Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[NoSoup4you]

I gave up on this game... I like it in principle, but it's heavily dependent on save scumming, and each reload makes the whole thing mean less and less to me.

Are we talking savescumming because your party's getting wiped frequently? Or are you playing with the mentality that you don't even want to deal with one character death? This game definitely isn't the type where you can expect the latter to hold up.

That's not to say I won't just say fuck it and reload if half my party gets wiped in one unlucky round, or someone gets drained for multiple levels etc. And yeah I save super frequently in dungeons because it can happen any time.

Back attacked and everyone decapitated, level drained, etc. The possible outcomes of combat with everyday enemies are incredibly swingy. It would be cool if the legitimate methods of coming back from such setbacks didn't take too much time to be practical.

 

[Matador]

Yeah, the game is too brutal too not play it without save-scumming.

You can think about it like a lot of "normal" encounters are like boss fights in other games, where is perfectly normal to save after.

There are few popcorn encounters, so it´s impossible to Iron Man. But the encounters are devious and fun, and your party can get very nasty also. It´s cheap in both sides.

That said, if you have a good party with good equipment and know which are the hard enemies weaknesses (check ingame Monster Encyclopedia), and know how to use your spells, you are not going to die often until Post Game.

I´m pretty sure that if make another playthrough I can blast the Main Game restarting 10 times or less.

 

[gman42]

I´m pretty sure that if make another playthrough I can blast the Main Game restarting 10 times or less.

This would be a decent challenge, honestly I think for just main game I'd be able to do it with less than 5 reloads. Obviously it helps having knowledge of the game, I wouldn't be making the obvious rookie mistakes like barging in on the first floor master and getting annihilated like I did during the first run-through, that kinda thing. Post game is a different animal, but even that doesn't seem terrible to me until you're at least halfway up Ibag tower (in the lower half, I've had nearly entire floors that I was able to clear in one expedition without a single death). But honestly I'd be almost disappointed if it didn't become a total fuck you to the player at some point, lol (which is about where I am now on level 16).

I will admit some people are way more hardcore than me when it comes to reloading, I remember looking through this thread and seeing Aweigh talking excitedly about a near party wipe where his poisoned thief had to drag the rest of the party through half the tower and escaped with like 2 HP left. That sounds cool but I would have given up and reloaded way before that.

As far as the complaints about the interface, I dunno. 95% of stuff became total muscle memory with the keyboard for me after after a few sessions. I never touch the mouse when I'm playing, and if anybody tries to, they're doing it wrong IMO.

 

[Haplo]

I gave up on this game... I like it in principle, but it's heavily dependent on save scumming, and each reload makes the whole thing mean less and less to me.

Are we talking savescumming because your party's getting wiped frequently? Or are you playing with the mentality that you don't even want to deal with one character death? This game definitely isn't the type where you can expect the latter to hold up.

That's not to say I won't just say fuck it and reload if half my party gets wiped in one unlucky round, or someone gets drained for multiple levels etc. And yeah I save super frequently in dungeons because it can happen any time.

Back attacked and everyone decapitated, level drained, etc. The possible outcomes of combat with everyday enemies are incredibly swingy. It would be cool if the legitimate methods of coming back from such setbacks didn't take too much time to be practical.

Having a Ninja largely prevents the surprise attack issue.

 

[Matador]

I gave up on this game... I like it in principle, but it's heavily dependent on save scumming, and each reload makes the whole thing mean less and less to me.

Are we talking savescumming because your party's getting wiped frequently? Or are you playing with the mentality that you don't even want to deal with one character death? This game definitely isn't the type where you can expect the latter to hold up.

That's not to say I won't just say fuck it and reload if half my party gets wiped in one unlucky round, or someone gets drained for multiple levels etc. And yeah I save super frequently in dungeons because it can happen any time.

Back attacked and everyone decapitated, level drained, etc. The possible outcomes of combat with everyday enemies are incredibly swingy. It would be cool if the legitimate methods of coming back from such setbacks didn't take too much time to be practical.

Having a Ninja largely prevents the surprise attack issue.

Like I have said in the past I don´t understand playing this game without a ninja. It´s the most fun class.

