Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[aweigh]

 

[aweigh]

no, cos i'm about half-way through. like i said, i'm clearing ice caves / wind cavern. EVENTUALLY i'll beat aaalll the asses added to the 20th floor.

Look at the stats of the new landlords:

- "Force" has 63 in all attributes (game maximum), -93 AC, and lord knows what else I didn't even finish investigating.
- Shippinusufen (whatever) is some sort of Humanoid-somewhat-looking divine warrior as he is packing the new Divine Sword, Divine Shield, Divine Orb, and Divine Fist. The stats on those items are just completely ridiculous, with the divine sword (which is main-hand) easily being TWICE as good as the 2-handed Holy Sabre you have to steal from the Apostate enemies inside the tower.
- the third part of this trio is something called "Stella", and i have no idea what she/it is but from her inventory she is probably another "divine type humanoid", except this time she is a spell caster and not a fighter: her items include Stella's Wand (just imagine the best wand ever, then triple it), Stella's Shoes, Stella's Clothing, and... you know, I assume one can STEAL all this divine shit from these two bozos but both of them are around Level 2500+, and they're literallly the last thing you're gonna fight in the game...

don't really see what's the point of even bothering to code those new items if there's no more game to use the items in (after beating them AND stealing them, heh).

Have no idea what "Force" is but most likely it is some type of straight-up God-being, not a humanoid, as he doesn't have anything in his inventory.

So there's those 3, plus Incarnation herself received stat boosts, though that won't make any difference. Now she's 5 percent susceptible to sleep instead of 15 percent! WOW! heh. something like that.

 

[aweigh]

hehe, i put the Training Hall Officer (the knight u fight for fun) to the left of the three bosses, just for fun. Also it makes it easier to quickly tell what is stuff, as you can compare his 10 AC to the -31 of Stella and immediately know what you're looking at.

the numbers correspond to the number the item is checked as by the game's SHOP. That "1" you see as the 1st item that our Officer has is a Longsword, as it is the very 1st item in the game's internal item list. The high numbers for the boss items, like 600+ and such, is because enemy-only items (but which can be stolen, though) start appearing in the game's item list after item entry number 453.

The 3ds item list is exactly 915 items long. The Pc version is 734 items. The VAST additions to the 3ds port were adding the old enemy-only "monster type weapons" that monsters use, such as claws, beaks, etc, like in elminage ORIGINAL. (gothic was the first of the elminage games to not include enemy-specific "monster weapons").

I actually posted pix of the divine sword, etc, those items' stats but showcased in the PC version when i modded the PC game's item list, it's a few pages back in this thread.

i think you've seen the pics.

 

[aweigh]

oh, right, "Skier". zero clue what or who that is. 53k hp, -93 ac, 63 in all stats, etc. YAWN

 

[Exbelion]

The 3DS port looks good, way better tha the PC Port, and also much easier

 

[aweigh]

eeeeeeeeeeh, i DEFINITELY would _not_ say it's better than the PC port. AT ALL.

original Gothic came out on PSP, jap lang. Around 1 year later or so it was ported to PC by Starfish themsevles (they always do everything, but wanted to mention it) and it is _obvious_ the amount of love they put into the super snazzy high-resolution sprites/graphics. They also changed the dungeon textures, well basically the entire game's textures / graphical fidelity CONSIDERABLY.

the PC user interface, with the golden trim and burgundy inlays, was exclusive to the PC. The decisions, btw, to completely remove:

- option to pay GP for experience points in town.
- option to pay GP to continually keeep changing your ex-skills as many times as you want.

believe it or not, (and THANKFULLY, imo), those two decisions were made intentionally by Starfish in order to make it truer to Wizardry. Those two things came back for the 3ds port due to "fan backlash", as you can imagine; i.e. people are fucking dumb.

(the e: gothic psp japanese game does not feature a very good looking UI, nowhere near as good as the PC version or the 3ds version's double-screen UI).

Anyway, what I'm saying is the PC version is the definitive version of elminage: gothic, and it is inarguably the single best accomplishment in Wiz-style turn-based dungeon crawler RPGs released in the least 15 years EASILY. it is a masterpiece and it is doubtful Starfish will ever top Gothic; and nor should they keep trying either.

The decision to make Magic Maps limited, was:

1) call-back to their wiz empire games where it was same shit. buy magic maps, cast dumapic, etc. yawn. drawn your own fucking maps!

2) decision to massively downgrade weapons effectivenesss and to increase enemy dangerousness... well, to sum it up:

- we ended up getting by far the single best balanced RPG in decades featuring a masterCLASS in game design and itemization. when you really take that all in, what Starfish achieved is nigh unheard of: almost 750 items in the PC version and the game is actually legitimately balanced, and _not_ in the Sawyer way!

That is almost miraculous in and of itself. OBVIOUSLY E: Gothic, goes without saying, features BY FAR the best itemization and enemy and wepaon balancing (and class/skill balancing too) of the 5 elminage games. It makes the previous games look like they're for casuals, and that's saying a lot (because thy're not).

...so, the 3ds port is fun in that: 6 new npc's u can recruit if you want, around 30-45 brand new items (weapons, armor mostly), and around 175-200~or so "new weapons" in the way of each single game Enemy having back their traditional (elmi original, 2 and 3) "monster-type weapons" like claws, bites, beaks, sprays, mucus, hoofs, etc, all of which can be stolen by the player.

Unlike the decisions to make magic maps limited and to remove gp for EXP; i actually have ZERO clue whether or not the decision to turn all the enemy weapons into "generic abilities" whihc couldn't be player-stolen was "intentional" or not. It definitely makes for an easier time for the devs when balancing the itemization/enemy encounters, etc. Obviously.

Way easier than having to balance 1 weapon pr 1 game enemy, of which there are in the Pc version of gothic: there are easily 350+ enemies. That is a ton of work just so the player can steal Dragon Claws and then not use them because they just 5 mins later got a drop of Blue Streak claw weapon so they don't need that dragon claw anymore, yay. Etc.

I'm guessing that decision was done out of time constraints, cutting corners, etc. Oh well.

Personally i 100% believe the pc version is the best version of the game: it is much more difficult in many different ways including but not limited to the limited magic maps, the much harder (overall) enemy encounters, hell even the traps have higher %'s of going off on your character; the "bonus races" like the ogre, the goblin and the magic doll were intentionally either REMOVED from the game due to being super over-powered (Ogre and goblin races, btw they've been around since E: Original; those 2 races are completely busted and make the game a total cake-walk)...

as for Devilish i like that they, for fucking first time!, decided to "balance" the Dev race (which is obscenely good due to bypassing item curses, AND also having the 3rd best "stat spread" of all races, second to Werebeasts only and the 1st place is a toss-up between Humans/Dwarves/Dragonewts, depending on the mood of the day).

in e: original and in elmi 2 and 3 just the fact u can start out creating Devilish chars is ridiculous. sure it's fun, but it immediately says to me: this won't be fun because this party will steamroll everything and *i* will have less fun because due to being using a party of OP races like devilish, ogre, goblin, et al, the game's challenges and even decisions of managing classes and materials for enchanting, are all down-graded and dumbed down due to devilish race's curse immunity.

i love that in e: gothic they make you wait until the mid-way point in the game, the mid-dungeon, and you find an out of the way black pool, no explenation, and if you drink from it then that char turns devilish. That is probably the single best possible way to do something like that. Bonus points for making the whole thing feel very "earned" and very much part of the game's world and progression.

