Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[aweigh]

WITNESS THE RAW POWAH OF A "PURE CLERIC" CHAR'S INCREDIBLY HIGH CHANCE OF SUCCESS (dice roll, etc) TO KILL ENEMIES WITH Cleric-spell school's ZEIFUS ("instant death spell").







No other class can attempt viable Ibag's Tower strategies that include usage of death spells unless the party has a Cleric, pure and simple. The Cleric's extreme usefulness inside the Tower is a huge reason I like the Class a lot more now in Gothic and consider it more than useful enough to be a 100% rock-solid choice for any party. Just make sure he isn't "Innocent", or at least wait and use Power Medal to change someone into the party Cleric: make sure he/she has Alchemy spells, or at least Mage spells (the Mage spell earthquake which is "Instant death", falls under a Cleric's domain), otherwise will not be optimally useful.

VIDEO NOTES: 1st Unit (the Fighter I mention above) is still a Lord, and when these vids were recorded I had my Thief temporarily benched and trying out a (Gold Piece level-advanced during char-gen) Shaman class-changed from a random Mage char I still had in stock doing nothing who was already level 22, so only needed like 3 milllion GPs to level her up to a decent fighting level, i do believe my actually current save has the Shaman in party, and my thief still benched, as Shaman's access to the single best 2-handed katana in the game (only shamans and ninjas! SUCK IT SAMMIES) alternating with Shaman's access to the single best bow available to martial-types, i.e. the Flame Heresy bow (samurai and shaman only, oh, and Mage too, for some reason), just ends up being more combat-valuable than anything my Innocent Thief was bringing to the table post floor 16th of Ibag's Tower...

Oh, and in both videos, I modded enemies with:

- enemies seen on those videos have 2x (twice) their Hit Die upon encounter-generation, therefore effectively having 2x their vanilla/default hit points regardless of their spawning.

- enemies have 25% extra (1.25) across-the-board boost to the HP Turn Recovery ability, thus ensuring whatever amount they have always receives extra 25% hp recovery. That is why you see one of the Mirror Ring fuckers HP Turn Recover for 1250k hit points, LEWL.

- lastly, all enemies received across-the-board 2 point bonus to armor class, no exceptions. Yes, even the 90~ AC ones.

FUNNY NOTE: Originall I had also "liberated" the 2-handed weapon, the Bow, from an artificial restriction they put on it for E: Gothich which is:

- normally, ALL 2-handed weapons regardless of range can exceed 10 hits (formula is normal atks-per-swing cap of 10 hits per "action" spent on a weapon attack, but if weapon is 2-handed then 10 number gets an additional amount of hits, up to a hard cap of 15 hits, by adding the 2-handed weapon's "atks-per-swing" number, which is never, ever higher than 4, to the 2-handed weapon formula which determines total hits dealth to enemy: TL;DR 2-handed weapons, with arbitrary exception of bows, can all reach potential 15 hits without usage of ORATH spell, thus I removed this limitation from all bows).

WOW. TALK ABOUT REALIZING WHY THEY DID SOMETHING! Uncapped bows are insaaanne, just imagine those StarGazers, hitting me already for 400-600 points of damage, basically being allowed to use their (Bow-only ability) Swift Strike to always go first and deal (potentially) TWICE that dmg. I immediately realized why they capped bows as the only 2-handed weapon unable to exceed 10 hits.

Obviously, uncapping bows also immediately makes hunter into probably best dmg dealer in game. back row of bow-wielding chars, with bows atks-per-swing uncapped as it used to be pre-Gothic... yikes. ofc, then u meet party of bow-wielding enemies and alt + f4 and remove modification immediately, if not outright uninstall windows.

 

[Gunnar]

Aweigh, you are just the right mix of insanity and genius.

 

[Haplo]

Good stuff, aweigh

Btw. There is at least one 2-handed weapon which bestows more then 4 extra attacks: The World.
It adds 10 extra attacks - for a total of 20 attacks! It also adds 10 accuracy to make sure these attacks can only sometimes miss against the highest AC enemies (Champions and Iron Golems so far, but look forward to Ibag's and Belials....).
Of course the base attack is shitty.... but then again you can easily double it with Alchemy... maybe even triple with a good Alchemist. And it has x2 modifier against all races - except Gods.
Then you get the Strenght bonuses, Cruelty/Ruin bonuses, War Rite bonuses, maybe also Counter Attack bonuses.... and it gets kinda sick. Especially if your Brawler lands a 4 hit combo for x7 damage (last hit can be x3).

It also debuffs your Charm and Confusion Resist by 90 (and is cursed?), but I guess it needs some negatives.

