Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[aweigh]

YAH barrier is nice buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuttt do let me know when shaman barrier reflects arrows

all the shaman needs, honestly, is the addition of Cleric spell learning. that's it. nothing more, nothing less. Yes, the samurai will always have a slight advantage over the shaman because of the samurai's post-game hallellujah-parries via 'swallow return'; but the Shaman makes up for it in 'Gothic' with an incredibly diverse and unique gear set that is spread evenly between samurai and ninja, and usually excluding one or the other.

case in point i got my hands on the most bad ass of the baddest ass katanas, and it is Shaman/Ninja ONLY:

- the thing has a bonus of -4 AC to the shaman/ninja's armor class
- its dmg spread is 12-83...
- to-HIT modifier (the number that represents the weapons accuaracy; in wizardry it should be 'negative' in elminage it should be 'positive') is a cool 7, w/ # of atks per swing numbering 4 means as long as the Shaman has decent STR (15 and above) she'll almost always land the maximum amount of hits on the weapon attack.
- it's 2-handed, which means its maximum # of atks per swing is 14 (natural 10 atks per swing that applies to all weapons + the 2-handed weapon bonus which is the # of atks added on top of the natural 10 swings)

finally found some gear for her that isn't ass-tastic and left 2x divine charms smithed with 40-50% 'SLEEP' and the other 'CONFUSE' equipped in her two accessory slots.

like i mentioned in the previous post, i wanted more direct melee dmg output so i class changed my lord character into a Fighter. zero regrets! sucks having less castings of spells but the increase in melee dmg is easily more than 30%.

been slowling loving more and more using the regular CLERIC character i made mid-way through the first few Tower floors (i Glass Shoe'd my party's Ninja because... ninja's are too op); currently using the ASS HAMMER until i find something better and that thing deals godlike dmg to be honest.

i tried for a while rolling w/ the Cleric using M-hand hammer MJOLLNIR (best Main-hand hammer available), and in the sub-weapon using another hammer/club called "SHALLULAH" or something like that, basically it has about the same stats as a Happy Seven or a Describer or whatnot, except it has an Armor Class bonus. Unfortunately since the Cleric does not acquire increased offensive skills, such as phys atk up, dual-wielding is 100% not the best way to to front an offense Cleric.

since cleric lacks phys atk power up (in addition to adding percentile damage like one assumes from the name of these "power up" skills, both phys atk up and also the magical variants of 'power up', both + and non-plus versions, also directly add percentile math to the # of atks per swing of the character's "base" factor and also affects accuaracy: this is why a Fighter with phys atk up++ can deal more damage than any other class with a melee weapon not just because the Fighter gains increased percentile melee dmg output but the increased accuaracy and increased # of atks per swing, which are more than valk/lord/samurai/ninja, allows a fighter to equip weaponry with horrible To-HIT modifiers but huge dmg spread, like vast majority of 2-handed Axes which have crappy accuaracy modifiers usually a negative number, but feature awesome-sauce damage number ranges);

er, right, so yeah Cleric needs to stick with the best 2-handed weapon available, and the ASS HAMMER fits the bill perfectly. i've actually never seen him miss once!

the Bishop/Alchemist duo is still rocking "DEATH STAFF"'s to the max for those Stargazer encounters and i found a RAINBOW CHARM drop in floor 16th and put it on jenny the Shaman so when fighting stargazers: fighter/samura/cleric PROTECT the bishop/alchemist (literally) and the shaman casts misama/rastoma/argeiss thanks to the rainbow charm boost).

the one class i've yet to try out legitimately is the Herbalist (servant) and man oh man is the Tower telling me constantly that i should've brought one. I've probably thown away more than 50 magic herbs slowly making my way through the b16f of the tower before moving on.

i wish i had another medal of power left if i did i would class change the Bishop, or maybe the Cleric actually, into a herbalist.

 

[aweigh]

 

[Courtier]

The top of the spire:

After a brief battle with the witch Helioliza, her daughters, and Eyelock (most of which I spent trying to steal their shit) . . .

A bunch of sluts plus this guy

CONGRATULATION

The witches are no more lads . . . without spoiling too much, what is said to you at the end raises some doubts about your actions up until this point.

So about unlocking the final dungeon, aweigh: you thought it was tedious? Man, I JUST did it and it took me ten minutes. All you have to do is walk a circle around the floors of Sheba, Parthenes, and Last Court. When you get within a four of five tile radius of the altar, it automatically shows up on your compass. If you're still having a tough time use this as a reference and just walk over the circles.

