Under World 3

author=Krolan
Pro Tipps (consider this SPOILERS(!!!!!), since figuring out stuff is part of the game), these tipps are meant for if you want to play on hardest difficulty and struggle with it. With any other difficulty you probably could make decisions more lighthearted.

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Everything that is said here might not apply to you, you can very well find other good tactics, strategies and combinations if you picked another class.

Basically, if you narrow it down, there are 5 classes to take:
The Melee Fighter, the Ranged Archer, the MassGenocide Magician, the Resourceful Shapechanger and the Brutal Martial Artist(Brawler).

Keep in mind that I played through this game as Melee fighter, I also set Difficulty to highest possible from the very beginning (Key: D, white = weak enemies, red = strong enemies, 4 stages = easy, normal, hard, hardcore) since that gives you more EXP. I will provide some hints for other classes anyway, but you might invalidate some of them.

1. Healing Ability is life-saving in early game, later on it might still be pretty useful, dependant on how much damage you take. Especially Fighters and Brawlers get up close and personal therefor get potentionally more hits. Shapechangers have many options, they also can't heal while in summon-form, and if their Summon dies they don't die, basically being able to cast another summon, also there are 2 "rare skills" in later stages of the Mansion (Level-Up), one which gives the essentially life-steal (Also known as Vampirism) to summons (there is also a Vampire-Shapechange), the other one actually allows you from that point on to heal while shapechanged. So with them, I really don't know if this healing is mana-dependant or not. You figure it out.

2. Mana upgrades are rather cheap and provide with them more healing capacity, preservance of mana crystals (more important for early-mid game) and options to cast different spells. Again not sure about if shapechangers need mana to heal while shapechanged once they have the skill.

ANY CLASS (except, maybe, shapechangers....):

3. Get stone-skin!!!!

4. Get stone-skin!!!!

5. Get other utility spells like time-stop, divine energy (only if you actually need energy, I guess mages don't, shapechangers definitely don't), etc.

6. Once you get the "Armor of Wealth" (you might also get the Dagger of the Rich or something like that, but it's weak, whch probably is a good deal for mages, since there are rarely staffs which increase magic performance), use it as often as possible if you want to be rich. I didn't take that advice and ended up not being able to experiment with all the spells I wanted to after 3rd town (Yes, As a fighter I liked to try out spells. Guess I made a poor career decision)

7. If you are a mage you will probably not invest in weapon-attack range (for melee). With some bosses though you probably would want to. Know this: There is a recipe for a ring which maxes your attack-distance.

8. Get people to like you everywhere everytime. Okay, really only in 3 cities.

9. In first town, don't miss the thief-shapechange (ANY CLASS), stealing is easy and in first town will allow you to buy everything there is(as well you should) after about 20 minutes of dedicated stealing. You might wanna save occasionaly, especially before you first try. Note that you can steal from any character multiple times, everytime a character took 2 steps (about every 5 seconds)

10. Do. Not. Buy. Property. (yes you can) Before. you. went. in. Seriously. There is always a ring combination. If you are a perfectionist you wouldn't wanna miss that.

11. If Figter or Brawler, get ring of Rapid *something*. Here's the ring combination(heavy Spoiler):

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2xWind, ooze, 3xfire, ooze, 2xlight(halo), ooze, enchanted crystal

12. IMPORTANT: If you get to 3rd town, find the guy who wants to teach you a Card Game FIRST (don't worry, it is not in-depth), and get his quest finished (if you want to) before doing anything else (except maybe kill the bandits). In this town there is one character which disappears after you finish her quest, if you didn't play cards with her before you did her quest, you cannot finish the card-battle quest (I don't know if the reward is worth it, I just know that this pissed me off)

13. Save inhumanly often at the inhumanly often seen save-points. Use them. Always.

14. As Fighter/Brawler and probably as any other class, except shapechanger, get hit points. Just do it. You'll thank me later.

15. Since I failed to safe 2 of my propertys here a conclusional advice:

Pick 2 of the 6 possible shops... (Weapon-shop (+ to weapon and bow attack), Hospital (+ to healing skill), Magic-shop (+ to magic attack), Archery (+ to Bow Attack), Bank (+ to income per levelup), Shapechange-shop (+ to shapechange attack)) ...which you DO NOT want to protect at all, protecting the other 4 more efficiently. You might get lucky and don't loose them anyway, (with a 2/3 chance), but you will not loose your favorites if recruiting carefully.