 

[Gunnar]

What's the deal with this asshole giant named Legion? He can clear debuffs? I had him on the ropes and he just cleared all my AC debuffs and I was back to square one.

edit - Ah he is vulnerable to silence.

 

[aweigh]

and u guys have never been witness to me geeking out over frame data in street fighter. the new balance patch just dropped for sf5 and printed out the 47 pages of patch notes (every single char was *somewhat* re-designed, to greatly varying extents); and i am just ultra hyped over the good ecisions they made w/ this new balance pass.

i make similar, long-winded blog-type posts about SF frame-data / setups / scenarios / what-if's, eve, about SF games, over at shoryuken and eventhubs forums.

 

[aweigh]

Haplo

most probably the knuckle-type weapon, "World", will have major negatives. almost every single Cursed weapon offers a legitimate downside to its strengths.

early in the game, i.e. as early as while clearing Tsun-kun Caverns, the first "cursed weapon" your party will find is none other than the Rusty Longsword. At first glance you notice it does total 2 pts less of DMG-spread (1pt less in the minimum end - 1pt less in the maximum end); you'll also notice it doesn't come with any Accuracy bonuses and in fact, I do believe it is -1, which is worse than the flat "0" Accuracy modifier on the standard "Longsword". (i.e. no bonus nor also any penalty).

Believe it or not this took me like, my fucking 3rd playthrough/party before realizing the why/hows of cursed weaponry, and it started with the Rusty Longsword. The Rusty Longsword, although less accurate than the normal Longsword and dealing less damage... guess what? I had never before noticed that it came with built-in "normal damage bonus" versus GHOSTS!!

Not only is that very good, it also means no wasted Ore-pts on making a Ghost-killing Longsword! Doesn't stop there, tho: after closer inspection, once having noticed the tiny "equal (=) sign" which represents the item doing "normal dmg" (read: 1.0x dmg modifier) to ghosts; I noticed that it also has TWO (2) TWO "attacks-per-swing", and is in fact:

- Almost alllll the way up until you unlock the set of dungeons that accompany the Underground Church (not the Sanctum), which if i remember correctly are: rosalie ruins, "light cave" (cave which has green moss on all the walls), etc; my point is you will not start finding ANY weapons with extra "atks-per-swing". For a LONG time the only one is that Rusty Longsword.

- The (probably) 2nd sword u will find with 2 atks-per-swing will be the Palindrome sword, received after chasing around a gay leprechaun in the "water caves" (not the ice cave). Very similar stats to the Rusty Longsword except with no built-in "normal DMG" versus Ghosts, but with higher DMG-spread, and much higher Accuracy (+2).

This means... what? Nothing really, just saying that was when I realized: the majority of cursed weapons NEED a close-up, careful inspections, ESPECIALLY of their list of how much built-in DMG mods it has, if any, and equally importantly how bad are the resistance % penalties.

Yes, those are real penalties. In order to restore the wielder of that cursed weapon back to at very least post-10% on the resistances affected by his cursed-gear you WILL need to enchant/de-enchant/etc. There's no other way around it. This means... oh, and also: regardless of whether it is cursed or not, or whether wielder is Devilish, an originally cursed item's stats are set in stone. uncursing only allows free equip of the item, nothing more.

So, once again, this example of the game's (probably) 1st cursed weapon found by the party also serves to highlight, one more time, just how useful it is to have 1 or 2 Devilish in the party so you can spend those swag-a-licious lvl 2 Ore-points on raising any negative resistance %'s, raising the cursed weapon's DMG spread, also they sometimes come with a minor hit point penalty (wielder of weapon takes 1-5 DMG at turn's end, just because he has the weapon equipped); using Ore-points to "reverse" that is also incredibly useful: simply "enchant" the item and raise it's HP Turn Recovery until it is no longer in the negative range.

Now, returning to the Brawler and the item "The World": you are correct, i had 100% forgotten knuckle/fist-type weaponry (i.e. brawler gear, although a lot of those weapons can also be equipped by Ninja); i had forgotten that almost all Brawler fist-weapons are 2-handed. Plum forgot. So yeah, those are absolutely the exception, and most definitely intentional in order to further cement Brawler class as the premier damage dealer. I've talked about a regular Fighter's high-level damage output, with his/her Phys PWR Atk UP++, but Brawlers can most definitely out-damage ANY fighter.

I just usually don't like using Brawlers because aside from their DMG and their specific use for capturing poke-summons: there is nothing the brawler can do that a Fighter or a Ninja or a Samurai or a Valkyrie can't do: deal damage (check! all the ones i mentioned!); heal (sorry, brawlers don't get spells naturally, the other classes i mentioned except the Ninja, they do); Brawler weapons are rare (but extremely good and satisfying to get them due to their rarity), and lastly almost all of the best Brawler fist-type weapons are cursed. This means the player would have to meta-game a little and make "sure" their party Brawler is devilish, i mean, if they want to go for optimization and shit.

