Climax Landers ============== Mini Playing Guide ------------------ written by Alan KWAN Shiu Ho ( mailto:tarot@netvigator.com ) Copyright 5 April 2000 Alan KWAN Shiu Ho This document addresses a few issues in the playing strategy of Climax Landers. Names and terms in this document are loosely based on the Japanese import version, and may not correspond to the terminology in the English version (which is renamed "Time Stalkers"). Some of the data is incomplete, and the information may be inaccurate, or there may be changes in the English version. If you have collected the missing data, or if you observe different behavior (in either the Japanese or English version), please notify me at: mailto:tarot@netvigator.com This document is probably only moderately useful, at best. Handling -------- In order to effectively use an equipment, spell or skill, your basic parameters need to be high enough to fulfill the "handling requirements". For equipments and spells, the requirement is checked individually for each equipment or spell. If you don't fulfill the requirement for an equipment, its battle attributes are halved, you can't use attacks other than the most basic one (in the case of a weapon), and any skill which comes with the equipment becomes ineffective. If you don't fulfill the requirement for a spell, you cannot cast it. Skills are a bit different. The requirements for all active skills are added together, and if you don't fulfill the total requirement, /none/ of the skills has any effect. You can deactivate some of your skills so that other skills take effect. This can be done in the "set-up window" between dungeon floors, or in town. Player Characters ----------------- This game is not too difficult: any character can clear any dungeon with reasonable ease, so the player is pretty much free to use whichever character he wants to use. However, the characters have quite different abilities, and there is some variation in playing style among different characters. [Sword] All-round balanced fighter. He mainly fights with sword, but he can use some magic too. Available from the start. Weapon: sword, broadsword, knuckle Initial carrying limit: 4 items [Rao] Powerful but slow physical fighter with tough defense. He doesn't have any spells, but he does have a few MPs, so it is best to give him a "ring of healing magic" or "ring of support magic" so that he can use spells. Available after clearing the pyramid. Weapon: broadsword, spear, rod, knuckle Initial carrying limit: 6 items [Ryle] Fast elf fighter. As a treasure hunter, he can carry lots of items, and he can identify items from the start. He has the best overall initial parameters, and is thus the best character in handling items and skills. Available after clearing the forest. Weapon: bowgun, sword, knuckle Initial carrying limit: 8 items [Marlin] Elf mage. Defensively she is fragile, but her magic spells are very powerful. Available after clearing the temple. Weapon: staff, bowgun, knuckle Initial carrying limit: 4 items [Lady] A balanced fighter. She mainly relies on her offensive abilities and is a bit weak on the defensive side, but she has many attack-boosting skills to help her out in a critical situation. Available after clearing downtown. Weapon: whip, boomerang, spur Initial carrying limit: 6 items [Marion] An animated doll with average physical strength and good magical power. Her defensive parameters seem low, but she has many skills to boost her defense, and she has her 20% inherent magic resistance too. With a high carrying limit, large skill and spell windows (8 each from the beginning), and smaller need for food (200% stomach), she is probably the best character. To get her, you need to find her inside the doll house, in small doll form. Bring her to Noiman, and he will fix her. Weapon: staff, boomerang, knuckle Initial carrying limit: 8 items Each character can equip only his own type of armor. The male characters can equip most shields, but the female characters can equip only magic shields. Capturing Monsters ------------------ You need the "capture" skill (which every character has) to capture enemy monsters. The chance of successful capturing depends on the monster's type, its loyalty (the higher its loyalty, the more difficult it is to capture it), and the level of your capture skill. You have only eight capsules, and you cannot capture any more monsters if they are all filled. Since you cannot drop monsters until you leave the dungeon, you should bring only monsters you're planning to use into a dungeon, and you should only capture what you need. If a monster's loyalty is too low, it may not listen to your commands in battle. This can be inconvenient, especially for offensive types such as Madams and Sorcerers. Though you can try to raise the loyalty using the "Part-Time" mini-game, the efficiency is quite low. You might as well bid it farewell and capture another one instead. If your character doesn't have the Heal spell, it is