Spoiler

 

[Courtier]

Speaking of Parthenes: It's a small nightmare, I forgot how this dungeon jacks you up. The tarot puzzle on the first floor takes a little time but is easy enough, but then on 2F you have to endure that faggot puppet's boardgame over and over (and over and over...). 90% of the time he kills half your party while you can't do anything about it, the rest of the time you are sent back to the beginning.

When you land on a rock tile and don't prostrate yourselves before him, your party is teleported into solid rock. If by pure luck you manage to get through, the stairs to the sides transport you back to the beginning. The tiles after the game are a no-teleport zone, so you can't even warp past until you go up the correct stairs (granted, they're pretty obvious but I mess up once every time I get here).

After all that you still have to perform the ballroom theatrics to ride the unicorn AND answer the Sphinx' riddles. (When you get it right she wags her tail in satisfaction tho, that was pretty qt)

 

[aweigh]

Courtier

before i forget: i finished doubling-up every enemy's Armor Class and their Level (multiply by 2 across the board on those two values, "AC" and "LVL"; except it was done one by one manually); AFAIK the only person even remotely interested in playing a 2x harder version of Elmi: Original is myself so i hence me asking you here in this thread if you (or anyone else reading this) wants to play elminage: original with all of the enemies rocking 2x their default LVL and 2x their Armor Class values so I can go ahead and start uploading to my FIREDROP account the 500~mb .ISO of the modified psp game.

(i don't know how to create a patch, nor am i going to learn how to; simpler to just upload the .ISO to my firedrop and anyone who wants it can DL it, and that way i know for sure the person who downloads the .ISO is seeing the exact same changes i am seeing on my end)

------------
ON THE RIGHT SIDE IS THE NORMAL GAME .ISO, UNTOUCHED, RUNNING ON PPSPP WITH THE MONSTER BESTIARY ENTRY OPEN

ON THE LEFT SIDE IS A SCREENSHOT I TOOK OF THE MODIFIED ENEMY DATA, i.e. A SCREENSHOT OF THE MODDED GAME .ISO RUNNING ON PPSSPP, THEN I CLOSED IT, AND LOADED THE NORMAL .ISO FOR THE COMPARISON

----------

as you can see the decision to also raise the enemy LVL was because i wanted to not only bump up (i.e. "down") enemy -AC; i wanted their 'class skills/abilities' to scale w/ a higher LVL.

i have a screenshot somewhere around here of the final Ninja enemy and since i doubled his LVL to 60-something he has like -71 AC haha and an insane behead %.

truth be told that's exactly how it should be!

EDIT: oh, btw, obviously enemies that already have insane -AC levels, such as the kamikage and the post game enemies and stuff like that I left default as what would be the point in doubling -99, heh.

 

[aweigh]

oh, and thank you for the encouragement: i am indeed in the process of walking said circles right now; i am finishing up last court and for last the dreaded Parthenes.

i. fucking. hate. parthenes.

dude, do you know what i started doing on my 2nd playthrough in order to skip the tedious "flip over" / "leave face down" puzzle w/ the Tarot cards?

i just started initiating combat encounters and casting DIOMANTE during battle non-stop until eventually the game teleported me inside the area beyond the doors you're supposed to unlock haha, prolly took me longer than actually doing the puzzle again but it was more fun this way.

oh, and i've never completed parthenes; i only did just enough (read above) to be able to pick up the ring on the 2nd floor and that's it. have never talked to the sphinx. 1st time i played the game took one look at the "game board" puzzle and said fuck this shit

 

[Courtier]

At least beat the game before digging through the files and modding it aweigh, you will find in the Old World enemies don't fuck around

 

[aweigh]

oh, i have no doubt! i am VERY eager to start playing through E: Original's post-game dungeon!

the fact that i made a seperate .iso of the game with more difficult enemy values has nothing to do with any of that tho: i've just always, always wanted to do exactly this from the very first time i started playing 'Original right after i did my 1st "playthrough" of 'Gothic.

i've always found that the vast majority of the random enemies, and also the bosses in 'Original are/were incredibly underwhelming; for example last time i beat the female sorceresses after i cleared all of the floors of the dragon's fang and i didn't bother going to an inn to recharge instead i just plowed on and i beat the sisters using auto-battle button every single round.

THAT is why i suddenly started rooting through the game .iso's files for the enemy data.

- anyway, ok, i found the altar inside the town with your King

- next i went and did the quest where you have to 'rescue' the Ore Miner dude and then he asked me for 450 000 GP to pay for the cathedral (or something) and i paid and voila 2nd altar found

- now i'm currently walking through LAST COURT, basically making sure to walk over / step on every single one of the red double-circles that are illustrated on the map you provided.