The last thing I dislike about Brawlers is lack of armor. No, their Armor Class is 2nd best in the entire game, as they have the same AC bonus per 3 levels that Ninjas do: it's that they don't wear jack-shit. I like using all the shit enemies drop, it's like 70% of the reason to play the game. I don't like having a party character that doesn't require equipment, regardless of how good they may be.

That said, I would love to compare a level 150 Fighter wielding the GOLDEN AXE, and a level 150 Brawler with whatever the fuck their Ibag's Tower S-tier godly knuckledusters are, and see how much DMG both can inflict, with both characters of course using best race for each (Dwarf/Dragonewt for the Fighter, and Devilish for the Brawler).

I would bet money the level 150 fighter will out-damage the Brawler with the golden axe. I have seen mine deal 2000 damage to the enemy with that weapon...

 

[aweigh]

so yeah, like i said, bows were singled-out for capping their ability to reach same # of total hits that all other 2-handed weapons can reach, and like i said, for good damn reason. Uncapped bows = super OP Hunters. Like, game-breakingly good. Each swift attack of that Hunter will basically guarantee, 100%, that before the Turn Order begins at all already 1 of the enemies will be down, and don't forget also that higher hits per attack also = higher %/dice roll bonus to land any ailment/status effect that weapon might have on it.

That means with a possible uncapped max of 15 (14 without ORATH, 15 once orath is cast); possible max of 14 hits-per-bow-shot assuming that Hunter has like, a good 50-60 % chance of landing some sort of ailment the weapon has (Confusion/sleep are the two best, always, ALWAYS); the extra 4 hits (extra 5 w/ orath) means they will get 5 chances to land the ailment, regardless/not taking into account the 50% dmg boost.

the bows were balanced for 10 hits. In any case, It is very easy to mod PC version of Elminage: Gothic, and i have played the game with parties rocking M-ranged weaponry that is not M-ranged in the vanilla game, but WAS M-ranged in previous Elmi games, such as:

- Along with my modification to the 3 .xls monster spreadsheets to boost their hp/turn recovery/armor class, i also changed...

- All staves (canes/rods/staff) changed as follows: the ones with a NEGATIVE accuracy modifier (very bad, stave users already will have very low chance to-hit); i changed those ones to a flat "0", so no bonus and no penalty to the ACC. Obviously, also made them Medium-ranged.

- Added 1 or 2 points of Accuaracy to most belts, a few gloves, one or two helms, to a few shields, (alll of this copy/pasted straight from the 3DS port of the game's new item item stats, nothing made up by me), as this was the 1 sole good idea Starfish had for adding to the 3ds port. Having 1 or 2 extra ACC points is great, GREAT help for the non-martial/warrior-type classes, like mages/bishops/alchemists/summoners/etc, as now they can simply equip some Obi/belt/etc and substantially raise the chances of actually hitting the enemy with their (probably) now M-ranged stave/cane/rod/staff/mace/club.

- Changed all 2-handed axes to deal 1-3 points of less DMG-spread, but gave all the ones who DID NOT HAVE an AC bonus; i gave them a 1 point bonus to AC. Traditionally, axes are used equally for attacking as for parrying or for tactucs such as hooking enemy clothing/armor/shield in order to unbalance them and then kill them with their other weapon, most usually a Dirk of some sort (i.e. what D*D calls "short swords").

- Changed all 2-handed Samurai/Ninja/Shaman katakans (only the 2-h ones) to have M-range. This is both cool for the party members who use these, as without this huge range incentive there is _zero reason to use 2h katanas instead of the almost-always better ones, the 1-handed katanas_. At least with the 2-handed katanas (of which there are few, btw, not a very prolific weapon sub-type) being M-range gives a nice incentive to equip them, plus... Enemies with these weapons equipped will, of course, also have M-range, which means watch out for ur backline!

- Changed all (2-handed clubs / a few SPECIFIC Maces / and, again, one or two SPECIFIC 2-handed "knightly swords"); into M-range as well. E: Original always had M-ranged clubs/staves/canes/rods/maces: and unlike me, E: Original has them all m-ranged. I made only very specific ones M-ranged.

Example of one: I made High King's Sword M-ranged, but took away its HP Turn Recovery bonus it comes with and removed two of the enemy-type DMG-modifiers it comes with (it comes w/ 4 enemy type DMG mods, all 4 are "1.5x" amounts: i removed two of them); so it is an M-ranged 2-handed sword usable by lords/fighters.

Also did the same with the Hell Sword (must be stolen! not available in loot/chests).

