Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[e-mailio estevez]

...bump?

I've been long-overdue in playing this. I really liked Original on the PSP (although I didn't see it through to the end). I loved messing around with custom portraits and music tracks. I thought the NES Bard's Tale battle theme fit pretty well with the snappy combat

Been enjoying Gothic a lot. Only complaint so far is that the starting sections of some of these dungeons can be fairly boring- once you get deeper and the mobs start ramping up things get more interesting, but having to wade through the initial easy encounters and then back through them on the way out can be grating. Especially those packs of green-haired mobs in the starting section of the tree. Eagerly awaiting that warp spell.

My question is what a good tactic to deal with breath attacks, specifically POISON breath would be. Outside of the higher level spell that specifically defends against it, can you gear up to defend against this stuff? Groups of Poison Giants, or those wyvern creatures in Dezaporlia tunnels that can shit out poison breath are the only things that have cleaned my clock so far. Also need to protect against those super dangerous SKUNK GIRLS

I would think you could forge resistances, but the 'poison' resist I would assume is for the ailment. Is poison breath considered a 'dark' element?

 

[Reality]

I remember breath damage in this game being based on Current HP / 2 (both for you AND the enemies) - if they're on lower HP it does less damage - also I feel like Breath attack users in general are USUALLY weaker to the various instant deaths (priest/decap) than other enemies in the region throughout the game.

I know next to nothing about forging resistances because I'm usually forging sleep-on hit, etc for my physical atttacks.

 

[Matador]

...bump?

I've been long-overdue in playing this. I really liked Original on the PSP (although I didn't see it through to the end). I loved messing around with custom portraits and music tracks. I thought the NES Bard's Tale battle theme fit pretty well with the snappy combat

Been enjoying Gothic a lot. Only complaint so far is that the starting sections of some of these dungeons can be fairly boring- once you get deeper and the mobs start ramping up things get more interesting, but having to wade through the initial easy encounters and then back through them on the way out can be grating. Especially those packs of green-haired mobs in the starting section of the tree. Eagerly awaiting that warp spell.

Later dungeons are much better, also from the start. It's shame that they put bland dungeons at the start of the game.

But when you get pass early game be prepared to Incline.

 

[NoSoup4you]

Gonna make my first post here, since I just picked up the game on sale. Really, I only made the account because I wanted to reread the Stones of Arnhem thread and the bastards hid it.

I'm on the second dungeon, and my party is starting to lack some offensive oomph, so progress is slow. I didn't read the manual or any guides going in. I have some blobber experience - Wiz8, M&M6, a couple others - but not really the super archaic ones that this game is emulating, so some things are wtf. At times it feels like Tales of the Forsaken Land, only missing the production value and cool team dynamics. My one party wipe so far was the the first superboss, because I didn't know I wasn't the "target audience" for it. Had to go in with the prebuilt characters and rescue everyone tediously.

The party:

Halfling (Hotlet...?) Thief / Find Treasure
Dwarf Fighter / Cruelty
Dragonewt Brawler / Curse
Gnome Cleric / Hand of Kindness
Human Servant / Mysterious Bag
Fairie Mage / Spirit Contract

Right off the bat, the brawler was doing at least 5x more damage than everyone else, to the point that I considered just making three of him instead. The fighter was almost comparable once I got him a +2 acc spear so he could hit things. The early game miss rates are annoying as fuck. I rolled >15 bonus points on everyone and generally maxed strength and agility on melee classes, so I don't know what's going on there.

The thief is basically dead weight except for getting free money all the time, and now he's actually in danger of getting killed. His AC is 5 compared to 2 or 3 on the other front rows... Hiding usually fails... Not a great early game class it seems.

I got whips and bows for the back row to actually do something in non-important fights, but they always miss anyway. The servant really hasn't contributed anything, though I did just discover the medicine bag, and that's kind of neat.

My skill choices were pretty bad, now that I'm running into counterattacks and stuff. Curse especially feels like a waste when dragons already have a good built-in action to take.

If I really hit a wall and have to rework everything, should I make new characters or go multiclass? There was a guy early in the thread going on about how great the class system is here, but isn't it basically pointless in most cases? The couple of guys I would really want to change class, don't have any spells to retain from it.

