Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[aweigh]

Shackleton

Magic Puppet race pros:

- begins with boosted Armor Class, a nice fat -5, just like the Faery race except Puppets live for hundreds and hundreds of years and never go senile (which means Puppet races will never start losing Stats like crazy on post-game level ups).
- Are not excluded from *any* gear I can think of. I'm willing to bet.... nothing, that they are the only race that can equip anything without worry. (They can still be cursed ofc).
- Built-in native increased Status Recovery Rate %, can't remember the exact number but it is more than the standard 30%. Think it was 35 % ? Must check.
- Again, must check, but p. sure they're natively immune to poison. This is actually p. worthless really but might as well mention it.

- And the REAL reason to use a Puppet character: they feature built-in native 50% resistance to Mage/Cleric/Alchemy spell resistances. Think about dat for a sec. Ponder dat. The second-highest are Elves with... 20% base resistances.

Puppet cons:


- Mediocre racial minimum for their Attributes. Almost all of their stats reach their maximum cap at around 13-16. Don't expect Puppets to be causing havoc w/ spells or melee or being super speedy or being great Thiefs: their stats are 100% mediocre.
- that's basically it... i guess. Their stats capping at 15-16 maximum for any given attribute is a pretty big blow, but their 50% magic spell resistance (which can easily reach the almighty 100% by enchanting cloaks/obis/etc with high-point Ores.
- 100% spell resistances actually are NOT, i repeat, are NOT nullified by an enemy using Magic Essence ex-skill. This is very, very awesome but in E: Gothic i think only a Puppet char with a post-game gear that has at least 30 % resistance to Mage/Cleric/Alchemy plus combined w/ high-point Ore, in the 40-50 range of points, and yep sure enough that puppet can rock for sure 1 of those 3 spell schools with immunity; and at least a 2nd one sitting pretty at around probably 70%.

 

[aweigh]

Shackleton

i tried reading a bit about the books in the japanese wiki but the google translation makes it both impossible to understand what the fuck is going on and also makes the books seem like alien relics that are glitches in the matrix.

i *think* they have a mixture of special msg's to the player of both the Wiz Empire series and the Elminage series straight from the lead designers, and i *think* the last book you find has a series of numbers that constitute a special password which could be turned into Starfish's.... offices i guess?, and the numbers would decode into predictions such as all of the ideas Starfish are planning for their next games.

in E: Original there is also a very similar sequence of numbers that are found in a pedastal in the top floor of the dragon's fang and they read a specific sequence the 1st time u reach that place and whoop those witches' asss but if you manage to defeat at least 1 of the Kamikages (gods) of the Old World you can read a sequence of numbers in another pedastal in the Old World which, I *think*, decode the numbers from Dragon's Fang and and and, that's all i know.

Probably something related to Starfish "promotions" and the like in Japan, OR possibly the super-secret password that allows the player to play a hidden remix-REMIX version of Elminage 2 for the NDS which was upcoming for release back then.

(the NDS remix version of elmi 2 has a menu option where it asks a password. it unlocks the same overall content as the actual Remix, which has different map layouts for all of the elmi 2 dungeons hence "new content" for the NDS compared to the original PSP version; but according to the JP Wiki the password unlocked in E: Original supposedly unlocks some special easter eggs along with an increased difficulty rate but with the map layouts from the remix path.)

 

[aweigh]

Shackleton

this is way too funny mang, i just realized *now* in my current play through of Ibag Tower, after probably 1000 combined hours on E: Gothic and about 150 hours on E: Original and around 100 hours combined on elmi 2 + 3 (left both mid-way through because i want to translate them before playing them for real) and you know what?

i had never realized before that casting MIRACLE lowers the casting character's max HP, similar to the HP loss from a Level Drain. Obviously it makes sense since the character is losing a level. I can't believe i never noticed that! All this time I had beeen spamming Miracle inside Ibag's tower until i suddenly realized my Samurai character, Jenny, I could've fucking sworn she used to have more than 2k HP! whaaaa?

heh. I'm currently trying to get the Citre emulator to run and I downloaded the japanese rom of elminage: gothic 3DS remix edition but i need to first learn how to decrypt a 3DS .rom and then i have to apply that and decrypt the 3ds gothic rom and then see if it runs ok in Citre emulator.

...*IF IT DOES* then i'm going to do a quickie-translation into english because it utilizes all of the same files for text, ALL TEXT, as the psp and the windows PC versions of E: Gothic. It will only be a simple matter of replacing files; and if not, the worst case scenario is simply typing into the 3ds rom the english text already available in my PC ver of Gothic; i.e. no need for any translation whatsoever just... i guess the equivalent of data entry.

unlike the PC port of E: Original which featured ZERO new content/map layouts, the 3ds ver of Gothic has a remix mode that changes all of the map layouts. i already say how they're like via Dorarnae 's YouTube channel playthrough of the 3ds version of Gothic. I only watched the 1st dungeon the Tsun-Kun Caves and then i skipped ahead and watched some Dorzapola Tunnels and yep, sure enough they are completely unrecognizable in terms of layout.

