Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[Jasede]

The one problem I have with this game is that it has so many great, useful classes, but there's not a huge amount of freedom in the early to mid game with your party.

I basically have to have a Thief (Ninja/Hunter disarm doesn't cut it at all, I tried!), a Bishop (very tedious to bench one), an Alchemist. That's 3 slots already gone!

 

[Haplo]

Ninja (and probably also Hunter, Bard) disarm is quite okay. Just try to push the Luck score high ASAP.
Ocassionaly, when you fear the result, you can use the 100% Alchemist 7th level spell.

 

[Gunnar]

You guys are making me have to play this game now

 

[aweigh]

Jasede

there are no obligatory slots except for MAYBE the alchemist; it is a bit of a hassle disbanding your party in the tavern in order to invite the benched Alchemist in order to enchant/de-enchant, and then the further hassle of micro-managing the transfer of inventory since you had to bench one of the active members.

However i will have to firmly disagree 100% with you that any other class is in any way, shape or form "mandatory". The game is hard, sure, but it's perfectly balanced and can be beaten with any party combination and without ever changing classes as well. (In fact, there are specific gear rewards for players who keep some chars "Innocent").

you can steam-roll early game with 1 fighter, 1 cleric, 1 thief, 1 mage, 1 alchemist and the 6th slot can be your **flavor pick** character.

- the mage will nuke and put enemies to sleep in early game

- the cleric will d double-duty as the 3rd string melee attacker in a Turn where nobody needs healing. He will also provide escape from dungeons via honey restorer spell. Cleric will also provide dungeon-spell that gives 2 bonus points to the party Armor class and it's learnt early on.

- the thief will guarantee your party will rarely (thre is on 100%), but very rarely if ever (in the early game) get fucked by a chest. he/she will also be the 2nd strnig melee attacker.

- the fighter will be the obvious main damage dealer. any turn where the bac row is in peril, use the fighter or the cleric (cleric can equip medum-type armours) to "Defend" them. Remember that losing your fighter's melee atk for that turn is way less important than keping the bck row (mage/alchemist/wild-card flavor pick) alive. Why? because...

- alchemist learns in their very first spell level the paralyze spell. in like 5 levels he'll have Rarood, group paralyze, PLUS also learns ORATH, the single most important Alchemy spell. ORATH buffs entire party's number of attacks (NOT the damage). In practical terms it obvoiusly poduces more dmg, but the distinction is quite clear. For the record hving more # of atks way better than smiply dmg buff.

i mean, wtf else does a party need? Just remember to buy at least 9 Health potions in the first 3-4 dungeon runs, and remember to carr a 9 stack of antidotes too since cleric, while learning Latumofis super fast, remember you might find your paty w/ a dead cleric and poisoned companions. Antidotes = life saving early game.

I honestly don't see why having elite classes is somehow "mandatory" to clear the early game dungeons.

AS FOR THE BISHOP THING: it's pure convenience. Did Wiz 1 have Bishops? Or were they introduced in Wizardry 2? In any case, simply char-gen someone w/ Ex-Skill "Mysterious Bag", skull-fuck a dungeon, honey restore yurself back to town, and you identify the massive pile of LOOT in less than 2 mins. WAY less tedious than swapping Alchemists ni and out of the party.

My only gripe is the Alchemist thing: enchantment should've been a Town NPC option, not a character skill. It's way too ipmortant. And it is too tedious swapping in and out benched Alchies.

Bishop ohwever is 100% laziness. I actually rather like coming back to town and finding my wareohuse filled ot the brmi w/ loot. Remember also the Bishop, the Class itself, is utterly mediocre. Probably the worst class ni the game in terms of bang for the buck.

EDIT EDIT: as for the chest disaming: Did I not stress enough the importance of racial attributes? a Werebeast has 6 luck (max 16), which means a thief werebeast will 100% wipe your party every fucking chest.

Want your ninja/hunter/bard to not wipe yur party when disarming chests?

1) have the alchemist open the chest w/ magic
2) read about the races/game beforehand, and thus already know to have chosen a high luck race for the chest-disarmer.

I did'nt even ever use the Thief class until my 2nd playthrough, because i wanted to steal uniques off enemies in late-game/post-game. I used to think there was no reason to go Thief nitead of Ninja but now i prefer having a high level, "Innocent" thief, using special Innocent equipment.

