Guygrim
dragon's fang enemy avg level (according to the in-game bestiary available by pressing the "select" key and opening the "configuration/extra stuff" menu, which is also where the save command is located will tell u the following:
- DF avg level of enemies = 20-27
- Old World (place you basically enter immediately upon clearing DF, i.e. i'm saying you will be at the same levels you were upon clearing the very, very, very, VERY EASY dragon's fang dungeon)... = 40-50 in 1st floor of the Old World area map.
OW has 3 "floors", and a final 4th area which isn't really a "floor" but a hidden area you access only after defeating Dukes of Hell awaiting to test ur might, Mortal Kombat-style, in the 3rd "floor" area of the old world.
expect a jump of 10-15 levels upon entering each successive floor/area of the E: Original's Old World, meaning that you'll be facing in the 1st floor...
- enemies levelled 40-50, whereas your party that just cleared the DF will almost definitely be around 25-30, or maybe less as in my case where I only had half my chars in the 20-level range, and the rest 18-19 or so, as I found the story dungeons very easy with proper party (i.e. using 1 or 2 ninjas, who are broken beyond belief in E: Original because they super-easily and super-fast reach BEHEADING rate percetanges that go above 50%...
...whereas in E: Gothic ninja behead rate is capped at 50 percent per individual hand/weapon, and even then you will only be reaching those percentages by the time you've gone thru approximately 70-90 hours of gaming (i.e. cleared all story dungeons and are probably mid-way thru 1st post-game dungeon).
there are ways to have close to 90% behead rates in E: Gothic as +2 Ores allow enchanting higher than 50% on the very few unique wepons you'll begin to (maybe) find in post-game that come with 10% behead rate already.
and you will NOT be getting +2 ores before post-game. guaranteed. unless you grind for hours in volcano dungeon where you have like, 5% chance of getting a +2 Ore there... er, NOT worth the hassle.
er, uh, my point was basically that in E: Original the post-game enemies literally are 20-25 levels above the 1st time player's party upon entering the area; and it's a VERY rude wakeup call.
in e: GOTHIC it's completely the opposite as the progression is MASTERFULLY handled and the balance of acquiring increasingly better loot/useful "Uniques" (not that there is only 1 of them but that they come with VERY SPECIFIC enchantments or "special properties" that make them very useful although USUALLY they will not feature impressive DMG ratios; and also "unique" in that these will either have level 3 rarity for dropping AND/OR only be acquired by the player if they have a MASTER level Thief (26+) with mastery ability which turns Thief from almost worthless class to arguably one of the TOP 5 most useful with the ability to STEAL the gear Humanoid-type enemies are using against you.
This not only means that you'll be able to use said Thief char to steal "unique"-type weapons (mostly weapons, can't remember off-hand any armor-type gear worth stealing, besides maybe a cloak or two in IBag's tower or maybe a +3 or +4 Element Charm or a Rainbow Charm (rainbow charm gives +200 % to both ATK and DEF percentages for all 4 of the "elements"; i.e. OOOOOH PEEEEEEEEE).
...secondly and perhaps much more important: this also means that said Thief char can COMPLETELY NULLIFY "humanoid-type" enemies in the post-game dungeons (or the final 2 story dungeons, volcano and sanctum, which is around the time they'll reach MASTERY level) by outright removing those items from the enemies and they'll be COMPLETELY INCAPABLE OF ATTACKING PROPERLY OR DEFENDING as they'll lose their Armor Class bonuses (you steal their armor) or inflicting any considerable DMG (they are using their fists now).
In the post game dungeons there is nothing more satisfying than running into very, very dangeorus enemies wielding weapons like Emperor's Axe or a Death Bone Axe or ninja/samurai types coming at you with weapons that are
extremely good at dealing dmg and at beheading such as the samurai-type enemies in the CAve of the Ancients who are wielding NAMED SWORDS, which are btw one of the TOP 5 best 1-handed KATANA-type swords in the game and are only acquried by stealing them from those said samurai-type enemies (the game has those weapons flagged as "not to spawn in chests").
many other examples but you get the idea
Seriously, just begin Gothic
right now mate. I very much recommend doing so and, this coming strait from the <3 bro, you frankly
owe it to yourself to begin experiencing the best modern Wizardry-clone (btw, Elminage games are made by ex-Wizardry developers) that will EVER come around.