It's a reward, you see; not a "Bribe".

also, you should play the 3ds version and experience for yourself the new, changed floor layouts for the first half of the game's dungeons. They took the floor layouts from the pc version's amazingly well done dungeons and just made everything square and t-shaped and everything connects to everywhere and the layouts are just so sad because they are so simple. THANKFULLY they only did that to the first dungeons, beginning with tsun kun cave and the last one they messed up layout-wise in 3ds port is the derzapolia tunnel. starting from ice cave and wind cavern so far all floor maps are identical, so that's good.

EDIT isc stuff like the fact that Starfish INTENTIONALLY raised the probability of resurrection spells not working for E: Gothic as well, just more detail like that that propels this version of the game as the best possible one. In the 3ds remix port... dude, i don't think i've yet to fail resurrection someone in heat of battle. there is absolutely zero tension. It's BORING. It also removes class strategy, and such things.

Blah blah, anyway, still recommend playing 3ds version for 1 single thing they did 100% right:

they added Accuracy Bonus Modifiers to certain armor pieces (such as hats, and of course most accessories), which means that the clerics/bishops/summoners/etc who would never hit SHIT now can equip an OBI accessory and enjoy an instant +2 bonus to their accuracy. Basically with that equipped, say on a Cleric, then he equips the 2-handed PICK which has -3 accuracy penalty, in reality now that PICK is swinging with -1 penalty!

Of course, modifying the pc version's items/gear to add the accuracy bonuses was the very first thing i did! it really was a stroke of genius on part of Starfish; it completely fixes the "problem" of caster-type classes not gaining attacks/swings/to-hit bonuses as frequently while leveling up as the martial classes do. I mean, fighters get +1 to-hit every 5 levels and get 1 extra attack-per-swing (the total of their extra atks-per-swing are, of course, added on top of their weapon's atks-per-swing amount seen on the item info) every 10 levels!

if i remember correctly clerics get like 1 to-hit bonus every 15 levels and god help them getting extra atks-per-swing! however by making majority of the game's accessories add accuracy bonuses to all classes who can equip them it "fixes" the discrepancy almost perfectly, as while a cleric still has way fewer atks per swing than a hunter, for example, with boosted accuracy that closes/eliminates the discrepancy in the martial classes overwhelming advantage in basic "to-hit bonus" amounts. Give that cleric a good hammer and slap some accuracy increasing gear on him/her and voila.

if you want, of course! that is the entire point. just more options. Anyway, aside from that, Which...

btw, that acc omdifer on armor pieces idea? yeah, starfish used to do that on wiz empire games 1, 2 and 3. Ask Courtier. empire 1 and 2, especially #2, are IMO masterpieces and a small part of why that is is because EVERY SINGLE ARMOR PIECE / ACCESSORY AFFECTS the CHAR's THACO (accuracy in wiz empire).

want to dress up with highest defense (i.e. armor with very negative numbers)? Then each piece you put on; each one, seperately, comes with a penalty to your THACO!

so then, how about dressing in medium-level leathers, or the like? those will give less defense and some of them even give BONUSES to the THACO. But of course they didn't keep it that black and white: they really, really lovingly balanced every single armor piece in terms of the AC they provide and in terms of how their THACO penalties (or bonus) would hash out with their weapons.

it made dressing up your chars FUN! completely different to simply going: ok time to equip all the armor pieces that give me the lowest possible AC aaaaaand i'm done !!

completely different from that, and the strategy/thinking it required was very fun, and it would make you look foward to mixing and matching pieces of different armor tiers/sets always hoping, always SEARCHING for that perfect outfit that gave awesome defense and good thaco.

 

[Haplo]

curiously enough, after hundreds of hours of elminage and elminage and elminage; and of course, ibag's tower as well... you know what the single handiest ex-skill / random "thing" i learned while going thru Ibag's?



the ex-skill "Chi Wave" is absolutely, inarguably the absolute best offensive pick for an ability. the damage it deals is calculated straight from the character's equipped weapons, which means: my level 200-ish Werebeast Cleric would deal 600-900 damage using chi wave inside ibag's tower-- but, my devilish lord was dealing sometimes almost close to 1700 points of damage, give or take.



the chi wave itself is L-ranged, which makes it fantastic for giving to back-row party members or to "casters" and such, and there are plenty of very high-statistic Staffs, Bows, Whips and other crap to equip these back-row "caster" types with (and of course shit like aura punch, or philosopher's stone), in order to make sure the chi wave deals hundreds of points of damage.



lastly, the kicker is that the chi wave is non-attributable damage AND it cannot be swallow returned by enemies! That means it's a much better pick than taking Swallow Killer (since that one is not L-ranged, and its damage comes from your char's standard melee attack, which can be great... or crap). The chi wave is guaranteed, solid damage that can't be resisted by spell resistance of special move resistances and it can't be swallow returned.



Since it's a special ability it bypasses armor class as well. Not sure if it bypasses enemy AC COMPLETELY, but i'll use this example:



versus Belial my dev lord's normal attacks were not great without using spells, right, HOWEVER one use of his Chi Wave was 300-450 damage, GUARANTEED, every time, without fail... against enemies like belial, and others, having that option/guarantee is amazing.



if anything i think chi wave is fucking overpowered. personally i would vote to nerf it, or perhaps not have it be L-ranged at least, because as it is now it is the #1 best offensive skill.



(the other #1 skill is of course, BRACE. that is simply on another level).



Other ex-skills I vote to be surprisingly very, very helpful, but simply not as good as going Brace/Chi-Wave are:



- Shout: i had this on my faiery bishop and that fucker was inflicting Fright on enemies by mid-game all the way to final floors of Ibag's tower. Frightened enemies will have a 50% chance to "not take an action" during their turn. This shit is quite handy!

(Note: i tried using "CURSE", which does same but versus 1 single enemy, and i found it has the same overall success rate as SHOUT, but since it is not group-affecting... it is immediately then relegated to useless).



- LEVEL DRAIN. seriously. drain an enemy of up to -3 levels and watch ALLLL THEIR STATS/ATTRIBUTES fall down the drain. also makes it super easy ot steal items from them as well. Don't know if it lowers the summon resistance but i doubt it (think summ resist is fixed on char-gen).



All shit that is tied to levels such as: special resistance UP, phys atk power UP and magical power UP, as well as AC decline, combative instict, ETC, ETC... all that gets lowered by 3 levels. Especially useful to lower the enemy's chance to behead you.



Those i think are the best, most useful ex-skills in Gothic. I would give an honorary shout-out to the one where you Absorb a Spell casted on you (and you then gain +1 rank 1 MP); however the +1 MP is WHATEVER the real important thing is:



it is a skill which has a random chance to activate whenever you are targeted with a spell by the enemy; i.e. this means you will always have, throughout the entire game, a dumb 50% chance to simply "absorb" an enemy spell which could be anything from an enterook mista to a petrification spell, etc. Or an instant death spell.



(BTW, i found that skill works best coupled w/ an Alchemist char, as they use their rank 1 Alchemist Spells, i.e. the breath spell Pomadoom, THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE GAME. This menas they will _always_ enjoy a "random" recharge of their rank 1 spells, leaving aside for the moment the fact that he/she now enjoys a "dumb" 50% enemy spell avoidance, heh).

Well, Brace is certainly awesome. But Chi Wave is maybe a little more situational. It's very good, no doubt. But it does not take into consideration the level damage bonuses your characters have accrued. Probably also not the number of attacks? Making it best suited for characters which don't get damage bonuses, like the Cleric. I'm sure it's great against Belial... but he is a bit of a special case. Maybe even a bug, considering his AC was nerfed to hell in the 3ds version. Most other high-ish enemies you can AC debuff with Robuti or such with relative ease. And then frankly 450 damage isn't that great at the tower. In my case most attacks are in the 600-900 range. Or 2 x 350-450 for the Samurai. Or 1100-1400 for the Valk + another weaker attack. L range is nice, but spears already have M and you can enchant weapons to have L as well (a bit tricky to get a good enough ore, but I do that on my Ninja). So yeah, it's pretty good, but I wouldn't say it's universally better then Swallow Killer.