Their ability to steal enemy gear is also godlike. Renders a lot of later humanoid enemies compltely non-dangerous by stealing their weapon/armor, and yes, it is fucking hilarious watching them resortnig to punching you.



Haplo

Oh, and Haplo, alchemist chest disarm spell only goes up to 95%. it was 100% ni E: Original, but Starfish wanted make Thiefs more relevant in Gothic. Oh, and Thiefs also can only go up to 95%. there is no 100% chance of chest safety.

(in E: Gothic).

 

[Jasede]

I don't know, am I missing something? To me, having a Bishop seems mandatory because... I can't identify things in the Warehouse. I have to take things out, identify them, sell them, take more things out, repeat. Very tedious!! Is there a way to identify things INSIDE the warehouse?

As much as I like the game, inventory management so far bothers me. The warehouse is a nice convenience (Wiz 1 didn't have that) but it's still tedious putting items in and taking them back out. You know what game solved this issue perfectly? Realms of Arkania 3. It has this "item distributor" interface and it's glorious.

And I don't think elite classes are 'mandatory,' I just wish there were 8 party slots. There's so many skills I want to cover all at the same time. I want to try having a Hunter and a Ninja and a Thief but there's just not enough space to do it all. I am gonna have to replay this game a lot...

I am not complaining, it's just that they all seem fun! I can't even decide whether I want a Thief, Hunter, Ninja or Bard. They all seem great for different reasons...

And yes, Wizardry 1 had Bishops, and they were just as bad/good/semi-mandatory but not really.

 

[aweigh]

Jasede, i guarantee you, without a shadow of a doubt, that a Bard/Hunter/Ninja can disarm chests no prob the entire game as long as the character itself ha high luck. i.e. a hotlet, a human, a devilish, fairy or an Ogre.

and, let's assume thre is no Alchemist and you only have a hnter/bard/ninja, guess what? Wizardry punished the greedy. You're not supposed to ALWAYS open every chest without fear!

ever chest sould ALWAYS force the party to calculate risk. otherwise wht would be the ponitof the traps?

remember that Elminge is literally Wizardry's successor. Made by ex-Wiz devs and using the Wiz blueprint to the core. I've played Wiz, and low chance of disarming chests was par for the course.

btw, i'll give yu a tip:

if you don't feel confident, get an Alchemit in the party and have him/her cast the spell that tells wht trap it is. THAT spell works 100%.

once yu know the trap, if it's not too bad, then just open it without disarming shit.

and, if the trap is known via Alchy spell, it raises the success rate fo the ninja/bard/hunter/thief's disarm attempt. Starfish thought about that relationship as well. it's not "either/or"; the alchie spell helps the chest disarmer's success rate.

As for inventory: IMO (obvously) it's not something worth even talknig about. Of course, remember i'm coming from a mindset of Wizardry 1-5 and the Gaiden/Empire series (i.e. what most codexers consider non-RPGs and with horrible UI because they lack mouse support); i consider kyborad only control to be great.

elminage can't use hotkeys but you get used to where everything is exactly i every menu. so much so that it is thanks to the muscle memory i developd as to where each option is, exactly, as in exactl how many taps "up" or "down" to reach the one i want, that allowed me to play the 2 Elmi games in japanese.

the inentories are the same, so it didn't matter it was in jap. i had 2000 hours of invnetory muscle meomry from E: Gothic and E: Original.

EDIT: but yes, i agree: Starfish has not fixed Wiz's biggest clsas makeup problem which is the act of identifynig iems. nt only that, Starfish went futher and made item enchantment a class skill, making TWO chars now "convenient".

that is the only true design flaw in the Elmi series. everything else is Wizardry, but 10x better.

 

[Haplo]

Well, then I was lucky with High Portal, as I don't think I've had it fail on me yet.
Also one of the other Vets mentioned it can't fail in Gothic I believe.

Yeah, Bishop is convenient... but most importantly money-saving. When you identify at shop, you don't make any money on loot you sell and actually loose money on stuff you keep.
And having him out in the field is better, as then he can ID party-wide instead of only his own equipment like in town.
He's not too bad I'd say. Only... very slow. That's why I recommended multiclassing him from another caster class so that he's highly proficient in at least 1 school of magic from the get go.
You obviously can't ID stuff at the Warehouse.