HOWEVER, i want to play it myself first though because what i saw seemed like half-a-step backwards in maze design from the vanilla maps in Gothic... i was noticing waaay too many empty hallways leading into a square room into either a dead end or a T junction or super simple, dumb stuff like that...

 

[aweigh]

Dorarnae Dorateen Siveon Viata Comte Shackleton Emmanuel2 Zetor Courtier

here's a thing i never before considered: If you make a DRAGONEWT char, AND MAKE SURE THAT HE/SHE IS A THIEF! A THIEF! class so he/she can equip 1 specific item... ok, so then make that character...

- play game until point where you can buy/acquire the Devil Club weapon
- equip that shit on ur dragonewt THIEF and voila, the devil club's SP EFFECT changes Breath into DARKNESS ELEMENTAL property.
- Now the fun begins, hehe. Go out there and acquire a Hermit Knife and make your Thief equip that thing and class-change into a Ninja...
Now you have a Dragonewt NINJA character who can use his/her BREATH skill with DARK elemental property and guess what? I do believe that the Ninja's ever-rising BEHEAD ACTIVATION % is utilized by a DARK BREATH attack.

I'm gonna repeat that shit cos i know it's simply mind-boggling: I'm saying the Darkness Breath of an enemy, usually almost exclusively this will come when fighting a DRAGON enemy, well each BREATH's "property/element" carries a chance to trigger the corresponding STATUS.

- Charm Breath from enemies charms. Heh.
- Poison Breath from enemies... poisons you.

You get the pictures. The point of this post is that we must go now AND TEST WHETHER OR NOT THIS DRAGONEWT NINJA'S DARK-PROPERTY BREATH CARRIES WITH IT THE BEHEADING % OF THE CHARACTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GET IT!?

I see no reason why it shouldn't because the Ninja's behead activation stacks with EVERYTHING. even unarmed he will be beheading. I just thought of this absolutely ridiculous character idea and just had to share it w/ you guys.

EDIT: and in an absolute, bottom-of-the-barrel worst-case scenario... i guess you can just pump to the max the dragon ninja's dark elemental ATTACK % because that also probably affects the Breath. My *hope* is that BOTH THINGS affect the breath. This is the only instance where something like THIS is possible, after all!

There are no other classes who come with built-in "status" activation of any sort; except for the Werebeast's 20% poison. But a werebeast has no BREATH... so....

 

[aweigh]

I MEAN, duh, it's not like post-game ninjas @ level 250 are OP, rite? amirite? heh

y not, let's give him a behead breath! i'm almost 100% sure this is possible but it is so ridiculous i don't think i'll physically bother doing it, even if it only means hex editing.

i'm right now hard at work on these free days of mine working non-stop on translating into english everything i can in ELMINAGE 2.

the best news about this is that i don't even have to use google-translation for ANYTHING. why? because i have all of the files extracted from E: Original!

I'm just writing over the japanese sentences in the ELMI 2 files w/ the exact same english words/text i'm reading from the relevant/same file from E: Original. Could literally not be easier.

(yes, obviously the character/NPC dialog, i know, blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah WHATEVER).

progress is also very quick because EVERYTHING inside the elmi 2 files is placed in the eXACT SAME ORDER (and sometimes even NUMBERED the same) as in the corresponding/the same file from E: Original !

Thinking about doing Elmi 3 next, since it will be equally simple. No need to translate anything really just have the files from E: Original open side by side with the same file from Elmi 2 (or Elmi 3) and overwrite the japanese text w/ the words i'm reading from the E: Original file.

As for the text that is displayed when things happen such as an NPC character talking to you, or i dunno weird shit like when somebody gives you a quest and persists and spouting text-words at you in japanese... wellp, there is no software in the world that can handle even simple japanese sentences and produce something legible in english. choies are either:

1) finding someone fluent to translate the dialog/story text and then i edit and insert their translation
2) do it myself using combination of japanese dictionary and google translation and then a HEFTY, MIGHTY dose of my own personal "flavor writing" as I basically bend over backwards writing something in english that makes sense to the reader but that also somehow is at least SOMEWHAT related to to what is written in the jap text.
3) same as 2nd option except instead of working that much just doing a quick and easy "short english sentences; go for that "cryptic" approach on dat dialog... translate everything in a way that it means whatever the fuck the player wants it to mean and not sweat it, because this is just a dungeon crawler".

Helly : mang, so you still willing to translate the Empire 1 npc dialog text / dungeon "event" text ? it's a shame the game is like 70% in english and all that's left to be done is the dialog. I would love your help w/ this one so much, it would be greatly appreciated: and then we can have Wiz Empire 1 AND Empire 2... both in ENGLISH and both translated by the RPGCodex community

(don't worry, i won't even dream of asking you to even bother reading Elminage 2/3 texts... i would literally have to pay you Currency and Monies because it would become your actual, literal job translating all that dialog. COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the amount of text in Wiz Empire 1; that one is very much like the amount found in Empire 2 which you already know firsthand)

 

[Helly]

One day, I will translate Wiz Empire 1 too. It's part of the plan

 

[aweigh]

ok

 

[aweigh]

Dorarnae

hey, wanted to ask your explicit thoughts on Elminage 3 for PSP... do you think the dungeons are good, or are they bad? Or... are they of varying quality much like E: Original and Elmi-2 except they are more forgettable? or are they more memorable?

is the game combat harder than Elmi-2? I ask because what I am enjoying the absolute most about Elmi-2 is that all enemies are MUUUUCH harder to defeat than in E: Original. This was SORELY needed as the main thing that always prevents from truly enjoying a good replay of E: Original is that the only "difficulty spike" in the entire game only happens in the post-game... everything before the Old World in E: Original can be beaten by simply using auto-battle.

