Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[turkishronin]

Well, that was perhaps an unfortunate expression. But the location layouts in Original resemble somewhat realistic landscape/architecture, that while unlikely, would be possible to build/arrange, while in Gothic those are purely abstract mazes, constructed only to confuse the explorer.

Ah I get it. It's really rare to see symmetric patterns in dungeons which makes it feel like randomly generated.
Like I don't remember seeing anything like this in Elminage series

 

[Max Damage]

Anybody know good interface and other mod(s)? The game is ok, but I definitely see why it ended up in "cheaper than dirt" price category last sale. It's more or less faithful to early Wizardry games, but there's no excuse for such shitty interface that requires 10 presses for what could be done in 1.

 

[Mangoose]

It's more or less faithful to early Wizardry games, but there's no excuse for such shitty interface that requires 10 presses for what could be done in 1.

Yeah it's too clumsy to masturbate to

 

[Biggus]

Anybody know good interface and other mod(s)? The game is ok, but I definitely see why it ended up in "cheaper than dirt" price category last sale. It's more or less faithful to early Wizardry games, but there's no excuse for such shitty interface that requires 10 presses for what could be done in 1.

I get your pain re the interface, and I won't try to defend it too much, but... once you get the hang of the keys, believe it or not, it works pretty well. The mouse isn't the best way to do much at all, it's all about the keyboard. The only thing that comes to mind as being a minor pain, is swapping stuff between party members, but even that is relatively fast once you get the 'rhythm' of the keypresses needed. The return key gets a workout, so too the cursor keys.

As for mods, there is a map mod (to make it easier to read) another map mod, that gives you unlimited map use (instead of 1 map = 1 use).
Much later in the game there is a sound file to replace a slightly corrupted one that will otherwise make your ears bleed. umm. That's all I can think of. The steam guide by The Weak that I linked before might have mention of these and others, I think. Never seen an interface mod though, don't really see how there could be? Anyway, use the keyboard for everything, and really, it isn't that bad. I HATED it to start, it almost made me quit, in fact I did quit several times because of it, but something kept calling me back.

Once I learned the keys though, honestly, it never worried me in the slightest. Climb 20 floors of ibags, and the keyboard will the the last thing on your mind.

Ask Aweigh for any info you need on this magic game. He knows virtually everything about it.

 

[Biggus]

Anybody know good interface and other mod(s)? The game is ok, but I definitely see why it ended up in "cheaper than dirt" price category last sale. It's more or less faithful to early Wizardry games, but there's no excuse for such shitty interface that requires 10 presses for what could be done in 1.

I tend to think that it is just too hard for most people and they refunded it or gave up. I have been playing these games since day 1 of the genre, and I have never played one that goes close to being as hard. Persevere, get past the (lack of) interface, and you will find this to be one of the most rewarding games you have ever played.

Know the feeling of how in most games, you become some uber death dealing machine where once you get past a certain point (usually mid way or maybe a bit after that) you are so powerful that nothing can even touch you?
Won't happen
Save, and save often.
Develop a high level alchemist as fast as you can, because he is the key to adding the buffs to the weapons and armour that will keep you alive, and the mobs dead.

 

[Haplo]

Well, it may happen late game/early post game.
But then you reach Ibag's Tower and....

If you've got the patience to catch some nasty monsters for your summoner, you can make do without the dedicated alchemist by using monsters turned adventurers. Some of them have like 90% resistances to most statuses, several status effect trigger chances, elemental immunities/boosts, regeneration...

I benched my alchemist in the tavern most of the game. Anyway alchemy plays a major role in the post game, before that the AP cost reductions aren't as major. You want to reach mastery on your alchemist ASAP though - to be able to swap ores on items.

 

[Biggus]

I never used a summoner. I know I know, I missed out on a lot of funky stuff, but by the time I decided I probably should have made one, it was too late.

With the guys I made, I think I would have struggled big time without the alchemist. This is one of the beauties of Gothic. It is just SO well designed. There are always decisions, always trade offs, very little is a 'given'. I have never played a game that has better mechanics. I rarely benched the alchemist, because I wanted to get as much out of the bonus AP as possible. I farmed a lot of ore to get the big numbers Regardless of anything though, like you said, you need mastery so you can break the items to suit the next situation.

 

[Eggs is eggs]

Get a controller. The interface was designed for it and even though it's still not great, it's better than using the mouse. It is pretty crazy that these Wiz clones are so faithful to the 80s Wizardry experience that they haven't even tried to update the interface.