The Elminage games are the
true and
only real successors to classic Wizardry and you will
not find a better evolution and sophistication of the fundamental Wizardry-blueprint and foundation than in the Elminage games... combined with organic additoins like the Alchemy/Enchantment system (which fits like a fucking glove into the ripped-straight-from-Wizardry 5 game mechanics) you'd think sometimes that ALL Wiz games had such a system, as it fits so naturally into the scheme that you outright forget classic Wiz never had such a thing!! hehe.
In fact, AFTER playing thru Elmi Gothic (and, to a lesser extent, Original), I went back and replayed Wiz 1-5 both the SNES versions and after finishing those I fucking went and motherfucking played thru Wiz 1-5 (skpped 4) the PSX/PS1 versions.
After having delved so deep into Elminage game mechanics, AND also after then playing the Elmi devs previous games, the OFFICIAL and 100% CANON series Wizardry Empire 1-3 games, and delving soul-deep into THOSE games' mechanics as well... countless days/weeks of poring over the translated japanese Wiki/FAQs for each Elmi/Wiz-Empire game and poring over and over thru documents that detailled the (not originally available) under-the-hood systems and mechanics of the Wizardry scenarios 1-5 (6-8 are not real wiz games, btw, although 6 and 8 are very good RPGs, but they are not real Wizardry);--
--well, frankly speaking, I could then appreciate to a nigh-retarded autism level the unbelieble grace and simple artistry that comprise the Wiz 1-5 gameplay systems and their underlying mechanics and how everything dovetails into each other in a perfectly symbiotic "relationship", with 1 thing allowing a 2nd thing to function while simultaenously operating as an independent 3rd thing which then ties dynamically (and sometimes subtly) with the 1st thing and the 6th thing and then you suddenly realize that even the 6th thing would not be the 6th thing if the 2nd thing wasn't born from the 1st thing, so on and so forth.
to be blunt, Wiz 5 (the pinnacle of "western Wizardry" games in terms of dungeon design, encounter design, itemization and its design/progression and all the other gears turning in conjunction to move the giant machine foward) is literally a "proto-Elminage"; and this becomes crystal clear when you play elminage devs (Starfish SD from hereon) Wizardry Empire games, of which I recommend immediately downloading and playing the 2nd one which is/was translated into English by codexers
MrRichard999 and
Helly, as it is...
...quite simply...
....
the single best Wizardry game ever made.
NOTHING compares to the stunning work that is Starfish SD's Wiz Empire 2 (pc version was the one translated, of course, and to boot it is the definitive ver of the game). It features the most devilish but at the same time
intelligently designed Wiz-dungeons in ANY Wiz game (I say this because, personally, Wiz 4 dungeons while being INARGUABLY the most complex and genius-level designed dungeons in the Wiz series, they are also unfortunately
intentionally designed as "actively hostile" to the player); whereas the dujngeons in Wiz Empire 2 are NOWHERE NEAR as complex or as deep as the Wiz 4 dungeons (few are; the Wiz 4 dungeons, in their hellishness, are also the best crafted dungeons from ANY dungeon crawling blobber.
ever.)-- while not being as complex as those they fortunately were designed to
not be actively hostile to the player and instead each room is simply a giant puzzle room consisting of 20x20 (same as wiz 4 dungeons, that are also basically the same description) except they were masterfully "balanced" to provide perfect mix of "hellish design" and "hey, we DO want the players to beat the game, so, uh, ok here's a hidden door that lets u warp back to town!".
"Yes, yes we know we JUST made you fall 3 floors deep from where u were because we devlishly decided to put INVISIBLE "rails" that before-you-could-blink steered you straight into a floor chute that promptly deposited you 3 levels down and now you are stuck in the middle a floor that is now suddenly has the walls bleeding and all the enemies are 10 levels above you and YES. YES! WE KNOW!
ITS UNFAIR! ...but, hey, remmebre that spell for viewing hidden shit? remember it!? now get ur shit together mate, make sure to run from the fights u can't win WHICH WILL BE ALL OF THEM LEWL, and try, oh please do try (insert dev cackle here) to make it back to town in 1 piece! like we said... SOMEWHERE there is a town-warp! but... i hear rumors that it's probably inside a dark zone...
(insert 2nd cackle followed by choking as jap dev eats dorits and mt dew regardless of the fact they did not exist meme-wise in the years wiz empire 2 was made and/or the fact japs don't eat that shit)"
..."oh, and also, be sure not to bump into walls in the dark zone as i think somebody forgot to remove the WALL-BOMBS, i.e. walls that explode and dmg ur party when u bump into them HAHAHARHARHAR desu desu kawaaaiii"
tl;dr WIZARDRY AND ELMINAGE 4 EVA