- Lastly, gave every single Whip an accross-the-board buff of +2 points to each whip's ACCURACY number; then buffed each single whip's DMG-spread by an across-the-board +2 points, with 1 point on the min-end, and the other point on the max-end, of the spread.

Oh, and I made each whip L-range, ALL of them "sub", for dual-wielding, and made ALL whips equippable by ANY CLASS/RACE, which, AGAIN.... this is in line with previous Elminage games.

Of course, previous Elmi games weren't intentionally trying to make a hard-core crawler; thus why I then boosted every single enemy. I must say, humble-bragging now, I really balanced everything fucking perfect.

:D

(Also nerfed half of the Spear weapons: they are all simply tooooo goood. Reduced by 1-2 points almost every spear's DMG-spread and also reduced by 1 point the ACCURACY of each single Spear weapon. Even nerfed thusly, they're STILL the best 2-handed weapons in the game. I also "eliminated" the three "sub-type" spears found in the game and adjusted their stats to resemble Main-hand spears. Valkyrie will already be super-broken dual-wielding fucking spears; having others with a sub-type weapon being a SUPER GODLIKE spear with awesome-sauce stats? no way, fuck that! NERF time.)

EDIT: also I gave all of the Charms/Seals that Shamas use for attacking and stuff; gave every single one of those charm items a buff of across-the-board +1 point of Armor Class. Replacing legit armor gear with charms will still leave your party shaman basically dead in 1 round inside the Tower; but hey, at least now they just might reach "V.L." ac !! heh.

Finally, for anyone who wants it, I also have a modded master item file with only the changes made to the item list for the 3ds remix port of E: Gothic, and nothing else changed by me. Monsters are also copy/pasted with the 3ds port's stats. I don't personally use that for the PC ver, as I prefer actually making the game harder. Regardless, i am on a 3ds version of the game playing it through: it's good mindless entertainment. The UI is much, much better due to double-screens, and although OVERALL the game is "easier", it is much more convenient for the player.

EDIT x2: also if anyone, say Gunnar or Haplo, seriously want to change one of their character's ex-skills now that they're in the tower please just let me do it. Upload to somewhere a .zip with your save game, and I will hex-edit the ex-skills to whatever you want.

Can also change everything else (race/class/age/etc), but... that'd be cheating. Way I see it, hex-editing a different ex-skill is not cheating because it was super obviously an oversight by Starfish, seeing as Elminage 3 (three) has skill-changing in the game, AND it was the first thing reported when the 3ds port was announced: p. obvious Starfish just plum... forgot!

 

[Gunnar]

I beat Legion! Woooo! Went back to the town and made my weapons give silence effects and double damage vs giant. Switched the Ninja to the front row and put the Samurai in the back, since he was my only mage caster. After many tries I ended up getting him confused and he landed a perfect brawler combo on himself for like 3000 damage. I received a prize for all my efforts: a Whip! A shitty cursed whip! That's all I get?! How about some good ore you chintzy game!

Sigh. Ok, I've cleared the tower of secrets and I'm now ready to move on to 19f and 20f for the final challenges.

btw aweigh, thanks for the offer but I already bit the bullet and changed my one guy so I could get mysterious bag.

 

[aweigh]

what whip? whips are deceptive, even un-modded. the Angel Ribbon? one called something like "Silencer"?

 

[Gunnar]

what whip? whips are deceptive, even un-modded. the Angel Ribbon? one called something like "Silencer"?

It's the Sealing Whip.

 

[aweigh]

(looks at stats)

YUP!

That's exactly why i overhauled ALL of the whips. for my difficulty mod playthrough (current one, on PC, party resting @ 20th floor).

90% of the whips are one hot fucking mess of seemingly random stats/dmg-spread/accuracy/status afflictions/etc. Like, as if EVERYBODY took a turn making 1 whip or 2, and did not look at ANY OTHER WEAPONS while doing so and just wanted to finish making sure there were whips in the game.

CASE IN POINT: that "Silencing Whip" would have been a GREAT drop... in mid-game, maybe. By the time you're near, or inside the tower!? get outta hereeee with dattt

 

[Gunnar]

I like the changes you made to the weapons, there are a lot of 'useless' weapons in the game. Not sure about making the monsters more crazy than they already are but hey I guess after you master the game you need a challenge.

Did you say you had spreadsheets with the game stats in them? I'd like to take a peek at those myself.