Level Drain I haven't tried, but I'm surprised that it's so effective. 3 levels aren't that big of a % increase in the various "UP" skills. More like 1%? Or 1 AC decrease?

Maybe I should try Shout. Sounds pretty sweet.

 

[aweigh]

Definitely give Shout a try. I used to make my alchies/bishies "help out" using War Rite when not wanting to spend MP, but after discovering SHOUT there is simply no going back! IT's amazing the success rate on shout. I'm fairly sure it calculates some odd shit between the shout-er's char-level and the enemies, blah blah. All i know is it WORKS, and frightened enemies won't Act on their Turn. That is huuuge.

As for level drain see the thing is (not 100% sure, but faaarily certain!) that enemy "levels" don't "work out" the same way as player character levels do.

I mean, why would a level 300 party defeat a level 2600 (yes 2.6k) level post game boss, amiirite? a crude example, but an eeasy one to give, and it holds water.

all i can tell you is: after draining those mere "3 levels" from enemies my thief would instantly successfuly remove their gear, and steal their shit, no questions asked; also if the enemies were fighter-types, i.e. they have "---ability PWR UP" etc? those "3 levels" you drain make that shit go doooooooooooooooooown.

i actually experimented by levelling up elminage Original enemies in order to make the game harder, and to my surprise merely increasing 2-5 levels on an enemy would make stuff like their combative instinct or their chance to behead SKYROCKET... so it works backwards as well.

EDIT: btw, i've done extensive experimenting (re: fun) with the Avenge ex-skill, the one where if a party member dies then the char with Avenge can literally just PICK UP THEIR BODY AND THROW IT. heh.

here's how it works:

your companion dies (he can't have turned to ashes, but thankfully no enemy can "ash" your chars, that happens only on a failed resurrection attempt); so now the char with Avenge, previously it DID NOT SHOW UP in his skill menu but NOW suddenly you can spend 1 SP to "Avenge".

What happens then is that the Avenging character will hurl the dead body of his bro at your target (L-range, thankfully, lewl) and after many, many testings the damage done i simply can't figure out how it was derived. not from the Avenging char's weapons, and *maybe* it is partly from the DEAD char's gear... but honestly that sounds wrong. Not morally; it sounds like not a good idea for programming.

the damage is WILDLY variable. sometimes a body-throw would net my Lord 1000-2000 thousand damage on Skillving inisde the tower, and sometimes it would net half that!

basically it is a chi-wave analog attack skill that is restricted to waiting for a companion to die first and the damage u do with the avenging body hurl varies too much to recommend the skill, that said the top end of the dmg done EASILY double, if not triples a chi-wave DMG burst. Easy.

(thinking about this maybe the dmg uses the dead char's level + avenging char's level resolving versus the enemy's armor class obviously, EVERYTHING passes by AC in elminage/wizardry, and maybe part/some amount of the enemy's level as well? who knows)

(also, keep in mind something i didn't know for sure til recently: attacks from the front-row made by player chars to enemies in BACK ROWS... are done at LESS THAN 100% DAMAGE EFFECTIVENESS. I had suspected that but yes, it is true)

(also i haven't checked this out yet on the wiki but am very sure that a character's 2nd weapon attack while dual-wielding receives negative modifiers to the atks-per-swing (of that sub-weapon's attack) and probably also to the 2nd weapon's accuracy modifier...

...OR perhaps they simply throw in a simple, flat "correction" value instead of messing w/ weapon stats and just make 2nd weapon's attack have a corrective, negative value that varies depending on levels, weapons, etc.

EDIT: one thing i learned early on: STRENGTH determines the amount of bonus points added to the attacking char's "to-hit" when attacking... AND it also determines (via a convluted formula, though not nearly as convoluted as the resolution formula for INT/PIE and spell-casting)-- also determines the end DMG done by adding a correction value on top of the weapon's damage that is derived from the char's STR attribute mishmashed with player/enemy levels, whether the attack is made by front-row to enemy front-row, or whathaveyou.

The bonuses from str/int/pie/agi/vit to their respective shit is not linear; 17 INT affects the dmg done AND the probability of landing a status spell, sure, but 18 INT, only 1 point higher, affects both those things but not in increments, in sudden bursts that depending on spell can triple the attribute's effect on the spell by going up only 1 point.

same holds for strength and its effect on to-hit / dmg done, and vitality on its effect on probability of NOT turning to ashes, i.e. the char's innate VIT-derived % of reviving; also of course on HP, but whatever there.

agi is for turn order, and again, not linear. 1 single extra AGI point can mean the difference between always going first or never going first.

reason for this is because the attributes are capped at +10 added to each race's baseline attribute numbers. this means that in order to balance the races / make things fun, a race that has 1 extra point of STR should actually derive a tangible benefit from their 1 extra STR point.

wizardry did it same way, of course, but elminage has many more shit/variables to keep track of.

 

[Haplo]

Might explain why my summoned Gaia, who has 39 base Str, has that much easier time hitting high AC enemies then my regular party members. Of course he's boosted by Blood Oath too, but I'm not sure what Blood Oath exactly affects. Probably effective level and therefore HPs, ToHit and the various "UP" abilities, if the creature has them.

 

[aweigh]

yah, dude, the difference can be summed up like so:

level 150-ish dwarf lord, with his racial max of 22 str, will deal APPROXIMATELY (!!!) 20-35% whopping more "end total" DMG per standard attack than a human dwarf lord, also 150-ish level, using same gear; (human's racial STR max is 18).

so that's what...? like, 5%-7% per 1 STR point above 18? and while it's not craaaaazy exponential in its increases, it is not a linear incrementation. At all. And that's by design.

as for blood oath that's the Summoner's High Mastery ability i believe he learns it reaching level 26? or 28? i forget. it's somewhere around those levels.

basically it is as you guess, and i concur that the blood oath skill's calculations would probably derive from something static like the char's Level. And that's also probably why everyone who's run summoners in their teams agrees wholeheartedly that 'created' Monster Adventurers are beyond broken and are basically what you want to do after you've decied you want to make a party of (monster adventurer characters) that is simply going to flat-out steamroll everything in 1 round and have immunities/resistances to everything. basically.

the only thing that keeps that tactic legit is the insane hours/work needed to pokemon catch all the summons, and then turning them into monster adventurers, and then levelling them up. blech.

that said, if you ever felt like your party really really needs a brawler with built-in beheading special attack %.... then that's how you get one. Yeah... brawler group attacking while beheading. Welcome to elminage's summoners.

Dorarnae

i've heard some stuff, well rather i've read it, about how it is somehow possible to create monster adventurers out of your summons, right, and blah blah shit i didn't understand: boom, you can get/access the newly created monster adventurer's INVENTORY? aren't they born "naked"?

...or was it that you can INFLUENCE their birth so that they are generated WITH an item? i don't understand any of that. i've actually never bothered with monster adventurers. I find the tedium of playing pokemon with these enemies beyond worth doing.

 

[Haplo]

yah, dude, the difference can be summed up like so:

as for blood oath that's the Summoner's High Mastery ability i believe he learns it reaching level 26? or 28? i forget. it's somewhere around those levels.

basically it is as you guess, and i concur that the blood oath skill's calculations would probably derive from something static like the char's Level. And that's also probably why everyone who's run summoners in their teams agrees wholeheartedly that 'created' Monster Adventurers are beyond broken and are basically what you want to do after you've decied you want to make a party of (monster adventurer characters) that is simply going to flat-out steamroll everything in 1 round and have immunities/resistances to everything. basically.

the only thing that keeps that tactic legit is the insane hours/work needed to pokemon catch all the summons, and then turning them into monster adventurers, and then levelling them up. blech.

that said, if you ever felt like your party really really needs a brawler with built-in beheading special attack %.... then that's how you get one. Yeah... brawler group attacking while beheading. Welcome to elminage's summoners.