If I would rebalance the classes in the game I would give at least another class the Ambush prevention skill (Shaman,Bard?), and the hunter the disassemble skill as the Alchemist, but not the High Purity Synthesis. Because right now I find hard to roll a party without Alchemist and Ninja.

 

[gman42]

I wouldn't roll without my ninja but at the same time I don't looooove the class. The slow leveling really becomes a burden after a while, and one place where I think they ever so slightly nerf them (yeah yeah game balance, I know) is by making their top weapons good but not elite. All the best stuff I've found for them (Thunder God Particle, Demon's Full Moon Ring, Fushun, Ninja Sword, Totsuka Sword) is un-forgeable, and do medium amounts of damage at best (Totsuka sword is the exception there, but it doesn't allow lowered AC either so it's out as an option)...and the stuff that is forgeable is significantly worse so it's probably not worth considering. When she's not beheading, she's doing the least damage in my party for sure (well, technically my Alchemist is, but he's literally just wielding two shields for max defense right now so I don't even know if he counts).

Also she doesn't know any spells which is my own damn fault, but I couldn't face going through two class changes for her and have her be miles behind everybody else. Having her choices be "hide or fight" every round does get a little boring after a while.

 

[Max Damage]

The constant awkward menu interactions is what killed the game for me unfortunately. Would definitely finish it if it ever got a usability overhaul

Yeah, I remember like every interaction requires confirmation, dropped this even though I'm fan of Wizclones.

 

[gman42]

Dumb question regarding the whole aspect of the shop generating new items when you sell enough of the fragments to them: Do you have to actively do anything for them to appear, or do they just show up in the shop's inventory on their own? I haven't exactly been counting, but I know with absolute certainty I've sold over 100 Star Fragments by now. Talking to the shopkeeper or blacksmith doesn't do anything.

The Japanese Wiki shows the Angel Ribbon as the item created from Star Fragments, and the Life Stealer (this is the one I'm kinda interested in) for Moon Fragments. Anybody know what the items are for Sun and Space fragments? Can't find info on those anywhere.

 

[Matador]

Dumb question regarding the whole aspect of the shop generating new items when you sell enough of the fragments to them: Do you have to actively do anything for them to appear, or do they just show up in the shop's inventory on their own? I haven't exactly been counting, but I know with absolute certainty I've sold over 100 Star Fragments by now. Talking to the shopkeeper or blacksmith doesn't do anything.

The Japanese Wiki shows the Angel Ribbon as the item created from Star Fragments, and the Life Stealer (this is the one I'm kinda interested in) for Moon Fragments. Anybody know what the items are for Sun and Space fragments? Can't find info on those anywhere.

No idea.

 

[gman42]

Skill calculation formula †
About calculation formula of each ability. Let the current level be L, sqrt () be the function to find the square root.

Physical Attack Power UP (Battle) Sqrt (L - 25) * 5
Physical Attack Power Power UP (Burglary Warrior Shinkansen) Sqrt (L - 25) * 2.5
Physical Attack Power UP (Kimiobu Shinobu) Sqrt (L - 35) * 2
Spell powerfulness UP + 1 (Witches) Sqrt (L - 25) * 10
Spell power power UP + 1 (monk) Sqrt (L - 25) * 25
Spell power power UP + 1 (Tsukasa) Sqrt (L - 30) * 5
High purity synthesis (refining) Sqrt (L - 25) * 3 + 100
Number of haste (hunting) Sqrt (L)
Struggle instinct (fight) Sqrt (L - 31) * 2 + 50
AC (Punishment) 10 - (L / 3)
Blood coalition (call) Sqrt (L - 31) * 11
Honen reserve protected area (you) Sqrt (L - 35) * 3.5
Special resistance UP (you) Sqrt (L) * 5
Swallow return (Samurai) Sqrt (L - 35) * 1.6 + 15
※ Haste times and AC are rounded down to the nearest whole number. Otherwise rounded off to the second decimal place.

ALSO

STR past value of 14

- values 14 and upwards each = approx. 3-5% additional DMG.

