Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[aweigh]

i know hand of kindness ex-skill raises the total output of damage dealt by the healing spells (i.e. hand of kindness increases the amount of DICE rolled to determine the amount of POINTS are healted)

does it also do the same sort of beneficial boost to Elnam? Elnam uses the exact same formula as all of the healing spells, if you didn't know, all theyh did was fucking use negative numbers with elnam and positive ones with the helaing ! LOL

Dorarnae

 

[Dorarnae]

i know hand of kindness ex-skill raises the total output of damage dealt by the healing spells (i.e. hand of kindness increases the amount of DICE rolled to determine the amount of POINTS are healted)

does it also do the same sort of beneficial boost to Elnam? Elnam uses the exact same formula as all of the healing spells, if you didn't know, all theyh did was fucking use negative numbers with elnam and positive ones with the helaing ! LOL

Dorarnae

I don't know, haven't used elnam much except maybe in elminage 2 where it instantly kill a demon type enemy I think.

 

[Courtier]

Ye lads taking on Gothic, even long after beating it I'm still with you in spirit - in the middle of another playthrough of Original, besides Wiz Emp/Chronicle. I just entered the Dragon's Spire. Here's some screens of the journey

This chick gets awkward when you have men in your party, if you park them in the pub and come back with cute girls you can do her quest

Bunch of items

Best girl

The Spire - lower levels

 

[aweigh]

Courtier

I'm almost done unlocking the post-game dungeon in 'Original. I only need to find the altar in the Last Court and that's it, however it is very tedious.

Dorarnae

Elnam is an instant-death spell in every Elminage except in 'Gothic'. They forgot the change the description for 'Gothic. It functions as an instant-death spell in 'Original as well. (versus demons of course).

I much prefer it as a direct-damage Holy spell though as I can rack up some sick damage with my 'Gothic Cleric w/ 150-200% Holy Attribute Attack.

 

[Courtier]

For spell damage nothing tops leveling a mage and smithing %boosts onto charms/staves. High level mages get ridiculous with elemental spells and Enterook Mista, Mastery % increase ramps up quickly. But if you have a Bishop, as I tend to have, it goes up so slowly that you won't really be doing much damage. If you had kept a pure mage throughout the game they'd be cleaning house.

Example: Bishop (Spell power +78%) with a +4 Lightning Charm (tower drop)

Spoiler

This would be several times as much if it had been a mage (!)

You do get nice damage with a high lv cleric, and the percentage increase ceiling is higher than even a mage's. But Elnam runs out quickly leaving you without important Feireed/Psi Breath casts, and some enemies have 100% holy resist but few resist all elements. Mista can only be resisted with spell (school) resistance, but the EX Skill Magic Essence (shown in pic) resolves that.

It might be worth dropping that for Spirit Contract to increase the damage even further, and just cast Rapidos for resistant enemies

 

[aweigh]

My Ibag's Tower squad:

--

 

[Courtier]

I don't even recognize some of that gear dude, it's crazy how you can play this shit for so long and still discover so much. A bunch of gear and enemies left to find, and things like the secret room and flavor text in the Cave of the Ancients, or the unique spear down a shaft in the tower I stumbled over by pure chance. I never even found the mapping orb or mined the glowing crevice for the best ore

e: shieet your guys are old as fuck m8 go find some kiss of the goddess traps, I recall them popping up a lot in the lower levels of Soldier of the Giant Gods (actually they won't make much of a difference at this point)

 

[aweigh]

Courtier

uhhhh, so i guess i told her that she was betrayed? the god of truth said KTHXBYEEE and disappeared.

i am currently trying to find the elevator/door switch on this floor (b15f); been abusing Miracle basically in order to regenerate MP/Ashes/etc because I want to activate the elevator on this trip although i'm reaching my limit of tedium prolly gonna Honey Restorer back to town and gain like 25 levels and then just bee-line my way back up to b15f and then find the switch.

i assume these two ghost dudes have something to do with the circles of light in some of the Tower floors?