Dorarnae

i've heard some stuff, well rather i've read it, about how it is somehow possible to create monster adventurers out of your summons, right, and blah blah shit i didn't understand: boom, you can get/access the newly created monster adventurer's INVENTORY? aren't they born "naked"?

...or was it that you can INFLUENCE their birth so that they are generated WITH an item? i don't understand any of that. i've actually never bothered with monster adventurers. I find the tedium of playing pokemon with these enemies beyond worth doing.

Yes, Blood Oath is Summoner High Mastery skill. It modifies the level of the summoned monsters, probably with all that entails (HP, Attack, various "UP" abilities they have).

Then there's Spirit Pact, an Ex Skill exclusive to Summoners, which allows to change a Summoned monster into a level 1 Adventurer of a static class with the same status chances/resistances, elemental boosts/resistances, recovery % and HP recoveries that the monster used to have. You seem to have confused the two.
Btw. on PC at least Spirit Pact is a perfect choice for a support character parked in the tavern, as another summoner can transform the summon caught by your main Summoner and the level does not matter for the Spirit Pack (you do have to go out to a dungeon to activate the summon and you need SP for the Pact action).

 

[aweigh]

nah, i may have written a badly expressed post, but i assure you it's been way too many elminage game hours for me to not know the ex-skills. anyway, this isn't about arguing:

- you're 100% correct on what you've written. What I was asking Dorarnae about in an earlier post is that i've seen in the japanese wiki(s) talk of a tactic wherein players "breed" specific Monster Adventurers so they can marry them (you can do that in Elmi: Original for PSP, and in Elmi 2 and 3 for JAPANESE PSP; but... AFAIK (!), i repeat, AFAIK; in _any_ version of Elmi: Gothic apparently Starfish deliberately decided that was simply too over-powered and i have never found any trace of the Monster Adventurer (i.e. as you explained, captured summons which the summoner, using his special skill which is NOT blood oath, NOR IS IT the one which calls all the summons during a fight; it is the one which has the word PACT in it)--

--right, so players target specific enemies to poke-capture them, then they turn them into monster adventurers, and then (already knowing the marriage will work, as the summon captures were premeditated) they marry them (in elmi riginal this can be done by mid-game at earliest) and those two MA's disappear forever and voila, a brand new baby MA waits for the player in the Tavern and guess what?

oooof course that little bitch inherited (hopefully) the best "traits" of its parents. Thats why players plan it out methodically: there are many chances for ending up with a dud baby that didn't inherit what you wanted. (Say, for example, you wanted to get a baby MA who has ac decline and also tarot reading).

ANYWAY, i am 99% sure the MA marriage option was missing in action for the entry of Elmi: Gothic, and really... no big deal. it's a super over-powered option available only for the most autistic of players willing to tediously grind the routine of capturing summons, turning them to MA's, then (through whatever means there may be) seeing if their offspring will inheret something good, etc, etc. In the end you're better off just using that time to single-mindedly summon-capture and turn into an MA the specific high-level enemy you want and be done with it!

---

the thing i typed about them having an inventory (or not) is more stuff i read. I ask because i have never even once made an MA out of a summon, as the only summoning i've done was via the soul eater sword's SP invocation power found in ibag's tower which gifted my Lord with summoning spells.

pretty sure MA's are generated in the tavern "naked" in elminage: gothic, since i think the whole talk of doing X or doing Y or doing Z variables to make sure they spawn with some items or whatnot was about elmi: original, and not gothic. (or elmi 2 or elmi 3).

---------------

ENDING... ok, now, in Elmi: Gothic, in the monster game files (MONSTER1.csv, monster2.csv, monster3.csv) i found the column entry which specifies if an enemy (or npc whom you interact with, since for example e: gothic NPC's such as Training Hall Knight are in monster3.csv, along with a bunch of other peeps you meet in the game. I assume those are the Picture Book entries)...

so it says what race the enemy will turn into if forced to become an MA via the skill spirit pact, and for example the Demonic Valkyries (first found in underground church) not-surprisingly turn into Devilish race.

(See, the reason for that is because "monster" monsters, i.e. ENEMIES (plain and simple): their RACE is actually one of the ones listed in:

13 - CHIMERIC
14 - UNDEAD
15 - ELEMENTAL
16 - INSECT

etc, etc. That demonic valkyrie enemy's MONSTER RACE is "22", which is... FIGHTER! It's the "Fighter" which shows up in the context of "double damage", etc.Those are the monster races. Of course, you can and will fight tons of humans throughout the game and non-"monster" race enemies, but 90% of the enemies that you face are of a Race taken from that "list", and not the "normal list of player-available races".

Some details that changed concerning this specific thing is that in the Gothic PC Version starfish did not include for player use out-of-the-box the races Ogre and Goblin, even though they are there and are only a small tweak away from usability. Like i said previously: they did this because those races are simply too good, and they wanted E: Gothic to be "a real crawler".

(Just to drive it home: an Ogre race char on char-creation only needs 21 bonus points rolled to unlock Samurai class....

... seriously, that is insane. a Human race char in char-creation needs almost 30, if not outright 32 bonus points rolled to meet reqs for samurai. This means exactly what you think it means: ogre and goblin races are so "good" for the simple reason that their attribute spread is simply way bigger than all other races. Ogre in particular is like 11 fucking attribute points "over" the standard for the normal races.

devilish is not broken, tho, as their attribute spread is simply same as an Elf, but way better allocated. their ability to bypass cursed items makes them immediately gold-star invaluable, and i prefer the way Gothic did it where you have to wait until mid-game to unlock Devilish race and to boot it's completely off-the-side and optional and not a quest.

Anyway i got way off track. To finish: in pc version a GIANT race monster when turned into a MA he will spawn in tavern as human, but for the 3ds version starfish actually went the extra mile to make sure they come out as Ogre race. (in japanese the Ogre race is actually a simple Giant; it was a bad localization that happened with elminage: Original so some stuff got lost in translation. For us, now they're ogres, but in japanese, they are giant race. anyway...)

TBH i never saw the fun in making super OP monster adventurers with access to shit like 100 resistances and group attack combined with 55% stats recov. rate, or whatever. Just examples, but i mean what's the point?

EDIT x2: actually, honestly my real problem is simply how hard / how long it takes to contract good summons. It's a huge grind in Gothic. if it were faster i would 100% be in there creating MA's non-stop and making MA parties.

It also makes the Brawler put in an odd position. It means for shit like capturing Skillving, as an example, who has 95% summon resistance, you absolutely need a brawler in the party to deal a clean hit and lower it down by-20% (thus it will then be 75% resistance); and that means a miserable 25% chance, all the while dealing with that faggot, heh.

I've seen pics of some insanely OP monster adventurers on this thread and on this subforum tho and they are very nice.

 

[aweigh]

DOUBLE POST: btw, i forgot to mention i find that using NINJA's ex-skill "Replicate" and summoning a clone of your party's Ninja char is just as good as having a summon for backup, or at least close enough.

Unlike summons the ninja's clone (evne though it is CPU-controlled) will spawn with the exact inventory, spells, skills, etc as the host ninja character which means if you plan ahead and equip a good weapon or whatever you want to equip and, the ninja clone will be dealing out insane damage especially if you're rocking post-game ninja crap.

i found that the CPU would irritatingly make the ninja clone access spells and also make the clone go into HIDING when all you/I wanted was for the ninja clone to simply attack with his equipped ring/shuriken/etc and behead fools; but i found the solution...