INT/PIE past value of 16

- values 16 and upwards each exponentially increase dmg done by spells or healing achieved by cure spells; unlike STR however each point past "16" does not increase by a linear %, and here shit gets real crazy if dealing with Elves or Goblin races which can reach 20 points in INT/PIE.

(mage = int, alchemy = int, cleric = pie)

VIT = affects chances of resurrection spells working (i.e. determines % of char turning to ashes) + obviously affects level up Hit Die calculations

AGI = affects turn order + thief/hunter/ninja/bard's HIDE skill success % + thief's chance of success at stealing shit

LUC = affects _every single thing, plus other shit no one has documented_ in extremely incrementally small ways. Not even the jap wiki(s) have specifics here...

Quoting a really old post here partly because it's super useful, but also I was wondering about some of the formulas above. I was actually looking for this info to find out how much I'd have to grind my Alchy to get his High Purity Synthesis up to at least 125% (so I can squeeze -6AC out of a bunch of 48AP stuff I have currently), but the above formula seems to be wrong, at least for me. As far as I can tell he's getting SQRT(L-25) * 1.5 + 100 (not *3 which would be great). Currently he's at lvl 257 and has 122.9%. So if the formula with the 1.5 multiplier holds, he'd have to be level 303. Yayyyyy reverse exponential formulas.

Also, the jap wiki translates mages as Witches and cleric as Monk, correct? The Spell Power Up+1 for Clerics looks wrong then, too, should be *10, not *25. I'm wondering if some of that info is from 3DS version or something.

 

[gman42]

Dumb question regarding the whole aspect of the shop generating new items when you sell enough of the fragments to them: Do you have to actively do anything for them to appear, or do they just show up in the shop's inventory on their own? I haven't exactly been counting, but I know with absolute certainty I've sold over 100 Star Fragments by now. Talking to the shopkeeper or blacksmith doesn't do anything.

The Japanese Wiki shows the Angel Ribbon as the item created from Star Fragments, and the Life Stealer (this is the one I'm kinda interested in) for Moon Fragments. Anybody know what the items are for Sun and Space fragments? Can't find info on those anywhere.

Answered my own question, I think. Didn't realize they showed the fragments in the shop inventory, apparently I'm either way overestimating the fragments I got, or they only started counting after a certain event or something (saw a thread elsewhere where somebody claimed they only start to count after you talk to the blacksmith and start the His Finest Work quest, but they might just be confusing that with the stuff you get him to make the Full-Bodied Swing, who knows).

Anyway buried in the wiki was this table for the items each 100 fragments gives you:

universe turmeric
Sun Clausolas
moon life stealer
star angel ribbon

Clausolas=Crownless sword (which is meh), but apparently turmeric=Ukon Basara, which is a sick hammer. Fighter/Lord/Cleric only, 7-112DMG (!), +1 to hit, 2 attacks, 2x vs gods, 50% Lightning attack/defense, 5% confuse/petrify, 25% behead resist. That's good enough that it would make me consider moving my cleric back up front (since it's not forgeable and I'd be stuck with short range), or maybe just deal with using Chi Wave or Yuniwa Coat every time.

I'm pretty close to being done with the game anyway but I might just want this thing for bragging rights. I get a ton of space fragments on the upper Ibag floors anyway so I can just hang out there and grind for a bit.

 

[gman42]

Random boring game stats post incoming. Yes I know I'm about the only one playing this in 2023, lol, but I figured it'll be a good resource for somebody and hasn't been discussed ITT before.

I already had an idea of this but just to figure out how much the game screws you over with the RNG for ores, I decided to chart the stats for a marathon +2 ore grinding session in the ore spot on F3 of the tower, gathering over 1000 ores and keeping track of what I got. (Yes it's boring but didn't take as long as you'd think, just turn off all text animation and put on some music while you mine, then pause adventure and have a town character empty out the warehouse and sell all the bad stuff, lather rinse and repeat). Results:



So as if it weren't shitty enough that they put such a massive value spread on +2 ores, yeah you're gonna have a bad time if you're trying to squeeze out every last point of AC or whatever for your characters by grinding for the good stuff. The whole time I've been playing I've managed to snag only two 50AP, and one of them is a fucking Millstone that I don't even have use for.