Currently I'm using a hyper-agressive party setup. 2 characters with Mark of Ruin (Brawler and Mage). 4 damage dealers and Summoner plus Ninja. Party efficiency has exceeded my expectations thus far.
Usually stuff dies in the first round. And I'm usually only endangered by ambush attacks... and sometimes traps.
Let's see how the party stacks up against the Ibag Tower denizens however. Also when the HPs cross 1k, the damage from MoR can become more difficult to handle. Livin' on the Edge, I guess.


Oh and thank you very much for the tip about the Murasame, aweigh!
Only took about an hour of grinding to loot it... and it's pretty hot. Although Full-Body Swing from the smith's quest ain't that much worse. Good thing Samurais can dual wield main-hand arms

 

[Haplo]

Isn't the reverse true, though? With Portal able to fail and High Portal always suceeding?

 

[aweigh]

the game files confirm high portal reaches only 95 %. but this is not something worth arguing about

it actually oculd be 100%, and thy simply didn't "update" the data files, but the game code reflects it. who knows.

EDIT: yes, Portal can fail too, BUT according to the sheet fils it can reach 100% success rate. it also is a much, much higher "bonus" to the dice roll to determine the trap than an equal-level thief. i.e. a lvl 1 thief versus a theoretical lvl. alchemist using portal: the lvl. 1 alchemist's portal, while not yet 100% due o his low char level, is like 40% above the thief's roll at same level.

 

[aweigh]

OH, mark of ruin is godlike, btw. good choice. I always like to put MoR on my pre-detremined main damage dealer. usualy this would be a starting party Fighter, who will latre class into Lord.

MoR's % bonus to the atk damage dealt (does not affect # of swins, only end result damage dealt) increases linearly with the char's LVL, exactly like how the class abilities "Phys PWR UP / Phys PWR UP +" do.

i ca'nt remember if it tops out somewhere, but i do know that a fighter in ibag's tower around level 100-110 will be doing like, an extra 30% dmg from MoR. and since at that high lvel the dmg is HUGE, 30% is... a HUGE bonus.

it's almost OP sill except the damage received also increases along with its dmg bonus. by post-game expect to eat 50-150 dmg when the Turn Order ends; but by post-game everyone will have 750+ ~ 1000 HP. it's ont that bad.

 

[aweigh]

murasame is the weaker version of that sword, you mean the Masamune.

the murasame has -10 ACC penalty, but the masamune has +6 ACC bonus. Both katanas have i think same DMG spread (50-60) and same # of swings per atk, and both sworsd have same 10% chance to behead.

10% chance to behead is godike, bw, cos at that point you ca enchant that shit and give that samurai with dual-wieldnig Masamunes each one w/ crazy good ACC and great DMG spread and good amount of # of swings pre ATK and with fucking enchanted up to like 35-40% behead.

coupld with a ninja, who will be at thoe points ni the game with enchanted weaponry around 60-80 % behead, the two will be fucing severing heads all day, every day.

(# of swings pre atk is better for inflicting ailments, and behading is an ailment, as each "swing" rolls dice. craft the transmutatoin item "Dice f Fate" it's fun seenig the hidden combat dice rolls).

EDIT: and yea, dude, FULL BODY SWING sword is so good it is literally end-game worthy. It is indisputably the game's best sword for the Thief and Bard class, btw, and for other classes it's like, Top 5.

enchant it to raise it's status recovrey up to 100% and feel awesome as you shrug off enemy status shit. hehe

 

[aweigh]

Haplo

SHIT! i brain farted again. You are correct:

the good one is: Muramasa (btw, that is a shout out to Starfish's first Wiz Empire game. The sword.)

the bad one, whic is still good, is: Murasame.

I dunno where i got Masamune from.

 

[Haplo]

Maybe from Stranger of Sword City? :D

Or Final Fantasy... or something

Damage spread is SLIGHTLY worse: 10-50. But still very, very solid.
And when I saw the ID cost, I was mind-blown...

MoR should actually add as much as 50% damage.

 

[aweigh]

possible it oculd be, but

1) it's an actual jap sword from RL

2) wiz empire 1's storyline centered around a grup of sword smiths who called themselves "Muramasa". I know: i translated most of it. Heh. You actually need to get the Muramasa sword eventually in wiz emp 1.

3) caveo f the ancients is full of callbacks to Wiz Empire series. Man, i wish Starfish somehow got the Wiz license again someday. With their experience now making Elminage games cn yu imagnie the sheer nuclear awesomeness a new Wiz from Starfish would be??