 

[Dorarnae]

I don't even recognize some of that gear dude, it's crazy how you can play this shit for so long and still discover so much. A bunch of gear and enemies left to find, and things like the secret room and flavor text in the Cave of the Ancients, or the unique spear down a shaft in the tower I stumbled over by pure chance. I never even found the mapping orb or mined the glowing crevice for the best ore

e: shieet your guys are old as fuck m8 go find some kiss of the goddess traps, I recall them popping up a lot in the lower levels of Soldier of the Giant Gods (actually they won't make much of a difference at this point)

the tomb map had a couple kiss of the goddess traps too.

 

[aweigh]

lol, btw, i have my Shaman using 4 Divine Charms smithed w/ 40-70% sleep/confuse/silence/sleep one more time and FUCK is it annoying fighting her Mirror!

bitch puts me party to sleep/confuse/silence better than I do the enemies.

 

[aweigh]

ok, so i found the switch on the 15th floor, went back to town levelled everyone up to around 175-235 (depending on class/race/etc), re-smithed every single piece of gear and upgraded my samurai to dual Muramasa's and re-smithed my Shaman's Divine Charms to all do confuse %; lord character is using holy sabre, cleric is using an Aas Hammer now instead of the Mjollnir/Shullal combo from before; and I managed to bump up the -AC of the alchemist/bishop pair by 2 more points each, so they are both at -22 and -24 AC respectively. (lord/samurai/cleric are at -40 AC, give or take one or two points, and the shaman is 100% glass cannon).

enter the tower > take elevator to 15th floor > ascend stairs to 16th floor

get wiped by 1 dragon and 1 stargazer.

 

[aweigh]

Dorarnae Dorateen Courtier

Stargazer wipe - beginning/most of the actual fight:


Stargazer wipe - final moments; and yeah, i was refusing to use Miracle on purpose... jesus christ that bitch is hard-core:



16th floor as well, just me beating up my Mirror Party:

 

[Dorateen]

ha, only one stargazer? I think I remember some epic battles with the emerald dragon and multiple ladies.

For the doppleganger fights, I wanted to resolve them as quickly as possible. So the strategy I implemented had the Bard making as many run away, while the Bishop and Mage would each get off the spell that has a chance of swallowing an enemy into the earth. This was usually after the Ninja took out his share with one-hit decapitations.

 

[Courtier]

i assume these two ghost dudes have something to do with the circles of light in some of the Tower floors?

Nah you break those seals later

Basically with these you are given a moral dilemma: you can reply in a lawful/neutral/chaotic way, and are asked again about it later. If you answer differently alignment-wise from your first time you have to start all over again. I forgot the details tho

get off the spell that has a chance of swallowing an enemy into the earth.

You didn't have 100% dark resistance on everybody? Argeiss is dark element just like zefeifus and one of my highest priorities to become immune against

 

[Dorateen]

get off the spell that has a chance of swallowing an enemy into the earth.

You didn't have 100% dark resistance on everybody? Argeiss is dark element just like zefeifus and one of my highest priorities to become immune against

Interesting, I'll have to check what our stats were. Not that Argeiss worked every time against the false party members, so I suspect we had a fair bit of dark resistance. But not 100%

 

[aweigh]

- yah man, i have 70-100% dark attribute resist on everybody except for my Samurai who has -50% because of some equipment he has on.

- the only real problem is fighting multiple stargazers and/or stargazer(s) in a back-row like in the video. i'm gonna have to hang up the dual Muramasa's i just got for my Samurai and go back to the Flame Heresy bow, and and i'm also gonna have to re-organize my party in the following way:

1. gonna move my cleric to the back-row and give him either whip or staff (i have some awesome staves, like Tiln, and Chancellor's Staff, etc).
2. gonna move my Shaman to the front row and hang up ALL of the Divine Charms. it's a cute concept, but it's time for serious business.
3. Shaman to the front row to replace the cleric using the Anglestrike Fall Bow + best armor/equipment possible
4. Samurai gonna be using the flame heresy
5. lord character will stick with holy sabre since it is M-rance.