 

[gman42]

Unofficially done! Nordetanit is toast. Took a few attempts and beat him in a long but fair fight.

Went back up to pay Incarnation a visit, mildly worried he wouldn't be insanely hard. Fears were unfounded lol.

The fucker one-shot my beefiest characters with his mirage lance, terrifies the entire party with one shout and completely fucks up half of what I wanted to get done on any given turn, and most importantly, he casts Ramialf, meaning I can't go with the standard strat of buffing/debuffing for 10 rounds straight and then letting loose. Even spamming Miracle (a spell I never had to bother with in the entire game and postgame until now) I couldn't keep up. This is the good stuff right here.

Hey, I didn't wanna quit anyway. Time to go grind like another 50 levels and formulate a strategy.

 

[Cyanide]

Unofficially done! Nordetanit is toast. Took a few attempts and beat him in a long but fair fight.

Went back up to pay Incarnation a visit, mildly worried he wouldn't be insanely hard. Fears were unfounded lol.

The fucker one-shot my beefiest characters with his mirage lance, terrifies the entire party with one shout and completely fucks up half of what I wanted to get done on any given turn, and most importantly, he casts Ramialf, meaning I can't go with the standard strat of buffing/debuffing for 10 rounds straight and then letting loose. Even spamming Miracle (a spell I never had to bother with in the entire game and postgame until now) I couldn't keep up. This is the good stuff right here.

Hey, I didn't wanna quit anyway. Time to go grind like another 50 levels and formulate a strategy.

He's like level 1200 something, and not many are willing to grind thar much but, I assume you used Greater Demons on Cave of the Ancients to level grind, right?

 

[gman42]

Unofficially done! Nordetanit is toast. Took a few attempts and beat him in a long but fair fight.

Went back up to pay Incarnation a visit, mildly worried he wouldn't be insanely hard. Fears were unfounded lol.

The fucker one-shot my beefiest characters with his mirage lance, terrifies the entire party with one shout and completely fucks up half of what I wanted to get done on any given turn, and most importantly, he casts Ramialf, meaning I can't go with the standard strat of buffing/debuffing for 10 rounds straight and then letting loose. Even spamming Miracle (a spell I never had to bother with in the entire game and postgame until now) I couldn't keep up. This is the good stuff right here.

Hey, I didn't wanna quit anyway. Time to go grind like another 50 levels and formulate a strategy.

He's like level 1200 something, and not many are willing to grind thar much but, I assume you used Greater Demons on Cave of the Ancients to level grind, right?

The Chaos Demons are my usual go-to. Although at the moment I'm just running through the gauntlet of Ibag 16F over and over so I can farm Space Fragments at the same time, and hopefully finally get that hammer I posted about earlier. I'm considering using a MoP to change my Cleric into a Lord after I get it and shuffle my formation around a bit (right now she's in the back wielding a Comet Hammer forged for L range).

I'll miss the heavy duty healing a lot, but I figure the court sanctuary (which won't be super high after her level gets adjusted down, but still OK) will save me a ton of grief. Among other things I can ditch pretty much any items and forging that I have in place strictly for resistances, and just worry about pure AC reduction across the board.

Honestly I'm enjoying the game enough that the grinding is fun in a perverse way. Even after I beat this guy, I'm thinking of new ways to challenge myself with this party before parting ways with em, probably will train up a thief and try to steal the Mirage equipment just for bragging rights...then I'm considering trying an iron man full 20-floor walkup of the whole tower in one go. That should be a fun, masochistic test of party strength.

 

[gman42]

And...done. Incarnation has been, uh, disincarnated. Or something.

Strategy became pretty obvious after seeing he's only weak(ish) to sleep. Basically put aside a ton of my "good" weapons and replaced with high accuracy forgeable stuff that I could just load up with 50-60% sleep chance. Wailed on him with half my characters while casting Robuti/Skorekh/Lascorek with the others, hoping to get to the point where all my actions were first. Then just kept pumping Orath with one character while the rest beat him down, basically getting to where it was almost statistically impossible not to put him to sleep every turn before he could act. He was 100% to recover at end of round, but as long as I could go first and he couldn't undo my buffs I'd be good.

