Figured I'd give some advice to newcomers.

You're likely to change classes & races as you progress. For now your best bet is a combination that will get you through the early dungeons.

Fighters - Self-explanatory. Always a safe bet for the frontline.
Brawlers - Most likely your main damage-dealer for the early parts of the game. They have a natural bonus to defense that accumulates as you level.
Thieves - Almost all treasure chests are trapped, and your #1 source of equipment comes from said chests. Thieves are a must. Make a dragon-newt thief so they can breathe fire in battle.
Mages - Can nuke enemies but most importantly they learn diomente. Diomente is a teleport spell that allows you to move to nearly any explored tile in a dungeon. After you get diomente you can immediately class change to something else like a Summoner or Alchemist.
Clerics - Healing spells.

Like I said, race doesn't matter too much at first. If you need to make a new character it's faster to take advantage of certain EXP grinding locations to bring them up to speed. Anyway, two dragons are a definite help. Before long their breath attack can hit entire rows of enemies.

Set your age low. Old characters lose vitality and eventually die and stay dead. If you want more stat points you can re-roll until you get a large amount. That said, it isn't really necessary. Stats fluctuate on level-up, sometimes they go up, sometimes they go down. Don't worry too much about it.

For skills you'll definitely want the following:

Mysterious Bag - all excess items from treasure get deposited in the alchemy warehouse. Nice way to reduce the headaches that come from running out of space.
Healing boost - I forget the name exactly but it strengthens the healing abilities of the character. Make this character your cleric and give him/her/? all your potions.

Money is easy to come by before long, mainly because all you'll really need to buy are potions and magic maps. Consider grabbing a flamberge when you get the cash for it, it'll make your fighter viable for awhile. Otherwise expect your brawler and dragons to do most of the killing.

The skill that awards treasure chests after random encounters. Normally chests only appear after fixed encounters. This can really increase the amount of loot you can attain.

When leveling up don't settle for 1 HP. Yes it happens A LOT but just continue to reload until you get 7-15 hp gains. With only 8 hp to work with at the beginning of the game you'll need all you can get. Don't worry about losing stats on leveling, it's only something to consider when you're class changing (you need points in certain stats to unlock classes).

If you're looking to get diomente early on your best bet is the third floor of the first dungeon. There is a hole at the very end you can continually inspect to fight relatively easy battles for 3000 to 4000 exp a fight. Bring a lot of supplies and a good book to keep yourself occupied. Once you hit spell level 7 with the Mage you get diomente and miracle. If you're getting bored (most likely) you can go ahead and stop. Personally I'd consider class-changing at this point to a summoner or an alchemist. Alchemists get a lot of debuff spells (very useful) while summoners can make contracts with monsters(basically a 7th party member, also very useful). Once you class-change your mage will end up with three charges for every spell level. Yes even if you only have one in spell-level 7 you'll somehow end up with three.

Oh and SAVE FREQUENTLY. This can't be emphasized enough. After the first dungeon monsters capable of beheading, nuking the entire party, and other nasty tricks will start appearing.

Once you get through the first few dungeons you'll likely want to pursue the more advanced classes. Hopefully by this time you've acquired some gear that'll make them viable.

The main thing to consider is that this party most likely won't be your final one. This party is for getting over those initial humps. You'll be class-changing or even creating new characters for the next leg of the game.

ZarquonHigardi posted:

I edited the texture file to make the walls white instead of brown to stand out better: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17345665/EL03_001.dds

Just drop that file into the main Elminage directory.

Here's a preview of what it looks like:

SelenicMartian posted:

Are the bosses in this Elminage still vulnerable to instant death by beheading?

...and do they still have a non-zero chance of being tamed by a Summoner?

SelenicMartian posted:

Are the bosses in this Elminage still vulnerable to instant death by beheading?

...and do they still have a non-zero chance of being tamed by a Summoner?

corn in the bible posted:

Summoners have the ability to pick SPIRIT PACT as their extra ability in gothic, which converts captured monsters into adventurers you can add to your party:

-Blackadder- posted:

How does Spirit Pact work exactly? Is it a one time thing? Or can you keep using it? Does it overwrite the previous party member monster?

-Blackadder- posted:

How does Spirit Pact work exactly? Is it a one time thing? Or can you keep using it? Does it overwrite the previous party member monster?

Serious Frolicking posted:

I wanted to like this game so much, but the map system is just incredibly awful.

SelenicMartian posted:

Eh? What did they do to the mapping? Eliminage Original had an permanent automap.

corn in the bible posted:

Some special encounters do seem to be prevented by story reasons (if you try to contract with the training hall guy, for example, it just straight up won't let you), but in most other cases they're made difficult or impossible to contract by means of giving them 100% resistance to being contracted. And there are methods to reducing enemy resistance -- for example, if a brawler manages to get enough extra hits to land four of them, the fourth one will be a CLEAN HIT and massively reduce the enemy's resistance, making it more likely (or possible) to contract with them.

The White Dragon posted:

So are those weird black shapes on the walls mining points? How do I use them? I have three Picks, but none of them are equipped.

ShankyMcStabber posted:

It is my understanding that in Elminage Gothic only bosses have itemized loot that a Thief can steal (unlike Elminage Original). This means the Thief is not nearly as required if you want to gear up a brawler.

Which means I went Samurai, Brawler, Ninja, Bishop, Mage, Alchemist as my starting party. I will class change the 3 spellcasters so that they all end up with level 7 spells from all classes and finally end up as Bishop, Alchemist, Summoner.

ChibiSoma posted:

The game got an update. You can now change your resolution and toggle fullscreen without it crashing, hooray!

But then I got into combat and the very first effect that went off crashed the game so it's still unplayable for me. And, getting close to a week since release, the pre-order bonuses still aren't available.

But hey. It's progress! Maybe in a month or two the game'll be stable enough for me to play. I want to believe.

Koorisch posted:

I was wondering if i should do a party composition of Brawler, Valkyrie, Cleric, Mage, Thief and Alchemist, is that a good beginning party or should i get something like a Bishop instead of a Mage?

nftyw posted:

Also in my playthrough of Original, I think the only characters I didn't class change at all were my Fighter, Brawler, and Thief. Needed a higher level to steal more items with the Thief so that I could make my huge hp Fighter do crazy damage, and the hilarious glitch with the off-hand paralyze monster weapon made a demon Brawler practically a necessity.

-Blackadder- posted:

Couple more tips:

- Have an alchemist make you some HP regen gear for your front line asap. It's amazing and allows you to stay in the dungeon ALOT longer without having to go back to town to rest.