 

[aweigh]

i posted download links to the legit majority of the spreadsheet files of the of the game, i uploaded them to my dropbox and to my firedrop. just click like 10 pages back or so and look for those links.

in that post containing said links to a .zip download of .xls / .doc spreadsheets/files (ITEM.xls, MONSTER1/MONSTER2/MONSTER3.xls, EXP_PROG.xls, etc; you get the idea); in the same post i also go into detail about how to interpret the simple reference ID numbers so you can know that the number "16" in the spreadsheet which shows all the weapons which have a magic/extra use when "used" in an encounter refers to the 16th weapon down the master ITEM.xls list, i.e. the Lightning Sword.

Longsword, btw, is of course... item no. 1

so, uh, do that. If you prefer to not search pages of this thread i will make a new post with the links to the files but i'll do that in a few days, just to make you search. I have to do it, though, cos i finally have a fully non-glitchy, non-buggy set of edited/modded .xls files all mirroring every single item "stat revision" copy/pasted over from the master ITEM.xls file from the 3ds port (read: Obi accessory comes with +1 ACCURACY).

like i said, the only changes i made personally and not because they were copy/pasted from the 3ds version were buffing up all enemy health, turn recovery and AC in order to give my party a decent challenge since, using a mix (now I'm strictly referring to my own personal-use set of edited spreadsheets, not the "only 3ds changes" ones); using a mix of copy/pasted item stats from the 3ds version of the game, which basically means everyone ends up with slightly more AC and with higher bonus to ACC (3ds ver is easy mode), and finally coupled w/ the changes i made to weapon ranges and the overhaul i did to all the whips (did I mention i made all whips L-ranged and sub-weapon type?)-- obviously a party with these edited items will need edited enemies to balance out the increased overall aprty accuracy and increased overall party armor class points.

also, i always lower the summon resistance on enemies which have it set to 100%, which means only way to poke-capture those guys is by necessity using a Brawler; instead I lowered all of the 100% summon-resist enemies down to 95%.

no longer obligatory to have a brawler to lower it with his/her clean hit, but by no means is 95% "easy": poke-capturing skillving with my party bishop (previously original party SUMMONER) took me around 3 hours, give or take a few mins, just doing nothing else but that.

i assume starfish made end-game enemy summon resist 100% in somce cases to force players to at least in 1 of the playthroughs to use a brawler, but i say fuck that, if i could i would also make Divination and Item Identification (class skills both, although Divination is an ex-skill available only to two classes, it's a distinction)-- if i could i'd make all that shit standard, universally-chosen EX-SKILLS, and instead make bishops shine by giving them higher martial possibility (basically increasing bishop class's attacks gained per level, of which Bishops earn a flat 0 extra, same as Alchies, while Clerics gain 1 extra attack every 15 levels, mages gain 1 every 20 levels i believe, and of course the martial-type classes gain 1 extra atk-per-swing every 5-10 levels, depending on the class; and lastly by allowing the bishop to equip heavier armor like in Wizardry/Elminage: Original); thus he would still have a role in any party but he would no longer be simply the item identification machine.

same with alchie's smithing skills; that shit would not even be an ex-skill just a service the player pays money to access in the town. alchemy spell school already warrants any alchie a spot in any player party; no need to also make them obligatory to lug around so player can enchant his shit.

alas, i never was able to figure out how to mod the files which contain this data (EXJOB.xls, SKILL.xls, CHARMPLT.xls, etc) and have what i typed above actually show up working and displaying correctly in-game. i managed to shove item identification into the ex-skills general list, but was not able to REMOVE it from the bishop, so...

i also edited the PSP .iso (hex edited :humblebrag of Elmi: Original and buffed all of the enemies by around 3 times what i buffed the E: Gothic enemies; E: Original is much easier so i fixed that and made it hard as fuck. probably TOO hard; currently i am simply unable to win any encounter in the post game due to my edits. Heh.

So if anyone wants a harder version of E: Original for when they finish E: Gothic, let me know and i'll upload a new ISO with slightly toned down enemy stat buffs so the post game is actually workable for mere mortals.

i have no idea how to patch games, or how to make a patch, so this means i am specifically talking about uploading the psp .iso of Original, which is around 400mb, to my firedrop/dropbox and linking it here or sending it thru PM, which is why i have not done so yet since no one has asked for it.

 

[aweigh]

oh, and yup, you guessed it: blindly mashing the auto-battle button inside Ibag's Tower, my entire party used their melee attack and this meant my back row, wielding M-ranged Death Staffs, swung at Skillving.

Skillving said no, parried, then swallow returned entire back row's heads on a platter. heh. gotta remember to make 'em not melee in an encounter like that.

 

[Serus]

I started playing Elminage (both Gothic and Original but with focus on Gothic) a few days ago. Still very very early (4th dunegon but some sidequests left in the 3rd, level ~11)

Pretty standard team in Gothic:
1. Werebeast Valkyrie
2. Dragonewt Brawler
3. Dwarf Cleric
4. Hotlet Thief
5. Human Mage
6. Elf Alchemist
and in reserve (only level 7) a Human Bishop.