He was able to get off one Ramialf and I had to start over, but second time around it stuck and was smooth sailing. In the end I wound up casting two Miracles early on, one for increased evade (it seems like Ramialf doesn't erase this, which is nice) and one for health and recovery. Although if the RNG had been nicer to me I could have gotten away without casting any.

My "final" party and stats (although I have some more planned for this party as I mentioned in my last post):

Innocent Gnome Cleric, lvl 398, Chi Wave, wielding Ukon Basara
Innocent Human->Devilish Samurai, lvl 279, Mysterious Bag, wielding Muramasa/God Slayer
Hotlet Thief->Ninja, lvl 243, Replica, wielding Thunder God Particle/Fushun
Innocent Dwarf Valkyrie, lvl 306, Find Treasure, wielding Blue Gale/God Slayer
Werebeast Alchemist->Hunter, lvl 318, Shout, wielding Garndiva
Elf Mage->Alchemist, lvl 365, Divination, wielding two Autoguard shields (lol)

My Ex Skill choices were meh, went with a lot of quality of life stuff. Find Treasure was OK early on for having more $$ and being able to spend it for EXP at class changes etc, but in the end it wasn't worth it at all. Shout barely got used. Chi Wave was nice in a few specific spots (was great for beating down Belial when he was the new and exciting 'impossible' monster). If/when I replay with a new party I'll definitely take Tackle, maybe Swallow Killer (although I really really hate that it's not just a passive skill and I have to pick and choose when to use it). Only one I'd definitely take every time is Mysterious Bag.

 

[gman42]

Hmm, guess I'm not stealing that Mirage Lance/Shield anytime soon.

Unequip and Steal Tips †​

(Since it is reprinted from Elmi 3 wiki, it may be slightly different from the specification of this work)

• First, let's raise the bandit's LV to 26 or higher and master the HM ability. Start with that.
• Basically, it will be done in the order of "unequipment" → "steal".
• In addition to the LV difference with the enemy, quickness affects the success rate, so
  stacking the alchemy spells Skorek and Raskorek will increase the success rate.

action	friendly roll	enemy roll
Unequip	Level x 0-2	Lv～+20
steal	Level x 0-2	Lv × 2-4 (when restrained) None

Due to the above specifications, it is quite troublesome to steal from someone with a higher level than you.
If you have a restraint (sleep, paralysis, petrification) type of status ailment, you can ignore the "steal" resistance roll.
If the range is against the enemy's front row, the thief's position can be from either the front row or the back row.
If you apply the alchemy spell Unihacot, you will be able to "unequip and steal" the enemy's back row.

Since Incarnation is level 1249, looks like I'd have to grind a thief up to at least level 635 to overcome his resistance to getting unequipped. It's actually not *that* tedious to do by grinding Chaos Demons and having everybody else run so he gets 6x the EXP, but it feels a little cheesy to raise a bench character like 300 levels higher than most of my main party.

I guess it depends on whether the part about relative speed is accurate and how much of a difference it makes. If a full stack of Skorekh/Lascorek can make up for a couple hundred levels then maybe I have a shot. Then again, it could also turn out that Incarnation's 63 AGI vs my thief's 22 is also something I have to overcome on top of the roll above.

 

[Cyanide]

And...done. Incarnation has been, uh, disincarnated. Or something.

Strategy became pretty obvious after seeing he's only weak(ish) to sleep. Basically put aside a ton of my "good" weapons and replaced with high accuracy forgeable stuff that I could just load up with 50-60% sleep chance. Wailed on him with half my characters while casting Robuti/Skorekh/Lascorek with the others, hoping to get to the point where all my actions were first. Then just kept pumping Orath with one character while the rest beat him down, basically getting to where it was almost statistically impossible not to put him to sleep every turn before he could act. He was 100% to recover at end of round, but as long as I could go first and he couldn't undo my buffs I'd be good.

