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[Vieo]

You're there in a dungeon, then, all of the sudden the music stops. You don't hear it for about 10 secs, then this other music that can only be described as "Uh oh! Danger!"-music starts playing. All the monters in the dungeon disappear and are replaces with really high level ones, like... level 27 Blood Bats.

What's the deal with that? It's only happened to me once. I didn't even spend a lot of time on that level, so it wasn't like I was taking too long to finish the dungeon.

Also, every once in a while you'll here this faint tune play in the background that sounds like trumpets. What does that mean?

And also, is it true that if you get killed, you have to live with the consequences; meaning, if you try to press reset, something REALLY bad happens? (Sorta like Animal Crossing and Mr. Repetti, except he actually does something bad to you this time.)

Man, this game is really for the hardcore gamer. It's intense!

 

[Rummy Bunnz]

Haven't run into that UH OH DANGER thing yet, but I can help ya with the other two.

Also, every once in a while you'll here this faint tune play in the background that sounds like trumpets. What does that mean?

That means you fulfilled a requirement to make a Silver or Gold chest appear. They tend to have good loot, so make sure you collect them. Check the map to see where they are - in case you didn't know Select will increase the map size. Also, the loot is fixed, so you can earn multiples of the same item by re-doing the dungeon.

I coulda swore the Japanese version told you what the requirements are for the chests, but there seem to be no hints in the US version. Maybe that was just me being retarded and misunderstanding the menus, since I don't know Japanese. But I think I heard someone else say the Japanese one told you the requirements....

And also, is it true that if you get killed, you have to live with the consequences; meaning, if you try to press reset, something REALLY bad happens? (Sorta like Animal Crossing and Mr. Repetti, except he actually does something bad to you this time.)

Yes, if you reset you have to sit through a long spiel about how naughty you are AND you lose all your loot. Or so I read. I haven't done it myself.

I love this game. I can't believe how much I was missing with the import. I didn't even know how to do quests! Or the bonus dungeons! Oy!

 

[sprsk]

that music means youve been dawdling too long and the will o wisp appears, if you touch it your life goes to 1.

quests are HARD. especially that one with the dark sword thingie.

 

[Rummy Bunnz]

The one with the sword that THIRSTS FOR BLOOD? That one was a BITCH. I kept screwing up, exiting and re-entering, and eventually I was such a high level that the monsters were near impossible to kill. I had to restart it. Calmed down and took it slow and beat it on my first try. I think I'm still using the sword I got as a reward.

I haven't had the guts to try a bonus dungeon yet. I'm too ascared. I should probably just put all my good loot in storage and give one a shot.

 

[RevenantKioku]

I haven't had the guts to try a bonus dungeon yet. I'm too ascared. I should probably just put all my good loot in storage and give one a shot.

My first run through the original dungeon, I made it pretty far, grabbed a few levels, but eventually went out for lack of healing items.
When I learned about breaking down the door, I figured, fuck, its level 1-1's bonus dungeon, it can't be that bad.

I died in a couple steps.

 

[Rummy Bunnz]

I died in a couple steps.

I just tried the Bonus Dungeon on the 11f of the Cave.

I died in a couple of steps.

 

[sprsk]

i just died and lost all my aqua armor

 

[RevenantKioku]

Is there a way to rip shards out of equipment?

 

[Rummy Bunnz]

Nope. Can't remove shards. Or at least that's what the manual (or something in-game) said.

How do I get more quests? I only have the first 3, plus variations on the knight armor quest. Do I just gotta progress through the main game, or does it require talking to people in town or something?

 

[sprsk]

wait, are you guys trying to say you can put shards into armor??? how?

 

[Rummy Bunnz]

Go to Equipment, choose the part of your body you want to equip, then hit right. It'll show you all the slots the item has. Move the cursor to the slot and stick in whatever gem you want.

Last night something went wrong when I was saving and it corrupted my save. 8 hours down the drain...

I ended up starting over and trying out the Ruins bonus dungeons. At first I was just trying to avoid all the enemies and make it to the next floor, but it seems like you only get loot by killing them. So I stocked up on a ton Squall Bottles and would use them to kill 2-3 enemies at a time. Got a lot of great aqua equipment for this early in the game. Ended up using most of the gems I got to kill monsters who cornered me, though.

 

[ninvampire]

Here's some tips:

When you die, if you don't press any button you can reset your system and the file will revert to the file that is saved as you enter the dungeon. You'll lose everything you earned in that dungeon run, but it's better than losing everything.

Resetting will cause you to go through a lecture with Ishtar, but after the third time, it never gets any longer and you can memorize the yes/no sequences (they never alter) to minimize the time needed to get through it.

In order to pop a gold chest, you must first get the silver chest and clear that floor and come back and then meet the requirements for the gold chest.

After the initial time you get a silver/gold chest, you will randomly get the original chest item or a fine/quality ability potion.

As for bonus dungeons ... I'd recommend trying to go as soon as you get an overpowered weapon for your level. Bonus dungeons monsters will always be up to 5 levels higher than you ... so remember that. Collect gems and whatnot your first run through, use the key ... feather out ... sell those. Go back, repeat.