Plans for the future:
1. Stay innocent Valkyrie
2. Change him to Samurai OR roll an innocent Samurai (dragonewt samurai is easy to roll ~ only 24 points)
3. Change to Lord
4. There are 3 options:
> change to Ninja later
> or take an innocent Ninja (a monster one perhaps, devilish ?)
> or Alchemist/Mage -> Ninja for some spellcasting abilities
5. Change to Alchemist (or maybe insert Mage levels before Alchemist)
6. There are 4 options:
> change to Bishop
> or alternatively to Cleric then Mage
> or after change to Cleric then Mage will end as a Summoner with all four spell schools
> or after change to Cleric then Mage will end as a Hunter

Any major problems with my plan (i mean post game-wise if i ever go that far) ?


Elminage Original is easier as aweigh wrote in one of his post in this thread - but imho not because monsters are easier (at least early game they are very similar in both games - in fact some are indentical and/or use re-used graphic assets) but because your party is much strgonger. You find better items much faster/earler, you can start stronger due to the way age works during character creation, you have access to several dungeons from the start = can recruit some good monsters right from the start, etc, etc...

Original is also much less frustrating - not only it is easier/faster but there is no stupid usable maps gimmick. Who tought that was a good idea shoud get whipped, one hit for every additional click to buy a map by every player in the World ! Another plus for Original: the map itself is actually readable ! Who tought - again - that making brown walls on brown-ish floor as chosen map colors (in Gothic) is a good idea should be whipped too !
The game interface in general is a thing made for masochists by sadists, unreadable, slow, badly designed - and i mean even as a CONSOLE interface (i play it using a pad - i tried with keyboard but it feels wrong somehow) it is poorly done, as a computer one - it is just horribly bad in every way imaginable.

Otherwise i'm ok with Gothic :D. It is somehow more appealing than Original too - maybe exactly because it is harder ?

aweigh - whips in Elminage Original are as you wrote in your post about modding Gothic - stronger/more versatile but they are NO "sub" but "main" weapons (at least not the few type of whips i found early).

Edit: And thanks to everyone in this thread - possibly the most informative thread about Elminage: Gothic on the internet for people who don't speak Japanese. Seriously, there is very few things about strategy/party building and all game mechanics on the net in English outside the Wikia.
Of curse most thanks goes to aweigh...

 

[Gunnar]

You'll want to end up with at least 2 characters that can cast each of the spell schools.
Devilish race seems best for Brawler or Samurai. They get the most useful cursed items.
Innocent gear really doesn't matter.
I'm opening chests with no problems on lv20 of Ibags tower with my Ninja.
Ninja levels very slowly, I used the medal to switch my Hunter over to one in the post-game. It will take forever to level Innocent ninja.

 

[Serus]

I'm not sure about devilish Samurai/Brawler - dragons-things have so much better max STR (22 vs what - 19 ?) and probably more life too due to higher VIT/race that i think i like them more at these roles.
I plan to leave Valk innocent not because it is very valuable but because a Valkyrie is good enough on its own - for a physical damage dealer 1 school of magic is enough imho (not optimal but enough) unlike the casters/supporters who should have more. Same applies to the Samurai.
I plan to ditch a pure Thief for the Ninja anyway so yeah. In Wizardry 7 i would simply change-class the Thief to a Ninja after first few levels but in E:Gothic because of alignment restriction it is more complicated than that.
Then i should probably start the ninja as a caster class to give him some magic ability... but then he won't be devilish (no sense to class-change recruited adventures, right ?) so maybe you are right - a devilish samurai after all will be best...
Thanks for the input.

Party is level ~12 now, one more for the mage to teleport. I opened the Church dungeon but some guys there kick my collective ass - i'll go back to the Tree and do the sidequests there first.

 

[Haplo]

Does your Ninja really need magic though?

Is it better then what a monster adventurer would being too the table?

 

[Gunnar]

SO I'm wandering around on 20F, first one side and then the other side, slaying dragons. There's no switches or secret doors. Wander, wander, wander. Collecting loads of medicine, worthless rings and rocks. Nothing up here. I'm told I have to pass a test before I can go fight the last guy. What is the test? What am I supposed to do?

 

[Dorateen]

There are three gods you have to find on the previous levels: The God of Fate, Power, and Truth. I think you need to resolve those encounters to pass the test.

 

[Gunnar]

Huh. Thought I'd checked the previous floors pretty thoroughly, but I guess not. I'll go over them some more then. Thanks!