Now the back row will be:

1. Cleric using Chancellor's staff / Tiln
2. 5th and 6th spots, as always, the Bishop/Alchemist. At the moment i have them both dual-wielding shields, but i can go buy an Aura Punch (or two).

Depends on if stargazer does swallow return like Polyete. Gonna go slay some stargazers in a lil bit right now i'm "raising" the -Armor Class of the enemies in ELMINAGE: ORIGINAL .iso for the PSP (stacking an extra 5 points of Armor Class on every enemy in E: Original) and it is slow going as i have to hex edit each enemy manually.

i've always found the thing that most prevents me from enjoying E: Original to the maximum is that it is too easy so i'm doing something about it. Thought about doubling hit point amounts but came to the conclusion it would be more in-depth to "boost" the -AC of the enemies in 'Original instead, as i find they are all way too easy to hit.

trying out the modded .iso now...

 

[Courtier]

if stargazer does swallow return like Polete.

Polete:
-Has no swallow return
-Is highly resistant to all ailments + 80% status recovery
-Inflicts poison (30%)
-Minus 18 AC
-No regen

Stargazer:
-Swallow return (32%)
-Susceptible to most statuses + 35% recovery - you really want to be casting rarood/rastoma/ramisama when fighting groups of them
-Minus 35 AC
-Breaks armor
-Regenerates 384 HP/round
-Does much more damage than Polete

Both do a fuckton of attacks per round, come in groups, have pursuit sweep and swift attack, and have a small chance of beheading (Polete 10% Stargazer 3%). Also worth noting: Polete is 100% dark resistant but Stargazer has 0% dark resistance, meaning instant death spells will work exceptionally well.

 

[aweigh]

These are the original Elminage: Original values, i.e. this is just ppsspp with the normal game .iso loaded:

This is w/ the modded .ISO loaded; i couldn't really take the time to perfectly try out values since each -AC change has to be done per enemy and then you have to save it and re-build the .iso and load the game and see if it is working so i just "boosted" enemy -AC by 5 points, give or take. Some enemies that had atrociously bad AC, shit like (positive) 8, 10, 12, etc, I just lowered their AC to "0":

 

[aweigh]

thanks for the heads up about Stargazer's lack of dark attribute resistance. time to put the Death Staff into action.

 

[aweigh]

oh shit, the Aas Hammer comes with 100% dark attack (and -100% dark def). Yeah, I'm looking at stargazers stats right now and she's basically vulnerable to everything.

 

[Dorateen]

Out of curiosity and for personal edification, I went back to review the resistances of the party I ended the game with.

Human Lord 6% Dark defense
Dwarf Fighter 30% Dark defense
Fairy Ninja 100% Dark defense
Human Bishop -10% Dark defense
Elf Bard -50% Dark defense
Elf Mage 0% Dark defense

It was worse than I thought. Has to do with equipment like the elf's Rainbow Charm.

aweigh I had the Lord character dual wielding with Laevateinn for the main hand ( 6-60 damage, 5 attack rate) and Happy Seven as the sub weapon.

 

[aweigh]

Dorarnae Dorateen Courtier



honestly don't know how i would be faring right now if courtier had not told me to exploit the stargazer's complete lack of dark attribute resistance. i slapped a Death Staff (+100% dark atk, -100% dark def, then further enchanted) on both of my casters, i.e. the bishop and the alchemist.

basically i use the lord and samurai characters who have -45 AC (or thereabouts) to meat-shield for those two, and fingers crossed that their defensive manuever triggers before the stargazers.