Other thoughts: Alignment is all fucked up and meaningless... I started out neutral/evil and now they're all over the place from refusing like two friendly fights. It doesn't matter though, just a weird inconvenience in one or two edge cases that can be trivially circumvented... Why's it in there? Also, I'm kind of bummed reading about all the features left out of the PC port for some reason. Is it that big a deal?

 

[Haplo]

Rather then making new characters, I would consider getting a summoner, capturing some enemies and potentially making a blood pact or whats-it-called with them - basically turning them into adventurers with some monster features (like regeneration, access to some spells, various status resistances or even immunities, inherent behead chance, elemental boosts/resists - like up to +300% damage with chosen elements - or reflection of enemy elemental attacks). Some of them may be VERY potent. With the downsides being that their class is pre-determined (not a bad thing if you capture the right ones), Ex skill assigned randomly at creation and you cannot multiclass them or they'll loose these special features.

Also, the summon helps. For example can be an effective thief - while contributing to damage. And eventually you'll be able to poke-capture the likes of those floor master you've had to avoid... and the best floor master, boosted by summoner bonuses, even remains competitive in most of the post-game.

 

[NoSoup4you]

I accidentally gave my summoner the group summoning skill rather than the permanent summon skill. Oops. Rolled a great alchemist though, and figuring out what I can do with that. I thought I might need it to do the underwater part, which seems impossible without breathing or some sort of no-encounter skill, but at the moment I'm stuck.

 

[Haplo]

No problem, really.
The "pact" Ex Skill doesn't need to be used by your active summoner (in fact, a waste of an Ex Skill slot possibly). You just need the summon in your party and another character (level 1 skill mule works; summoner, I guess - not sure if necessary) to trigger the ability. Needs to be done in a dungeon AFAIR, but not an issue to enter one.

 

[NoSoup4you]

I opened the tunnel, but am trying to clear out the tree dungeon first. The beheadings are real man. I trained up a second dragonewt brawler, because the DPS and breath are too valuable, and I started putting the best ores I had towards HP regen on various equipment - preferably stuff I can pass around for free healing. My last run got cut short by a bunch of paralysis I couldn't get rid of, and my servant couldn't access the bag, so poison also became an instant killer. It's looking like I can't get much farther without cleric spells handy, and my good cleric is the one annoying holdout who's still evil. I could pull some trick to mash the parties together, but it feels like cheating. Alternately, I could try to change my fairie mage to bishop.

 

[Matador]

I opened the tunnel, but am trying to clear out the tree dungeon first. The beheadings are real man. I trained up a second dragonewt brawler, because the DPS and breath are too valuable, and I started putting the best ores I had towards HP regen on various equipment - preferably stuff I can pass around for free healing. My last run got cut short by a bunch of paralysis I couldn't get rid of, and my servant couldn't access the bag, so poison also became an instant killer. It's looking like I can't get much farther without cleric spells handy, and my good cleric is the one annoying holdout who's still evil. I could pull some trick to mash the parties together, but it feels like cheating. Alternately, I could try to change my fairie mage to bishop.

Just Change class your thief into a Ninja ASAP and start the beheading party. CLINC, CLINC, CLINC

 

[NoSoup4you]

If they can still open chests with 99% certainty along with actually doing something in combat, I'd be down for that... From what I hear, stealing is shit in this version of the game anyway. I don't even know when/how you get the skill.

Other random thoughts...

Why is that infinite healing spring there in the first dungeon? Negates part of the gameplay, is tedious as hell to use... It's like a joke punishment for cheapskate players. I can only assume that the inn fees cease to matter at some point.

I'm a little pissed at the wood quest, during which I had an orc axe and a hand axe on me, but no, apparently only a broadaxe will do the trick. No prompting, no nothing. It led me to believe there would be some sort of key item, and if not for seeing the answer on the internet, I never would have revisited this. I don't like cheating with guides etc, but this game seems to expect it and just throw more difficulty at you. I don't know how practical a blind playthrough is going to be.

Damn, that Ryu guy really likes this series.