...plan ahead and make this party's ninja, the "clone supplier", NOT learn anything you DO NOT WANT THE CLONE TO DO. simple, heh. the ninja clone can also be selected/used to disarm trapped chests, just like a summon, btw.

the ninja's "stats" are always exactly 75% of the stats of the ninja character host upon the moment he creates the clone. consumes all his SP.

There is also a bug in both pc AND 3ds versions (was never fixed!) where if you equip an item that can break in non-combat use such as the Pick, the Aura Punch (ibag's tower digging), etc, then CREATE THE CLONE so that it spawns with that equipped, and then you UNEQUIP your shit, but the clone can't do that so he/she is "stuck" with a pick/aura punch/whatever it was...

...and you run into a mining spot? well, don't worry, the ninja clone will use the item appropriately and it doesn't break! that menas in ibag's tower in the aura punch digging spot for +2 ores the player can have their ninja equip it, make clone, unequip it, then go to the spot and have the clone do the digging and their aura punch won't break.

also helpful in actual battles, but i think that applies with summons too: i.e. their inventory can't be broken.


-------------------

btw, in wizardry empire 1, 2 and 3 the way summoner class worked was:

each dungeon featured 1 (sometimes 2) super-secret bosses that you would optionally seek out and find and then fight (if you want to); if you win then any time there is a summoner in the party they will have access to summoning those beings.

i much prefer this way because there is no pokemon-aspect and because each dungeon progressively begins featuering better and better summons to fight/contract; and half-way through empire 2 they begin making the 2 or 3 summon-bosses in a given floor/dungeon mutually exclusive so that you can't have all in one go.

i think that was Starfish SD's by far BEST way of implementing summoner class / summoned monsters into trad. Wizardry blueprint.

(and of course, i mentioned it but it bears repeating: half the fun is/was finding their secret locations!)

 

[Exbelion]

Speaking of Level Drain, does Skillving use Level drain if he is summoned?

 

[Dorarnae]

ahh that's who I thought when you were talking about a devilish valk. I just never recruited her, didn't know how.

 

[Dorarnae]

evenuatlly you'll meet new monster too. in soldier giant god dungeon(or whatever what it is called) there's a nice new guy in there hehe.

 

[aweigh]

really Dorarnae? i thought i'd found all six (by looking through the monster game files).

from what i understand ALL npc's who get recorded into the picture book are taken straight from the 3 monster.csv files. Well, i'll look again... if he is a Bishop then that will solve my problems.

 

[aweigh]

Exbelion

in my PC version party i had a Skillving captured but i never saw him once use level drain. Could be something to do perhaps with summoned monsters and the availability/amount of their Skill Points? I saw him cast healing spells on my party regularly, and of course i also saw him doing Group Attack via his normal melee action (and then beheading enemies with the blows).

Oh! I think his level drain is a weapon enchantment! I guess it just never triggered while i used him as a summon, that's all. His other shit worked just fine, and so did his spells.

BTW, wanna know what the one and ONLY behavior routine the game uses for the doppelgangers? ...."0": "Choose randomly between any available option during that turn. If no targets available defend".

I _assume_ that, going from all of these routines, that enemies don't have an escape command.

 

[Exbelion]

Exbelion

in my PC version party i had a Skillving captured but i never saw him once use level drain. Could be something to do perhaps with summoned monsters and the availability/amount of their Skill Points? I saw him cast healing spells on my party regularly, and of course i also saw him doing Group Attack via his normal melee action (and then beheading enemies with the blows).

Oh! I think his level drain is a weapon enchantment! I guess it just never triggered while i used him as a summon, that's all. His other shit worked just fine, and so did his spells.

BTW, wanna know what the one and ONLY behavior routine the game uses for the doppelgangers? ...."0": "Choose randomly between any available option during that turn. If no targets available defend".

I _assume_ that, going from all of these routines, that enemies don't have an escape command.

And I thought Doppelganger's programming and AI was complex lol, you know, because of its ability to imitate the party and even summons.
And using sprites (?) from E. Original's classes was a nice touch

 

[Haplo]

nah, i may have written a badly expressed post, but i assure you it's been way too many elminage game hours for me to not know the ex-skills. anyway, this isn't about arguing:

- you're 100% correct on what you've written. What I was asking Dorarnae about in an earlier post is that i've seen in the japanese wiki(s) talk of a tactic wherein players "breed" specific Monster Adventurers so they can marry them (you can do that in Elmi: Original for PSP, and in Elmi 2 and 3 for JAPANESE PSP; but... AFAIK (!), i repeat, AFAIK; in _any_ version of Elmi: Gothic apparently Starfish deliberately decided that was simply too over-powered and i have never found any trace of the Monster Adventurer (i.e. as you explained, captured summons which the summoner, using his special skill which is NOT blood oath, NOR IS IT the one which calls all the summons during a fight; it is the one which has the word PACT in it)--

--right, so players target specific enemies to poke-capture them, then they turn them into monster adventurers, and then (already knowing the marriage will work, as the summon captures were premeditated) they marry them (in elmi riginal this can be done by mid-game at earliest) and those two MA's disappear forever and voila, a brand new baby MA waits for the player in the Tavern and guess what?

oooof course that little bitch inherited (hopefully) the best "traits" of its parents. Thats why players plan it out methodically: there are many chances for ending up with a dud baby that didn't inherit what you wanted. (Say, for example, you wanted to get a baby MA who has ac decline and also tarot reading).

ANYWAY, i am 99% sure the MA marriage option was missing in action for the entry of Elmi: Gothic, and really... no big deal. it's a super over-powered option available only for the most autistic of players willing to tediously grind the routine of capturing summons, turning them to MA's, then (through whatever means there may be) seeing if their offspring will inheret something good, etc, etc. In the end you're better off just using that time to single-mindedly summon-capture and turn into an MA the specific high-level enemy you want and be done with it!

Monster marriage? And monstrous offspring? Sounds.... kinda cool.... and weird. Actually, scratch that, simply very Japanese

EDIT x2: actually, honestly my real problem is simply how hard / how long it takes to contract good summons. It's a huge grind in Gothic. if it were faster i would 100% be in there creating MA's non-stop and making MA parties.

It also makes the Brawler put in an odd position. It means for shit like capturing Skillving, as an example, who has 95% summon resistance, you absolutely need a brawler in the party to deal a clean hit and lower it down by-20% (thus it will then be 75% resistance); and that means a miserable 25% chance, all the while dealing with that faggot, heh.

I've seen pics of some insanely OP monster adventurers on this thread and on this subforum tho and they are very nice.

Yes, it's a royal pain. Even worse if the enemies have Restore skill, because you can't reliably shut them down. The best ones from Nga-Nga Vulcano, like Nue and Don Mags do. Well, at least their Summon Resist is "only" 80%. And obviously 90% of the mobs in Ibag Tower have Restore as well, making capturing them with the 99% Summon Resist and extremly autistic venture. Almost all actually worth catching, except for, uh, Tomoku (who isn't that great, frankly far worse then Gaia, unless you really want Vigilance and a summon trap disarmer) and Stargazer (who is a murder machine, but you need level 170+ to have any hope.. so you're basically finishing the Tower bosses when you get a shot at her.. and by that time of course every second encounter has an enemy with Summon Judgement to simply off the Summon, no questions asked).