EDIT: and, remember, once you're done beating up Ibag Tower's shenanigans (lol Incarnations stats), Elminage: Original on PSP (i played it emulted using PPSSPP) is very, very good as well! After one finishes Gothic if it's your first Elminage i know you'll be suffering withdrawals in need fo a fix. For me, E: Original (and then the 2 jap ones) have been my fix.

And... do rmeember to also play Wiz Empire 2 (PC), usnig the codex's english patch. It is proto-Elminage. Same races (dragonewt, werebeast, devilish, etc), ALMOST the same classes (except no ex-skills and no class abilities except for misc. tuff like Thieves being chest disarmers, and such); but it is truly the perfect mix of taking 100% classic purebred Wizardry dungeons, classes, enemies and itemization and polishing every sub-system possible.

you can really appreciate how Starfish went from Wiz Emp to Elminage. In fact, some might say they just put a different color scheme and changed the title and claled it a day... heh.

wiz emp 1 (PC) i am waiting for Helly to finish translating the cript, and Wiz Emp 3 will never get translted, but i played it in jap on PPSSPP emulated and it is ont that good. Starfish was suffering management/money problems, and it was a rush-job because they lost the Wiz license before finishing Empire 3. It is very... empty-feeling. lackluster dungeons.

Thankfully 1 year later they busted a nut all over us w/ E: Original.

 

[Haplo]

Thank you very much for all the recommendations, Aweigh. I will probably get around to it, eventually.

But my play time is pretty limited and conquering the tower should occupy me for a long time...

 

[Jasede]

Made a new 'speedrun' party (New Game) to see how much better I got.
Got Underground Map in less than 180 minutes (took me 10 hours on first save), 0 deaths on everyone.

Radically different party:

Human Male Fighter
Human ? Fighter
Human Male Fighter
Human Female Valkyrie
Human Male Servant
Werebeast Female Hunter

What a difference that party made! I figure I don't really lose anything because now with 3 super high DPS fighters, grinding a new mage when I want mage spells is going to be easy as pie. Hunter disabled traps just fine. Not sure whether to continue old party or switch to this awesome new one, 0 deaths everywhere is tempting.

Lategame idea is something like:
Make Human ? Fighter into Lord (please tell me ? weapon is not Innocent Only)
Remove 2nd Human Male Fighter & Replace with Brawler Summon
Replace Servant with some Spellcaster (Mage->Cleric->Alchemist->Summoner?)
Hunter can be replaced with something if needed, but idea is to switch to Alchemist and back to Hunter

Alternative idea: learn spells on Servant, put servant in front row, make 2nd Fighter into all spell Bishop for ID convenience

This game is too good.


Should I also get Strangers of Sword City?

 

[Exhuminator]

Should I also get Strangers of Sword City?

Yes.

 

[aweigh]

you lucked the fuck out, Jasede, i'll go ahead and spoil for you: the motherfucking end-game uber-saber for Lords is... specifically for "?" gendered Lords!.

hah. Oh, and don't just "boot" the 2nd-string Human-Fighter, just Class Change him/her into a Brawler. Why? Because Fighter class gains tons of HP, so when he changes to Brawler he/she will have lots more HP, even at LVL 1, than a freshly created Brawler char.

Same thing with the Servant: for god's sake, don't throw away the earned HP! When you class change racial Attributes drop to Minimuns, but you retain your actual Hit Point total and all your spells (reduced in castings of course depending on what changed who in where for why, etc).

Simply class-change that Servant into one of the Caster-types you need/want, and then class-change THAT fucker into whatever other caster-type you want to complete the "set" of spells you have in mind.

(BTW... there's absolutely no reason you can't groom a LVL 1 Mage/Cleric very preciously in order to have them reach LVL 13, learn Diomante/Rizefus/etc, and boom class-change the Mage into a Lord or Valkyrie (usuallly Valk, as Lords requirements are super high; and obviously this means that the Mage in this example was char-generated with this plan all the way planned out before even beginning the game; that's why party building is SO FUCKING ADDICTIVE).

I recommend switching the Servant to a pure Thief (which will be almost guaranteed as Thief requirements are the lowest out of any Class change); then... well there is an knife in the game, and that knife is a knife that was also in all of the Wizardry games.

