they save the good stuff for later but they are VERY good.

EDIT EDIT: heh, i just noticed you were saying that elminage mazes are indescernable... they get a LOT trickier. Starfish does not play around when it comes to making challenging dungeons and they really made some good ones for elminage Gothic. however i think Starfish's best dungeons are in wizardry empire 2: the dungeons in that one are absolutely malevolent! loved every single one of them.

elminage 1 (original), 2 and 3 don't feature difficult dungeons btw. elminage Gothic is actually Starfish's bona fide return to difficult Wizardry 5-style dungeons (which is why it's the best elminage).

 

[Zeriel]

I don't mean the complexity of the dungeons, just the way they are presented. Maybe it changes in the later tilesets, but these rooms that are one tile wide and every wall or every wall except 1 is a door look identical to each other. I don't get the whole "here's a door, and a door, and a door, and a door, and a door" corridor philosophy they seem to use in some places. I've never seen this in any other blobber. It's just weird.

Floor 1 and 2 of the first dungeon are chockfull of places like this. When I got to floor 3 and had an actual, normal winding passageway with arguably more paths to go but less monotone design it was a lot easier to find your way around. They seem to really love those door corridors for some reason, though.

 

[aweigh]

yeah the bland T-shape design goes away after the first 3 or 4 dungeons. once you reach the 4th story dungeon, the Church... kid gloves come off. btw, once you memorize the "route" the first few dungeons are very short. in the 1st floor of the 1st dungeon once you know the route you can reach the stairs down to the 2nd floor without a single enemy encounter.

there is an item you can craft using alchemy that shows the fixed enemy encounters on your map (once the floor has been cleared); i forget what the ingredients are but you can find them in the wiki i linked. or just google "elminage gothic sheephair brush". that little item stays with me from beginning of the game to the very end.

NOTE: there are several optional dungeons so the 4th one to appear on your dungeon list is not necessarily the "4th story dungeon". if no one explicitly tells you to go there then it is optional. Obviously you should clear them all tho :D

EDIT: supa-secret: in the 2nd floor of the 1st dungeon you can meet (and recruit if you do his quest) the game's ONLY "story NPC"; a Devil-race teenager whose class is Ninja. In order to trigger this event you need to visit the town's church's Confessional room with a 5th Level Bishop in your party. I mention this secret because if i didn't you would never know this NPC exists. note that although i typed "story NPC" after the initial event he never speaks again :D

it's basically the best way to get a Ninja in your party without either 1) wasting hours re-rolling the bonus points; or 2) levelling up an Evil character until he meets the requirements then class changing; or 3) secret! won't spoil anything more.

 

[Zeriel]

Ninja wasn't that tough for me, my hotlet had the stats for it by level 3.

Thanks for the rest of the information, though, highly helpful. Incidentally, what do you suggest for a party composition? I saw your posts for composition vary throughout this thread, curious what you think now that you've seen it through to the end. Early game, middle game, and post game variations would all be cool to know about.

So far I'm pretty confident in Lord, Ninja, and Valkyrie. I've got the obligatory two casters in the back (Mage I'm planning on classing to Alchemist and then Hunter) and a Bishop. I'm not so sure about the last melee slot (I just filled it with a brawler for the beginning since they do so much more damage).

 

[aweigh]

problem with hotlet is that their strength caps out at 16. they're the game's weakest race... don't sweat it too much tho: my first party i went 2 hums 2 elfs 2 hotlets. now i only make 6 humans (because they have the most balanced stats and make class-changing easier).

just like in wizardry 1-5 the character attributes are very important to keep in mind.

a human's str caps at 18 if i remember correctly, a dwarf's str caps at 22. those 4 points of difference in the str attribute mean the dwarf can deal 20% more damage (after str 15 each point bumps by 5%) and has an extra -4 to his thaco when attacking (after str 15 each point lowers thaco, or if you prefer increases accuracy 1:1).

each attribute goes crazy at different marks. str is after 15, and int and piety/wisdom/whatever start bringing in massive mechanical bonuses after 18 (which means classes like the elves and the devilish whose int can go up to as high as 22-24 are crazy good casters). agility is also very important because getting your character's turn/action BEFORE the enemy turn can sometimes be the difference between an easy battle or a wipe. luck is unknown but you absolutely it as high as possible on your thief/ninja because the #1 cause of party wipes are chest traps... just like in wizardry 1-5.

overall the best race are the werewolves with the exception of their low luck score but aside from that they have basically the same spread as humans but better. they can't equip silver items though which can be a pain sometimes. also remember that characters age whenever they die, change class or as time passes. don't worry too much about that though unless you're running a party of all faeries or something.