Elmi-2 immediately comes out of the gates with weapons that do less dmg, are less accurate, have less # of swings per attack, armor/gear that has slightly less Armor Class points, Ores that hare harder to get than in E: Original and best of all the dungeons are slightly more devilish than the ones in Original (although there are SO MANY OF THEM i admit i have not actually tried out ALL of the dungeons... so there could be equally as many boring ones).

Also the enemies in Elmi-2 all have more HP, better Armor Class (right from the very beginning of the game), and will generally fuck you up much faster than in E: ORiginal.

I wrote all that because I wanted to convey that I really enjoy the increase in difficulty found in Elminage 2; now I wanted to ask you about how you think Elminage 2 stacks up when compared to Original, 2 and also 3 ??

 

[aweigh]

Courtier

dude, i think i just found the perfect way to get me to LOOOVE using brawlers, haha check this out:

This is my modified BRAWLER GROUP ATTACK BATTLE TEXT...

A FLYING KNEE!
ILLEGAL EYE GOUGE!
DOLPHIN DIVE!
DICK PUNCH!
UPPERCUT!
ASSUMING... THE
...CRANE STANCE
EPIC KICK KILL.

love it.

 

[Dorarnae]

Dorarnae

hey, wanted to ask your explicit thoughts on Elminage 3 for PSP... do you think the dungeons are good, or are they bad? Or... are they of varying quality much like E: Original and Elmi-2 except they are more forgettable? or are they more memorable?

is the game combat harder than Elmi-2? I ask because what I am enjoying the absolute most about Elmi-2 is that all enemies are MUUUUCH harder to defeat than in E: Original. This was SORELY needed as the main thing that always prevents from truly enjoying a good replay of E: Original is that the only "difficulty spike" in the entire game only happens in the post-game... everything before the Old World in E: Original can be beaten by simply using auto-battle.

Elmi-2 immediately comes out of the gates with weapons that do less dmg, are less accurate, have less # of swings per attack, armor/gear that has slightly less Armor Class points, Ores that hare harder to get than in E: Original and best of all the dungeons are slightly more devilish than the ones in Original (although there are SO MANY OF THEM i admit i have not actually tried out ALL of the dungeons... so there could be equally as many boring ones).

Also the enemies in Elmi-2 all have more HP, better Armor Class (right from the very beginning of the game), and will generally fuck you up much faster than in E: ORiginal.

I wrote all that because I wanted to convey that I really enjoy the increase in difficulty found in Elminage 2; now I wanted to ask you about how you think Elminage 2 stacks up when compared to Original, 2 and also 3 ??

I dunno. I enjoy the first elminage because it can be finished pretty quickly(like 35 ish hours for main and post game). the second elminage takes more time because of the rise in difficulty and getting fame takes a bit more time too, I guess if I could understand the story, that would help...the thing that doesn't help too is the psp version is a bit slow, there's some loading time, I'd like to try the ds version it's probably faster and has additional post game content...dungeon wise elminage 2, I dunno, some were nice other felt maybe a bit empty.

Elminage 3 is the one I enjoyed the most at first. I played it a couple time and is the only elminage that I completed every quest in the game. I really liked how you unlock some dungeon. was the first game with music load too I think. the difficulty is alright, it gets harder as you go deeper in the dungeon, it's not always the same mob as elminage 1...
downside of the game are some of the npc looks...the game feels less 'serious' and more anime. there's a couple boss in the game but I was hoping to see more gods(there's only 3) but there are other 'secret' boss that are cool and that also make lvling easier.
I didn't like how you acquire the 'gods items' in this one. in elminage 1 and 2, you get one each time you defeat a god. in this one you have to do new game + and then when you reach elminage, Izabel gives you one. Well the game have different path, so you can see what happen when you decide to do other compass, but when you just want to get those items, it's a pain, I rather walk in circle and wait until I encounter those god like elminage 1 and 2.

the big let down I guess with the game is the feature of creating your dungeon. the feature overall is fine...it's mostly for fighting some optional boss and getting special items. the problem with that is there one of those item that can be exploited, it transform all your exp into gold. you get back to lvl1 but you keep your exp, so you can accumulate an infinite amount of gold and then give that at the temple, then use a medal of power til you get the class you want to be and bam you have a character that is lvl 18k.
when you don't know that trick, elminage 3 is very good(I really like it), but this thing really destroy the game. I wonder if they fixed it with the download version.