strongly recommended that you bring a Healer along, or capture one as soon as possible. When you return to town, you should visit the monster house and register the monsters you're keeping. The monster house is quite small (8 in the beginning, 16 more available through expensive renewals), and you can take only a few monsters into a dungeon anyway, so you need only keep the useful ones which have reasonable loyalty. The races which I find the most useful are: Madam - superb attack, though rather weak defense Knight - strong defense with reasonable stomach (unlike Golems and Skull-heads) Healer - a necessity when the player character can't do it Hammer - reasonable fighting for their small appetite (200% stomach) Long-ear - fillers with small appetite (200% stomach) Monster Stomach Size Table -------------------------- One interface feature lacking in the game is that monster parameters (other than HP, MP and loyalty etc.) cannot be verified without bringing the monster into the party, and thus being stuck with it for a floor. Personally I find hungry monsters annoying and distracting, so I like to use monsters with good stomach sizes. Monster stomach size is uniform within a race (for example, Madam, Volcano, Poseidon and Judgement all have the same stomach size). The list is currently incomplete. Long-ear 200 Skeleton Burgler 50 Knight 70 Armor 40 Golem 30 Larva Dog Skull-head 50 Unicell Sorcerer 80 Ghost Balloon Serpent 80 Hat-bug 60 Healer 100 Hammer 200 Madam 80 Building Up Levels ------------------ When inside a dungeon, you gain experience by defeating enemies. For each 100 EXP, you go up a level. The total experience value of each enemy group is modified by three multiplicative modifiers: [# of enemy groups in battle] 1 x1.00 2 x1.20 3 x1.50 4 ?? [relative level difference] ... 4 ?? 3 x3.00 2 x2.00 1 x1.50 0 x1.00 -1 x0.90 -2 x0.80 -3 x0.60 -4 x0.40 -5 x0.20 -6 x0.10 -7 x0.05 ... [relative party size difference] -3 ?? -2 ?? -1 x1.50 0 x1.00 1 x0.80 2 x0.50 The most important modifier to notice here is the relative level difference modifier. It is calculated based on the /average/ level of your party and that of your enemies. Thus, you can invoke a high modifier by including low level monsters in your party. As long as the low level monsters survive the battle, everybody will be gaining more EXP because of their presence. For this reason, a good strategy is to bring more than two monsters into a dungeon and rotate them, in order to boost the player character's level. (Or you may use newly captured monsters in the rotation, if you can find appropriate ones.) Note that while the modifier decreases by a small percentage when your level is higher, it goes up rapidly when your level is lower; this easily more than offsets the relative party size difference modifier. Taking into account the relative level difference modifier, we see that in order to maximize one's level before fighting the boss, it is not necessarily useful to defeat every enemy in a dungeon. In fact, for a battle of which reward would exceed a certain degree (when your party level is relatively low, and the enemies are reasonably numerous), it is possible that you will end up with a higher level after the battle if you enter the battle at a lower level. Since the level of enemies is determined by the dungeon floor, it is not useful to fight needless battles in earlier floors, provided that the party is strong enough to soundly defeat the immediate enemies. In order to maximize one's chances against a tough boss, it is needed to defeat all enemies on the floor just before the boss only. Also, if one is already strong enough to soundly defeat the boss, it is again not useful to level up further, since that reduces the experience one earns for the boss fight, and consequently gives one a lower final level to be credited towards his ranking. Fighting multiple groups is sometimes more risky than the extra reward is worth, and should generally be avoided unless you are reasonably confident that you can win the battle without taking losses (for example, if the enemies are weak Long-ears, or when you have good "giga-" spells). However, if you can win a large battle at a good relative level difference modifier, the reward can be very handsome. (You can sometimes get more than 1000 EXP in a single battle.) When you leave a dungeon, everybody returns to level 1, but the levels one has earned are credited towards his ranking. When a character or monster has accumulated enough levels in dungeons, when he exits the dungeon, he goes up a rank and earns new skills, spells, and attacks. (Only monsters learn new attacks; player characters learn new skills which enable new attacks instead. Note that one doesn't get any parameter increase when he goes up in rank; this is a game balance feature.) Jackpot Machine Payoff Table ---------------------------- 7 x3 500 Bell x3 200 Bar x3 100 Orange x3 50 Melon x3 25 Yogurt x3 10 Yogurt x2 3 Yogurt x1 1 END OF DOCUMENT