Btw. you've actually modded the game for Skillving and other Tower enemies to have a "meager" 95% Summon Resistance. Normally its 99%. And its a HUGE difference. with 95% you have far better chances to capture summons. 2 times 5% is 0,25% if your level is at least 10 levels above the target. With 99% it's 0,01%. The Brawler's chance to make a Clean Hit isn't great, btw., so it doesn't help as much as one might think. For a high-is level Brawler with Combat Instinct at 70%, the chance to get a Clean Hit is probably about 9%. And you still need to roll twice in the (lowered) range. Hm, so its essentially a 0,75% chance with a 70% CI Brawler vs standard 0,4% chance with a 70% CI Brawler. Hm, still pretty autistic.

And I guess the main challenge remains controlling the enemy. With Restore skill, it's too much trouble for me. Hat off to catching a Skillving.
Maybe I will eventually grind my way to catch a Stargazer (who doesn't have Restore nor very high resists).

As for the pics, they might have been mine

-------------------

btw, in wizardry empire 1, 2 and 3 the way summoner class worked was:

each dungeon featured 1 (sometimes 2) super-secret bosses that you would optionally seek out and find and then fight (if you want to); if you win then any time there is a summoner in the party they will have access to summoning those beings.

i much prefer this way because there is no pokemon-aspect and because each dungeon progressively begins featuering better and better summons to fight/contract; and half-way through empire 2 they begin making the 2 or 3 summon-bosses in a given floor/dungeon mutually exclusive so that you can't have all in one go.

i think that was Starfish SD's by far BEST way of implementing summoner class / summoned monsters into trad. Wizardry blueprint.

(and of course, i mentioned it but it bears repeating: half the fun is/was finding their secret locations!)

Without all the grind?! Sounds... too good to be true Yea, I guess this method is really superior.

 

[Dorarnae]

really Dorarnae? i thought i'd found all six (by looking through the monster game files).

from what i understand ALL npc's who get recorded into the picture book are taken straight from the 3 monster.csv files. Well, i'll look again... if he is a Bishop then that will solve my problems.

I meant a new monster, he's just annoying, doing miasma wave and you cannot heal when he's there and he can act like 3 times each turn.

 

[moraes]

How can I tell if the version of Original that I'm playing is the patched one? What are the differences between the translation pre and post-patch?

 

[aweigh]

yeah, once (while determined to clear the tower using the 2nd main playthrough party) i noticed skillving was impossibly dangerous, i went to the files and checked out his stats/etc; but that wasn't the good part, as that was when i 1st noticed he had 100 percent resistance to summon.

i couldn't believe it. how the fuck would someone catch him then? and i realized: ah, a rare thing has happened now... i have found a game design flaw made by Starfish SD.

and that is noteworthy my firend. i truly believe they are inarguably the currently-living, currently-working dev studio with the most wisdom and most expertise and most commitment to the traditional wizardry design blueprint. Not only do they "get it", but it's kind of impossible for Starfish to (when making one of their crawlers, i mean) "fuck the game up".

so, i realized one needs a brawler in party to clean hit. i searched high and low for other ways to lower enemy summ resist... but alas, no dice: starfish, in a rare moment, had decided for the player that a summoner in a party by requisite necessitated "wasting" 1 other slot with a brawler. (wasted, in case player doesn't want the brawler i mean).

it's like the Bishop/s identification thing... it was "fine" back in wiz scenarios 1-6, but back then there weren't even half the amount of char classes that there are in elminage; not to mention the additional "variables" each class brings when combined with the (even more than in Wiz) amount of races, etc.

having bishop be the only class able to identify is the 2nd other rare mistake by Starfish: it's time to make Identification of items a selectable skill on char-gen.

...or do what i do: i mod gothic (any version), well, i do this for ALL elminage games when playing: i give identification to

- give identifaction to Bard, because i believe that the Bard is lackluster and only brings Tarot to the table; powerful though tarot option is they are unreliable and thus he is eclipsed by all other thief-types.

giving the bard ability to identify, which can be rationalized by simply acknowledging a bard's traditional affinity for "Lore" and "forgotten bits of knowledge" and one can easily get on board with the idea.

- and/or i give it also to the Summoner. Unlike the bard i don't have a rationalization for in-game purposes: summoner is the single worst class in elminage games and they need something, ANYTHING.

right now, in my elminage 3 (PSP) playthrough, i finished translating everything finally... except-the-dialog-of-course, but i finally finished translating the quest log for elminage 3, so i began a new playthrough recently:

- gave Summoner access to Mage spells, BUT the learning rate is copy/pasted from the BISHOP's "table"... so he will be learning those mage spells reeeeeeeeeeel slow, cos i then cut THOSE calculations (the bishops ones) by 25%; that summoner will be casting DIOMANTE by the time i finish translating the game, which is, btw, never.

- gave summoner Identification, because man, i mean fuck what else is one gonna do?

also been thinking of doing away with the summoner as "caster-type" thing and turning him into a BEAST-TAMER archetype:

- give summoner ATK PWR UP tier 1 (same as servant, shamans, samurai, lords, thieves, valkyries, hunters, and ninja, oh and bards: although each class uses a multiplier with the skill so not everyone gets the same AMOUNT of phys atk power up, plus each class has their own personal capping on the % maximum number that it may increase).

- give Summoner dual-wielding. why? beause why not! explenation:

- summoner has pathetic access to good weapons, same as bishops, mages, alchemists. hell fucking alchies and mages have at least rare Books and amazing post-game / end-game Staffs and the like. Summoners are fucked, man.

give that fucker dual-wielding, give him phys atk pwr up tier 1, and watch your summoner rock out with dual fucking whips. it balances out because:

a) as like all the other non-martial-type classes.... summ's have an abysmal rate of picking of to-hit bonus points (something like 1 every 15 levels!), and they get an extra atk-per-swing (if i remember correctly) they get +1 of those every 20 fucking levels to boot.

trust me, with his shitty weapons, inability to take brute force trauma in front row due to low AC due to shit armor pieces accessible: that summoner will not be a warrior... BUT!

at least he will be in the back row, smiting fools with his dual-wielded whips (or whatever), each one enchanted with afflictions of course, and UNLIKE the other back-row peeps (the alchie, the mage, the bishop), he will actually be able to... LAND THE ACTUAL HITS. dmg will not be good, but now it is possible ot use that summoner as a back-row crowd-controller via his enchanted whips/weapons. at any rate, gives him something to do when not doing summon shit.


---------------

so, yeah... also, i like the approach they took in elmi 3 with dividing all of the ex skills according to class archetypes. right now, i edited my current 3ds playthrough like so:

about half of the ex-skills are now no longer selectable on char-gen instead they're handed out exclusively to classes like...

- fighter gets brace

- brawler gets CHI WAVE (and also drunken fist, because drunken master hellooo)

- bard gets identification

- alchie gets divination innately

- bishop gets spirit CONTRACT, identification, and fucking divination too.

- mages get magic essence

- thief gets mysterious bag (come on, that one was obvious)

- hunter gets dual wield (come on, d and d RANGERS man, they DUAL WIELD. it's classic ranger shit; and it's balanced because rangers, outside of bows, can't equip JACK SHIT)

- summoner gets identification too, plus phys atk power up, (but that one's just for me); and they get master therion, AAAND fucking spirit pact.

- lord gets a modified version of COURT SANCTUARY i did a while ago: i edited that skill so that it allows equipping in the sub-weapon slot a 2-handed weapon.

(this is the valkyrie's last mastery skill, btw, which is why they're so way OP for post-game by dual-wielding 2-handed spears, one each hand, each 1 of them dealing full-force 2-handed spear-type damage. it's completely ridiculous and i never, ever liked it)

instead of taking it away from the valks, instead i modified the skill and gave it to Lords and they, unlike the valks, on learning that can now equip 2 handed swords, 1 in each hand. (only 2h swords, not spears).

just like starfish's previous class, the BERSERKER, in wizardry empire games 1, 2 and 3 !! they could dual-wield 2-handed Axes, 1 in each hand! wee.

