Incline Elminage Gothic (former Japan only dungeon crawler)

[NoSoup4you]

Update: The tree dungeon is done, though I missed the missing kids quest. Gonna come back once I can teleport, because I hate navigating that place. It takes forever. Tunnels I think are 100% done, except I'm waiting to steal from floor masters.

Three new dungeons are open, and I've done a bit of each. Got the Stampy Stamp, tried it out on my thief, still not worth having him in front. I thought "attack frequency" would give combos like the brawlers, aka still the best class so far, but I guess it's just a multiplier. I went back to using 2x Power Sling for some minor combat support, and I stripped the crappy 0 or 1 AC armor off my back row casters just so I could carry more stuff. All the unidentified trash really adds up.

The church is truly awful with its teleporters. I didn't know they wouldn't even have a visual effect. 1F is mostly done, I broke an altar and hit a switch, and don't know yet what they did. Basements are varying levels of done. I haven't been entirely meticulous, mostly rushing for XP off of the undead valkyries. Main party (fig/bra/bra/thi/cle/mag) is level 12, also quickly powerleveling a samurai and an alchemist who jumped up to 10 in short order.

I haven't noticed any changes in forging from leveling up, but I went ahead and blew my lower ores just getting every character some HP regen. My best ore is 20, but I don't have anything really noteworthy to use it on at the moment.

It's approaching time to multiclass the casters, but is there any reason to multiclass anyone else?

What the hell is Tiger Loincloth for?

 

[Haplo]

Church has some nice monsters to capture and make into party members AFAIR: Dragonfly is one of the best ninjas (and only one that's easy to catch early).
There's also the one-eyed giant that makes a solid brawler with access to some alchemy spells.
He's eventually outclassed by the Tempest Efreet from Hastrana caves, but catching him becomes realistic a lot later.

You're still at a level where it's easy to catch up with the rest of the party.

 

[Matador]

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.

Totally OK in this game IMO.

The Chuch is the first outstanding dungeon of the game. Or it was the ice caves?

From now on expect very high quality dungeons.

 

[NoSoup4you]

Well, it's definitely pants-shitting when you're sneak attacked by enemies with whole-party instant death spells.

I've popped my barely-used summoner in there for a few levels. Obviously, she's failed at getting any contracts, though I don't know what governs it, and my dice carrying guy is at the tavern. I don't even want to learn the summoning system right now, but there's a couple enemies in the church that give ridiculous exp for no extra effort.

I've read about HP averaging out over enough level-ups, but what about other stats? I just had a level-up where I only lost stats, and gained nothing lol. Can't be too scummy to reload that one.

Speaking of scum... Given my current situation where I'm propping up a fragile character who shouldn't be here, what're your thoughts on constant saving and reloading in the dungeon? Mandatory at higher levels? I gravitated towards roguelikes as an adult because I prefer there to be consequences for failure, and these gamey exploits can eventually make me feel like everything's pointless. I'm considering only saving in town... The game feels like it's built for it in the first place, with its dead party retrieval thing. But maybe the difficulty curve will bring back those simpler times when only beating the game mattered.

...Urgh.

 

[Haplo]

What governs your chance to capture an enemy is the enemy summon resistance (need to beat it with a d100 roll - or rather beat it twice-four times) and delta between summoner level and enemy level (decides how many times you need to beat the enemy resistance. I THINK it was twice if summoner level > enemy level +10, thrice if enemy level +10 > summoner level > enemy level -10 and four times if enemy level > summoner level + 10.

Also you can THEORETICALLY improve your odds with a brawler. When he does his full 4-hit combo, it lowers all enemy resistances by 20. However for the next attack only. So it's very cumbersome to use in practice and I preferred to simply spam the capture ability more on normal enemies (mainly aim for enemies with max 80 summon resistance). Floor Masters have 95 though... (and devils + post game enemies 99 AFAIR).
A brawler combo might be nearly necessary for post game enemies with very high summon resistance and levels.

 

[aweigh]

Are those two things considered standard to play the game?