The map designers are dicks. Is cheating with infinite maps an acceptable level of cheating, or fundamentally breaking the game? It's not all that fun to flip back and forth between the game and a screenshot when I'm trying to leave and it takes half an hour.

I'm gonna try building an alternate party and flip my old cleric to good, so I can get him in the real party without any exploits. It is tough to find room for everyone, though... Maybe the servant can go once I have a few HP regens stacked on everyone.

 

[Reality]

There is a re-usable map pretty soon (technically it breaks, but there is an alchemist spell for field repairing broken equipment mainly for later dungeons when normal enemies will weapon/armor break you)

I didn't really play this game blind, but I took a lot of Wizardry bias in and played straight and narrow so that kind of worked out for me.

 

[NoSoup4you]

I got through the water part of the grotto, but I'm out of maps and just running around before I use honey restorer (??) to leave. Found a doll, didn't find the lady's pearl. I discovered that floor masters can go through doors, and also that Akabey is vulnerable to instant death spells. I don't know if I'm missing out on steals/summons by killing a floor master at this point though, or if they respawn... It just said "you drove the monster off," after all.

That infinite map can't come soon enough, though I'll be bummed about having to bring in an alchemist fulltime. I haven't really touched the one I've been forging with, and didn't want to get into it for awhile.

 

[aweigh]

I got through the water part of the grotto, but I'm out of maps and just running around before I use honey restorer (??) to leave. Found a doll, didn't find the lady's pearl. I discovered that floor masters can go through doors, and also that Akabey is vulnerable to instant death spells. I don't know if I'm missing out on steals/summons by killing a floor master at this point though, or if they respawn... It just said "you drove the monster off," after all.

That infinite map can't come soon enough, though I'll be bummed about having to bring in an alchemist fulltime. I haven't really touched the one I've been forging with, and didn't want to get into it for awhile.

The re-usable/infinite map is found in a side-quest in your next dungeon, the 3rd dungeon the one where you're inside a giant tree. As for Floor Masters you're not really supposed to try killing them for now, they're meant for you to come back later and take them on if you want. It's completely optional and they don't give good rewards; the only way to get good stuff out of them is to Steal their equipment using your Thief who won't learn how to steal enemy equipment until around level 23 or so if I remember right.

hough I'll be bummed about having to bring in an alchemist fulltime

IMO an Alchemist is literally the only class that's basically mandatory in Elminage: Gothic. This could have been "fixed" by having the Weapon Shop provide a generic alchemy and crafting service of some sort but as it is I consider Alchemist essentially mandatory for any group. You will need the upgraded Alchemist's abilities to further enchant and customize your weapons and armor (as they go up in level they can use Ores better and achieve results impossible for under-leveled Alchemists).

I can't even imagine tackling the later dungeons without a party Alchemist upgrading all my shit. Luckily the class itself is also pretty good, and in the end-game you can buy them a neat weapon called the Aura Punch for 1 million gold too, fun little fixed-damaged L-range wepaon.

 

[aweigh]

is cheating with infinite maps an acceptable level of cheating

This is 100% fine. They made maps infinite-use in the port of the game they did for 3DS. No shame in it. You get inifnite-use map items anyway in the 3rd dungeon and in the 8th dungeons. The one from 8th dungeon never breaks while the one from the 3rd dungeon breaks once in a while and you need the Alchemist to repair it when it does.

Games are for having fun anyway, giving yourself an inifinite use Magic Map via mod is fine in my opinion. Devs themselves did it anyway in the later port of the game.

 

[lentils_and_rice]

So, I just started this game after hearing a lot of good things about it and buying it on sale, and I've just completed the first dungeon. The game seems pretty difficult, and I have no real idea of if I've built an okay party. In my opinion, the first dungeon does not give a strong first impression, it was not very interesting, nothing of note, just doors leading to empty rooms or more doors, seemingly in order to confuse you. Do the dungeons get more interesting as the game goes on? The inventory limit was also pretty frustrating.

I've never played any games like this one, but I have an interest. I also bought Elminage Original, Strangers of Sword City, and Operation Abyss at the same time (they were all pretty cheap), I'm wondering if it would be better to start with one of those, if anyone has played all of them? I feel like I maybe jumped in the deep end with this one without learning how to swim.