 

[aweigh]

Dorarnae

dude, you're the best! very much appreciate your pretty damn insightful AND to-the-point breakdown of elminage 1, 2 and 3 (in the context of explaining it to someone who is already a fan of hte games, i.e. Me).

so, yep, the #1 reason i enjoy Elminage: Gothic is because its dungeons are amazingly well designed, it has near-perfect itemization and near-perfect "balance" all across the board... unlike E: Original where the entire game is ridiculously easy during combat, that is of course until you reach the Post-Game's "The Old World" and suddenly you experience the first, and ONLY difficulty spike in the entirety of E: Original!

before the post-game the toughest enemies hang out in the dragon's fang and they top out at around LEVEL 25-30, give or take. The toughest of them will probably spam ENTEROOK MISTA and/or shut down your party (or attempt to shut down...) via Alchemy spells or a good ole-fashioned Argeiss in order to swallow up any party members whom you skimped on the Dark Element: Defensive %. Hehe.

it's p. much a walk in the park! you can beat the 5 witches and eye-lock w/ ur eyes closed and by spamming the auto-battle Button. (i actually won that fight ONLy using the auto-battle button). Very, very disappointing. That is... until I then reached the POST GAME! and wow, what a difference! If you look at the bestiary you will notice the Old World enemies are all LEVEL 40 and UP, UP, UP!

this means FINALLY, FIIIINALLEEEEEEEE your E: Original party of bad asses who are all probably level 50-70 when you reach The Old World will for the FIRST TIME IN THE ENTIRE GAME be able to fight enemies whom you can't beat by pressing auto-battle. Other than that, it is of course still Elminage, and Elminage = Wizardry, except BETTER. ALL THAT I JUST SAID? DOESN'T MATTER!

Elminage Original is still an amazing turn-based blobber that does Wizardry better than real Wizardry games. Besides, the only reason I harp on how brain-dead easy combats are is because i totally abuse the ability to continue stealing +2 ORES from the Trash Collector enemy in Last Court dungeon. Sue me.

So it's a great game, but it's not something I see myself replaying over and over the way I have been beginning playthrough after playthrough after playthrough of E: Gothic over and over because every. single. time. it is a completely worthwhile and engaging experience where I get to utilize items, spells, classes, races and do things i STILL have yet to do in previous play throughs. The game is tough as nails and that's what i most enjoy: spending hundreds of hours building a finely tuned blobber-machine of DEATH; and doing that is NO FUN if there are no TOUGH COMBATS to steam roll!

This brings me then to why I asked Elminage 2. I am loving it and this is the 2nd time i play it; the 1st time I clocked around 27 hours before deciding that i simply did not want to play the game in JAPANESE. However, since i am now doing my humble efforts to translate as much as I can of the game's text into English it has made this 2nd beginning w/ the game a completely "new" experience and the very first thing I noticed is that: Starfish WAS PAYING ATTENTION SON!

Elmi-2 is, right from the word GO! a much, much, MUCH "harder" game. Of course it is NOWHERE NEAR the levels of depth, mechanical complexity and sheer over-abundance of items and enemies and weaknesses and strengths and races and really-real Wizardry-worthy dungeon mazes... but i mean, what game comes close, right?

what it does offer is the exact same "foundation" as E: Original except:

- twice the number of quests (and i have already completed 13 of them by simply utilizng the japanese wiki. This shit is not rocket science after all and the majority of quests are comprised of an NPC character spitting out japanese text at you, then you go check the jp wiki's EVENT LIST page and then read the english translation of what the NPC wants you to do.:

"Oh, the fucker just wants me to go to the Snow Field area and... hunt down a mouse? jesus christ. well, let's go do dis!"

"Ok, i am in the Snow Field... where the fuck is the mouse... OH THERE IT IS! *fight* GODDAMNIT HE RAN AWAY ARGH *cue player chasing mouse and fighting it 2 more times*

"Hmm, hmm, yes yes I agree! (Undecipherably japanese text being spouted)"

*SOUND OF QUEST HAVING BEEN COMPLETED*** ding ding

"now i just return to the dude who said that thing about the snow field... there he is... hmm, yep!"

*ACQUIRED 20 FAME!!!*

....the game is perfectly playable IMO and will only become LEGITIMATELY playable once I translate more of it! I think anyone who has already finished E: Original and E: Gothic 20 times over and wants to play some more ELMINAGE... I think this person needs to IMMEDIATELY DOWNLOAD THE .ISO OF THE PSP GAME OF ELMINAGE 2 (JP) AND LOAD THAT FUCKER INTO THEIR PSP AND/OR THEIR EMULATOR.

Ppl, go play it! You're welcome.

EDIT: **Currently uploading my WIP-English-Version-Elmi-2 to my FIREDROP account so anyone interested can at least enjoy the game with most of the item list and most of the spells already in ENGLISH. I'm still methodically translating enemy names and a hundred other stuff but just having half the items in proper English completely makes it feel like you're REALLY playing the game.