- have not yet gone to search for the altars of sheba or parthenes.

- keep doing exactly this? or is there an order i'm not following?

 

[aweigh]

to be fair to the game, tho, i completely "broke" this playhtough of 'Original ever since i found out you can steal +2 Ores from the trash-collector enemy.

i started stealing/grinding/hoarding +2 Ores from him in last court from the start and basically everyone has every single piece of gear enchanted with +3 or +4 armor class bonus; and everyone has their weapons either double-punch 3-4 enemy types and/or dmg boosted by 6-9 extra pts.

so yeah, if you abuse this tactic and do what i just described then obviously the normal game will have absolutely no challenge for your uber enchanted party... i mean, my fucking thief has -22 AC right now lol and he's using an Iron Boomerange enchanted with +11 extra dmg pts.

shit's ridiculous.

 

[Courtier]

You can do them in any order I think. The guy asks for the money to sell you a ''rare artifact stone slab'' which turns out to be the altar itself. Also there is another cathedral you might have forgotten.

 

[aweigh]

YES!! FOUND LAST COURT'S ALTER! only sheba and parthenes to go! thanks a tonf or that map!

 

[aweigh]

having a hell of a time finding the sheba altar. still have a few more squares left to map tho, so i suppose it's a simple matter of literally uncovering every single tile of the dungeon...

i'll be honest: this is extremely tedious. i call bullshit on your supposed "did it in 10 mins"

AINT NO ONE THAT FAST

 

[Courtier]

It probably took me less, you are just slow or extremely unlucky if your altars are in the back of the third floor or smth
Use ceremony of rebirth if they seem impossible to find

 

[aweigh]

i can't do it. i've spent hours walking all over sheba ruins and doing the parthenes puzzle floors, and, i just can't. i can't do it. i have no idea if what i'm doing will trigger anything at all even.

oh well.

EDIT: i'll give the ceremony of rebirth a try then.

 

[aweigh]

EDIT EDIT: Well, i did the ceremony and i stopped by the King for an audience just to see if maybe he had anything new to say and indeed he did: he said...

(paraphrasing) "oh, looks like you're making good progress finding the altars! however the VOID ALTAR is still hidden..."

void = parthenes
naru = sheba
dehain = last court fortress

apprently (perhaps?) there is an order of sorts and i should've been walking all over parthenes instead of walking all over sheba ruins earlier; and perhaps i simply lucked out with doing last court 1st or whatever.

the king says specifically that the void altar is still hidden, and void = parthenes... can't be clearer than that. in any case, i'm gonna take a break from this: way too complicated process regardless of anything else.

 

[aweigh]

Courtier

...and just like that, boom i found the void altar in parthenes. less than 25 mins doing parthenes before finding it.

Spoiler

perhaps it doesn't have to be in a strict order, but my experience so far seems to conclude that it's:

1. last court
2. parthenes
3. sheba

and that those 2~ hours or so that i just wasted walking all over sheba ruins were completely unnecessary because that wasn't where i was supposed to be.

i bet now when i go to sheba ruins it'll trigger super fast, just like now in parthenes. i'll talk to the King first, tho, just to make sure.

NEVERMIND, ALL DONE. ENTERING EX-DUNGEON... NOW.

dude, for whatever reason after doing parthenes altar i immediately unlocked the dungeon. i swear i never found the sheba altar whatsoever but whatever! i won't complain!

 

[aweigh]

hehe, was trying to Summon-capture any one of the rival demon party's members. After casting about 12 layers of RAPIDOS and lowering their speed, raising my own, etc, still couldn't do it. Guess they have perfect 100 summon resistance which will require a brawler. right?

 

[aweigh]

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE SHEEEEEET

the random encounter demonic enemies in the ex-dungeon... jesus fucking christ. the difficulty spike is EXACTLY as brutal as what Starfish used to do to the player in wizardry Empire 1 and 2; (remember in wiz-empire 2 how mid-way through, suddenly demonic enemies started appearing and the difficulty of any random encounter increased 20x?)

(and then remember when you finally eventually began exploring the wiz-empire 2 post-game dungeon and how the god-like enemy encounters there were an even bigger increase in difficulty? like, from 0 to 60 mph?)