The EXP mod would completely break the game.

 

[Reality]

I think going Entry point by Entry point

Wiz 1 - have to remember to equip newly made charathers, trap lethality is higher than in later games in series/elminages , decapitation/breath attack madness beings floor3
Etrian Odyssey - fun but job mixing and skill optimization is far more encouraged than "stripped down" games in the Wiz1-5/Elminage tradition.
Strange Journey Redux - very good but no fast attack animation or Text delay 0 option... I would only play it on emulator to add this by by going between the 5x speed and normal speed toggles.

Blobbers that avoid the Wizardry tradition (Might and Magic, Eye of Beholder) are their sub-genre within sub-genre status doesn't make playing them really lead to playing classic blobbers afterward (especially difficulty wise)

 

[NoSoup4you]

The bottom of Hastrana is so much harder than the top, jesus christ. I went from treating it as a joke dungeon, because hey, I was already plowing through things in the church, and that's a three skull rating... to having to reload after like 75% of fights. It feels too cheesy to do so at this point and I'm gonna have to pack it up and go elsewhere for awhile. I am getting surprise attacked a ton now for some reason, and enemies suddenly have three digit sweeper attacks, mass petrification, etc. It instantly became a whole different dungeon.

My cleric hit 13 and I changed him to an alchemist. The escape spells should come in handy. Teleport mage soon I hope. That's gonna feel as god tier as finally getting flight in M&M6. Don't know who else to switch classes... Maybe this will just be the insurance party in case innocent equipment ends up mattering.

The star rod seems really badass. 4-22 damage staff, -1 ACC, fairies only. If I get a 30AP ore for infinite range, will this actually land hits on things? Or is my fairy mage just going to miss constantly? Seems like it could make for a good brawler, except I don't know how much strength they can muster.

Incidentally, that fairy is like 26 years old and I'm hoping some de-aging traps start showing up.

 

[Haplo]

Ninja's ability to neutralize 50% of enemy ambushes comes really handy...

And no, I don't think your fairy mage will ever rock with a weapon. AFAIR classes such as mages get few (if any?) extra attacks from high BAB, so when your warriors will do weapon damage x10, a mage will still suck it at x1 (might be mistaken, but it was something like that, I think). Number of attacks is capped BTW., so multi-attack weapons are absolutely awesome early, but eventually the multi-attack property isn't so great.

 

[NoSoup4you]

Well it still gives elemental bonuses that will apply to spells I think.

How does bonuses/resistance stacking work? It seems to just take your best modifier and ignore everything else? But then what about negative ones?

 

[Grunker]

"are ya winning son?"

"sure am dad. playing this hypercomplex number-crunching tactical mastermind game that demands true intelligence and wits, only playable by the most alpha of males."

The hypercomplex number-crunching tactical mastermind game that demands true intelligence and wits, only playable by the most alpha of males:

Spoiler

 

[NoSoup4you]

I've got two charges of diomente finally, so a lot of the chores will be taken out of the game. Awesome. I decided to focus on tackling the ice cave, so I used my best ores with my best anti-ice equipments - flamberge, ice cloak, storebought ice charms - everyone's resistance ranges from 30-50%. Hopefully that'll make the attrition manageable. I'm trying to use silence and psi breath more now that I can't one hit nuke everything reliably, but god damn my gnomish alchemist/ex-cleric is slow. He's probably the worst guy to be filling this role.

Would it make sense to change my mage into a samurai to try and get hit points? Or should I switch to another dedicated caster? Become a cleric since she's a fairy and fast? From what I know, bishop should pretty much be just an endgame switch because of their slow levels, and I don't really know anything about shaman.

 

[Haplo]

Going Mage -> Cleric -> Bishop sounds like a good plan. Bishops can't wear good equipment anyway.
Although there was one spell that was twice more effective if cast by an actual Cleric AFAIR (Immolarati?). Could be good against some of the nasty post-game enemies (Beliar with his sick AC?).

A fairy samurai... doesn't sound good.