 

[aweigh]

Serus

The tradition of opting for a consumable "map item" was begun by Starfish Studios all the way back in 1999, when they developed and released their very first Wizardry game: "Wizardry Empire" for the GAME BOY COLOR.

All of the W: Empire games (2 of them on PC, of which 1 is in english) have since 1999 used that "mechanic" because, as Starfish posits and I agree with: it's the perfect answer to the question of whether or not to have a "modern auto-map" option/mechanic (i.e. DECLINE) or instead choose to keep it traditional and make Maps viewable only via Magery and spell-casting (like in Wizardry 1-6), or by hidden/bonus items (like Wiz 5's idol statue that grants unlimited castings of DUMAPIC).

instead of hemming over that whole thing, instead Starfish simply chose to include the modern day gamer's need/want for an AUTO MAP but instead of it being an option in the menu they decided to make the auto-map an item; thus in this manner the player has to manage resources, specifically in this context the maps themselves...

...just like having to manage the resource of DUMAPIC spell castings left to the party in Wiz 1-6

They dropped the MAgic Map thing when they "lost" the Wizardry license and then 1 year later made Elminage: Original; and they dropped specifically because they needed the game to sell and to sell well. Mechanics like the one we're discussing, (auto-maps in dungon crawler games), are HUGE FUCKING BIG DEAL to us horrible nerds, but to real normal folks? they would never fathom/understand why the game "restricts" their ability to know where they are.

think about that: the modern crawler gamer would wonder wh y the game makes it "hard" to know the party's location...

(isn't that such a horrible thought, having to know people think this way? but ti's not because they're bad/casuals, it's because the sbu-genre itself isn't mainstream enough for erybody and their mother to know how things have been always been done, etc, or that this game is bringing back a feature in order to hew closer to something else, etc).

(E: Gothic has magic maps, a callback/return from their W: Empire days, because they wanted a Wizardry-classic experience, and such an experience REQUIRES ABSOLUTE restriction of all resources available tot he party, of which probably the most important one is drawing the party's location: thus magic maps, and just to make my opnion on magic maps clear I do think it is truly the best possible "solution" tot he entire auto-map discussion.)

 

[Dorarnae]

Serus

The tradition of opting for a consumable "map item" was begun by Starfish Studios all the way back in 1999, when they developed and released their very first Wizardry game: "Wizardry Empire" for the GAME BOY COLOR.

All of the W: Empire games (2 of them on PC, of which 1 is in english) have since 1999 used that "mechanic" because, as Starfish posits and I agree with: it's the perfect answer to the question of whether or not to have a "modern auto-map" option/mechanic (i.e. DECLINE) or instead choose to keep it traditional and make Maps viewable only via Magery and spell-casting (like in Wizardry 1-6), or by hidden/bonus items (like Wiz 5's idol statue that grants unlimited castings of DUMAPIC).

instead of hemming over that whole thing, instead Starfish simply chose to include the modern day gamer's need/want for an AUTO MAP but instead of it being an option in the menu they decided to make the auto-map an item; thus in this manner the player has to manage resources, specifically in this context the maps themselves...

...just like having to manage the resource of DUMAPIC spell castings left to the party in Wiz 1-6

They dropped the MAgic Map thing when they "lost" the Wizardry license and then 1 year later made Elminage: Original; and they dropped specifically because they needed the game to sell and to sell well. Mechanics like the one we're discussing, (auto-maps in dungon crawler games), are HUGE FUCKING BIG DEAL to us horrible nerds, but to real normal folks? they would never fathom/understand why the game "restricts" their ability to know where they are.

think about that: the modern crawler gamer would wonder wh y the game makes it "hard" to know the party's location...

(isn't that such a horrible thought, having to know people think this way? but ti's not because they're bad/casuals, it's because the sbu-genre itself isn't mainstream enough for erybody and their mother to know how things have been always been done, etc, or that this game is bringing back a feature in order to hew closer to something else, etc).

(E: Gothic has magic maps, a callback/return from their W: Empire days, because they wanted a Wizardry-classic experience, and such an experience REQUIRES ABSOLUTE restriction of all resources available tot he party, of which probably the most important one is drawing the party's location: thus magic maps, and just to make my opnion on magic maps clear I do think it is truly the best possible "solution" tot he entire auto-map discussion.)

it's not too bad when you're used to it. like you said it's pretty much like the old wizardry where you have to manage your dumapic ect.
one thing that I find weird, is a lot of people like the ''drawing your own map'' with the etrian odyssey series and they could do that with other game...first time I played Wizardry prisoners of the battle, I drew all the maps, it helps a lot in saving those dumapic charge.

 

[Serus]

...