Dost thou remember the knife of the Butterfly? I'll say no more, except this final hint: this ancient, powerful knife, that has now been coded into pure-blooded RPGs since Wizardry 1; ancient chinese secrets tell of those who like to pilfer go all asian when they hold this knife and start wearing a fully black halloween costume.

Hmmm... it's in the game somewhere. This knife, and any Thief would like to get it. So this way you will get rid of the lackluster Servant and replace him/her with a supremely useful pure Thief, who dreams of one day acquiring a very, very awesome knife that... changes people.

Now you can take out the Hunter, since you Servant turned into a Thief; make your Hunter into an Summoner.

Boom, there's the party you were typing about.

Jasede

It will be quite powerful, btw, if you pull it off:

- "?" gendered Lord (previously one of the two starting party's Fighter chars).

- Brawler (previously one of the two starting party's Fighter chars).

- [Super Awesome Class] - (previously Thief) - (also, previously the starting party's Servant).

- Summoner (previously the starting party's Hunter).

- Lastly, your third Fighter character: Don't waste a single second and turn that fucker into either a Mage, or a Bishop right now. Your party is in desperate need of Mage-school spells. In fact, I would go so far as to recommend the following: simply groom that Fighter for Samurai class.

Boom. Problems solved.

EDIT: If you REALLY want to go all out and make the Summoner as optimal as possible, change that Hunter first into an ALCHEMIST (the eventual fighter -> Lord will have the Cleric spells, plus you already have a Valkyrie who will also learn Cleric spells, therefore you will be in sore need of the Alchemy spell school); once that fucker levels to 13 and learns High Portal class him/her into a Summoner.

Sure it'll take some grinding, but you'll have a kick-ass bad ass Summoner

And, btw, your Valkyrie is good as-is. Valkyrie is, ARGUABLY, the best martial class in the game. Lords win only because of their Mastery Skill's usefuleness.

 

[aweigh]

Jasede

2x post:

ALTERNATE SUGGESTION:

- Make Servant into an Alchemist, and then when he reaches LVL 13 turn him into his final saiyan form: Summoner!

- Make the 3rd Fiighter, i.e. the one who won't be aiming for being a Lord (the "?" one; and remember, since you already have a Valkyrie if you can't make Lord feel free to turn him/her into a Samurai. Samurai is better, except, as always, Lord's Court Sanctuary skill is retardedly useful)-- right, this one you turn into the Brawler.

- And then, now turn the Hunter into... a BARD!! And now you'll still have a chest-opener AND he'll plug the hole in your current party i.e. the lack of mage-spell nukes. Plus Bard's ability to use Tarot cards is both fun as fuck and also insanely powerful (when it works!).

That leaves:

- Turn the Servant into...

a) if the "?" fighter guy/girl manages to reach being a Lord, then turn the Servant into a SAMURAI.

b) if it looks like it will be too hard/take too long for the "?" fucker to reach Lord, then turn THAT guy into the Samurai, and thus be sure to have been grooming the Servant to be the Lord or the Samurai. The point is for both of them to be one of each!

c) turn Servant into a a pure Cleric. I am partial to regular Clerics because, number 1 they're better at fighting than servants (heh), and number two, in end-game / post-game during battle enemies will kill your members so many times, sometimes every single round, that Resurrection spell is literally SUPER DUPER FUCKING IMPORTANT.

what's the catch? Resurrection spell in E: Gothic works on a dice roll. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

my point? Clerics, naturally, have class ability that LINEARLY raises the effectives/damage/chance-of-success of their Cleric spells, (same as Mages with their spells), and their success ratio resurrecting is like, well, i can't even quantify it.

there's no comparison. Clerics almost never miss resurrections. That alone made me begin to like having one.

 

[aweigh]

3x post:

And yes, do please treat yourself and get SoSC. It's not Elminage, and it doesn't WANT to be Elminage. It is NOT specifically developed from a desire to relive Wizardry.

However, it is indeed a "Wiz-clone", but compared to Elminage it plays like it's from the future. Exp Inc and Murasama Studio (the devs of the game and many others in the series), are "developer friends" with Starfish Studios, and both companies have been producing dungeon crawlers from a root inspiration in Wizardry since, oh, since around the years when the PS1 was king.

First Wiz Empire game from Starfish came out for PS1, and Team Muramasa's first Wiz-clone (called Wizardry XTH: New Frontier) came out as a launch title for PS2.