 

[Dorarnae]

Dorarnae

dude, you're the best! very much appreciate your pretty damn insightful AND to-the-point breakdown of elminage 1, 2 and 3 (in the context of explaining it to someone who is already a fan of hte games, i.e. Me).

so, yep, the #1 reason i enjoy Elminage: Gothic is because its dungeons are amazingly well designed, it has near-perfect itemization and near-perfect "balance" all across the board... unlike E: Original where the entire game is ridiculously easy during combat, that is of course until you reach the Post-Game's "The Old World" and suddenly you experience the first, and ONLY difficulty spike in the entirety of E: Original!

before the post-game the toughest enemies hang out in the dragon's fang and they top out at around LEVEL 25-30, give or take. The toughest of them will probably spam ENTEROOK MISTA and/or shut down your party (or attempt to shut down...) via Alchemy spells or a good ole-fashioned Argeiss in order to swallow up any party members whom you skimped on the Dark Element: Defensive %. Hehe.

it's p. much a walk in the park! you can beat the 5 witches and eye-lock w/ ur eyes closed and by spamming the auto-battle Button. (i actually won that fight ONLy using the auto-battle button). Very, very disappointing. That is... until I then reached the POST GAME! and wow, what a difference! If you look at the bestiary you will notice the Old World enemies are all LEVEL 40 and UP, UP, UP!

this means FINALLY, FIIIINALLEEEEEEEE your E: Original party of bad asses who are all probably level 50-70 when you reach The Old World will for the FIRST TIME IN THE ENTIRE GAME be able to fight enemies whom you can't beat by pressing auto-battle. Other than that, it is of course still Elminage, and Elminage = Wizardry, except BETTER. ALL THAT I JUST SAID? DOESN'T MATTER!

Elminage Original is still an amazing turn-based blobber that does Wizardry better than real Wizardry games. Besides, the only reason I harp on how brain-dead easy combats are is because i totally abuse the ability to continue stealing +2 ORES from the Trash Collector enemy in Last Court dungeon. Sue me.

So it's a great game, but it's not something I see myself replaying over and over the way I have been beginning playthrough after playthrough after playthrough of E: Gothic over and over because every. single. time. it is a completely worthwhile and engaging experience where I get to utilize items, spells, classes, races and do things i STILL have yet to do in previous play throughs. The game is tough as nails and that's what i most enjoy: spending hundreds of hours building a finely tuned blobber-machine of DEATH; and doing that is NO FUN if there are no TOUGH COMBATS to steam roll!

This brings me then to why I asked Elminage 2. I am loving it and this is the 2nd time i play it; the 1st time I clocked around 27 hours before deciding that i simply did not want to play the game in JAPANESE. However, since i am now doing my humble efforts to translate as much as I can of the game's text into English it has made this 2nd beginning w/ the game a completely "new" experience and the very first thing I noticed is that: Starfish WAS PAYING ATTENTION SON!

Elmi-2 is, right from the word GO! a much, much, MUCH "harder" game. Of course it is NOWHERE NEAR the levels of depth, mechanical complexity and sheer over-abundance of items and enemies and weaknesses and strengths and races and really-real Wizardry-worthy dungeon mazes... but i mean, what game comes close, right?

what it does offer is the exact same "foundation" as E: Original except:

- twice the number of quests (and i have already completed 13 of them by simply utilizng the japanese wiki. This shit is not rocket science after all and the majority of quests are comprised of an NPC character spitting out japanese text at you, then you go check the jp wiki's EVENT LIST page and then read the english translation of what the NPC wants you to do.:

"Oh, the fucker just wants me to go to the Snow Field area and... hunt down a mouse? jesus christ. well, let's go do dis!"

"Ok, i am in the Snow Field... where the fuck is the mouse... OH THERE IT IS! *fight* GODDAMNIT HE RAN AWAY ARGH *cue player chasing mouse and fighting it 2 more times*

"Hmm, hmm, yes yes I agree! (Undecipherably japanese text being spouted)"

*SOUND OF QUEST HAVING BEEN COMPLETED*** ding ding

"now i just return to the dude who said that thing about the snow field... there he is... hmm, yep!"

*ACQUIRED 20 FAME!!!*

....the game is perfectly playable IMO and will only become LEGITIMATELY playable once I translate more of it! I think anyone who has already finished E: Original and E: Gothic 20 times over and wants to play some more ELMINAGE... I think this person needs to IMMEDIATELY DOWNLOAD THE .ISO OF THE PSP GAME OF ELMINAGE 2 (JP) AND LOAD THAT FUCKER INTO THEIR PSP AND/OR THEIR EMULATOR.

Ppl, go play it! You're welcome.

EDIT: **Currently uploading my WIP-English-Version-Elmi-2 to my FIREDROP account so anyone interested can at least enjoy the game with most of the item list and most of the spells already in ENGLISH. I'm still methodically translating enemy names and a hundred other stuff but just having half the items in proper English completely makes it feel like you're REALLY playing the game.

the thing I noticed with elminage original is that couple monster breath are fire dmg and you can steal phoenix feather which absorb fire dmg, so breath attack isn't much a problem once you have that. after that, all you need is to raise your darkness resist so death spell doesn't work.
but I felt the game had a good lenght, compared to elminage 2 where maybe it felt there was a bit too many dungeon for main story, also the final(main story) dungeon of elminage 2 was disappointing, you can pretty much skip it the first time and go right away to the boss. On new game + you have to find the switch in the dungeon to activate the true final boss.