- valks get NOTHING. in fact, i REMOVED from them holy physical attack. dual wielding 2h spears is GODDAMN MORE THAN ENOUGH. jesus.

- samura get swallow killah, obviously, to accompany their normal swallow return. i mean, who else? it's perfect fit.

- ninja get the REPLICATE skill as high mastery. I REMOVED from them: a) ability to start round while hidden; b) ability to stop surprise enemy attacks...

...but i gave them access to imitate skill additionally too.. HEHE. (yes, ninjas are stupid OP. there is no need whatsoever to have a class that stops enemy ambushes or starts hidden and happens to be the only class who, while HIDDEN, has super-high behead rate. COME ON man, balance this shit! NO SUPER CLASSES!!!)

...bettter to have INTERESTING and LAYERED ones!

- oh, servant/herbalist i gave them access to the hunter's swift strike / lightning attack (different names depending on original or gothic). Obviously did not give them the pursuit sweep ability... i figure, meh, they're mediocre front-row chars, and while their herbal remedies are legit very good... they really need something to spice them up: ah, perfect, since they are always ready to quickly step in and give everyone perfectly prepared herbs and remedies in between rounds that means those fuckers are FAST ON THEIR FEET!

so they get swift strike, heh.

- shamans... that was a tough one. i removed barrier and made it generic (i.e. selectable by anyone on char-gen), and instead gave them access to GROUP ATTACK, buuuuuuuuuut removed their PHYS ATK POWER UP ability so they deal less damage. it balances out perfectly.

also gave them access to Cleric spells, but with the learning rate of bishops, and like earlier, further slowed down (the numbers) by 25%, so they'll learn those spells even later than late.

it's a weird mix: a shaman, a char who can use most katanas, i.e. good wepaon access, but TERRIBLE armor access which means is poor-to-dubious choice for front-row attacker; however gave him group attack WHICH DOESN'T WORK w/ CHARMS BTW, so that he can actually function as a glass cannon fighter in the front when using weapons...

... but when in backrow when using bows or Charms (repeat, group attack DOES NOT work with ranged weapons) he can also now cast cleric spells.

Oh, and gave shamans also hand of kindness. That means when they heal via item, their new spells, or when they heal by using an MUSICAL INSTRUMENT, they'll heal a lot more.

so all that means that those skills are part of those classes in my mod, and are not able to be used/selected, ever, by anyone else.

shit not mentioned was left as selectable skills on char-gen.

combined with my forced mission of finishing this 3ds playthrough of gothic using only the 6 recruits (means i'm stuck with them as they are better or worse), this has mde the playthrough sufficiently fresh/spicy enough to get me enjoying and interested in a 4th, full playthrough of this game. (the 1st play though i did not do the post game; 2nd play and 3rd play i did, with the 3rd playthrough the one where i beat incarnation in PC version).

this 4th playthrough on 3ds i had to mod the fuck out of everything cos man, otherwise i wouldn't be able to have fun playing it. obviously it's not like i am being forced to do this, heh, but i love elminage games and i like doing this 3ds modded playthough as "down time" while busy slowly, very slowly, translating elminage 2 and 3 (psp).

i find it very very hard to have "fun" playing through elmi 2 and 3 now because all i do with them is work, translate, edit, etc. i can't play them for 5 mins straight because i immediately see something i should go fix/translate, etc, and thus can't play them for now: hence this 3ds version playthrough.

btw, if you (or anyone) wants the 3ds rom i'm using (WITHOUT MY MODS), that has "everything-but-the-dialog" in english feel free to PM me and i'll upload the 3ds rom somewhere. It is 700 mb.

same with elmi 2 and 3, both are far along in english, with currently busy translating every quest journal entry into english + the accompanying HINTS bought with the solutions for the quests. all other "everything-but-dialog" is in english.

those ISO's are 500~ish MB and same, pm me and i'lll upload them.

once the quest entries and the hints are in english i think elmi 2 and 3 will be 100% finishable without any help at all. sure, the npc dialog will be in jap, but all you need is to read the quest entry, and then read the hint.

...these games are not exactly "difficult" in terms of figuring out what to do, after all.

 

[aweigh]

OH!

also, ALCHEMISTS SHOULD GET THEIR FORGING REMOVED.

THAT shit should always have been a menu option for the player available in Town. Period.

I hate a class which has something that is mandatory; it effectively diminishes the player's amount of fun because they need to always include a bishop/alchemist/etc or whatever in the party!

that is bad design, probably the only bad design i've EVER found in the elminage games.

tl;dr: identification should either be available to all OR spread around to a few other classes...

...and enchanting items should be a Town option: alchemists should be alchies, not the absolutely mandatory class you always, always have to include, BARF.

 

[Haplo]

yeah, once (while determined to clear the tower using the 2nd main playthrough party) i noticed skillving was impossibly dangerous, i went to the files and checked out his stats/etc; but that wasn't the good part, as that was when i 1st noticed he had 100 percent resistance to summon.

i couldn't believe it. how the fuck would someone catch him then? and i realized: ah, a rare thing has happened now... i have found a game design flaw made by Starfish SD.

I believe that's actually 99% Summon Resist on the Skillving. Still a next-to-impossible task, given he has Restore and 95% Status Recovery.

Brawler actually isn't necessary - doesn't even help much - for capturing enemies before Ibag's Tower and Floor Masters. So actually you don't need one if you don't plan to take him into the late post-game.
His contribution to capturing enemies with 80% Summon Resist is negligible - takes more time to set up then its worth.

You will probably want one to try to capture Gaia. But the difference between a low-level Brawler, nearly fresh from the tavern and a 50+ level Brawler that sticked with your party should be next to none.
Gaia doesn't have Restore, so once you Petrify him or something, character survivability doesn't matter.
Combat Instinct only modifies the chances on the final, 4th hit of the combo to be upgraded to a Clean Hit (base 50%.. maybe like 55-60% on a level 50 Brawler). You only have like 12,5% chance to reach that 4th hit anyway, regardless of level.
And after Gaia... I just don't see any attractive summon targets. Ibag's Tower enemies are all either:
1) Weaker
2) Have Restore and are deadly, making attempts to capture an extremly autistic and masochist experience
3) Have 100% resist and can't be captured

Well, Stargazer seems to be a notable exception.... but you need a level 170+ Summoner to have a shot at her. By which point you're ending the game with 1-2 last bosses left.
Still, no Restore means you could drag a freshman Brawler corpse from the tavern to the appropriate Floor and resurrect him once the Stargazer is petrified or something.
Same deal as Gaia, really. Clean Hit is level independent. Well except for Combat Instinct, but that's at best a change between 50% on 4th Hit and maybe 80-90%. Not insignificant, but not worth the bother for maybe 2 summons IMO - unless you wanted a Brawler in your party anyway.
Or you're autistic enough to capture other Ibag's Tower monsters despite the odds really stacked heavily against you.

it's like the Bishop/s identification thing... it was "fine" back in wiz scenarios 1-6, but back then there weren't even half the amount of char classes that there are in elminage; not to mention the additional "variables" each class brings when combined with the (even more than in Wiz) amount of races, etc.

having bishop be the only class able to identify is the 2nd other rare mistake by Starfish: it's time to make Identification of items a selectable skill on char-gen.

...or do what i do: i mod gothic (any version), well, i do this for ALL elminage games when playing: i give identification to

- give identifaction to Bard, because i believe that the Bard is lackluster and only brings Tarot to the table; powerful though tarot option is they are unreliable and thus he is eclipsed by all other thief-types.

giving the bard ability to identify, which can be rationalized by simply acknowledging a bard's traditional affinity for "Lore" and "forgotten bits of knowledge" and one can easily get on board with the idea.