 

[NoSoup4you]

It would basically sit around doing nothing for a few levels and gaining samurai HP per level. Don't know how much that is or how much it's reduced for being a fairy.

 

[Grauken]

"are ya winning son?"

"sure am dad. playing this hypercomplex number-crunching tactical mastermind game that demands true intelligence and wits, only playable by the most alpha of males."

The hypercomplex number-crunching tactical mastermind game that demands true intelligence and wits, only playable by the most alpha of males:

Spoiler

A true blobber fan sees the world only as wireframe

 

[Haplo]

It would basically sit around doing nothing for a few levels and gaining samurai HP per level. Don't know how much that is or how much it's reduced for being a fairy.

And for that you'd sacrifice the benefits of either learning more spells from other classes or learning high mastery skills from level 26 (damage boosts in case of mage AFAIR)?

Not that staying a pure mage was such an awesome idea in my experience (used a DonMag pact adventurer, who has like 200% boosts to elemental spells).

 

[NoSoup4you]

Ice cave's done, now I'm hitting a wall with the bottom floors of the hole and the church. Expeditions tend to be short-lived. I've rolled a new halfling alchemist just to be able to cast escape spells first in combat. The precon valkyrie that I've kept around got a Spiral Spear, which is the best weapon I've seen in the game so far. I'm close to having two sets of viable characters now, so I can mix up the party if need be.

I don't know whether to care about the brawler's lowered AC ability - I currently have one naked with a couple +AC forged accessories and brass knuckles, and the other one has heavy armor and a hammer. If nothing else, the extra inventory space is nice, but I can squeeze out more points of AC if I throw a bunch of heavy armor on. The hammer should be way better than the knuckles, but they don't seem to really do appreciably different damage with physical attacks.

 

[Matador]

Ice cave's done, now I'm hitting a wall with the bottom floors of the hole and the church. Expeditions tend to be short-lived. I've rolled a new halfling alchemist just to be able to cast escape spells first in combat. The precon valkyrie that I've kept around got a Spiral Spear, which is the best weapon I've seen in the game so far. I'm close to having two sets of viable characters now, so I can mix up the party if need be.

I don't know whether to care about the brawler's lowered AC ability - I currently have one naked with a couple +AC forged accessories and brass knuckles, and the other one has heavy armor and a hammer. If nothing else, the extra inventory space is nice, but I can squeeze out more points of AC if I throw a bunch of heavy armor on. The hammer should be way better than the knuckles, but they don't seem to really do appreciably different damage with physical attacks.

- The challenge with brawlers is to get them diverse resistances with the few equipment options you have that are compatible with natural AC. AC is not the main concern with them.
- If they are not punching and kicking, use another class
- You have enemy demon packs in the church to grind easily for XP to get a few levels if you need.
- Alchemy, buff and debuff spells and crowd control spells in general is the key to success in combat encounters in this game, damage spells are not so useful, except weak but numerous enemies. Just check the monster encyclopedia to detect fissures in enemy defenses. If not, buff and debuff speed, number of attacks or AC always works like a charm.
- Again, ABUSE alchemy spells and cleric and mage buffs/debuffs. Plan the party with that in mind to have a lot of casting points in your party overall.

 

[NoSoup4you]

Finished church, onto mansion. Bottom of giant hole is still worse than both. My casters are definitely idling a lot less in everyday battles than they used to. Good to have 9+ casts of whole row paralysis, silence, etc so I don't have to care as much when they accidentally turn out to be unnecessary.

Speakingof which, if you manually order your characters' turns, are you potentially letting the enemies get more attacks where your faster characters would have gone first?

It is definitely dumb that my brawlers both have breath attacks... But Dragonewt isn't a bad melee race anyway, and there are situations where punching is better. I went ahead and armored up the other one, because I wanna use this hammer, but if unencumbered AC scales with level, someday it may catch up to current armors.