He was able to get off one Ramialf and I had to start over, but second time around it stuck and was smooth sailing. In the end I wound up casting two Miracles early on, one for increased evade (it seems like Ramialf doesn't erase this, which is nice) and one for health and recovery. Although if the RNG had been nicer to me I could have gotten away without casting any.

My "final" party and stats (although I have some more planned for this party as I mentioned in my last post):

Innocent Gnome Cleric, lvl 398, Chi Wave, wielding Ukon Basara
Innocent Human->Devilish Samurai, lvl 279, Mysterious Bag, wielding Muramasa/God Slayer
Hotlet Thief->Ninja, lvl 243, Replica, wielding Thunder God Particle/Fushun
Innocent Dwarf Valkyrie, lvl 306, Find Treasure, wielding Blue Gale/God Slayer
Werebeast Alchemist->Hunter, lvl 318, Shout, wielding Garndiva
Elf Mage->Alchemist, lvl 365, Divination, wielding two Autoguard shields (lol)

My Ex Skill choices were meh, went with a lot of quality of life stuff. Find Treasure was OK early on for having more $$ and being able to spend it for EXP at class changes etc, but in the end it wasn't worth it at all. Shout barely got used. Chi Wave was nice in a few specific spots (was great for beating down Belial when he was the new and exciting 'impossible' monster). If/when I replay with a new party I'll definitely take Tackle, maybe Swallow Killer (although I really really hate that it's not just a passive skill and I have to pick and choose when to use it). Only one I'd definitely take every time is Mysterious Bag.

Congratulations, you have slayed everything the game has to throw at you, unless you get to play the 3DS version, where you can challenge three superbosses as powerful as Incarnation, and at the same time.

 

[gman42]

Looks like the steal formula in the Japanese wiki was also incorrect (or again maybe it's for 3DS version). When bringing the Dice of Fate with me, I've never seen my thief roll anything above his own level for his disarm roll (so it really should be 0-1, not 0-2). And completely maxing out stacks of Skorekh and Laskorek seems to only get rid of the +20 for Incarnation's roll, which is meaningless in the grand scheme of things (although it probably is a much bigger deal when monster levels are in the dozens and not thousands). Looks like I need to level my thief above 1300 or so to have a shot at disarming Incarnation.

 

[gman42]

Been really enjoying messing around with this game post-completion. Bunch of random thoughts/observations for anyone who still cares about this game...

--It took my thief-for-hire outleveling Incarnation by about 100 levels for me to finally disarm him and steal his stuff. It's actually pretty diabolical what they did, not only giving him 5 random pieces of garbage in his inventory that suck up your steal attempts, but also equipping him with three of those annoying Energy Fluxes alongside his weapons, meaning that when you finally get a successful disarm, there's a 60% chance that you not only miss the good stuff, but ACTUALLY IMPROVE HIS FUCKING AC BY 15 and make the battle harder. Brilliant and evil.

--That said, the stuff you get from him isn't amazing. Neither the Mirage Lance or Shield has the rainbow of status effects that it does when Incarnation attacks you, so the lance is really just like a Blue Gale on steroids that at least a few other classes can wield, I'm using it but it's not an earth shattering upgrade. As for the shield, it's basically like the Aura Punch in that it doesn't inherently damage any monster types so you have to rely on whatever damage bonuses you get from your armor (as it can't even be forged), combine that with being fixed damage and short ranged and it's pretty much a non-starter for any decent fighting class that can wield something better. The resistances and natural AC are really nice, so it might be good for a back row magic user to carry, unfortunately I have no innocent ones that can wield it. Biggest use for it would be to keep stealing them and use them as unlimited Medals of Power for my innocent characters.

--Speaking of the Aura Punch, it was the best weapon by far that I found for my Alchemist to wield from the back row, but never bothered with because of the native inability to damage anything (there's only so much you can forge on it even with a 50AP ore). Eventually realized one item that I had overlooked is the Heracles Ring, which looked at first like just another flavor of the 87 million rings you can find as loot, it adds 2% behead to your weapons and adds + damage to like five monster types. But what I missed is that for the other 11 monster types, instead of the usual "X", it has "=", meaning it grants you standard damage. Basically equipping it instantly makes the Aura Punch a useful weapon against anything, and you can spend all your AP on giving it status effects instead. The ring is a flat 0 AC but you can forge AC on it like anything else, and magic users can't really equip any misc items with better than a base -1AC anyway, so you're not giving up anything really. Minor thing but it's just fun to keep discovering things that I'd missed first time around.