- and/or i give it also to the Summoner. Unlike the bard i don't have a rationalization for in-game purposes: summoner is the single worst class in elminage games and they need something, ANYTHING.

right now, in my elminage 3 (PSP) playthrough, i finished translating everything finally... except-the-dialog-of-course, but i finally finished translating the quest log for elminage 3, so i began a new playthrough recently:

- gave Summoner access to Mage spells, BUT the learning rate is copy/pasted from the BISHOP's "table"... so he will be learning those mage spells reeeeeeeeeeel slow, cos i then cut THOSE calculations (the bishops ones) by 25%; that summoner will be casting DIOMANTE by the time i finish translating the game, which is, btw, never.

- gave summoner Identification, because man, i mean fuck what else is one gonna do?

also been thinking of doing away with the summoner as "caster-type" thing and turning him into a BEAST-TAMER archetype:

- give summoner ATK PWR UP tier 1 (same as servant, shamans, samurai, lords, thieves, valkyries, hunters, and ninja, oh and bards: although each class uses a multiplier with the skill so not everyone gets the same AMOUNT of phys atk power up, plus each class has their own personal capping on the % maximum number that it may increase).

- give Summoner dual-wielding. why? beause why not! explenation:

- summoner has pathetic access to good weapons, same as bishops, mages, alchemists. hell fucking alchies and mages have at least rare Books and amazing post-game / end-game Staffs and the like. Summoners are fucked, man.

give that fucker dual-wielding, give him phys atk pwr up tier 1, and watch your summoner rock out with dual fucking whips. it balances out because:

a) as like all the other non-martial-type classes.... summ's have an abysmal rate of picking of to-hit bonus points (something like 1 every 15 levels!), and they get an extra atk-per-swing (if i remember correctly) they get +1 of those every 20 fucking levels to boot.

trust me, with his shitty weapons, inability to take brute force trauma in front row due to low AC due to shit armor pieces accessible: that summoner will not be a warrior... BUT!

at least he will be in the back row, smiting fools with his dual-wielded whips (or whatever), each one enchanted with afflictions of course, and UNLIKE the other back-row peeps (the alchie, the mage, the bishop), he will actually be able to... LAND THE ACTUAL HITS. dmg will not be good, but now it is possible ot use that summoner as a back-row crowd-controller via his enchanted whips/weapons. at any rate, gives him something to do when not doing summon shit.

Makes sense. Not that a Summoner will suddenly be able to hit stuff only because he has dual-wielding. I mean maybe he will - early on. But the early whips tend to be "Sub" types anyway. Later the better ones tend to be "Main" hand.

so, yeah... also, i like the approach they took in elmi 3 with dividing all of the ex skills according to class archetypes. right now, i edited my current 3ds playthrough like so:

about half of the ex-skills are now no longer selectable on char-gen instead they're handed out exclusively to classes like...

- fighter gets brace

- brawler gets CHI WAVE (and also drunken fist, because drunken master hellooo)

- bard gets identification

- alchie gets divination innately

- bishop gets spirit CONTRACT, identification, and fucking divination too.

- mages get magic essence

- thief gets mysterious bag (come on, that one was obvious)

- hunter gets dual wield (come on, d and d RANGERS man, they DUAL WIELD. it's classic ranger shit; and it's balanced because rangers, outside of bows, can't equip JACK SHIT)

- summoner gets identification too, plus phys atk power up, (but that one's just for me); and they get master therion, AAAND fucking spirit pact.

- lord gets a modified version of COURT SANCTUARY i did a while ago: i edited that skill so that it allows equipping in the sub-weapon slot a 2-handed weapon.

(this is the valkyrie's last mastery skill, btw, which is why they're so way OP for post-game by dual-wielding 2-handed spears, one each hand, each 1 of them dealing full-force 2-handed spear-type damage. it's completely ridiculous and i never, ever liked it)

instead of taking it away from the valks, instead i modified the skill and gave it to Lords and they, unlike the valks, on learning that can now equip 2 handed swords, 1 in each hand. (only 2h swords, not spears).

just like starfish's previous class, the BERSERKER, in wizardry empire games 1, 2 and 3 !! they could dual-wield 2-handed Axes, 1 in each hand! wee.

- valks get NOTHING. in fact, i REMOVED from them holy physical attack. dual wielding 2h spears is GODDAMN MORE THAN ENOUGH. jesus.

- samura get swallow killah, obviously, to accompany their normal swallow return. i mean, who else? it's perfect fit.

- ninja get the REPLICATE skill as high mastery. I REMOVED from them: a) ability to start round while hidden; b) ability to stop surprise enemy attacks...

...but i gave them access to imitate skill additionally too.. HEHE. (yes, ninjas are stupid OP. there is no need whatsoever to have a class that stops enemy ambushes or starts hidden and happens to be the only class who, while HIDDEN, has super-high behead rate. COME ON man, balance this shit! NO SUPER CLASSES!!!)

...bettter to have INTERESTING and LAYERED ones!

- oh, servant/herbalist i gave them access to the hunter's swift strike / lightning attack (different names depending on original or gothic). Obviously did not give them the pursuit sweep ability... i figure, meh, they're mediocre front-row chars, and while their herbal remedies are legit very good... they really need something to spice them up: ah, perfect, since they are always ready to quickly step in and give everyone perfectly prepared herbs and remedies in between rounds that means those fuckers are FAST ON THEIR FEET!

so they get swift strike, heh.

- shamans... that was a tough one. i removed barrier and made it generic (i.e. selectable by anyone on char-gen), and instead gave them access to GROUP ATTACK, buuuuuuuuuut removed their PHYS ATK POWER UP ability so they deal less damage. it balances out perfectly.

also gave them access to Cleric spells, but with the learning rate of bishops, and like earlier, further slowed down (the numbers) by 25%, so they'll learn those spells even later than late.

it's a weird mix: a shaman, a char who can use most katanas, i.e. good wepaon access, but TERRIBLE armor access which means is poor-to-dubious choice for front-row attacker; however gave him group attack WHICH DOESN'T WORK w/ CHARMS BTW, so that he can actually function as a glass cannon fighter in the front when using weapons...

... but when in backrow when using bows or Charms (repeat, group attack DOES NOT work with ranged weapons) he can also now cast cleric spells.

Oh, and gave shamans also hand of kindness. That means when they heal via item, their new spells, or when they heal by using an MUSICAL INSTRUMENT, they'll heal a lot more.

so all that means that those skills are part of those classes in my mod, and are not able to be used/selected, ever, by anyone else.

I like most of those changes. Make a lot of sense thematically. Not sure I agree with removing Vigilance from Ninjas. Sure they are powerful, but that's kinda the point, they are a hard-to-reach class.
They have a lot of utility with trap disarming - and yes, ambush prevention. They also have very good AC in late post-game. But attack-wise, even with beheading, which is infinitely cool, they have nothing on the likes of Brawler, Valkyrie or Samurai. Fighter probably too, I don't have one in my party. They eliminate some threats very efficiently, but are not as effective vs. others.

Also I feel you give maybe a little bit too much credit to Valkyries. Sure, they are great. But being able to equip a "Sub" weapon/shield doesn't equate to equipping a second 2H weapon - or even another "Main" hand weapon, which is possible via dual wielding. Their offhand weapons typically do ~1/3 of the damage of their main weapons. Plus most of them before Ibag's are S range - which clashes with the M range of their spears. At Ibag's GodSlayer sure is nice, but the accuracy on that thing sucks, so it does 1/2 of the damage of Blue Gale AT BEST, given low enemy AC.