You can build up any equipable item up to +99 (MAX). The items that you combine with your base item do matter ... I found blades/hammers to be the best to combine for the maximum damage increase (usually +2/3 per combination). Obtaining bonus dungeon weapons is a great way to build up your weapons quickly. (You can take leather knuckles and max them out and that'll take you probably most of the way through the deserted holy place.)

After you finish chapter 4, chapter 5's Between Heaven and Earth is basically a huge bonus dungeon. There's 120 floors will no portals ... so you have to do it all in one sitting. Floor 119 is a bitch of a floor, checkboard pattern where you're forced to kill every single roper and hyper knight you come across. I heavily suggest having freeze smite and using a fire enchanted weapon to take out the ropers and then unequipping your weapon and using your fist to kill the hyper knights. (You really don't want to risk your weapon being deflected beyond the enemy where you can't pick it up)

Between Heaven and Earth has absolute random drops ... certain exceptionally rare items can only be found here, but considering how random the drops can be .... you might never see one.

Build up 2 main weapons for Between Heaven and Earth, one with Fire/Water/Light, and another one with any combination and Dark (I went with Fire/Lightning/Dark) Edit: Reason for the dark weapon is for the absolute final "boss" where if you have ANY light element on your weapon you will deal 0 damage.

As for ideal choices to build up, I preferred to go with a nice weight 8 weapon (knuckles and/or a Queen's Saviour - tower of druaga floor 42 or 43 gold chest). In conjunction with weight 10 or less armor your weapon will be able to first strike any enemy (outside of the spirit based legend monster - earth elemental)

Each floor of every dungeon has a bonus dungeon gate-keeper on the 4th bonus dungeon floor. These gate-keepers drop some of the absolute best items in the game. But I would definitely not recommend trying these guys without triple speed and some really good weapon abilities like extreme force, parrying attack, and quite possibly violent twister.

One final thing about bonus dungeons, the items dropped on the 2nd and 3rd bonus dungeon floors is not randomized ... Each dungeon floor bonus dungeon will drop different items. Dark ruins will always drop aqua; Underground Caves will always drop lightning; Holy Place will drop ice up until the 17th floor and then fire; Tower of druaga has an interesting pattern: aqua, lightning, ice, fire, then light up until the 10th, then it'll cycle aqua, lightning, ice, fire, then dark up to the 20th and then it repeats the cycle I just laid out.

Edit #2: I forgot to answer the question in Vieo's post: There are 2 possible causes for that. #1 if you've received messages about an evil pressence/air/etc then you've spent too many turns and either tons of will-o-wisp's will spawn or some really strong enemies will pop. #2 You've triggered a legend-monster to spawn ... these legend-monsters are just like gate-keepers and can drop some really good items (uber rare drops of course).

 

[Rummy Bunnz]

ninvampire, you're the greatest person to ever post on the internet. Thanks very much for all that info!

 

[ninvampire]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention a few more things:

Enemies that spawn in the bonus dungeons are based on the monsters that spawn on that particular floor. Some of the best items dropped by the gatekeepers have some of the most annoying enemies to get through ... (ghosts, spirits ... be very very careful on these floors)

Gems are also a good way to get yourself out of a perilous situation in bonus dungeons. However gems seem to have a +1/-1 tier tolerance ... so keep that in mind.

Healing gems will heal for more if you have dark on your armor.

Freeze smite is super super useful.

Vampires (I still think they look like wookies) have the ability to cause random ailments. This can be deadly in bonus dungeons if you're unlucky.

Sleep is the #1 way for an untimely death.

The item that reduces the number of turns for a status ailment also reduces positive ailments as well.

Gems do not work on legend-monsters and gatekeepers.

Pandora's Box (mimic legend/gatekeeper) will appear as a red dot on your map.

If you see a chest in a bonus dungeon and haven't killed anything that dropped a chest on that tile, it's a mimic.

If you press select, you'll enlarge the map, but keep holding select down and the background will change to black so you can actually see the map a lot better.

Uhm ... I think that's all I have ...

 

[Rummy Bunnz]

Oh man, that holding down select thing is a massive help! The map was driving me nuts before. Thanks.

And yeah, I was right - the Japanese version had chest hints. Namco cut them out for the US release. AGGGGGH. Someone on GameFAQs posted this link to the Arika homepage showing the J menu. The Oracle of Ishtar had tips on how to earn the chests on every floor.

I guess they figured it wasn't worth the effort to fully translate a game that's probably going to sell 2,000 copies. "Let 'em go to gamefaqs!" Hopefully someone writes up a chest faq soon...

 

[Vieo]

WTF?! 120 floors!?>!

I guess that's not as bad as Brandish. In Brandish, the game constantly saves every time you move to another floor. Theres a type a trap in the game where you can actually step in a hole that will make you fall to the floor below and if there was a hole under the hole on the floor below, you can end up falling from the 7th floor to the 4th floor. The game then instantly saves. And usually each floor is so vastly large and difficult to navigate, you could spend 3 hours getting back to floor 7 only to fall in yet another hole and have the same thing happen again.