16. Know that most of the time the save-points are there for you, but they abandon you when it comes to levelling up (except once) as well as protecting your property, so my advice is to take your time and to carefully decide which skills to get and which protectors to recruit. Also concentrate real good on the mini-games. You don't have to do them, and you don't have to win em all. But the more you win the more powerful you will get.

17. While in Levelup-Mansion notice that barriers disappear when you get skills. Behind barriers are usually fresh skills and mini-games (+ EXP). With a little luck you might open really huge areas of the mansion in one visit, so don't waste your EXP's all in one room, if your favorite skill is already gone. Additionaly, if you can't find you favorite skills anymore and still have EXP left, spend them rather than save them.

18. Don't underestimate the importance of a shield, but definitely favor a good utility spell over shield-using (keep it equipped. In this game the shield has a chance of automatically blocking and, if contained, activating its skill. Even as a mage you should get a shield)

19. The Sword of Chopping (late game) IS the best melee weapon to use, despite the God Sword being more expensive and, on paper, more powerful.

20. Some Ring effects are completely useless on hardcore. The ring that shall give you unlimited energy doesn't work for example. The Spell , divine energy, on the other hand works. Make sure to try any ring out before you safe after you made it, otherwise you're wasting materials (which are rare in the beginning, and rare to the very end)

21. Take your time with this game. Be assured that dying is annoying, but never a real set-back (as long as you use every savepoint provided, which is like every 3rd screen in fighting areas). The real dangers are: Wasting materials on rings you don't need, skilling badly or unthoughtful or one-sided (believe me, a fighter neeeeeeeds mana), Buying the wrong equipment or ignoring/missing the socializing in cities. Again. Always save.

22. Regarding socializing. As long as you didn't screw up gloriously with a character by taking the wrong option in conversation or compliment/flirt them all the way to the left which has the same effect, notice that you can always pick the second option "Compliment/Flirt" to become friends with a character. Charisma is a (Yellow) Skill which is cheap to level up. In the first town you won't have that though. Note that the Ring Combination which "makes it so you don't ever have to worry about Compliment/Flirt having a negative effect" doesn't work for some reason. The workaround here is rather time-consuming and might be considered boring, but it looks like this:
If you have a character from which you know that you cannot have positive conversations with him (like the father of the girl (1st town) who only increases his affection to you if you made his girl cry (yes, that happens, he even gives you a "high five"), which means the girl won't be friends to you or even talk to you anymore and you don't want that), go to the save point, go to the dude, compliment/flirt him, if you fail, load, if you succeed, go save again and repeat the process until affection is maxed out (red bar all the way to the right).
Aside from winning customers for your shops, affectionate NPC's will tell you their "Secret" which is always something burried somewhere in town (buy the shovel, equip it, use it in the area where the NPC told you he burried it).

23. Lifepoint-/Mana-Regeneration (as speaking of skills) is overrated (don't ask me by whom... but you get what I mean)

24. Really.... don't play on hardcore. You'll probably have way more fun and waaaay more room for mistakes on normal. There isn't even an acknowledgement in the end (the only thing that is considered hardcore is not using Angel-Statues, for which you get a code for the beginning of the game. Also note that you can change difficulty anywhere anytime, so you could micro-manage your difficulty if you are unable to do something on hardcore (which I'd advice against, for own satisfaction and EXP's if you're up for it)

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(Cheatcode (don't open this Spoiler) :

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I said DON'T!!!!

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335746 - 100% critical

On another Note: If anybody knows what the requirements for "path of good" are, I'd really like to know, otherwise a replay is pointless to me.

Another 2 cents from me: This game and its skill system would get so much more enjoyable if there was a "reset all skills" option, which would essentially just give you the exact cost of all skills you have back in EXP, closing all barriers again as if you never walked the halls, leaving mini-games and plants alone of course. This Option should be Outside the Mansion (Entrance). I don't know how difficult that would've been to code and I realize that nobody is actually reading this, but I drop it anyway.

And yet on another Note: Unbelievably well crafted, fun, exciting, worth-a-playthrough-or-more and addicting game. Play this. You want to.

author=sbester
I'm back, and ready to round out my playthrough of the trilogy. Right from the intro, this already seems much more in-depth and versatile. Expect a review in the next few weeks!

author=Gamer111
Just played Under world 2 and it was amazing! To think this is even better!