 

[Max Damage]

I pretty much disregard mouse (not like ye olde Wizardries supported it, not much to get used to), but every time I return to town I want to quit the game because no "identify all" + have to buy every map/pot individually + crafting cancer, and that sound effect from millions of confirms is driving me crazy. I mean, fucking Dwarf Fortress is less frustrating to control, and that game doesn't even have interface, this one's is that bad.

 

[Haplo]

I believe there was an option to identify all the Bishop's carrying (or even all?) - in the tavern.

 

[Eggs is eggs]

And definitely get the infinite map mod as well. Having to buy multiple maps and have them take up precious inventory space is just silly.

 

[Max Damage]

Bishop has to identify each item just like in shop, and I only have default lvl 4 one. It's much faster to identify my load in shop than swap out somebody, swap in bishop, find out he can't identify because lvl too low, swap out bishop, swap in main member, go identify item in shop anyway.

 

[Biggus]

I pretty much disregard mouse (not like ye olde Wizardries supported it, not much to get used to), but every time I return to town I want to quit the game because no "identify all" + have to buy every map/pot individually + crafting cancer, and that sound effect from millions of confirms is driving me crazy. I mean, fucking Dwarf Fortress is less frustrating to control, and that game doesn't even have interface, this one's is that bad.

oh, I forgot to say, there is a replacement file (S03.bra) that turns off the repeating sound. Just overwrite the original with the modded one.

The ID all couldn't work because of the skill level needed to ID items. You need a high level Bishop to ID the high level items. ID in the shop will end up costing you a lot of money, that you may want to use for training instead.

 

[Haplo]

Bishop has to identify each item just like in shop, and I only have default lvl 4 one. It's much faster to identify my load in shop than swap out somebody, swap in bishop, find out he can't identify because lvl too low, swap out bishop, swap in main member, go identify item in shop anyway.

I'm pretty sure Bishop has a mass identify option in the tavern menu.
Sure, he'll often fail and get the curse. But you can rest at the inn to remove the curse and try again (a lot more clicks ). He should be able to ID most level-appropriate equipment... eventually. Identifying at the shop costs as much as the item sale value, so doing that is very wasteful.

 

[turkishronin]

I only identify the expensive items at the shop

 

[Max Damage]

I'll do the sound replacement, thanks. And as I said, it's low level bishop, not an option for me since I don't have dedicated bishop in my party. I may train one eventually, but right now I have neither time nor gold for that. No, there isn't identify all option, you are thinking of "Identify" in tavern, which is same as shop minus money plus bishop level requirement.

 

[Haplo]

Guess so. Anyway, it lets you to try to batch identify... provided that the Bish has inventory space.

Advice regarding Bishop: You may keep a starter one in Tavern for ID purposes, but if you want one for real, teach him all cleric and all mage spell levels first. That will still take only 1/2 or 1/4 the xp needed to learn those spells as a Bish... Preferably also teach him all Alchemy spells. Maybe 3 circles of summoning too (if you don't run a dedicated summoner)?

 

[turkishronin]

You may keep a starter one in Tavern for ID purposes, but if you want one for real, teach him all cleric and all mage spell levels first. That will still take only 1/2 or 1/4 the xp needed to learn those spells as a Bish... Preferably also teach him all Alchemy spells. Maybe 3 circles of summoning too

Is it done by class-changing from mage to cleric and then to bishop?

 

[Haplo]

Yes. Or the other way around. He will only have 3 slots per spell level from the 1st class initially - till his Bishop level catches up. He'll keep ALL spell slots from his mage/cleric class taken directly before multi-classing to Bishop.

 

[Seigneur Voland]

I played without Bishop and without problems honestly. It could have been very useful though in certain dungeons, to identify on the fly and get rid of the trash, because the Warehouse was sometimes quickly filled.

 

[Biggus]

I'll do the sound replacement, thanks. And as I said, it's low level bishop, not an option for me since I don't have dedicated bishop in my party. I may train one eventually, but right now I have neither time nor gold for that. No, there isn't identify all option, you are thinking of "Identify" in tavern, which is same as shop minus money plus bishop level requirement.

The other (much later) file, the one with some corruption is ...\Elminage Gothic\S03\EL3BGM_50.ogg

Yell if you can't find one, and I'll throw it up somewhere. 400K. From memory it is in the really cool dungeon with the...

Spoiler

wireframe

...graphics

This one is no big deal, you could turn the sound down, or replace the file with something else, so it is hardly earth shattering stuff One (maybe two or three, I forget?) floors of one dungeon.