(they did the difficulty much, much better in elminage: gothic as while the post game is brutal the entire game is brutal so it feels natural)

 

[aweigh]

 

[Courtier]

Rapidos and lascorek have zero influence on summon resistance. Use the dice of fate to check the rolls. Your summoner has to make a d100 roll vs their resistance and roll higher to succeed, but depending on your summoner's level vs the enemy's level, this can become several rolls you have to succeed in a row. Fendel and his bros have 100% resistance. The only thing that can reduce summon resist is a clean hit aka 4hit combo from a brawler (20%), and only on the move directly following said hit (set turn order brawler=>summoner). Most of the creatures in Elminage Original have surprisingly low resistance, way less than in Gothic.

 

[aweigh]

jesus fucking christ, The Old World post-game is fucking brutal. i love it.

i had to revert back to unmodified elminage: original as the Armor Class changes i had made make the post-game enemies almost unbeatable.

the Vampire Lords are especially annoying with the monster summoning, item breaking and off the charts INT score making their tiltowaits huge damage dealers. Oh, and their level draining.

 

[Comte]

aweigh did you guys translate the PC version of Elminage original?

 

[aweigh]

Comte

nope. the same BRAunpacker tool that works on the .BRA files for E: Gothic works on E: Original but i simply never got around to even downloading a copy of the PC port.

my enthusiasm for doing it evaporated when i learned there is nothing new whatsoever added to the pc port other than improved graphics, so i never even talked with anyone else about it either.

i have a QuickBMS script that works for extracting the .CSV files from the PSP version (though i do not have one for re-inserting them), and using the BRAunpacker tool to extract the .CSV files from the PC port the first thing one would check before anything is:

- seeing if they're the same, in which case one could immediately replace the items, monsters, spells with the english ones from the PSP version.
- seeing if the PC port version's dialog is the same type of .WZA file that the PSP version is, and if so, then replacing it with the one from the PSP version.

assuming all of those things, then checking to see if a simple switch-a-roo on the files works. It's probably wouldn't work, or it might, who the hell knows, but there is a considerable chance it would because i've hacked open every single one of Starfish's games on every single console and so far they have been using the exact same .CSV and .WZA files ever since their very first Wiz Empire 1.

the only things they've changed are the compression/encryption methods on the container archives which house the files.

in any case, like i said, since there is 0 new content i would just play the PSP version.

 

[Comte]

aweigh I have a copy of the PSP version I will just stick with that then. I am planning on revisiting the Elminage series after I complete the Gold Box Krynn trilogy.

 

[Haplo]

Hello, a newfag here.
Has been stalking the forums for some time, finally decided to join.

I enjoy blobbers, even though my favourite ones are maybe some of the less popular titles, such as M&MX and recently Stranger of Sword City (granted you are given somewhat too powerfull tools there with the Divinities and multiclassing). I also loved World of Xeen, M&M 4&5 back when I was a kid. I also played and finished M&M 6-9 but didn't really like them.
Out of the traditional Wizardies only played No. 8. It was okay, but somehow I didn't love it.
I kinda liked Grimrock 2, maybe need to play it a bit more someday. But I generally prefer my crpg games / crawlers turn based.
Was both impressed and dissapointed with Lords of Xulima. The author sure did a fine work there, seems this game is almost "perfect". But its also what I would call overbalanced. You never really feel stronger and the skills you learn are nothing impressive, at least in the face of your progressively tougher enemies.

Recently started playing Elminage: Gothic. It's an impressive game... Has lots of interesting systems, with summons, stealing, alchemy and such. Great class and monster variety.
But I wasn't quite prepared to be overwhelmed and lost on the very first map. Quickly caved in and installed the inifinite Magic Map cheat. Not sure if I want to sink so much time to finish it... let's see how it goes.

Anyway you guys seem to be a fountain of knowledge about the game. And aweigh in particular seems very... passionate about the game.
There is one thing I was wondering about. How are status effect chances and resistances calculated? With a 15% sleep chance on your wepon is it roll d100 and if you roll 96-100 then the enemy tests their resistance (say 10%, so on 91-100 he resists?). That would be 13,5% chance then. Or is it substract his resistance from your chance (15-10 = 5%), roll a d100 and suceed on 96-100?
Where does the enemy resistance to specific spell schools come into play (magic, alchemy?).
And perhaps the most difficult question, what are the actual chances to afflict status effect with spells (single target with "great" chance, full-row versions with lesser chances)? What factors into that? Level, main stat, some other hidden modifiers?

Does anybody know?

Also is there any place one can check what are the effects of the mastery skills when they are earned (level 26 and 32 I think?). And what are the reasonable effects one can reach in the main game (something like level 50-60?). I somehow doubt I can endure the post game, but lets see.