 

[Courtier]

EPIC

no

 

[Courtier]

congratulations! you have now unlocked the option to Create a new chracter in the training hall as a (Race) "Magic Puppet"!!! (They made their first appearance in E: Original and the quest to unlock their Race was almost exactly the same except WAAAAAAAAAAAAY less tedious)

Courtier did both parts, tho, so he'll have something to say.

Yah I completed every single quest in the game, though I may have missed a couple of unlisted ones. There is no puppet race in our version of Gothic. IIRC they added it in the 3ds remix. You find the pieces, kill the puppet and get a minor reward, that's it.

Also Shackleton I'm pretty sure you need a mage of a certain level to be able to read the books, they contain miscellaneous info.

phoenix feather

Those are great, once I found out about them I looked forward to every phoenix encounter. Original had great loot in general, it makes the game much more fun to be able to get unique+interesting (if not very practical) parts and equipment from every single enemy. It also feels like there were way more items with special effects such as changing class. Finding out some mundane items actually do things like change classes and attributes is a real treat for the player.

Actually I've been wondering something, Dorar did items in Elminage Gothic psp version originally have art or only in the 3ds remix?

Also aweigh you've been doing fantastic work man, even if you could never realistically finish the Elmin2 TL you've laid the groundwork for any future groups picking it up, and anybody who googles Elminage ends up here anyway thanks to this grandest of threads. I don't actually know how to work uMOD and such well at all, just swapped in that .dll meant for a different game at random (from a german site??? I forget) to get it to hook properly. I'm ok at editing images and shit tho

 

[Dorarnae]

items picture was only on 3ds.

 

[aweigh]

Courtier

dude

DUDE

for the love of all that is holy! er, i mean when you have the time to spare and if you feel so inclined to do me this favor... PLEASE DOWNLOAD THAT ELMI-2 WIP TRANSLATION .ISO that I linked in this post a couple posts further back, and also download the linked .zip containing the already ripped "menu textures" from both E: Original and Elmi-2.

Sorry to be so demanding it's just that I just spent a fucking 1 hour or so frustrated trying to get *any* verison of uMOD (tried 1.44 and also 2.53 alpha) to WORK. Here in my current OS/partition of preferred use, i.e. I am currently posting from a Win 7 x64, the uMOD(s) don't "hook" / "attach" to the PSP emulator and the main menu just remains with the same default uMOD options (i.e. no way whatsoever to manipulate the Emulator via uMOD).

So I just fucking had it an hour ago and said fuck it and rebooted into the win 7 x86 partition... i'll just cut this short: in my w7 x86 partition ninja ripper (i tried two versions: first one was 1.4 and the other one was the most recent one version 1.5.1)-- ninja ripper is NOT the problem and in both OS partitions it will hook the PSP emulator day and night with a d3d9.DLL.... anyhoo, so in the x86 w7 partition i do all that and then fire up uMOD and lo and behold mother FUCK!!!!!!!!!!! it fucking "hooks" with the emulator!!!! hallelujah!

anyway to finish this whine post it hooks the PSP emulator and it freely lets me cycle through the PSP main-GUI default screen's Textures and everything working right but the second I make the emu load ANY GAME boom uMOD and the emu both crash. After 1 hour of that bullshit i'll just do 1 of 2 things:

- hope you do the menu-texture switch-a-roo for me, but if you can't that's a-ok cos
- been googling that apparently the PPSSPP emu can do this texture replacement NATIVELY?? without any other programs!? must google...

Meanwhile, i'll keep translating everything i humanly can in Elmi-2 but i really, really wanna have the english menu-textures already in the modified WIP .iso :D :D

there's no hurry tho, i was just venting. it angers when i have no clue why my PC doesn't work right.

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ELMINAGE RELATED 2nd POST:

Courtier, dorarnae, Shackleton , Emmanuel2 ; ANYBODY who is remotely interested in an Elminage: Gothic playthrough i just wanted to let y'all know i'm plugging away every night, 30-60 mins at a time just going over the enemy weapons (there are many, many, many enemies.... and there are even many more times the amount of weapons) and changing the non-Humanoid enemy weapons to the ones that they are sporting in the 3DS version of the game.

this requires simple text file editing but it is time consuming: have to first rename the weapon as in the PC version of E: Gothic all non-Humanoid enemies utilize generically-named weapons such as the Legendary "Strike" ! oooh.

So basically i'm slowly matching each eneemy-weapon with the name and the STATS and any other MISC. CHANGES (such as RANGE changing on the enemy-weapon, like w/ the 3DS version's INSECT LORD and LA FLANUSE who both sport much less damaging weapons BUT they are L-range and Starfish added an Armor Class bonus to both of their L-range weapons witht he Insect Lord's one in particular sporting a nice -5 to AC); so yeah i'm making sure the PC version of the Insect Lord's "Slash" weapon is named after the 3ds weapon, is L-ranged, is nerfed down to the 3ds weapon's super low damage and accuaracy, features the new addition of the -5 to AC and all that stuff and then hex editing the weapon so that it utilizes the same flag that all the other "regular weapons" utilize that allow the game to read them as stuff the player can STEAL.