BTW, on a non-Stargazer related note:


- After hours playing through the majority of Ibag's Tower using a Shaman character i can 100% honestly and legitimately say that: there is absolutely no reason to take a Shaman over a Samurai. The regular Samurai's ability to randomly parry (and nullify in the process) an incoming enemy attack and then immediately attack that enemy and deal excellent damage completely outclasses and outperforms any and all combinations of abilities or "quirks" the Shaman variant may have on the Samurai.


Simply put the Shaman has absolutely nothing worthwhile to offer in the post-game. No spells, the charms are a complete joke when you take into account post-game enemy defenses/swallow return %; etc. 2x Samurai would do very, very well in post-game, as the swallow return is a real life-saver.

i always take a Lord because of the Court Sanctuary but to be completely honest right now the fucker is at like, 41% Court Protection for the party and it has taken the entire playthrough... other than the court sanctuary there is absolutely no reason to use a Lord when you think about it: instead of a Lord one should just turn an O.G. Cleric into a FIGHTER and just use that Fighter character.

A fighter deals more 30% extra melee dmg at level 100 than a Lord, or a Valk. Sure, i suppose it is nice knowing i have 40% court protection but considering the sheer over abundance of accessories and items and shit that give 20 %, 30 % or more to half of the resistances or all of them (diamond colony cape is an early example, among many others); I really no longer think the Lord is necessary at all.

Valk earns their keep due to the OP lances + the OP valkyrie ability to dual-wield lances (lol), and of course already mentioned how life-saving the Samurai's swallow return class ability is in post-game and needless to say the Ninja is extremely OP.

(in fact,t hat is why i am specifically not running w/ a ninja, and class-changed my ninja into my current Cleric using glass shoes).

ninja is simply too good, but hey, not complaining just pointing out the truth.

 

[aweigh]

need an extra challenge so i:

- changed my lord into a fighter. using exact same "seraph" armor suite (hat, torso, gloves, boots); ankh of divine fortune (-1 AC unlike "regular Ankhs" and has 45% behead resistance), cloak of changing seasons (offers nothing except -3 AC), and the main difference: instead of using the 2-handed Lord-Saber now my Fighter is dual wielding main-hand "Evil Excalibur" and in sub-weapon the God Slayer sub-Lance.

- he does a ton more dmg than the lord once he gained a level and his phys pwr up ++ kicked in. Fighter is truly in a league of their own when it comes to mathematical melee dmg output. There is simply zero contest.

- Obviously now my group no longer has court sanctuary... already getting slept/confused/charmed more than before but it's no big deal, i have everyone w/ 60~ % status recovery, a few of them inching towards 70% status recovery.

i can't use the Golden Axe because the character is a hermaphrodite, since I made him "?" gender right from the beginning in anticipation of the holy saber (since i never got to use it the 1st time i reached the Tower); sure I could smith the Golden Axe's gender restriction away but i did some math and dual-wielding evil excalibur + god slayer sub-lance does about 100~ points total dmg more combined plus the possibility of 1 kill per weapon, which is something not to be overlooked.

decided to switch the Shaman to the back row again this time i took out her katana/etc weapons and gave her the Aura Punch, a hat, torso-armor, gloves, boots, and 2x Divine Charms in the Accessories Categories.

using the + / 2's dmg bonus modifiers of the Charms to make the Aura Punch function

 

[aweigh]

question: what the hell is the Dispel skill used for? i have probably clocked like 1k hours in elminage playings i have never been able to use it correctly i select it a graphic appears onscreen and then a turn is wasted.

 

[Courtier]

Dispel just kills an undead, it ''dispels their undead curse''. P useless unless you ran out of harias and are fighting a spooky ghost in the first dungeon.

You didn't mention the Shaman's barrier which is their main attraction, don't you like being able to reflect all spells? It completely protects you from dickass casters like Salome and all demons. Castings of rastoma petrifying half your team are a real pain in the ass. Shaman is not a variant on Samurai, they're a utility class like Servant. Their demon-killing high mastery skill is like the Valkyrie's, and increases their damage substantially but still doesn't put them on the level of a warrior class. I put spells and a bow on them and keep them in the back row.