to answer your question i think this is probably an effective ibag's tower party:

- 1 samurai (can be pure, but preferably this samurai was previously any class where he picked up cleric spells so he can cast both) dual wielding some bullshit swords
- 1 lord (same as the sam, preferably he/she picked mage spells in a previous class) using a 2-handed bullshit hammer/sword. this dude is here only for the Lord's class mastery skill which raises the entire party's resistance to enemy abilities and afflictions such as beheading and such. invaluable.
- 1 ninja (since ninjas don't learn spells i recommend that he/she learns alchemy spells so you can have 1-turn buffing) dual-wielding some ridiculous bullshit shurikens or death arms and beheading left and right. you can switch out the ninja for a Hunter abusing Pursuit/Machine Gun Pursuit if you want as you get some GODLIKE bows later on and Pursuit/MGP becomes AWESOME once you reach ibag's tower. matter of preference.
- 1 valkyrie in the 4th slot dual-wielding godly bullshit spears and dealing massive damage from the back row. you can keep her pure no need to class her to anything else. you want to make sure you have AT LEAST 2, preferably THREE characters with access to cleric spells though. when shit hits the fan sometimes you need to cast 3 resurrections in 1 round.
- 1 alchemist in the 5th slot (on level 26 they learn a class mastery skill which improves their ore crafting. this is invaluable. obviously this dude should have the 3 spell schools, therefore this means alchemist will be his THIRD and final class). in post-game the alchemist can craft a philosopher's stone whihc is the alchemist class's best weapon or alternatively in a dungeon you can find a really good weapon that is l-range and alchemist friendly i'll leave it at that. in any case this guy is there to cast spells and to buff/debuff primarily.
- 1 bishop in the 6th slot (from the beginning of the game and never class-changed because bishops level extremely slowly... he's there mostly to identify shit. the fucker.)

now this may sound like a lot of "grinding" but it's not because: 1) alchemists/mages/clerics learn all their spells by level 13th, at which point you class them into something else; and 2) half-way through the game you start getting tons of exp. i remember i've leveled chars to 13th lvl in less than 1 hour.


last time one of my humans had very low VIT so resurrection spells were always turning him into ash (+1 year) and by post-game he was 60-something years old and had terrible stats and shit so i just fucking hex-edited the game's save file and made him younger.

if you want to change a race/class/anything without restarting you just need to hex-edit the game's save file. all of your party info is there. or just send it to me and i can do it. the info on doing this is in the english-language elminage gothic wiki under MODS.

 

[aweigh]

if the lord didn't have that essential class mastery skill i mentioned i would switch him out ASAP for a hunter. you can definitely go without the lord's master skill of course as it doesn't even kick in until he reaches level 36 so this is obviously very much post-game strategies. you can always just alchemize your gear with the appropriate resistances.

the samurai can also be switched out for a hunter or a brawler as well. i just like power-gaming it a bit and numbers-wise samurais are great damage-dealers because they can dual wield Main-hand weapons for their master skill...

 

[Dorarnae]

no love for valkyrie? their spear at the end <3

 

[aweigh]

oh i have plenty of love for them... it's just that they're ridiculously powerful lol

honestly the best elminage gothic team is 6 valkyries each one dual wielding spears and each one having some other spell school besides cleric.

3 valks in front row, three in the back = maximum damage output per character and spellcasting included.

but that's why i don't use them much, except for just 1. they're just too good a class. the dual wielding spears mastery skill is OP

 

[aweigh]

Zeriel

hehe, want proof of how bad-ass StarFish used to be with their Wizardry titles? check this out...

those bastards! haha. i activated a well in the 1st dungeon's 2nd floor then i, uh... used it i guess and wee StarFish plopped me down on the 6th floor, completely unprepared and surrounded by high level enemies and right in the middle of an Anti-magic zone :D

I FUCKING LOVE THIS SHIT!

they would NEVER pull this shenanigans with the Elminage series as they know they can't get tooooo hard-core or they might lose players. But this shit was back in the day when they were making wizardry empire titles (there are 3 of them, 1 of which is translated into english and the two others are being translated by myself and other codexers); and this shit is nothing compared to the little pranks they pull in wizardry empire 2... apparently when they were making that title they decided the best thing ever would be random areas in dungeons that are:

- dark zones
- plus anti-magic zones
- filled with spinners
- and the walls explode if you bump into them

:D :D :D

 

[Dorarnae]

yeah that path is for unlocking some race in the game, it's optional.