 

[Latro]

aweigh

yo, i wanna run with a servant and shaman, any thoughts on these guys? what about bards?

current team:

pure fighter
pure cleric
?
pure alchemist
?
?

i'm kicking around idea of going brawler & summoner because playing pokemon in wizardry sounds fun

 

[aweigh]

servant is kind of... underwhelming. they're the only class in Gothic that i'd say weren't "BALANCED" enough. There's just no good reason to take one, nor is there servant-only equipment that kicks ass (that I remember).

Shamans can do fun things once they're fully kitted out with charms and shit. Fun to fuck around with, and their barrier can come in very handy throughout the entire game. There's some good shaman equipment/katanas in the end-game dungeons too.

Both of these classes were kind of unintentionally nerfed by the power curve increase in elminage gothic though; a lot of the rules governing AC, weapon range and equipment class restrictions implemented into elminage gothic, which were implemented for the express purpose of bringing it more in line with classic Wizardry rules, also had the unintended effect of slightly nerfing the "flavor" out of the flavor-classes, like the servant and the shaman.

TLDR Elminage gothic implemented "hard core rules" for classes, weapons, armors, etc, that make it play more like traditional Wizardry (and make the game harder overall) but somewhere along the way they forgot to buff the flavor classes to help them compete better with the core classes.

Like I said though, the shaman is still very useful in Gothic, it was really mostly the Servant who got left by the wayside. You should use Servant only if you're intentionally wanting to increase the game's challenge IMO. My very last playthrough of Gothic about a year ago I had a servant in the party specifically for the purpose going Non-Optimal.

***Keep in mind all this balance talk is coming from someone whose main enjoyment from these games comes from playing optimally and/or power-gaming, so it is quite possible that you could play through the entire game and never once think your servant or shaman are underpowered compared to the core classes.

EDIT 2: As for nurturing a summoner? sure, go for it. E: Gothic (and Original) both heavily reward players who invest time and dedication into capturing enemies, and in both games you can utterly break shit in mid-game and end-game by fusing together enemies for creating ridiculously broken monster adventurers.

Personally I don't like creating monster adventurers precisely because they have too-good potential (which is ironic since I just now said I like power-gaming, I know), and also taking along a summoner kind of necessitates taking a brawler unless you have infinite patience. You don't need a brawler unless you plan on capturing the extremely rare enemies though who have 95% resistance; all a brawler's combo does is reduce poke-resistance by 20% so you don't really need it, it just reduces the amount of time you'd spend spamming the capture command.

E: Gothic is the best balanced game I've ever played, the power curve and the itemization is really a thing of fucking beauty, it's the kind of "game balance" people like Sawyer DREAM about. God it is such a perfect experience I get chills just thinking of how well-balanced it is; even the one aspect that may appear unbalanced, which is making overpowered end-game Monster Adventurers from your summons, even that aspect is challenging enough that it doesn't make it an obvious route, plus it also necessitates two character slots in your team (having to take along a brawler) which is another consideration.

 

[Dorateen]

The beautiful thing about Elminage: Gothic is that you just don't build a party, but can assemble an entire roster of characters, who can then be run in alternate or concurrent teams. This allows room for experimentation with classes throughout the game. Even though I had a primary Alpha team that started and finished the game, over the course of playing, I also ran simultaneous parties through different dungeons, trying out various combinations. But mostly to find more powerful ore and level up an Alchemist who would otherwise be sitting at the castle and not growing stronger.

Prior to Elminage: Gothic, the most fun I had running multiple parties was in Demise: Ascension, and long before that, Might & Magic II. Probably the gold standard in roster creation, due to class specific quests and character restricted areas.

 

[Haplo]

You don't need a Brawler to create great monster adventurers. Some of the best candidates, Nue (morphs into samurai) and Don Mags (mage), both from the vulcanic zone, have like 80% summon resist, so can be captured without one. Most other cool candidates, like Tempest Brawlers or Firefly ninjas (with 30% charm proc), have far less. Actually setting summon attempts after brawler combo (needs all 4 hits to help in anything - and can't kill target) is incredibly annoying and huge busywork.

You only kinda need brawler combos when you go for post game insane mobs, generally to be used as summons and not monster adventurers (it's kinda late to start training new ones from level 1). But some of the best earlier floor bosses are a lot easier to capture and can be also very strong (like Gaia, who can almost carry you trough half of Ibags Tower with the buffs of a high level summoner).