--I finally went ahead and tried an iron man full walkup of all 20 floors of Ibag Tower (not including Incarnation, basically walking to the altar on 20F and calling it done). The result: Success, depending on your point of view. The big thing about it is that if you're just taking the easiest path to the stairs, there are a ton of floors where you only have to fight only a couple (or sometimes zero) battles, and the first ten floors are pretty low-risk regardless. It basically turns into a "surviving floors 16F-18F" challenge. In the end I had 5 total deaths, one from a lucky shot from an Archer Polete, and the other four all from Doppelganger and Stargazer fights. Also, I did finally run out of healing spells somewhere on 17F, and had to use a Ghost's Book I brought with me to reload SP.

I guess a more interesting challenge might be to survive the whole expedition without the ability to re-up spells, or forcing myself to open every chest, or calling it a failure if there's even one death (although that would be a really tough one). The other alternative for a tougher challenge might be to try doing a complete 100% clear of every fixed battle on every floor, which would be a hell of a task. I'd probably have to grind a solid amount to prepare for that, probably getting my Lord's Court Sanctuary maxed at 75%, as well as get my alchy up ~150% High Purity Synthesis to really maximize my defense.

 

[Doctor Gong]

It was on sale for 1.99 on GOG, and it most likely a terrible choice for a first blobber, but 1.99 is a nice price.

 

[Matador]

It was on sale for 1.99 on GOG, and it most likely a terrible choice for a first blobber, but 1.99 is a nice price.

It´s not that bad. You can save anywhere, so it´s less punishing than other blobbers in that regard.

At some point many regular encounters feel like semi boss fights, but without permadeath is not enervating.

I recommend you to use infinite map cheat. Game is too big to manual map it and first dungeons are the less interesting, specially first one.

 

[gman42]

Yeah, infinite maps is a massively important quality of life cheat that I feel doesn't detract from the game in any way.

I'd honestly rather make my own maps than have to deal with buying endless stacks of disposable ones at the beginning.

 

[webman]

Hi everyone, I've beaten Cyclanos after cheesing it with Miracle and currently exploring the Soldier of the Giant Gods dungeon. But, but having a tough time with enemy parties that have demon lords and squid mages (whatever they're called). They frequently act first, and there's no way for my party to defend against their powerful attacks. I'm debating whether or not to continue the post game.

What does leveling actually do after the stat caps are hit besides increasing HP? I wasn't able to find any explanation on this.

 

[Haplo]

Hi everyone, I've beaten Cyclanos after cheesing it with Miracle and currently exploring the Soldier of the Giant Gods dungeon. But, but having a tough time with enemy parties that have demon lords and squid mages (whatever they're called). They frequently act first, and there's no way for my party to defend against their powerful attacks. I'm debating whether or not to continue the post game.

What does leveling actually do after the stat caps are hit besides increasing HP? I wasn't able to find any explanation on this.

You level the special class skills (at least those with variable modifier/rate). Such as Samurai parry & retaliate chance, Lord bonus to resistances, spell damage bonuses for mages & clerics, martial damage bonuses for fighters, thiefs and such, enchantment point budget for alchemists and so on. The bonuses you get each level are not huge though and it will be a while before they reach significant amounts.

More importantly, you level your attack bonus - and number of strikes per attack (up to a cap). Ninja and Brawler also level their unarmored AC (meaning in the post game they evetually leave other classes in the dust, AC-wise). Summoners have a shot at capturing higher level mobs/bosses (plus need to succeed in fewer dice rolls to do so).

If you're already struggling at the SotGG dungeon, you're not gonna have a good time at the Ibag Tower. Things get MUCH more crazy there.
If enemy Surprise Attacks are wrecking your party, consider hiring a Ninja. They greatly reduce the risk of enemy Surprise Attacks.