 

[NoSoup4you]

It definitely starts to ramp up considerably in wackiness and difficulty around the third dungeon. Looks like a minmaxer's dream. Elminage basically reminds me of a more complicated Wizardry: Tales of the Forsaken Land, or even Arcana on the SNES. It's probably not the greatest introduction to blobbers, but you can probably grasp it after a few hours.

 

[aweigh]

So, I just started this game after hearing a lot of good things about it and buying it on sale, and I've just completed the first dungeon. The game seems pretty difficult, and I have no real idea of if I've built an okay party. In my opinion, the first dungeon does not give a strong first impression, it was not very interesting, nothing of note, just doors leading to empty rooms or more doors, seemingly in order to confuse you. Do the dungeons get more interesting as the game goes on? The inventory limit was also pretty frustrating.

I've never played any games like this one, but I have an interest. I also bought Elminage Original, Strangers of Sword City, and Operation Abyss at the same time (they were all pretty cheap), I'm wondering if it would be better to start with one of those, if anyone has played all of them? I feel like I maybe jumped in the deep end with this one without learning how to swim.

Make yourself a fairly standard party when you're starting out:

- Lord, any race. Probably Dwarven is best because they have the highest Strength capacity. In end game 1 more point of Strength can average out to an extra 10-15% damage dealt per swing.
- Elven or Human Samurai, or a female Valkyrie.
- Elven Mage with the skill that boosts their spell power
- (this one is my opinion) Hotlet Cleric for healing and resurrection, normally Hotlet is a bad race for casters but the point of this one is to use their amazing Agility/Speed; getting the Healing to fire off BEFORE the enemy turn is very important.
- Then round out the remaining 2 slots with an Alchemist (race doesn't really matter much), Bishop (for simple convenience, probably Elven or Werebeast).

Then here is what I would do in terms of class changing to this party:

- Turn the Hotlet Cleric (when they learn all of their Cleric spells) into a Thief or a Bard; trapped chests become important factors to deal with and while in the early dungeons you can get by without one it becomes very useful to have one of these guys with you. The benefit here is that you'll have a Thief who can also cast healing spells, and if you go the Bard route then they'll have Mage spells as well. Very useful and multi-talented character, and the Hotlet race will benefit them.

- Turn your Mage into your new Cleric (once he's learned all of his Mage spells). Now your new primary healer will also have a full school of Mage spells. Incredibly useful. Having two characters with access to healing spells is very, very useful. If you went with a Lord earlier you'll even have three, though of course the Lord's cleric spell progression is very slow and he casts with less aptitude.

You'll still have access to Mage spells from your Bishop, and if you went with a Samurai earlier they'll get those too though at a slower pace.

There's lots more class-changing tricks you could make and this isn't even "optimal" really it's just a basic party that covers most needs with some simple class-change swaps that don't require much effort. If I were really power-gaming I'd work towards making all of my casters have all 3 spell schools, for example, and I'd have a Ninja instead of a Thief/Bard.

Random tip concerning weapons: it'll take a while but you generally want weapons that have more hits-per-swing than the previous stuff you were using. Example, if you are using a sword that does 1d8 damage, but you find a different sword that does 1d5 or 1d6 but has 2-swings then use this one instead.

 

[Fluent]

sheesh, now i want to play again. :D Such a great game. I had a Frost Giant summoned as an extra party member in my previous run. Was a lot of fun and he was deadly. Ah well, I think Grimoire is my next blobber but this is a contender too. good stuff guys!

 

[aweigh]

sheesh, now i want to play again. :D Such a great game. I had a Frost Giant summoned as an extra party member in my previous run. Was a lot of fun and he was deadly. Ah well, I think Grimoire is my next blobber but this is a contender too. good stuff guys!

Yeah what Fluent mentions can also be very useful: Summoning.

I didn't even mention anything about Summoning but you can form EXTREMELY powerful parties composed of Summoned Monster-Adventurers.