(I of course did prelimenary testing on the ps2 iso of that game, WXTH: NF, for translation purposes but the script is longer than all wizardry and all the elminage games put together end to end, and Helly is definitely not gonna want to have anything to do with that script, ergo... it'll never be translated. Unless I eventually learn my Kanji reading, of course. And even then... it would probably take 1 person (i.e. me) literally 1-3 years of work-work-work every day to finish translating that 'crawler. Sadly, Team Muramasa simply writes way too much damn text. Elminage 2, 3 and Wiz Empire 3 are actually possible eventually, as their scripts are short, but the 'crawlers from the Stranger in Sword City studio, of which there are TONS: those will never be translated unless done by the copmany. They have too many talking heads spouting dumb anime dialog).

....uh, oh yeah, soooo yes SoSC is a very good crawler. play it.

 

[Jasede]

Lack of Mage spells has caused 0 problems for now, but I know I will need them soonish. I really like the Hunter though, he is ~75% as good as Thief with traps and does great damage.

Yeah I will, but I want to master this game first. SoSC will feel like a breeze after, I bet.

There's still one problem with my new party (which is at the church now after <5 hours, it's crazy strong) -- no Bishop! What do I do? Grind one and bench him?

Basically I have to decide:

Do I want to use Summoners and invest in making a Red Cap Ninja to act as my Thief so the Hunter can be an Alchemist/Mage/Summoner?
Or do I just want pure power and forget about Summoners/Devilish and just go as is?
And do I fit in a Bishop or not? So far in this 'speedrun' not having a Bishop has not been a problem, but I would imagine later it would cost me huge gold amounts to identify at the shop.

 

[Emmanuel2]

Lack of Mage spells has caused 0 problems for now, but I know I will need them soonish. I really like the Hunter though, he is ~75% as good as Thief with traps and does great damage.

Yeah I will, but I want to master this game first. SoSC will feel like a breeze after, I bet.

There's still one problem with my new party (which is at the church now after <5 hours, it's crazy strong) -- no Bishop! What do I do? Grind one and bench him?

Basically I have to decide:

Do I want to use Summoners and invest in making a Red Cap Ninja to act as my Thief so the Hunter can be an Alchemist/Mage/Summoner?
Or do I just want pure power and forget about Summoners/Devilish and just go as is?
And do I fit in a Bishop or not? So far in this 'speedrun' not having a Bishop has not been a problem, but I would imagine later it would cost me huge gold amounts to identify at the shop.

I'm not master aweigh and I still haven't finished the game (dropped it by the time I got Royal Tomb et al. unlocked for university, 30 hours with at least 1/3 of those as idling time found out that you can save on floors by the 10th hour) but:

You can switch the Hunter to an Alchemist -> Hunter again since the hunter keeps all the spell slots from the Alc school.

Yes, you'd really want Bishop/Mage Class especially when the church comes up. High Portal and Teleport are IMHO mandatory for crawling.

The gold won't be an issue since by the time you're at the church, selling loot will shower you with gold a lot.

Also, grats on the "speedrun" time, that's impressive.

 

[aweigh]

Gotta go ATM, but Emmanuel is correct. The store only sells what you sell to the store, i.e. what you find inside dungeon romps, and while there are absolutely expensive items it will be RARE for your party to be 100% broke.

Items like Full-Health Potions and Revival Tonics and Stone Softeners are very expensive, and that's on purpose.

And, btw, this isn't 100% "accurate" but the more expensive a weapon or armor, the better it is. Always give those a 2nd examination if the gear sells for a LOT but it doesn't "look that great". Look at ALL the numbers. There's always SOMETHING!

Price is a huge indicator of "quality" in Elminage games. Heh. Oh! And dude, no, you're not gonna go broke by using the store to identify. Mid-game onwards you won't even know what to do with the hundreds of thousands on ya.Eventually in the post-game there is a secret NPC that will sell you the game's best L-range weapon specifically for use by non-martial classes (Alchies, mages, etc) for ONE MILLION GP. Dun dun. Chances are by the time you reach that guy you'll have like 2-4 million

 

[Haplo]

SoSC is pretty good. Loved the art and the loot is also pretty hot. Though compared with Elminage Gothic, the Morale/Divinity system feels almost like cheating.
After getting some levels and loot, the normal mobs become trivial and you can do an instant repeat of last combat orders in most encounters (fortunately there are tools to make it really fast). I believe in Elminage Gothic, unless you're grossly overlevelled, you can never feel to safe at the depths of a dungeon.