I'm not even doing it for myself really as stealing top-tier weapons from post-game enemis is craaaaazy time consuming (i spent almost an hour stealing some dragon claws +4 from a dragon in Ibag's Tower... then i couldn't use it because i didn't have a brawler, LOL); but i do want to do the weapon (and armor too!) changes to make the PC version's item list match the one from the 3DS verison so I can begin a new playthrough!

right after beating Ibag's tower i'm going to immediately begin a new adventure with the goal of using a brawler/summoner combo to make a super OP party of Monster-Adventurers all using stolen Enemy-Weapons

 

[aweigh]

P.S. I currently have all of the enemy weapons enabled/flagged as "normal" so they cal all be stolen now with a Thief character; so if anyone wants that I'm going to put up the link to the ITEM.csv file in while. Changing the names/stas/etc howrever gonna take a few more days, plus want to make sure i spend every possible moment of these days translating as much as i can.

 

[Courtier]

The E2 TL works but I can't get uMOD to hook it either, ppsspp crashed a couple times too while trying. Saw your lines spilling out of boxes becoming unreadable, and guessing at the work fixing that will take. Also the texture files aren't available anymore, dude.

The music is great. So all races are unlocked from the start? I was a little disappointed that they use the same portraits of Original, since I replayed that game so much I've used a good chunk of them already. Minor error: The bottom race CHIMERIC uses the goblin portraits, and the GOBLIN race uses the ogre ones so I'm guessing the former is just goblin and the latter ogre.

With Emp2 I used the global hook instead of starting the exe through uMOD, by the way

 

[aweigh]

Courtier

Dude, PPSSPP officially can now EXTRACT TEXTURES AUTOMATICALLY (from whatver game you are playing atm) and it saves it to a folder, right; then go and rename the textures you want to replace the game's with with the NAMES of the textgures that PPSSPP just finished ripping and then you place the replacement-textures, now renamed to the names PPSSPP gave the original ones, OUTSIDE of the texture-folder PPSSPP uses.

IT'S AWESOME.

Thank you again for trying man, but good news is uMOD is no longer necessary! I'm using the latest PPSSPP nightly and it only was a matter of 1st loading E: Original so the emu could rip aaaalllll the menus (has to show up on your screen in order for PPSSPP to rip it, btw); then i loaded Elmi no. 2 and did the same, made sure to go through aaallll the main menus and shit; and finally i just renamed the E: Original textures with the names from the corresponding/equivalent elmi-2 texture and boom, playing with english menus.

thanks anyway for trying tho.

 

[aweigh]

Courtier

....hang on mate, i'm writing out very brief, but very SPECIFIC step-by-step so you can have E: Original main menus (battle menu commands, stores, status screen, those... the ones you will use always) WITHOUT having to rip ANYTHING. I already did al that work for ya, just a matter of uploading what i'm using to firedrop and giving you the link and then you simply place the textures INSIDE THE GAME'S TEXTURE FOLDER (i'll explain...) but NOT, i repeat, NOT inside the folder titled "NEW" that resides inside "TEXTURE" folder.

(go into most recent PPSSPPP build's options etc go to system and go to developer tools and activate ONLY "REPLACE TEXTURES"; don't enable "RIP TEXTURES" since if you do the E: Original textures I'm going to upload/ and link you will simply get overwritten as you play the game and PPSSPP automatically keeps ripping and replacing the textures.

brb

EXAMPLE:

 

[Courtier]

It would probably be better to continue these postings in the TL thread you made

 

[aweigh]

Courtier

Download this .zip chock full of the most common-use E: Original menu-textures (3mb): https://firedrop.com/a9d8bda4128addd787deb44a7974c8b3

1. Launch PPSSPP.
2. Go into Settings -> System -> Developer Tools
3. ONLY ENABLE THE OPTION THAT SAYS "REPLACE TEXTURES". LEAVE THE THE ONE THAT RIPS THEM DISABLED.

4. Load the game Elminage 2.
5. Now go back to Dev Tools and ENABLE the option "RIP TEXTURES". Yes, I know, Bear with me.

--Now this will immediately create inside of the PPSSPP folder something new within the MEMSTICK folder--

6. Leave Elmi-2 running if you want; and go peek inside MEMSTICK and you will see a folder with the header numbering for the game Elminage 2. I think it's 4885 or something like that.

7. Enter that folder and you will see another folder titled simply "new". This "new" folder will by now be chock-full of any textures that appeared on screen while you were playing Elminage 2 as soon as you enabled "RIP TEXTURES" option.

8. Pay no mind to them, what we wanted was for PPSSPP to create that Texture folder and that "new" folder which are linked to the specific game.

9. DISABLE THE OPTION FOR RIPPING TEXTURES!

10. ENABLE THE OPTION FOR REPLACING THEM!

....and to finish this: Now simply unzip all the E: Original textures I linked you inside the 4885 folder, BUT NOT INSIDE "new". Get it?

(the game's numbering is something close that, just in case you think i'm being precise.)