Before i start my rant i'll repeat: i enjoy the game a lot, has some great elements:
- Character/party building has a ton of options, most seem to be useful (or at the very least not completely useless)
- The wacky bestiary (I am fighting vegetables... with pubic hair !?! And now a Santa in green, flying on... wtf ?! And now... wait... I don't even know... WTF am i looking at... !? I love it :D). I played a few japanese games before (some JRPGs mostly) but this beats them all, and i know it is not even high on weirdness level when it comes to jap games.
- The challenge.
- The variety of items (Sad that they didn't implement images for items as in E: Original. They already had half of them ready to use - they are re-using other assets anyway so why not items ?) .
- Some really well designed dungeons (i barely even started the game !).
- The story doesn't get in the way which is a good thing in my book (but the game could use a little more narrative - not story per se - but some more world building, more descriptions of everything (especially items could really use short 1-2 phrases ones), in geneal more narration that isn't the main story... I understand that the minimalistic approach is probably in line with tradition but it wouldn't hurt anyone to put a little more life into the gameworld.
- And more...

A propos dungeon design. Why the devs decided to put the WORST dungeon (of the first six i played but i can't even start to imagine a worse one later) as the first thing new players will see ? They don't like money i assume, just like the (in)famous KotC developer, is that it ? They used to. The first level of starter dungeon in E: Original by the same devs is much more interesting.

At first i also tought you can't save inside dungeons (finished the tutorial dungeon this way). It looked as a great game feature. I was disappointed after discovering the truth but honestly the game is probably not balanced for no-save in dungeon gameplay in the long run (sad).


About usable maps (that are stupid in E: Gothic):
The problem is not the basic idea behind including limited auto-mapping in-game (see the end of my post, part about W7) but how it is implemented. What annoys me most is having to re-buy those maps every time i am in town (bad interface again) but that is a very minor issue relative to the elephant in the room that needs to be addressed:
Contrary to what you seem to believe, usable maps DON'T ADD ANYTHING MEANINGFUL GAMEPLAY-WISE in E: Gothic. Early you can take enough of the 1-use maps to never lack them unless you have a compulsive map use disorder (CMUD) but even then it isn't a problem. At worst you won't be able to take 1 or 2 items of probably useless loot with you on the way back. However on the way back your maps are already mostly used or can be discarded so not even this is an issue gameplay-wise at all. Money is not an issue, maps are (practically) free.
So maybe later in game there is something that makes the maps work... let'see:
Later maps as a resource stop being an issue AT ALL anyway... ?! Really !? Really !? Damn... Unless perhaps there is something even later in game, that takes away your abilities and forces you to be limited for real in map usage ? Am i missing something because i am still so early in game ? Even if so, they are still an useless and annoying gimmick for some parts of the game.
I would really like to be proven wrong about this one. So tell me where and when exactly are usable maps anything more than a minor annoyance. Something that works well as a gameplay mechanic in E:Gothic ? I'd really would love to learn that there is a point to them.
To be fair, there is one "point" to those maps existence that i can see: To scare a few potential customers :D Again Pierre Begue syndrome ?

Mind you - i am not against "map everything yourself" approach, i can see it working. I don't like it much myself but it certainly adds some meaningful element to the game (namely - player skill at mapping and orientation). I could see it done like this in E: Gothic (perhaps as a toggle in options: "Auto-map: on/off") and that would be a real early wizardries element. But not the maps in Gothic as they are. Sorry.

A propos - imho a good intermediate approach to maps and mapping (an auto-map not completely absent from the game but very limited by in-game mechanics) was implemented in Wizardry 7. Not only the auto-map was very small (only showed a little area so it wasn't a 100% substitute for a hand-drawn map) but also required you to invest precious skill points in mapping skill (points required for magic schools and kirujitsu IIRC) to be properly useful. Of curse if you switched professions a 1000 times it was less interesting but that was a major weakness of the profession/levelling system, not the map. That map was a good idea if i ever saw one.

TL;DR
Make your own maps - Yes, why not.
Auto-mapping in game limited by good in-game mechanics - YES, PLEASE.
Auto-mapping in game limited by meaningless mechanics (as in E: Gothic sadly) or gimmicks - NO.

 

[aweigh]

Uh

in the tree dungeon (3rd one...) u get a permanent magical map. it breaks once in a while but you repair it with an Alchemy spell....

and if that is too much, in the earth cave dunge much later u can do a quest and a never-breaking permanent magical map.

tbh i don't even use them anytmore cos i drew my mazes long ago, and IF NECESSARY, 9 castings of the map spell (Mages have it) is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more than enough times to look at a fucking map. You draw out your progress "roughly", then use the mage castings of DIOSEED (DUMAPIC equivlaent) to "logically" finish filling in the floor.

i mean how many times does people really need to check where they are lol