The level design is nowhere near as complex and confusing as in Elminage Gothic.

Classes and skills are pretty cool. Maybe the devs went a bit overboard with multiclassing, as with sufficient grinding it's entirely possible to create a Jack-and-Master-of-all-Trades overpowered characters. But it's still perfectly viable to run regular, single-class characters. I'd actually argue the game would be much more fun this way.

So, yeah, worth checking it our IMO. But don't except Elminage Gothic level of challenge.


And regarding the gold concerns in Elminage Gothic: The main purpose of gold is training newly multiclassed characters (can only be trained right after the multiclass). Once you've finished your multiclass rotation (which should be around the church area, maybe a bit later I guess), there isn't really that much to spend gold on.

Well, the secret weapon aweigh mentioned. Also the weapons from the last dungeon have crazy prices - and consequently crazy ID costs. Though I don't know what level would a Bishop need to have to successfully ID these things (ID is not guaranteed). My last find was the Murasame.. and it cost me 500.000 gold to ID that! (that's actually from a dungeon before post game, some overpowered toys have a chance to start appearing from the Royal Tomb onwards... but before Murasame stuff used to cost 60.000 gold max).

And one more thing regarding pricing, I've noticed that items with a hidden power that can be triggered on equip or used in battle tend to be several times more expensive then equipment of similar power but without these traits. Even when it's trivial, useless or even harmful stuff like +1 Agility, petrify user, change alignment to evil, kill 2 party members.

 

[Emmanuel2]

SoSC is pretty good. Loved the art and the loot is also pretty hot. Though compared with Elminage Gothic, the Morale/Divinity system feels almost like cheating.
After getting some levels and loot, the normal mobs become trivial and you can do an instant repeat of last combat orders in most encounters (fortunately there are tools to make it really fast). I believe in Elminage Gothic, unless you're grossly overlevelled, you can never feel to safe at the depths of a dungeon.

The level design is nowhere near as complex and confusing as in Elminage Gothic.

Classes and skills are pretty cool. Maybe the devs went a bit overboard with multiclassing, as with sufficient grinding it's entirely possible to create a Jack-and-Master-of-all-Trades overpowered characters. But it's still perfectly viable to run regular, single-class characters. I'd actually argue the game would be much more fun this way.

So, yeah, worth checking it our IMO. But don't except Elminage Gothic level of challenge.


And regarding the gold concerns in Elminage Gothic: The main purpose of gold is training newly multiclassed characters (can only be trained right after the multiclass). Once you've finished your multiclass rotation (which should be around the church area, maybe a bit later I guess), there isn't really that much to spend gold on.

Well, the secret weapon aweigh mentioned. Also the weapons from the last dungeon have crazy prices - and consequently crazy ID costs. Though I don't know what level would a Bishop need to have to successfully ID these things (ID is not guaranteed). My last find was the Murasame.. and it cost me 500.000 gold to ID that! (that's actually from a dungeon before post game, some overpowered toys have a chance to start appearing from the Royal Tomb onwards... but before Murasame stuff used to cost 60.000 gold max).

And one more thing regarding pricing, I've noticed that items with a hidden power that can be triggered on equip or used in battle tend to be several times more expensive then equipment of similar power but without these traits. Even when it's trivial, useless or even harmful stuff like +1 Agility, petrify user, change alignment to evil, kill 2 party members.

Yeah, SoSC is a much different beast altogether (in a good way) but I'd have to argue some points:

• While the normal mobs are indeed trivial, the main combat attraction are the Bosses themselves unlike in E:G where it's You VS. Dungeon. This is very apparent especially in Postgame and without taking either Wall divinities.

• You cannot make a Master-of-all character because, apart from HP and MP, combat stats (ATK, DEF, AV, RST, SpEd, etc) don't carry over when multi-classing much like in E:G. Class switch slots and special skill slots are limited and, without NG+, so are the actual stats (up to level 99) themselves. By making a Warrior main take Cleric for example, you'd be gimping his combat capabilities by a large factor and his heals are worth nothing making him a low HP/low damaging/low healing member.

• A low level run is very, very fun but unfortunately IIRC from my first playthrough around halfway through the game (after killing your BFF and the 2nd Elder Fight) grinding is basically mandatory.