 

[Fluent]

hey aweigh . Should i play Elminage 1/4 on PSP next time, to get all of the features that the PC port didn't have? Just curious. I might run thru Original sometime and am wondering which version I should play.

 

[aweigh]

hey aweigh . Should i play Elminage 1/4 on PSP next time, to get all of the features that the PC port didn't have? Just curious. I might run thru Original sometime and am wondering which version I should play.

I think you mean on 3ds, because the PSP versions of Original and Gothic are actually inferior to the PC/Steam releases.

And as for the 3ds versions... well E: Original is basically identical there to the PC version, AFAIK I don't think anything at all was added or changed beyond, and the Elminage: Gothic 3ds version is only available in Japanese language, but even beyond that I'm not a big fan of the changes they made to it; they made the game easier overall and messed with enemy stats and kind of broke the early game itemization by throwing in a few too many powerful weapons that are a bit too easy to get, like the Leaf Sword in the 3rd dungeon. They did make some good changes to existing weapons like changing a few Ranges, though.

Anyway point is moot as that 3ds version is only in Japanese.

 

[Fluent]

sounds good aweigh , thanks!

 

[lentils_and_rice]

So the consensus is to just keep on with Gothic, then, rather than the other games?

Make yourself a fairly standard party when you're starting out:

Hmm, I seemed to have missed the mark if that is 'standard' haha.

My current party is:
Dragonewt Fighter
Werebeast Brawler
Dwarf Priest
Hotlet Thief
Elf Mage
Elf Alchemist

Would it be worth re-rolling?

Also, I ended up finding the infinite map mod talked about in the previous post, and it seems like there's an exp mod as well? Are those two things considered standard to play the game?

 

[newtmonkey]

lentils_and_rice

I would suggest reading up on Wizardry 1-5 mechanics a bit, just because the Elminage games sort of expect you are going into them as a Wizardry fan and therefore understand how those games played.

Gothic is a great game, but both Original and Gothic are worth playing imo, and I'd suggest playing Original first. It will be easier to get into especially if you have no experience with Wizardry games (and no doubt about it, Elminage is 100% a Wizardry game). It has a less linear structure than Gothic (you have several dungeons you can access at any time) and is generally easier. You will hardly ever get stuck in the game as you can always just explore another dungeon if you hit a difficulty wall. It will also give you good foundational knowledge of Elminage mechanics if you want to tackle Gothic later.

I think your current party is fine, actually. It's one of the classic Wizardy parties (two fighters and a priest in front, thief and two mages in back). I wouldn't change it.

I dunno what the exp mod is but it sounds bad. I would be suspicious of any mods that screw with the balance. Much of the fun of these kinds of games is developing your party and coming up with tactics to get through difficult areas, and inflated EXP awards will take that away from you. If you don't care for the challenge of mapping manually, the infinite map mod is not a deal breaker I think. Some people enjoy the challenge of mapping by hand (or dealing with limited map items/spells), other don't. I think the Elminage games (and also Wizardry) are entertaining enough in terms of combat, exploration, and party development that free automaps don't ruin the experience.

 

[d1r]

So, I just started this game after hearing a lot of good things about it and buying it on sale, and I've just completed the first dungeon. The game seems pretty difficult, and I have no real idea of if I've built an okay party. In my opinion, the first dungeon does not give a strong first impression, it was not very interesting, nothing of note, just doors leading to empty rooms or more doors, seemingly in order to confuse you. Do the dungeons get more interesting as the game goes on? The inventory limit was also pretty frustrating.

I've never played any games like this one, but I have an interest. I also bought Elminage Original, Strangers of Sword City, and Operation Abyss at the same time (they were all pretty cheap), I'm wondering if it would be better to start with one of those, if anyone has played all of them? I feel like I maybe jumped in the deep end with this one without learning how to swim.

It's a very tough entry into the genre, tbh. I'd rather suggest you to start playing easier, and less complex games like Wizardry Forsaken Lands or Stranger of Sword City to get into the mindset. Of course, there are also other DRPG's like Etrian Odyssey or Shin Megami Tensei I, II, Strange Journey Redux (best Japanese Dungeon Crawler of all time) which you can easily emulate.