My fairy mage is 29 years old, so I'm unwilling to accept any more of her deaths until I find a way to de-age her. This means a lot of savescumming I'm not entirely comfortable with. There's basically nothing I can do about surprise attacks or enemies randomly deciding to do 200 damage instead of 20 this turn (lightning spells!) But it feels cheap to just reroll the encounter, and in turn this playstyle is eroding my investment in the game.

I do have some good anti-lightning accessories I pumped up, but that's hardly the only threat of course. There's also the instant death spells and now the shurikens. I converted my backup halfling alchemist to a ninja and will see how that improves things. Can she replace my pure thief, or will opening chests become too risky? I wanted to potentially change my thief to a bard or hunter, but it seems like a waste as the thief levels don't transfer anything forward. He really doesn't do much except open chests... which is vital longterm, but still. Maybe I can manage to stack a non trivial silence % on his two slings or something.

I might have trouble integrating a ninja, because all my casters are good alignment, and keeping characters around with both is a huge annoying headache.

 

[Matador]

I might have trouble integrating a ninja, because all my casters are good alignment, and keeping characters around with both is a huge annoying headache.

Just use the old trick since Wizardry 1. Get the good characters in the dungeon, leave them there and escape to town menu, after that enter the dungeon with the ninja and search in the tile where you left the good guys, you now have your full mixed alignment party. With a little of luck they get all the same alignment after a while.

 

[Haplo]

By post game, brawlers naked AC will overtake the AC of Armored characters. Eventually only ninjas and brawlers will have AC worth anything.

Ninja can replace the thief IMO - BUT he needs very high Luck for that. So right after changing his class he'll likely suck at disarming - until he tops his stats.

And yeah, Valkyrie was usually the MVP of my party. I greatly enjoyed having her in the front - so she could stab and instantly eliminate annoying enemies in the enemy backlines.

 

[Torus]

Does luck stat matter at all for summoner capture attempts?

 

[Ysaye]

Does luck stat matter at all for summoner capture attempts?

I don't believe so - I think the variables as I understand it are:

(1) Level - your levels affect the number of roll attempts to reach the required monster resistance % - increasing your level increases the number of rolls (and hence the chance of contract).
(2) Monster resistance - this % can be reduced by characters that reduce resistances with their attacks (eg. like Brawlers).

 

[Reality]

The Japan wiki is super unhelpful about the luck stat. Supposedly it plays a minor role in most calculations. It does play a really big role in Trap Disarm though.

Level Difference formula is usually a stronger boost than any primary stat in most places it could apply.

One Place claimed that the Alchemist Lower Resistance spell also worked for helping summons like the brawler clean hit did.
I think the Brawler clean hit counts as 15! uses of the Alchemist Lower Resistance, but it's kind of murky.

Personally I just use the best 50% Summon Resist and 30% Summons Resist monsters and leave the 80%/99% monsters alone.
You still get Brainsly, Mifune, and Don Mags doing this...

During the Main story I think it's worth getting any Giants / Ninjas along the way just for use in the actual summon slot rather than making charathers
(Giants are all 60% and have breath attack+good melee) Ninjas are mostly 50%)

Ninjas you can get during the story are like - Redcap(Great Tree) Dragonfly(Uhim Hall) Master Ninja(Uhim Hall) Ghost Ninja(Royal Tomb) and Mifune(Royal Volcano)
The Ninjas in Guatela Grotto are bait and only have 5% Behead compared to the 20-30% the others have

If you want to experiment - use the wiki or kill one of the monster you want and check the in-game gallery once it's stats have been added
- Most Cleric type monsters are 90-99%, I've never bothered with any of them.
- Most Mage monstesr with direct damage magic are 50% or 60% - A Glass/Raglass spammer is pretty nice up to the 11th dungeon tbh.
- Mage type monsters with Status effect only (including instant death spammers) and no direct attack can be 30% in many places.
- Some of the dual-wield monsters can be pretty strong in the 7th slot despite not transferring the thing over if you make them party members.

 

[NoSoup4you]

Yashahime - unleash hidden power? Two party members turned to ash. Ok then. I've seen 3 of these prompts I think, and none of them have done anything positive, and I don't know what the fuck the point is.