11. Relaunch PPSSPP and make sure it's in OpenGL (although it works w/ d3d too but i prefer OpenGL and MAKE SURE THE OPTION FOR RIPPING TEXTURES IS OFF.

ANY textures that are placed inisde a game's texture-folder, but OUTSIDE the "new" folder; these textures will override the ones that are inside "new".

I think this specific step-by-step i just wrote , while technically it is all correct, you still need to first RIP TEXTURES from Elminage 2 so that you can RENAME the E: Original ones (placed inside the Elmi-2 game's texture folder, but outside of the "new" folder); rename the E: Original textures to the corresponding names from the Elmi-2 textures.

I *think* you can simply chuck the E: Original textures inside the Elminage 2 game's texture folder and It should simply override whatever the fuck is in htere, but what i don't know is if the "new" folder is EMPTY if the textures waiting outside will be triggered or not.

Worst-case scenario you'll have to spend 10 mins w/ rip textures option enabled and accessing all of the Elmi-2 menus you want PPSSPP to rip; then turn off the ripping function and proceed to profit by renaming your already safe and sound E: Original textures w/ the name from the MATCHING TEXTURE, i.e. obviously the point is to rename Original's battle menus with the name PPSPP gives to Elmi-2's battle menu textures... i made this all sound unbelievably more complicated than it is, trust me

Playing elmi-2 w/ english-language menus makes a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. it's incredible how huge the feeling is while playing. My next post is going to be a brief "route" you can take to do some of the easier quests in Elmi-2 and with an aside explaning them. They're not very complicated really in fact i'd say they're LESS complicated than the quests in E: Original.

YOU don't need me to really give you any pointers at all; just read the EVENT LIST / Event Log section in the japanese wiki and that will basically tell you all you need to know in terms of where to go! However the dungeons in Elmi 2 are like 2x the size of the ones inOriginal and are mostly more devilish, have more traps, and in fact the 3rd dungeon the Wetlands you can 100% get stuck if you enter willy-nilly ! enemies are more tough and this is a good thing and there is tons more loot: there are 100 more items than in Original (elmi 2 has 704 items total vs E: Original's 600-something). there are more dungeons and maps than there are quests! Again, unlike Original; they lowered the number of quests to do and instead almost tripled the amount of dungeons/maps to explore.

I think it was a good call.

 

[aweigh]

Courtier

MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH!!!

Wholesale copy/paste works! For some stuff. I just finished the ENTIRE 700+ ITEMS in 5 minutes!

I noticed that ALL of the items in the Elminage 2 list were IN EXACTLY THE SAME ORDER AS THE ITEM LIST FROM Elminage: Original! So I backed up all of the game files, just in case, and did a simply copy/paste beginning from the first item in E: Original's list and ending with the last item and then switched over to the Elmi-2 item list and pasted it... and it worked!!!!

Now, the bad news is that Elminage 2 has about 100~150 more items total than Elminage: Original, but it's not that bad considering I was going to do all 700+ items one by one originally! The only reason this copy/paste thing worked is because:

1. Starfish was kind enough to place the NEW ITEMS IN THE GAME _after_ the list of items from E: Original ends. If they had decided to place the new Elmi-2 items in-between the E: Original item listing then the copy/paste would NOT have worked.

2. Starfish did not change any of the STATS on the items. This copy/paste I'm speaking of won't work on Elminage 3's item listing and, if E: Gothic weren't in English then it would not work on the E: Gothic item listing either. I made sure to compare and contraste many, many items from the Elminage 2 item listing with a window of the items from E: Original, side-by-side, and tried to see if there were any STAT CHANGES. From my testing i do not think any of the item's stats were changed. So, once again, yet another unbelievable stroke of luck that allowed me to do a massive copy/paste from E: Original over to Elmi-2.

3. I still have around 70+ Elmi-2 items that i need to translate but who cares!

Now, I immediately tried to see if the same would work with the enemy listing... but, unfortunately, Starfish was not kind with the enemy list. The Elmi-2 enemy listing is way, way longer (just by glancing at it I think there are around 20 new enemies) and they're all interspersed within the E: Original enemy listing, which means I cannot copy/paste the enemy list over to Elmi-2. Still gonna have to do that manually.

Lastly, I figured out a way to make the game at least feel like it's in English without having to translate the NPC dialog... check this out:

- I'm simply going to translate into english the World Map's "Quest Menu" and translate each quest with specific details but without spoilers. I'll give you an example:

"Quest 01
BEGINNER'S TEST
Defeat b1f's guardian and SEARCH his lair for the first of the six sacred items!"

"Quest 70
ANCIENT WATER
Go to the Proficiency Wetlands and acquire the item ANCIENT WATER"

what do you think of that idea? That way the player can speak to everyone, get the quests posted to their QUEST MENU and then they'll know where to go and what to do without having the quest itself spoiled (i.e. specific X/Y locations, or stuff like that). I think it's the best possible way to make the game fun to play without the actual NPC dialog translated which, let's face it, would take me forever because of the text wrapping issues (limited to 20-22 english letters per line inside the dialog box); and this is putting aside the fact that i'm not fluent in japanese.

 

[aweigh]

 

[Courtier]

Shiiiieeeeeeet